Gerald Eversley's Friendship: A Study in Real Life

by J. E. C. Welldon

Gerald Eversley, in writing to his father, made no allusion to the ‘trying of voices;’ he did not know whether he ought not to tell his father about it, but he could not make up his mind how to describe it, though he began it several times, but after fully describing the other incidents of his first days at St. Anselm’s, and especially his association with Venniker, he went on to say that he found school-life very different from his expectation, a great many things of which he had had no experience were said and done in it; he could not say he liked it at present, but he hoped he should come to like it better as time went on. Mr. Eversley read the letter more than once, then wrote Gerald, No. 1, on the envelope, and put it away in his desk by itself.

CHAPTER V
THE RIPENING OF FRIENDSHIP

It is not the object of this story to describe in detail the progress or system of public school life. That story has often been told. One public school does not differ greatly from another in character, or sentiment, or interest; and the life that is lived in one is essentially the life of them all. I am concerned only with the strengthening or development of friendship between the two boys who are the heroes of this narrative.

What is it in this life that is the secret of friendship? Is it voluntary or involuntary? Is it formed by likeness or by opposition? Does it spring up of itself? Does it need cultivation and tendance? Is it not true that there are persons whom we feel we ought to like more than we do—very estimable persons, very dutiful, but not quite those of whom we make friends? and other persons who are not free from reproach or criticism and yet for whom we cannot help in our own despite cherishing an affection? Does friendship depend upon character or upon circumstances? The one thing certain seems to be that it is not a matter of the reason. We cannot make friends at will. We may say to ourselves perhaps that we will unmake a friendship, that we will not hold intercourse with a person any more (though that too is difficult), but nobody ever yet resolved that he would be the friend of a person, whether he liked him or not, and became his friend and remained so for life. Like all the most sacred things in human experience, friendship is a boon, in some sense independent of human volition. It cannot be acquired by perseverance or resolution. God reserves it like personal beauty, like the appreciation of beautiful sounds and colours, in His own hands. It is His gift; He bestows it where He wills; we can but accept it with grateful and reverent hearts when it is given.

Probably there were no two boys at St. Anselm’s whose lives might be deemed to be parted by a wider gulf than Harry Venniker and Gerald Eversley. They came from opposite poles of society. Except in the universal human functions, such as eating and drinking, and the universal experiences of life, they had no common ground. Conversation between them, apart from topics of school interest, was limited by the lack of sympathetic understanding. If the one had spoken of dances or shooting parties, or the other of Bible readings and parochial visits, he would have seemed to his companion to be living in a different world from his, and to be using a language of which he had no comprehension.

And the gulf threatened to grow wider as time went on. Harry Venniker plunged more and more eagerly into the brimming waters of school life; Gerald Eversley stood trembling more and more fearfully on the bank. It was only within the walls of the room which they occupied together, that they could be said to have a common existence.

Harry Venniker advanced every week in popularity. His frank manner, his good humour, his manly disposition, won the hearts of his schoolfellows. It was a common saying that he had never been known to lose his temper. He was eminently unselfish, always ready to do a good turn and never anxious to spoil it by claiming credit for what he had done. His sense of fun was keen, and he took a leading part in the ‘larks’ of his house, though he never went the length of giving pain to boys or getting into serious trouble with his masters. He enjoyed too the conspicuous advantage of excellence in games. He had plenty of pluck, the virtue which in the schoolboy code of honour is supreme. Even in his first term his ‘runs’ and ‘charges’ on the football field excited the admiration of veteran players. But when the summer term came, and it began to be rumoured in the school that so good a left-handed bowler as he was might actually have a chance of getting into Mr. Brandiston’s house Eleven—for had not the great Stanley himself been heard to remark that ‘that young Venniker kept a good length,’ and ‘he could make the ball break both ways’?—then Harry Venniker tasted for the first time the delicious joy of fame, so dear to all finely tempered minds, but to none dearer than to minds that are young and ardent. Several boys high in the school or prominent in athletics began to take notice of him, one or two of them invited him to breakfast, and there was a general feeling in Mr. Brandiston’s house that he was ‘the coming man.’ Nor was he less a favourite with the masters than with his schoolfellows. It is true that he was not intellectually distinguished; but he was not idle, he was always pleasant and cheerful, he kept a very fair place in his form, generally somewhere about the middle, he was seldom in punishment, and his athletic distinction appealed to the sympathetic feelings of masters as well as of boys. Mr. Brandiston was obliged to own that he was a boy who would do his house honour in one of the two lines recognised by Mr. Brandiston himself. At the end of his first term at St. Anselm’s, Mr. Brandiston had written to Lord Venniker, congratulating him upon ‘the excellent start that his son had made,’ and bearing testimony that ‘his lordship had every reason to be proud of his son.’ ‘He is,’ he added, ‘a boy who works well and plays well, and I have the highest opinion of him.’ It is only fair to add that Harry retained his simplicity, and was in no sense injured by the praises showered upon him.

