ferent gods of the Five Towns, chiming, clanging, ringing, each
insisting that it alone invited to the altar of the one God. And priests
and acolytes of the various cults hurried occasionally along, in silk
hats and bright neckties, and smooth coats with folded handkerchiefs
sticking out of the pockets, busy, happy and self-important, the
convinced heralds of eternal salvation: no doubt nor hesitation as to
any fundamental truth had ever entered their minds. We passed through a
long, straight street of new red houses with blue slate roofs, all gated
and gardened. Here and there a girl with her hair in pins and a rough
brown apron over a gaudy frock was stoning a front step. And half-way
down the street a man in a scarlet jersey, supported by two women in
blue bonnets, was beating a drum and crying aloud: "My friends, you may
die to-night. Where, I ask you, where--?" But he had no friends; not
even a boy heeded him. The drum continued to bang in our rear.

I enjoyed all this. All this seemed to me to be fine, seemed to throw
off the true, fine, romantic savour of life. I would have altered
nothing in it. Mean, harsh, ugly, squalid, crude, barbaric--yes, but
what an intoxicating sense in it of the organized vitality of a vast
community unconscious of itself! I would have altered nothing even in
the events of the night. I thought of the rooms at the top of the
staircase of the Foaming Quart--mysterious rooms which I had not seen
and never should see, recondite rooms from which a soul had slipped away
and into which two had come, scenes of anguish and of frustrated effort!
Historical rooms, surely! And yet not a house in the hundreds of houses
past which we slid but possessed rooms ennobled and made august by
happenings exactly as impressive in their tremendous inexplicableness.

The natural humanity of Jos Myatt and Charlie, their fashion of
comporting themselves in a sudden stress, pleased me. How else should
they have behaved? I could understand Charlie's prophetic dirge over the
ruin of the Knype Football Club. It was not that he did not feel the
tragedy in the house. He had felt it, and because he had felt it he had
uttered at random, foolishly, the first clear thought that ran into his
head.

Stirling was quiet. He appeared to be absorbed in steering, and looked
straight in front, yawning now and again. He was much more fatigued than
I was. Indeed, I had slept pretty well. He said, as we swerved into
Trafalgar Road