Lola, having nothing to do in Algiers, which had grown hateful to us
both, accompanied me to London. As, however, the weather was rough, and
she was a very bad sailor, I saw little of her on the voyage. For my own
part, I enjoyed the stormy days, the howling winds and the infuriated
waves dashing impotently over the steamer. They filled me with a sense
of conflict and of amusement. It is always good to see man triumphing
over the murderous forces of nature. It puts one in conceit with one's
kind.
At Waterloo I handed Lola over to her maid, who had come to meet her,
and, leaving Rogers in charge of my luggage, I drove homeward in a cab.
It was only as I was crossing Waterloo Bridge and saw the dark mass of
the Houses of Parliament looming on the other side of the river, and the
light in the tower which showed that the House was sitting, that I
began to realise my situation. As exiles in desert lands yearn for green
fields, so yearned I for those green benches. In vain I represented to
myself how often I had yawned on them, how often I had cursed my folly
in sitting on them and listening to empty babble when I might have been
dining cosily, or talking to a pretty woman or listening to a comic
opera, or performing some other useful and soul-satisfying action of
the kind; in vain I told myself what a monument of futility was that
building; I longed to be in it and of it once again.
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