with a stab of regret that he came to stay with me
at Cambridge for one of these, and besought me to go with him. But I was
shy and busy, and though I could easily have arranged to go, I did not
and he went off alone. "Can't you really manage it?" he said.
"Pray-a-do!" But I was obdurate, and it gives me pain now to think that
I churlishly refused, though it is a false pathos to dwell on such
things, and both foolish and wrong to credit the dead with remembering
trifling grievances.

But I do not think that his time at the Catholic rectory was a really
very happy one. He needed more freedom; he became gradually aware that
his work lay in the direction of writing, of lecturing, of preaching,
and of advising. He took his own measure and knew his own strength. "I
have _no_ pastoral gift," he once said to me very emphatically. "I am
not the man to _prop_," he once wrote; "I can kindle sometimes, but not
support. People come to me and pass on." Nor was he at ease in the
social atmosphere of Cambridge--it seemed to him bleak, dry,
complacently intellectual, unimaginative. He felt himself what the law
describes as "a suspected person," with vague designs on the spiritual
life of the place.

At first, he was not rich enough to live the sort of life he desired;
but he began to receive larger incomes from his books, and to see that
it would soon be in his power to make a home for himself. It was then
that our rambles in search of possible houses began, while at the same
time he curtailed his own personal expenditure to the lowest limits,
till his wardrobe became conspicuous for its antiquity. This, however,
he was wholly indifferent about; his aim was to put together a
sufficient sum to buy a small house in the country, and there to settle
"for ever," as he used to say. "A small Perpendicular chapel and a
white-washed cottage next door is what I want just now," he wrote about
this time. "It must be in a sweet and secret place--preferably in
Cornwall." Or again, "I want and mean--if it is permitted--to live in a
small cottage in the country; to say mass and office, and to write
books. I think that is honestly my highest ideal. I hate fuss and
officialdom and backbiting--I wish to be at peace with God and man."
This was his dream. The house at Hare Street was the result.

XIII

HARE STREET

I have no doubt at all that Hugh's seven years at Hare Street were the
happiest of his life. He generally had some companion liv