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As he walked out into Leicester Square he felt, with every step more strongly, that he had arrived at a crisis and that something must be done about it. Something must be done about his loneliness; he could not go on as he was any longer. Then, stopping to light a cigarette, he wondered, with a sharp stroke of perception that was almost like a revelation, whether it were not his Uncle Nicholas who had roused him to this sense of urgency. He had not as yet had much talk with Uncle Nicholas, but he had listened to him, he had watched him and, quite beyond question, he had been influenced by him. Uncle Nicholas seemed to have an answer to everything—yes, and a sensible answer, too. It was not that he was dogmatic. He spoke always with a laugh and an airy wave of the hand, as much as to say: “This is only the conclusion I’ve come to. There may be nothing in it. Don’t think I’m judging anybody.”

This was, to Romney, what was so exciting about Uncle Nicholas—that with all his knowledge of the world (he had travelled everywhere), with all his wide interests (there was almost nothing in which he was not interested), he never dogmatized. He offered an opinion, drew a picture, related an anecdote, and left you to draw your own conclusions.

He deferred to you in your own subject (absurd really the humble fashion in which he listened to Romney about pictures, or to the Old Lady when she was anecdotal about her youth), was surely the least conceited man in the world. Nevertheless, already Romney was aware that many things were absurd to Uncle Nicholas, most things perhaps. He did not believe, Romney was sure, in Family Life, in God, in Patriotism. And yet he was wise and kind. He would not laugh in your face whatever your opinions were. Somehow, since his arrival, the house was changed. Something was happening. Romney, very sensitive to atmosphere, was pulled in two opposite directions!

“I don’t want any change. We were very happy as we were.”

And then:

“Something is coming. Events are preparing. Life will never be the same again as it was before he came.”

Looking up, startled by his sudden apprehension of some hidden drama, he was aware of how lovely a face London was wearing at that moment. The space of brick and mortar between Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus is a very mysterious one: it is hard to believe that it was not always so. Only yesterday—if, taking Time as we should, we greet the Neanderthal Man as our brother—when the swamp oozed and sputtered under the thick dank boskage of the overgrowth—it was at this spot that the light was dim, that the coils and intercoils of tangled fibre hung lowest over the sullen stinking slime. Neanderthal Brother, brutish of jaw, sly of winking gaze, paused here, apprehending his enemy, before he paddled forward to find his kill. And now, leaving the Shakespeare statue and the click of billiard balls and the new garish Palace of Pleasure to guard the Square, you slip, for a brief moment, into a no-man’s-land where all peoples of the world may meet, regardless of caste, of financial status, of home or country. Beyond you gleams the Circus, and beyond that are the dusky sheep of the Green Park; here are the ghosts of a Society for ever vanished and the lonely sheet of sky that like a wall, of steel, of woolly fleece, of bird’s-feather blue, of a raging fiery sunset, is independent of social change, does not care that there are shops now where once there was Elegance, that will guard this little space with the same beauty, the same immortality long, long after the little stir of humanity has died into silence.

So, pausing for a moment outside the Prince of Wales’s Theatre, Romney beheld London transmuted. Above the Lyons’ Corner House the sky splashed its blue with waves of rose, recklessly splendid, while beneath it hither and thither figures hurried and paused, the traffic murmured like a beaten drum, and in the air there was a confused gentle breath of petrol, of tobacco, of flowers and, at the last, simply the London breath—London quietly resolving to be London although they might turn her ancient courts into shrill parlours of coconut-shy and Peeping Tom cabinets, and plaster flaring portraits of nude abandoned houris on the bosom of her theatres.

Everything was transmuted. Gold dust was in the air. May had come with carnations and starry evening skies and the first beat among the vegetable stalks of the Prelude to Die Meistersinger.

It would be a lovely evening—not so lovely as that spring evening weeks ago when he had walked from the Galleries as though he were stepping into a new world—the very evening, he remembered, of Uncle Nicholas’s arrival—that evening he would never forget—but lovely as the first May evenings in London are always lovely, promising, reassuring, consoling the doubting human heart.

He took off his hat and looked up. “What we want,” he thought, “is to believe in ourselves more. We have despised one another for long enough. There’s a new time of confidence coming.”

Three men and a perfect lady almost knocked him down. He apologized. “Star-gazing,” said the lady.

