June 5.
A New Pile in the Pier
Watched some men put a new pile in the pier. There was all the usual paraphernalia of chains, pulleys, cranes, and ropes, with a massive wooden pile swinging over the water at the end of a long wire hawser. Everything was in the massive style—even the men—very powerful men, slow, ruminative, silent men.
Nothing very relevant could be gathered from casual remarks. The conversation was without exception monosyllabic: "Let go," or "Stand fast." But by close attention to certain obscure movements of the man on the ladder near the water's edge, it gradually came thro' to my consciousness that all these powerful, silent men were up against some bitter difficulty. I cannot say what it was. The burly monsters were silent about the matter.... In fact they appeared almost indifferent—and tired, oh! so very tired of the whole business. The attitude of the man nearest me was that for all he cared the pile could go on swinging in mid-air to the crack of Doom.
They continued slow, laborious efforts to overcome the secret difficulty. But these gradually slackened and finally ceased. One massive man after another abandoned his post in order to lean over the rails and gaze like a mystic into the depths of the sea. No one spoke. No one saw anything not even in the depths of the sea. One spat, and with round, sad eyes contemplated the trajectory of his brown bolus (he had been chewing) in its descent into the water.
The foreman, an original thinker, lit a cigarette, which relieved the tension. Then, slowly and with majesty, he turned on his heel, and walked away. With the sudden eclipse of the foreman's interest, the incident closed. I should have been scarcely surprised to find him behind the Harbour-master's Office playing "Shove-ha'penny" or skittles with the pile still swinging in mid-air.... After all it was only a bloody pile.
June 11.
Depression
Suffering from depression.... The melancholy fit fell very suddenly. All the colour went out of my life, the world was dirty gray. On the way back to my hotel caught sight of H——, jumping into a cab, after a visit to S—— Sands. But the sight of him aroused no desire in me to shout or wave. I merely wondered how on earth he could have spent a happy day at such a Sandy place.
On arriving at ——, sank deeper into my morass. It suffocated me to find the old familiar landmarks coming into view ... the holiday-makers along the streets how I hated them—the Peg Top Hill how desolate—all as before—how dull. The very fact that they were all there as before in the morning nauseated me. The sea-coast here is magnificent, the town is pretty—I know that, of course. But all looked dreary and cheerless—just the sort of feeling one gets on entering an empty house with no fire on a winter's day and nowhere to sit down.... I felt as lonely and desolate as a man suddenly fallen from the clouds into an unknown town on the Antarctic Continent built of ice and inhabited by Penguins. Who are these people? I asked myself irritably. There perhaps on the other side of the street was my own brother. But I was not even faintly interested and told the cabman to drive on. The spray from the sea fogged my spectacles and made me weary.