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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 and overtook the aristocracy on its way to chapel and church:

“Well, ye let yeself in for a night, young man! No mistake!”

He smiled, and I smiled.

“What’s going to occur up there?” I asked, indicating Toft End.

“What do you mean?”

“A man like that–left with two babies!”

“Oh!” he said. “They’ll manage that all right. His sister’s a widow. She’ll go and live with him. She’s as fond of those infants already as if they were her own.”

We drew up at his double gates.

“Be sure ye explain to Brindley,” he said, as I left him, “that it isn’t my fault ye’ve had a night out of bed. It was your own doing. I’m going to get a bit of sleep now. See you this evening, Bob’s asked me to supper.”

A servant was sweeping Bob Brindley’s porch and the front door was open. I went in. The sound of the piano guided me to the drawing-room. Brindley, the morning cigarette between his lips, was playing one of Maurice Ravel’s “L’heure espagnole.” He held his head back so as to keep the smoke out of his eyes. His children in their blue jerseys were building bricks on the carpet.

Without ceasing to play he addressed me calmly:

“You’re a nice chap! Where the devil have you been?”

And one of the little boys, glancing up, said, with roguish, imitative innocence, in his high, shrill voice:

“Where the del you been?”