It was at that moment, as he approached the Circus, with the Pavilion’s cinematographic entertainment bidding him enter, that he determined that he would speak to Uncle Matthew. At once. He would find out what Uncle Matthew thought of all this. He had walked a little out of his way. He turned down the Haymarket, his face set towards Westminster.

Letting himself in, proceeding quietly upstairs, he passed an old man with a white beard. He had seen this old man before. He was one of Uncle Matthew’s friends. A very quiet old man, whose step made no sound, with very bright blue eyes and clean but shabby garments. The old man bowed, murmured “Good-evening,” and passed down into the hall where the maid was waiting to let him out. Romney went into his room, took the little negress from his pocket and placed her reverently on his table, then turned and went up to Uncle Matthew’s room.

Outside his own door he almost stepped on Becky Sharp, the cat. She seemed, he had noticed, to have the power, like certain birds and lizards and snakes, to change into the colour of the background against which she stood. Not that she was not always black, and black with a shining intensity, but with the blackness she was also at times invisible, invisible except for the intense watchfulness of her green eyes.

Now he almost fell over her, but she bore him no malice, only walked quietly beside him, along the passage to Uncle Matthew’s door. There, when he paused, she paused too and looked at him curiously and, he could have sworn, scornfully—as much as to say: “You surely are not going in there, are you?” When she saw that it really was so she walked, with quiet purpose, away.

He knocked on the door. “How very odd!” he thought. “In all these years I’ve never entered this room except to ask a question or deliver a message—never with any intention of staying there.” It was strange how, in this house, they all had their own quarters to which on the whole they obstinately kept. Was it Uncle Nicholas now who was drawing them together?

He heard Uncle Matthew’s voice bidding him enter.

He knew the look of the room, of course. It was wide and high, and books ran to the ceiling on all sides of it. There was only one picture—a large copy in colour of Leonardo’s “Virgin of the Rocks” that hung between the two windows. Romney disapproved, of course, of all copies in colour, but of this which Uncle Matthew had bought in Dresden he had to admit that the dim green shadows, the pale, lovely face of the Virgin, had in themselves a real beauty which the whole room reflected.

In the centre of the room was a table covered with a deep blue cloth. On the cloth was a plain white bowl. On the mantelpiece was a fat round tobacco jar. Uncle Matthew was sitting in an armchair reading.

When he saw who his visitor was he smiled.

“Why, Romney!” he said. “What can I do for you?”

Romney was shy. They were all, when it came to it, shy of Matthew because he lived quite definitely in another world than theirs. He had never bothered any of them with the slightest hint as to what that world might be like; he had never shown the slightest wish to lead any of them into it. But they were all well aware that his life was full, active, and exceedingly interesting. He had the look, in spite of his quiet ways and his indifference to speech, the calm of a man who is always happily occupied. He could say a sharp thing sometimes, too. He might be a saint, but he was not meek. He might love all mankind, but that was not to say that he suffered fools gladly.

“I don’t want anything,” Romney said, smiling. “Or rather—I do. I want to talk.”

“That’s splendid. Sit down there. That’s a very comfortable chair. Fill your pipe.”

Romney sat down and filled his pipe. He did not know how to begin.

Matthew helped him.

“Do you know?—this is the first time in all these years that you’ve come in for a talk. I’ve often wanted you to. I even knew that you would one day, but I wasn’t going to press you. We’re all free in this house.”

“I didn’t think,” said Romney, “that you’d want to be bored with me.”

“That’s very modest.”

“No, I don’t mean it modestly.” Romney hesitated. “I don’t mean that I’m not worth talking to. No one thinks that of themselves really, do they?”

“Oh, yes—some people do,” Matthew said.

“Well—not my friends anyway. What I meant was that you’ve always seemed so settled in your life—as though you’d made up your mind about everything; and I’ve made up my mind about nothing.”

“About nothing?” said Matthew.

“No, nothing at all. I’m influenced by everything that comes along. Six months ago I read Lawrence’s Plumed Serpent, and it seemed to me the most marvellous thing ever. Then I read someone’s book about him and he was awful—so self-centred, always squealing, false to his friends—and I didn’t want ever to read anything about him or by him again. So it always is. I can’t find anything to hang onto.”

“And so you thought you’d come and see if I had anything?”

“Yes, in a way. It was like this. I was coming from the office. The sky was lovely. I’d just bought a little wood-carving. I was excited and dissatisfied. I’d just had a great disappointment. I thought I’d come and ask you some questions.”

Matthew looked at him with great affection.

“Fire away then.”

