not write this to anyone else, but you combine so unusually
in your own single personality the characters of (1) priest, (2)
human being, (3) man of the world, (4) man of the other world, (5)
man of science, (6) old friend, (7) new friend, not to mention
Irishman and picture dealer, that I don't mind suggesting the truth
to you. Frances has just come out of what looked bad enough to be an
illness, and is just going to plunge into one of her recurrent
problems of pain and depression. The two may be just a bit too much
for her and I want to be with her every night for a few days--there's
an Irish Bull for you!

One of the mysteries of Marriage (which must be a Sacrament and an
extraordinary one too) is that a man evidently useless like me can
yet become at certain instants indispensable. And the further oddity
(which I invite you to explain on mystical grounds) is that he never
feels so small as when he knows that he is necessary.

But sometimes she would send him off whether she was well or ill, and
on Father O'Connor would rest the heavy responsibility of getting him
on to his next destination or safe back home. He tells of one such
experience.

He was most dutiful and obedient to orders, but they had to be
written ones and backed by the spoken word. He brought his
dress-suit, oh! with what loving care, to Bradford on Sunday for
Sheffield for Monday, but a careful host found it under the bed in
Bradford just as his train left for Sheffield. Sent at once it was to
Beaconsfield, where it landed at 5 P.M. on Thursday, just allowing
him ten minutes to change and entrain for London.

Scene at Beaconsfield:

"What on earth have you done with your dress-suit, Gilbert?"

"I must have left it behind, darling, but I brought back the ties,
didn't I?"*

[* Ibid., p. 43.]

Another time he came back without his pyjamas. They had been lost
early in the journey. "Why didn't you buy some more?" his wife asked.
"I didn't know pyjamas were things you could buy," he said,
surprised. Probably if one were Gilbert one couldn't! Father O'Connor
arriving at Overroads without baggage found that Gilbert's pyjamas
went around him exactly twice.

Lecturing engagements had of course not come to an end with the move
although they had (mercifully) somewhat lessened. What increased with
the distance from London was the problem--never fully solved--of
getting Gilbert