For some time we were all silent, until Ann said: “Hark.” “What is it? another Ripper murder?” said Higgs. “Oh, shut up, Higgs,” said Philip looking at Ann. “Hark,” said Ann again. It was horrible. Somewhere far off I could hear an angry murmur broken by frantic metallic clashings. No one sound out of the devilish babble could I disentangle, still less, explain. A myriad noises were violently mixed in one muddy, struggling mass of rumbling and jangling. The worst gramophones are infinitely nearer to the cooing of doves than this, but it had in it something strained, reckless, drunken-mad, horror-stricken, like the voice of the gramophone. Above all, the babble was angry and it was inhuman. I had never heard it before, and my first thought was that it was an armed and furious multitude, perhaps a foreign invader, a mile or so distant.
“Didn’t you know it was Saturday night?” said Higgs. “It is always worse on Saturdays.”
“What is?” said I.
“That noise,” said Higgs.
“Hark,” said Philip anxiously, and we all held our breath to catch it again. There.... It was no nearer. It was not advancing. It was always the same. As I realised that it was the mutter of London, I sighed, being a child, with relief, but could not help listening still for every moment of that roar as of interlaced immortal dragons fighting eternally in a pit. It was surprising that such a tone could endure. The sea sounds everlastingly, but this was more appropriate to a dying curse, and should have lasted no more than a few minutes. As I listened it seemed rather to be a brutish yell of agony during the infliction of some unspeakable pain, and though pain of that degree would kill or stupefy in a few minutes, this did not.
“If you like the ‘Elephant and Castle,’” said Mr Morgan, “you like that. But if you live in London all your lives, perhaps you may never hear it again.
“For the sound does not cease. We help to make it as we do to make England. Even those weird sisters of Aurelius out in the Wilderness help to make it by rattling branches and dropping leaves in the fog. You will hear the leaves falling, the clock ticking, the fog-signals exploding, but not London.”
I was, in fact, twenty-one before I heard the roar again. Never since have I noticed it. But Ann, it seems, used to hear it continually, perhaps because she went out so seldom and could not become one of the mob of unquestionable “inhabitants o’ the earth.” But when the window had been shut, we, at any rate, forgot all about London in that warm room in Abercorran House, amidst the gleam of china and the glitter of brass and silver. Lewis and Harry sat on the floor, in a corner, playing with lead soldiers. The English army—that is to say, Lewis—was beaten, and refused to accept its fate. On being told, “But it is all over now,” he burst out crying. Harry looked on in sympathetic awe. But before his tears had quite come to their natural end, a brilliant idea caused him to uncover his face suddenly and say: “I know what I shall do. I shall build a tower like David—a real one—in the Wilderness.”
“Oh, yes, let’s,” exclaimed Harry.