Gerald Eversley's Friendship: A Study in Real Life

by J. E. C. Welldon

‘Go to your rooms, all of you,’ he said, ‘and remain there (except during chapel) for the rest of the day. I will see you all at nine o’clock to-morrow morning.’ Then, turning to the seconds and umpires, he added, ‘You, Tracy and Vansittart, are, I suppose, the ringleaders in this disgraceful affair; pick up these gloves and carry them at once to my study.’

Slowly the two boys, their arms laden with boxing-gloves, made their way to the study, where they deposited the gloves on the floor in a rude pyramidal heap like the pile of cannon-balls at an arsenal. The other boys, none venturing to speak a word, dispersed to their rooms. When all had gone out, Mr. Brandiston shut the door. The echoes of his footsteps as he strode along the passage rang in the boys’ ears. It was remarked after chapel that evening that some of the boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house looked unusually pale.

The interview with Mr. Brandiston next morning, the reporting of the guilty boys to the head master—Mr. Brandiston reported them all, but recommended the lower boys, as being only reluctant accessories, to mercy—the stern rebuke and severe sentence of the head master, belong to the secret history of St. Anselm’s.

But in the house the question was, How had old Brandiston got to know about the boxing?

It was a question more easily asked than answered. The first theory was that he must have derived his information from the butler or one of the servants. But upon inquiry it came out that the butler had himself been in total ignorance of the boxing, and it was in the highest degree improbable that, if he had been ignorant of it, it could have been known to any other servants. The secret had been well kept—and yet had leaked out. But if the traitor was not a servant he must be a boy; for that some traitor there had been nobody doubted. The boys argued that ‘Old Brandiston would never have come into the house at that hour and gone straight to No. 3 if he had not been told what was going on there; besides, he looked as if he expected to come upon it.’ At last the suggestion was made—it was impossible to say by whom—that the only boy who could have ‘peached’ was Eversley. It was remembered that he would of course entertain a strong conscientious objection to Sunday boxing. It was remembered, too, that he had evinced a great dread of boxing when it was proposed before, and had begged to be excused it; but Tracy had insisted upon him sparring, and he had been a good deal ‘bruised’ by a bigger boy. And then a small boy, Thornton or some other, testified to having seen him come out of Mr. Brandiston’s study, or somewhere near the study as if he had just come out of it, that very morning.

This was the sort of evidence upon which the boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house, or at least the majority of them, including all the lower boys, decided that Gerald Eversley deserved to be branded as a ‘sneak.’ But boys are bad judges of evidence. It is possible that they are not above forming their opinion first and supporting it by evidence afterwards. But the evidence, such as it was, was not put before Gerald; he did not hear it, did not know of it; he had no opportunity of meeting and refuting it; it was bruited about, it passed from mouth to mouth, being exaggerated as it passed, and poor Gerald became conscious that a painful unpopularity was descending upon him like a cloud, without at first understanding how it had sprung up. Boys in the house turned away from him. In Hall there was a gap on his right hand and on his left. Harry Venniker did not out him, but Gerald thought he was cooler than usual.

‘But, my dear boy,’ said Mr. Selby, ‘what in the world made the boys fix upon you?’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ was the reply; ‘but you see, sir, I’m not popular like Venniker.’

There was a gleam of fire in Mr. Selby’s eyes at the thought of the injustice which this innocent boy was suffering at his schoolfellows’ hands.

Is it only among public-school boys, Mr. Selby, that unjust suspicions arise and spread themselves and poison life? Does not human nature all the world over possess a strange faculty of seeing what it wishes to see, and not seeing what it wishes not to see? and what is harder than to overcome prejudice, all the more when it is blindly unreasonable?