nip in the air; the sky was full of stars; and the greenish-yellow lamps
threw long gleams across the smooth, hard road. Few people were about;
under the trees at the corner a Guardsman was bidding a robust good
night to his girl, and here and there rang out the steps of solitary
travellers making their way home across the bridge to Battersea. I turned
up my overcoat collar, settled my sack comfortably across my shoulders,
and strode off towards the little square glow of the coffee-stall which
marked the near end of the bridge, whose sweeping iron girders were
just visible against the dark sky behind. A few doors down I passed
a policeman who was flashing his lantern on the catches of basement
windows. He turned. I fancied he looked suspicious, and I trembled
slightly. The thought occurred to me: “Perhaps he suspects I have swag
in this sack.” I was not seriously disturbed, as I knew that I could
bear investigation, and that nobody would be suspected of having stolen
such goods (though they _were_ all first editions) as I was carrying.
Nevertheless I could not help the slight unease which comes to all who
are eyed suspiciously by the police, and to all who are detected in any
deliberately furtive act, however harmless. He acquitted me, apparently;
and, with a step that, making an effort, I prevented from growing more
rapid, I walked on until I reached the Embankment.
It was then that all the implications of my act revealed themselves. I
leaned against the parapet and looked down into the faintly luminous
swirls of the river. Suddenly I heard a step near me; quite automatically
I sprang back from the wall and began walking on with, I fervently hoped,
an air of rumination and unconcern. The pedestrian came by me without
looking at me. It was a tramp, who had other things to think about; and,
calling myself an ass, I stopped again. “Now’s for it,” I thought; but
just as I was preparing to cast my books upon the waters I heard another
step—a slow and measured one. The next thought came like a blaze of
terrible blue lightning across my brain: “What about the splash?” A man
leaning at midnight over the Embankment wall: a sudden fling of his arms:
a great splash in the water. Surely, and not without reason, whoever was
within sight and hearing (and there always seemed to be some one near)
would at once rush at me and seize me. In all probability they would
think it was a baby. What on earth would be the good of telling a London
constable that I had come out into the cold and stolen down alone to the
river to get rid of a pack of poetry? I could almost hear his gruff,
sneering laugh: “You tell that to the Marines, my son!”
So for I do not know how long I strayed up and down, increasingly fearful
of being watched, summoning up my courage to take the plunge and quailing
from it at the last moment. At last I did it. In the middle of Chelsea
Bridge there are projecting circular bays with seats in them. In an agony
of decision I left the Embankment and hastened straight for the first of
these. When I reached it I knelt on the seat. Looking over, I hesitated
again. But I had reached the turning-point. “What!” I thought savagely,
“under the resolute mask that you show your friends is there really
a shrinking and contemptible coward? If you fail now, you must never
hold your head up again. Anyhow, what if you _are_ hanged for it? Good
God! you worm, better men than you have gone to the gallows!” With the
courage of despair I took a heave. The sack dropped sheer. A vast splash.
Then silence fell again. No one came. I turned home; and as I walked I
thought a little sadly of all those books falling into that cold torrent,
settling slowly down through the pitchy dark, and subsiding at last on
the ooze of the bottom, there to lie forlorn and forgotten whilst the
unconscious world of men went on.
Horrible bad books, poor innocent books, you are lying there still;
covered, perhaps, with mud by this time, with only a stray rag of your
sacking sticking out of the slime into the opaque brown tides. Odes to
Diana, Sonnets to Ethel, Dramas on the Love of Lancelot, Stanzas on a
First Glimpse of Venice, you lie there in a living death, and your fate
is perhaps worse than you deserved. I was harsh with you. I am sorry I
did it. But even if I had kept you, I will certainly say this: I should
not have sent you to the soldiers.
THE END
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