Romney smiled. “I like this. I like this room and everything. Why haven’t I been in here before? The first thing is about myself. My disappointment this afternoon was because a friend of mine wouldn’t go out with me this evening after he had said that he would. That isn’t very serious, is it? But in a way it is, because it showed me how awfully fond of him I am. Almost as though he were a woman. And that’s what worried me. Because I’ve never been in love with a woman, and I care for this man so much. I was wondering whether I were homosexual. But I know I’m not because I’m uncomfortable with men who are. I would hate to be—not because I think they can help it, but because—oh! I don’t know—because I want to be sane, square in the middle of life. It’s a handicap to be abnormal. Everything is twisted. Why don’t I fall in love? Why do I mind so much when this man chucks me?”

Matthew struck a match and relit a pipe. Bending over it he said:

“I shouldn’t worry. You’ve got plenty of time. People talk and write too much about these things. You’re normal all right, but we’re all a mixture, and different people rouse different emotions in us. I expect you’re a bit idealistic.”

“That sounds priggish,” Romney said. “But I think a lot of my generation are like me. Girls aren’t as romantic as they were. They are too close. They don’t hide anything. We want love to be something rare, a little out of our reach. Friendship seems rarer than sexual love sometimes.”

“What’s this friend of yours like?”

“Oh, he’s absolutely ordinary. He cares for none of the things I care for. I’m fond of him, because he’s so steady and safe. I like to be with him, to be near him. I don’t think there’s anything physical in that, and yet I was sick with disappointment this afternoon. He doesn’t care a bit for me as I do for him. I know that. And yet I cheat myself, I want him to need me. But he doesn’t. If I died tonight he wouldn’t care.”

“I had a friend once,” Matthew said, “for whom I felt like that. And yet I’m normal enough. I think we divide love up too much. Love whom you will, but keep the quality fine. There are lots of different ways of doing that. But you can’t mistake it. If the fineness is there, you’ll know it. If it isn’t there, drop it. Be your own judge.” He crossed his legs. “Don’t expect too much of anyone else. Expect a lot of yourself, though. And don’t be too solemn about yourself—which I expect you’re inclined to be. We’re all very comic—very comic indeed.”

“Yes. I know we are. But if you think yourself very comic you don’t have much confidence about the things you try to do. You know—sometimes I go to a restaurant with friends and I suddenly see myself in a glass and I think I’m too awful for anything. Eyebrows and a nose and a slit of a mouth. I’m so tired of it. I’ve seen it so often. Then I sell a picture to someone and I think I’m grand.”

Matthew was so clean and fresh, Romney thought. “It’s as though I’m seeing him for the first time. And this room for the first time.” Matthew was wearing a bow tie of light grey with white spots. The sharp ends of his collar gleamed with an intense whiteness. He was so quiet and friendly and restful. They looked across at one another smiling.

“Well, what’s the next thing?” asked Matthew.

“The next thing is connected with the last thing. Except for this man there’s been nobody who mattered to me except all of us—the family, I mean. We’ve grown up taking it for granted, our loving one another, being so happy together. I’ve never thought it odd that I should love Mother and Father and Nell and Edward. Or,” he went on, smiling, “that we should have uncles and aunts in the house and like them to be there. Well, suddenly, in these last few weeks I’ve realized that what we have hardly anyone else has got any more. Or at any rate all the intelligent people now think the family’s a mistake and a danger like nationalism. All in a moment I’ve realized that I might lose this—that it might be broken up, that something would come and tell us we’re all silly to believe in one another, to care for one another. You see, if I were to lose my friend and the family—if I suddenly thought Mother silly and Father lazy and our evenings together a bore—why, then I’d have nothing left at all.”

“Why should you?” said Matthew. “After all, your mother isn’t silly and we do all care for one another. It’s something real that holds our family together. If it’s real it can’t be unreal.”

“No—but what’s real or unreal? Isn’t it the way we look at it? There are so many ways of looking at things. Your way, for instance, and Uncle Nicholas’s.”

“Ah, yes—Nicholas.”

“It’s since he came that I’ve felt so unsettled. Some of the things I’ve thought fine I’m not so sure of when he’s there. It’s almost as though there’d been a little earthquake in the house and all the things that you had believed to be steady had rocked for a moment.”

Romney looked at his uncle.

“You don’t like Uncle Nicholas, do you?”

“Why should you think that?”

“Oh, one can feel it. And Uncle Nicholas feels it, too. He’s never quite at his ease when you’re there. You’re the only one of us who doesn’t.”