Very different was the case of Gerald Eversley. It was not that he was ever involved in a serious trouble. He was not a boy who incurred or deserved punishment. But there was nothing in him that attracted popular favour. It was reported in the school that he was ‘awfully clever.’ It was beyond dispute that he was ‘a dreadful sap.’ Some of the more discerning boys or masters may have ventured upon the prediction which can hardly be considered as unduly hazardous that ‘he would do something some day.’ But that ‘something,’ if it were destined to be done, would be apparently as far away from the sympathy as from the ambition of other boys. His tastes were not theirs. He lived in a different world from them. They were glad sometimes to avail themselves of his assistance, and I am afraid they availed themselves of it rather freely, in the preparation of their lessons; for his knowledge was multifarious, and it was believed that he had once or twice proved capable of answering questions which had puzzled Mr. Brandiston himself; but an oracle is not consulted except for a special purpose, and, when it is not required, it is treated with indifference. So it was with Gerald Eversley. Perhaps there is no isolation like that of a sensitive spirit surrounded by others which never come into contact or sympathy with it at all. It is what Byron has described in some memorable lines.

Gerald Eversley was not unhappy in his isolation, of which others were more conscious than himself. He had always led a lonely life (except for the society of his father), and it was no surprise to him or disappointment that his life should be lonely now. Besides he had his consolations, as the lonely often have. There is a pleasure in solitude itself. The old Roman was not wrong in his assertion ‘that he was never less lonely than when he was alone.’ There is a pleasure even in being misunderstood, though it is a pleasure that belongs to age, when the heart is soured a little and has become cynical, rather than to youth. But Gerald was old beyond his years. When his schoolfellows were at cricket or football he went for a walk, if he took any exercise at all, his eyesight disqualifying him for games. He was clever, and always high in his form; but he derived less pleasure from his high place than others who had striven for it more anxiously. The beautiful library of St. Anselm’s is known to all visitors, and there in a corner of the great oriel window he sat for hours, never looking at the view of the wide champaign that stretches beneath it, but scanning books of all kinds—novels, travels, biographies (of which he was especially fond), poetry, books of science (particularly archæology) and art, even sermons and books of controversial divinity. Whatever he read he assimilated. I do not mean that it was all remembered, but it soaked down into his mind and became a reservoir of knowledge upon which he would draw in hours of need. He realised what so few who are young, nay, indeed so few who are old, can be said to realise—the love of learning in and for itself, without the thought of prize or praise. Learning, alas! will some day be smothered by its own children, examination, competition, the calculation and publication of results.

In every school there are some boys to whom a library is more valuable than any classroom. For it is not what the young are compelled to do, but what they do of themselves and for themselves, that is the lasting educational result. Education rightly considered does not follow narrow hard lines—that perhaps was Mr. Brandiston’s mistake—it expatiates in a wide and ample domain, and its country walks are sometimes worth more than its dusty high road. Gerald Eversley had other tastes than literature, though none perhaps so dear, so delightful. He loved music, he heard in it, as so many have heard, the voice of heaven. When he had been some time at St. Anselm’s, he obtained the privilege of going now and then on weekdays into the chapel. Seated there at the organ in the little gallery, with the shadows of the evening gathering around him, alone and happy, he would fill and thrill the sacred building with the voluminous strains of some passages taken from a noble and dearly loved oratorio, the ‘Creation’ perhaps, or the ‘Elijah,’ or the ‘Messiah,’ and listening to their strains, so mighty, so unearthly, so much vaster and grander than the hand which called them forth, as the echoes of them faded and died away in the distance amidst the memorials of the dead who were dear to St. Anselm’s, he felt as if the angels of God were ascending and descending upon him in that holy place.