or your extreme kindness--I really
am grateful: though I am always dumb about such things when I meet
people.

* * * * *

I remember taking a walk with Provost Hornby at Eton at this date. My
diary says:

"_October_ 1903.--We talked of Hugh. The Provost was very kind and wise.
He said, 'Such a change is a testimony of sincerity and earnestness'; he
went on to tell a story which Jowett told him of Dr. Johnson, who said,
when a husband and wife of his acquaintance went over to Rome, 'God
bless them both.' At the end of the walk he said to me, 'When you write
to your brother, remember me very kindly to him, and give him, as a
message from me, what Johnson said.' This I thought was beautiful--more
than courteous."

I sent this message to Hugh, who was deeply touched by it, and wrote the
Provost an affectionate and grateful letter.

Soon after this he went out to Rome to prepare himself for the Orders
which he received nine months later. My mother went to see him off. As
the train went out of the station, and Hugh was lost to view, my mother
turned round and saw Bishop Wilkinson, one of our dearest friends,
waiting for her. She had told him before that Hugh was leaving by that
train, and had asked him to bear both herself and Hugh in mind. He had
not intruded on the parting, but now he drew my mother's hand into his
arm and said, "If Hugh's father, when he was here on earth, would--and
he would--have always wished him to follow his conscience, how much more
in Paradise!" and then he went away without another word.

XII

CAMBRIDGE AGAIN

Hugh went to the College of San Silvestro in Rome, and there he found
many friends. He said that on first joining the Catholic Church, he felt
like a lost dog; he wrote to me:

Rome, _Nov. 26_, '03.

* * * * *

My own news is almost impossible to tell, as everything is simply
bewildering: in about five years from now I shall know how I felt;
but at present I feel nothing but discomfort; I hate foreign
countries and foreign people, and am finding more every day how
hopelessly insular I am: because of course, under the
circumstances, this is the proper place for me to be: but it is a
kind of dentist's chair.

* * * * *

But he soon parted once and for all with his sense of iso