“It isn’t dislike,” Matthew said. “It’s only that we don’t believe in the same things.”

“You know,” Romney went on, “in the drawing room the other night after dinner it was almost a battle between you. You didn’t say anything, but the room was full of it. The house isn’t quiet any more. Events happen underground. The other night at dinner Mother said something that I thought silly, and I snapped at her. I wouldn’t have dreamt of doing that two months ago. I saw that she was hurt. I was awfully ashamed of it.”

Matthew said not a word.

“Perhaps it’s because everything’s changing just now,” Romney went on. “It’s like going downhill in a car when the brakes won’t act. Somebody whispers in your ear: ‘You’re rushing into chaos whether you like it or no.’ But we ought to have more power, oughtn’t we, Uncle Matthew? Not only over events but over ourselves. Chaos itself oughtn’t to matter if we’re sure of ourselves. And I’d like to fight to keep us together. Whatever happens, nothing can separate us. That’s what I’d like to say. But I’m so weak. I don’t respect myself. I don’t find anything I can believe in except beautiful things like pictures and music, and even they are changing their values all the time.

“But tonight when I felt my friend had chucked me and that we were all different at home, it was as though I had no ground for my feet. Between Leicester Square and Piccadilly it was as though I were standing on a swamp. I hope you don’t think I’m talking awful nonsense, Uncle Matthew.”

“No, of course not.”

“And so I thought I’d come and ask you—why, when everyone else is so uncertain, you’re so sure, and so happy.... It’s your religion, I suppose?” he added more timidly.

There was a pause. Then Matthew said:

“Do you think I’m happy? I suppose I am. If I am it’s because I don’t think about myself much any more. Oh, well ... think! If I had the toothache I’d think all right. But I don’t think how I am, whether I’m happy or not.”

“Why don’t you? It must be wonderful not to bother.”

“Oh, because there are other things more important. That’s a priggish answer, isn’t it? Very noble and all that. It isn’t noble. It’s simply what’s happened to me—that for a long time now I’ve lived in another world where the values are different.”

“You mean religion—God?”

“Not religion certainly—but God, yes.” He broke off. “Look here, Romney,” he said at last. “Do you really want to talk about these things? There’s nothing more interesting if you are interested, nothing more boring if you aren’t.”

“Of course I want to talk about them. That’s what I came here for.”

“Yes, but I hate to preach. I don’t particularly want to make you better, you know. Or make anyone better. What’s good for one isn’t good for another. Propaganda’s awful—or props of any kind. All that anyone’s got to do is to find out what’s true for himself. Your own truth. That’s your job. I’ll tell you what I’ve found out to be true for myself if you like, but that doesn’t mean that it’s true for anyone else.”

“Oh, no,” Romney said eagerly. “That’s just what I want to hear—how you’ve discovered something to be true and what that something is.”

“How quiet this room is,” he thought, “and how beautiful! The ground’s steady. It’s been rocking under my feet for weeks.”

“Look here,” Matthew said. “It will be time to dress soon. We’ll talk another evening for as long as you like.”

Romney saw that he was shy, that he had suddenly closed in upon himself as the petals of a flower close. But he was determined to get some kind of answer before he left the room. He felt as though, if he went away now, he would never return and an irreparable chance be lost.

“No,” he said. “I want just to hear from you what you’ve discovered. Then we’ll talk another time if you’ll let me.”

“I haven’t discovered anything,” Matthew said. “Or at least only one thing. I discovered some years ago that for me it was wiser always to be ready—waiting to receive—rather than to go out and try to take what I thought I ought to have. To let it come to me rather than that I should go to it.”

“To let what come to you?”

“God if you like. The other life. The life inside. The immortal life.”

“Then you believe that you are immortal?” Romney asked.

“I believe,” Matthew said, “that there is something immortal inside me.”

“And it’s that that makes you happy?”

“Why do you harp on this happiness?” Matthew said, smiling. “That isn’t the point. The point is that you should let the tree have plenty of light and air and good soil.”

“What tree?”

