y as the skies; the
tree-tops that should have been green were as grey as the clouds and as
cloudy. And when I had walked for some hours the evening was closing in.
A sickly sunset clung weakly to the horizon, as if pale with reluctance
to leave the world in the dark. And as it faded more and more the skies
seemed to come closer and to threaten. The clouds which had been merely
sullen became swollen; and then they loosened and let down the dark
curtains of the rain. The rain was blinding and seemed to beat like
blows from an enemy at close quarters; the skies seemed bending over and
bawling in my ears. I walked on many more miles before I met a man, and
in that distance my mind had been made up; and when I met him I asked
him if anywhere in the neighbourhood I could pick up the train for
Paddington. He directed me to a small silent station (I cannot even
remember the name of it) which stood well away from the road and looked
as lonely as a hut on the Andes. I do not think I have ever seen such a
type of time and sadness and scepticism and everything devilish as that
station was: it looked as if it had always been raining there ever since
the creation of the world. The water streamed from the soaking wood of
it as if it were not water at all, but some loathsome liquid corruption
of the wood itself; as if the solid station were eternally falling to
pieces and pouring away in filth. It took me nearly ten minutes to find
a man in the station. When I did he was a dull one, and when I asked him
if there was a train to Paddington his answer was sleepy and vague. As
far as I understood him, he said there would be a train in half an hour.
I sat down and lit a cigar and waited, watching the last tail of the
tattered sunset and listening to the everlasting rain. It may have
been in half an hour or less, but a train came rather slowly into the
station. It was an unnaturally dark train; I could not see a light
anywhere in the long black body of it; and I could not see any guard
running beside it. I was reduced to walking up to the engine and calling
out to the stoker to ask if the train was going to London. "Well--yes,
sir," he said, with an unaccountable kind of reluctance. "It is going
to London; but----" It was just starting, and I jumped into the first
carriage; it was pitch dark. I sat there smoking and wondering, as we
steamed through the continually darkening landscape, lined with desolate
poplars, until we slowed down and stop