“Well, when I was thirty I was an idealist. I was impatient of my family although I loved them. I thought the world was going to do great things in a year or two. I believed most devoutly in the Millennium. I grew older—I was hurt badly. I believed no longer, or thought I didn’t. I determined that the only thing in life was to hold oneself absolutely aloof. I have done that ever since.... I had forgotten all these years that I had ever been like you. And then when I heard once again the same things, the same beliefs ...” He broke off, lit his pipe, puffed furiously at it and watched the white clouds sail into the night air.
“Whatever I have felt,” said Philip, slowly, “however I have changed, to-night I know that I am right. To-night I know that all I believed in my most confident hour is true.”
The older man bent forward and put his hand on Philip’s arm.
“Stick to that. Remember at least that you said it to me. If before I died.... There have been times.... After the Boer War here in England it seemed that things were moving. There was new life, new blood, new curiosity. But then I don’t know—it takes so long to wake people up. You woke me up a little with your talk. You woke them all up—a little. And if people like my sister and my brother-in-law—whom I love, mind you—wake up, why then it will be painful for them but glorious for everyone else.”
Philip was more alarmed than ever. He had not, at all, wished to wake the Trenchards up—he had only wanted them to like him. He was a little irritated and a little bored with Uncle Timothy. If only Mr. and Mrs. Trenchard allowed him to love Katherine, he did not care if they never woke up in all their lives. He felt too that he did not really fill the picture of the young ardent enthusiast. He was bound, he knew, to disappoint Uncle Timothy. He would have liked to have taken him by the hand and said to him: “Now if only you will help me to marry Katherine I will be as optimistic as you like for ever and ever.”
But Uncle Tim was cleverer than Philip supposed. “You’re thinking—how tiresome! Here’s this old man forcing me into a stained-glass window. Don’t think that. I know you’re an ordinary nice young fellow just like anyone else. It’s your age that’s pleasant. I’ve lived very much alone all these years at a little house I’ve got down in Glebeshire. You must come and see it. You’re sure to stay with my sister there; she’s only five minutes away. But I’ve been so much alone there that I’ve got into the habit of talking to myself.”
Philip at once loved Uncle Tim.
“I’m delighted that you came. If you’ll let me be a friend of yours I shall be most awfully proud. It was only that I didn’t want you to expect too much of me. One gets into the way in Russia of saying that things are going to be splendid because they’re so bad—and really there they do want things to be better. And often I do think that there’s going to be, one day, a new world. And many people now think about it and hope for it—perhaps they always did.”
Uncle Timothy got up. “That’s all right, my son. We’ll be friends. Come and see me. London’s a bit of a forest—one can’t make out always quite what’s going on. You’ll get to know all of us and like us, I hope. Come and see me. Yes?”
“Of course I will.”