Gerald Eversley's Friendship: A Study in Real Life

by J. E. C. Welldon

The letters, too, were full and candid in their account of St. Anselm’s. One incident, as this story has shown, Gerald did not relate to his father, and his father was never informed of it. But the common events of daily life, the lessons, the games, the books read in the library, the half-holidays, the meals, the fagging, his place in form, his association with Harry Venniker, ‘the son of Lord Venniker,’ the decoration of their room, their conversation, the names of the masters, of those especially with whom he came into personal contact, Mr. Brandiston’s words and doings, all carefully recorded, were delineated with the simple confidence that, as they were supremely interesting to the writer, so would they equally be to his correspondent. Nor did it surprise Mr. Eversley that Gerald should experience some slight unhappiness in the early days of school life; he looked upon it as a part of the discipline which the children of God are called to endure in the world. But nothing pleased him so much as the spirit in which Gerald spoke of the pleasure that he found in the chapel services, and most of all in Dr. Pearson’s sermons, from which he would sometimes quote passages or phrases. Mr. Eversley did not feel quite so happy about the sermons themselves. They did not appear to be always what he would call ‘Gospel sermons,’ instinct with the sentiments of human depravity, divine redemption, and eternal judgment. But Mr. Eversley hoped for the best.

When Gerald was coming home to spend his first holidays, it was a question whether he or another boy who had been his rival all through the term would come out head of his form in the examination at the end of it. He had written home several times about his chance of winning the highest place; and his father had replied, urging him not to be disappointed if he were second, as he ‘would do his best,’ and ‘the issue was in God’s hand,’ but plainly showing—he was too simple a man for disguise—how great his own longing was that he should be first. The list would not be read out until the morning of the day on which he came home. He would reach X—— about four o’clock in the afternoon. It was arranged that Mr. Eversley should go not all the way to X———he was prevented from doing so by some parochial duty—but to a little hill about halfway between Kestercham and X——, from which a view of the train, as it speeded by, was easily obtained; he was to be there in time for the train, and Gerald, if he were first in his form, was to wave his pocket-handkerchief from the window of his carriage; if not, there was to be no sign. It was a bitter day, the snow lay upon the ground; but Mr. Eversley was at his post, waiting fully half an hour for the train. As it sped by, a white handkerchief waved in the cold wind. Mr. Eversley thought he could discern a happy boyish face half hidden behind it. He knelt down for a moment in the snow and gave God thanks. It was a bitter day, the winter was strong upon valley and wold; but the summer had come again to Mr. Eversley’s heart.

What rejoicings there were that night at Kestercham Vicarage! Gerald’s little sisters all sat up (except the baby) in honour of his home-coming. Mrs. Eversley’s sternness relaxed under the influence of the genial occasion, she kissed him with unusual warmth, looked him all over, and, while remarking that his clothes would need a good deal of mending, gave it as her opinion that he was ‘very much improved,’ and she ‘had never seen him look so gentleman-like.’ The servants, including the gardener, who was married and lived by the green gate, came in a body to welcome Master Gerald. And tea was hardly finished when the voice of Mr. Seaford was heard in the hall, inquiring if the vicar was within, and if ‘the young gentleman’ had got home safely ‘from that nasty ingin.’ For Mr. Seaford himself made it a rule not to travel by rail; he firmly believed, and did not scruple to express his belief, that the locomotive engine was an invention of the Evil One; and by way of impressing his view upon his domestic circle, which was composed of Mrs. Seaford and an unmarried daughter—the same who played the harmonium in church—all the other members of his family being married and out in the world, he was fond of reading aloud on the winter evenings a detailed account of some terrible railway accident which had lately occurred, enriching it with a stirring commentary of his own, which was not calculated to mitigate its horror. The question addressed by Mr. Seaford to the maidservant in the hall would suggest that he imagined passengers by rail to occupy places on the engine; but, of course, he may have spoken inexactly. At all events, in the eyes of Mr. Seaford, Gerald’s safe return to Kestercham was not only a pleasure, but in some sense a surprise; he looked upon it as an instance of a special Providence. For Mr. Seaford’s own travels seldom extended beyond a drive in his brougham to attend the fortnightly market at Wickeston, or on rare occasions, and always under protest, with Mrs. Seaford to do some necessary shopping at X——.

