Chapter 19 - Page 2

swung
behind me without noise. I turned toward the river, and on the broad
embankment the sunshine enveloped me, friendly, familiar, and warm like
the care of an old friend. A black dumb barge drifted, clumsy and empty,
and the solitary man in it wrestled with the heavy sweep, straining his
arms, throwing his face up to the sky at every effort. He knew what he
was doing, though it was the river that did his work for him.

His exertions impressed me with the idea that I too had something to
do. Certainly I had. One always has. Somehow I could not remember. It
was intolerable, and even alarming, this blank, this emptiness of the
many hours before night came again, till suddenly, it dawned upon me I
had to make some extracts in the British Museum for our "_Cromwell_."
Our Cromwell. There was no Cromwell; he had lived, had worked for the
future--and now he had ceased to exist. His future--our past, had come
to an end. The barge with the man still straining at the oar had gone
out of sight under the arch of the bridge, as through a gate into
another world. A bizarre sense of solitude stole upon me, and I turned
my back upon the river as empty as my day. Hansoms, broughams, streamed
with a continuous muffled roll of wheels and a beat of hoofs. A big dray
put in a note of thunder and a clank of chains. I found myself curiously
unable to understand what possible purpose remained to keep them in
motion. The past that had made them had come to an end, and their future
had been devoured by a new conception. And what of Churchill? He, too,
had worked for the future; he would live on, but he had already ceased
to exist. I had evoked him in this poignant thought and he came not
alone. He came with a train of all the vanquished in this stealthy,
unseen contest for an immense stake in which I was one of the victors.
They crowded upon me. I saw Fox, Polehampton, de Mersch himself, crowds
of figures without a name, women with whom I had fancied myself in love,
men I had shaken by the hand, Lea's reproachful, ironical face. They
were near; near enough to touch; nearer. I did not only see them, I
absolutely felt them all. Their tumultuous and silent stir seemed to
raise a tumult in my breast.

I sprang suddenly to my feet--a sensation that I had had before, that
was not new to me, a remembered fear, had me fast; a remembered voice
seemed to speak clearly incomprehensible words that had moved me before.
The sheer faces of the enormous buildings near at hand seemed to topple
forwards like cliffs in an earthquake, and for an instant I saw beyond
them into unknown depths that I had seen into before. It was as if the
shadow of annihilation had passed over them beneath the sunshine. Then
they returned to rest; motionless,