WATERS OF BABYLON 67 



Liverpool Street station knows neither heat nor 

 doze; searce, on such a day as this, distinguishes 

 between day and night. The faces of the travellers 

 by the boat -train were careworn in its yellow half- 

 light, anxious and confused as they searched at the 

 bookstall for such works as seemed to combine 

 length and staying power with the least possible tax 

 on the intellect; their figures advanced or dwindled 

 in the nauseous perspective of the platform, urgent 

 to the last, driven by the unseen stress of departure. 

 A group, scarcely less than criminal, cheered as the 

 train moved out into the rain, and thereby placed, as 

 Mr. Kipling has said, the " gilded roof " on what was 

 without it a moment of sufficient fiasco. A bad 

 cheer is a worse thing than even bad champagne, 

 and has in it the same hollow festivity, the same 

 pre\asion of regret. Out over the wet roofs of White- 

 chapel glided the train, a sullen, squalid outlook for 

 eyes of farewell; brown wastes followed, seemingly 

 composed of ash-heaps. Apocalyptic in desolation, 

 oozing malign juices into slits that ran starkly into 

 an ewigkeit of fog. At some unknown limit of the 

 wilderness, the train stopped among houses and shops, 

 a place where goblin children leaned against the 

 greasy hntels of the public-house, watching with 

 eyes of subtlety and weariness the pageant of the 

 street. Eventually, beyond further wastes, mis- 

 shapen warehouses alternated with the light scaf- 

 folding of masts and yards, and we came to a standstill 

 beside a shed. It was the Albert Dock station, the 

 Gateway of the East, the threshold of England; 

 apart from these titles it was a barn of entirely simple 

 conception, capacious, doubtless water-tight, and 

 almost too unambitious to be called repulsive. From 

 it swarmed a smart gang of natives in white trousers 

 and brilliant colours, and fell upon the luggage; 



