kindly entertainment, with all their curious contents, the talk of
fellow-pilgrims, the arbours of refreshment, until his feet touched the
brink of the river, and even there he went fearlessly forward.




XIX

RETROSPECT


Now that I have traced the progress of Hugh's outer life from step to
step, I will try to indicate what in the region of mind and soul his
progress was, and I would wish to do this with particular care, even it
the risk of repeating myself somewhat, because I believe that his nature
was one that changed in certain ways very much; it widened and deepened
greatly, and most of all in the seven last years of his life, when I
believe that he found himself in the best and truest sense.

As a boy, up to the age of eighteen or nineteen, it was, I believe, a
vivid and unreflective nature, much absorbed in the little pattern of
life as he saw it, neither expansive nor fed upon secret visions. It was
always a decided nature. He never, as a child, needed to be amused; he
never said, "What shall I do? Tell me what to do!" He liked constant
companionship, but he had always got little businesses of his own going
on; he joined in games, and joined keenly in them, but if a public game
was not to his taste, he made no secret that he was bored, and, if he
was released, he went off on his own errands. I do not remember that he
ever joined in a general game because of any sociable impulse merely,