Nothing would satisfy Mr. Eversley on the evening of Gerald’s return but that Mr. Seaford should stay and drink a cup of tea at the vicarage, despite something of the nature of a protest from Mrs. Eversley, whose rigid adherence to the inviolable social distinction between the clerical and the agricultural classes seemed to be threatened with a serious assault. But Mr. Eversley’s enthusiasm was not to be gainsaid.

‘Now, Mr. Seaford,’ he exclaimed, ‘this is good of you. You must let Mrs. Eversley give you a cup of tea; you must indeed.’

‘My dear!’ interposed Mrs. Eversley, who foresaw an air of ‘commonness’ descending upon the house if a farmer like Mr. Seaford should be known to have taken a seat at her tea-table.

But Mr. Eversley would not hear of opposition; so his wife was fain to pour out the tea, and with her own orthodox hands present it to Mr. Seaford, who gulped it down, though it was so hot as almost to choke him, feeling a little awkward at the unwonted familiarity. He did not fail to inform his family, when he went home, that he had been invited to take tea at the vicarage, but he paid a delicate compliment to Mrs. Seaford by protesting that the tea was ‘nothin’ like his own home-brewed.’

But the cup of tea was not the only privilege accorded to Mr. Seaford on that memorable evening; for Mr. Eversley bade Gerald run upstairs and bring down the prize which he had received as being head of his form, and Mr. Seaford, after inspecting it for some time with an air of enlightened admiration, returned it to its owner, observing that an intellect which yielded such a crop as that must have had ‘a pretty sight o’ manure.’ High farming and wide reading were parallel forms of cultivation in Mr. Seaford’s view.

Who will doubt that Mr. Eversley, when he retired to his study that night, lifted up his voice in reverent thanksgiving to the Eternal? He read the story of Joseph and his meeting his father in Egypt; it seemed appropriate to the occasion in his own life. Tears of joy were in his eyes as he read it. When at last he went upstairs, he could not resist the satisfaction of peeping into Gerald’s room just to see that all was well with him; the boy was asleep, sleeping as peacefully as on the morning when Mr. Eversley had stood over him with the telegram announcing his election to a scholarship at St. Anselm’s; he stooped down and kissed him. Oh! happy, blessed self-forgetfulness of love! We live two lives, our own and our children’s, and it is often in our children’s lives that we live most truly. What success that could have happened to Mr. Eversley would have given him as much pleasure as his son’s? What preferment in Church or State would have been equal in value to that little volume that lay upon the drawing-room table with the arms of St. Anselm’s on its cover?

The old life at Kestercham seemed to revive the next morning. Once more Mr. Eversley in the morning sat in his study with Gerald at his side, though I think he found it necessary, more often than of old, to interrupt his work for the sake of putting questions which, if the truth must be told, were somewhat alien from the sermon upon which he was engaged. Once more when he visited his parishioners in the afternoon Gerald trudged at his side, and there was not a farmer or labourer whom they passed but wished the boy well, some remarking in their rough honest way that he ‘fared hearty,’ others that he ‘had grown wonderful,’ and others again that they were ‘right glad to see him back with all his larnin’ in little Kest.’ The people of Kestercham did not ‘hold with’ education, at least in Kestercham; they did not feel that the village of Kestercham stood in need of it; but they supposed that for the unfortunate outer world, whose affairs were in general not so well ordered, it was desirable, and perhaps even necessary. Once more, too, when Sunday came, Gerald accompanied his father to church, took his old seat in the vicarage pew in the chancel, immediately behind the labourers and schoolchildren who formed the choir, and Mr. Eversley listened with grateful satisfaction to his young voice joining fervently, as of old, in the responses and hymns.