“Confucius called it the Tree of Heaven. That’s as good as another. Look here! I knew that we should get like this—loose and symbolic. I’ll give you a fact or two. Nietzsche says somewhere that life’s either wrestling or dancing. That’s partly true. But there’s a third way—waiting to receive what comes to you and then cherishing it. Twenty years ago, in 1912, I was in love, passionately, desperately in love with a married woman. It’s a commonplace little story. She also was in love with me. I wanted her to leave her husband, and she, quite rightly, would not. We parted. Life seemed altogether over for me—empty, useless. Then one evening I came into my room—I wasn’t living here then—and it seemed to me as though I had a visitor. Oh, I didn’t see anyone—but I felt as though someone were talking to me. After that it was as though a seed had been planted inside me. A new life began, timidly, shyly, to grow. I didn’t want it. I was as cynical about it as Nicholas could ever be. I tried to disregard it, but it wouldn’t be disregarded. Things that had been important seemed important no longer. I began to see things that I had never seen before. It was as though I had been shown the existence of a whole continent—yes, a world inside this other one—inside or outside, around it, intermingling with it. And the things of this world, its laws, its scale of values, its beauties have become increasingly real to me as I’ve grown older. This tree, this world, this life—I don’t want to be pretentious about it. I wouldn’t argue from my experience of it that there’s life after death or that it is what men mean by religion. I only know that it’s real to me, now, at this moment. It’s so real that the material world is often unreal—unreal in its detail, I mean. I suppose it would be simpler to say that I have an inner life and that it is more active than the outer one.” He laughed. “My dear boy, don’t think that all the material things aren’t real, too. I love my food and my friends and some work I do (although you didn’t know it, did you?) and theatres and the country and all of us in this house. The two lives intermingle. They are one and the same life. One enriches the other.”

Romney said: “You’re awfully lucky. To have that, I mean. If one hasn’t got it one can’t pretend.”

“No, of course not. All you can do is to wait and see what happens. Not to demand anything, but also not to miss a chance, not to close yourself up. Not to say that anything is nonsense.”

But Romney secretly was disappointed. He had thought that there would be more than this—it was all so vague and formless.

“Then you wouldn’t call it a religion?” he asked.

“Oh, no, not a religion, simply an experience. As though I’d walked down a country lane and met someone who took me to a beautiful place and invited me to stay there.”

“And it’s changed your life?”

“Well, of course. Everything and everyone I come into contact with changes my life. So of course this has done. Many things and people are valuable now. I wouldn’t even have seen them once. Many things are unimportant now that once would have worried me. This other world is created in love. That doesn’t mean, you know,” he went on, laughing, “that I love everyone, never lose my temper, never have indigestion any more or am not peevish if I do have it. Indeed no, I’m a very imperfect citizen of that world, but I know the qualities that make it. It’s like learning Chinese. Slowly, I’m picking up the characters.”

“Do you know other people who have had your experience?” Romney asked.

“Oh, yes. Gradually we meet one another. One here, another there.”

“Then it has no dogmas, no sect, no name?”

“All dogmas are right if they feed the Tree. Every man must find his own—the one that suits him.”

Romney moved restlessly in his chair.

“Uncle Matthew—don’t think me rude—but most people today—most people of my generation, anyway—would think it most awful nonsense. All imagined by yourself, I mean.”

“Of course they would,” Matthew said. “If they haven’t experienced it. And it’s right they should if that’s what they honestly think. The only thing they can’t do is to take it away. I’ll give it any name that pleases you. I’ll say that I believe in God as a beneficent power—I’ll say that Christ was the one perfect citizen of this world that the other, the outside world, has ever known. I’ll say that once you are aware of this life in you, you can’t deny it, you can’t do anything but live it. But I’ll say, most of all, that you must keep yourself open, let it flow into you, let it work on you as it will. And I’ll say that it’s a definite practical experience, that once you’ve known it, you can’t deny it any more than you can deny a voyage to South Africa if you’ve been there.”

“Are there any rules,” said Romney, “that you have to obey? Do you say prayers? Do you go to any kind of church?”

“Rules? Not rules so much as values. Some things are better than others. Charity is better than meanness, love than hatred, self-forgetfulness than egotism, cheerfulness than grumbling, attention than chatter, humour than pomposity—and always to lose yourself in something larger than yourself. Prayer? No, conversation rather. You have a constant friend. You talk together. Churches? All and every church. All and every place. There are no exclusions——”

He shook his head.

“There you are! You asked me. There’s no miracle, no revelation. I’m no priest or prophet.”

They were silent. The last lights of the May evening thinned the leaves of the trees beyond the window so that they were fragments of shadowed gold against a sky white with radiance. The room was dark. Romney sighed.

“I can only repeat,” he said, “that you’re lucky. Perhaps I’ll be lucky too one day.”