Gerald Eversley's Friendship: A Study in Real Life

by J. E. C. Welldon

There was much to think of, much to talk of, it will be believed, in the long winter evenings of the first holidays. But the days and nights passed only too quickly, and still the father and the son found ever new topics of conversation. For conversation is not the conveying or receiving of knowledge, but the interchange of sympathetic feelings.

One of the topics to which Mr. Eversley referred in almost the earliest of their walks through the fields was the suspicion entertained against Gerald of having reported the Sunday boxing to Mr. Brandiston. Several letters about it had already passed between them. Gerald had not failed to tell his father of the kind part played by Mr. Selby. He was convinced, though he could not have proved, that he owed his deliverance from suspicion to Mr. Selby’s advocacy. Mr. Eversley had expressed the hope of being able some day to thank Mr. Selby personally for his kindness. But of the boxing on Sunday he spoke in emphatic terms. He looked upon it as a definite act of sin, the violation of an express divine commandment. He regretted extremely that any boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house should have been guilty of it. He thought that the house, having been implicated in the sin, ought to make some sort of special atonement for it. But he accepted the suspicion which had lain upon Gerald as part of the discipline which the children of God are called to undergo in a wicked world. He was not anxious that Gerald should escape it; he was only anxious that he should bear it in the spirit of Christ. The story of Joseph, which was much in Mr. Eversley’s mind just then, afforded an example of unmerited accusation and of good resulting from it under Divine Providence.

But the subject on which Gerald talked most eagerly, and his father listened with the keenest interest, was his friendship with Harry Venniker. To his father Gerald descanted in terms of generous enthusiasm, and even more during later holidays than at first, upon the achievements and attractions of his boyish hero. Mr. Eversley heard him with somewhat mingled feelings. It was only a partial pleasure to him to learn that his boy’s heart had been so drawn out towards a schoolfellow. No doubt he appreciated the sympathy and protection which Gerald owed—more, perhaps, than he was aware of—to his robust and popular friend. It is possible, too, that he felt a secret satisfaction in his boy’s connection with a member of the social class which he had himself always regarded with a distant and respectful veneration as being in some unexplained manner a necessary part of the constitution. But he could not conceal from himself that the friendship was not altogether free from danger. It might excite in Gerald’s mind ideas and ambitions which a country clergyman like himself could not hope to satisfy. It might render him indifferent to the narrow circumstances in which he had been brought up, and in which his father and his family were destined to live. It might—oh! painfullest thought of all!—it might alienate Gerald’s affection from himself. For deep down in Mr. Eversley’s mind there was a jealousy (though he himself understood it not) of whatever could come between his dear boy and himself. Nor could he be blind to the fact that Harry Venniker, though a good average Christian English boy, had not been trained in the strictly orthodox evangelical lines of the theology which ruled in Kestercham Vicarage.

Still, Gerald was so happy, so ardent, so enthusiastic in his friend’s favour, that Mr. Eversley would not have had the heart, even if he had had the wish, to interfere with the friendship. After all, as he reflected, great and terrible is the responsibility of one who cuts a young soul adrift from the moorings of innocent friendship. Is not friendship sanctified by the Divine Example? Did not He whose life on earth is the model of all human lives say to His disciples in the most solemn hour of His soul’s history, ‘But I have called you friends’?

And for the present at least—I am speaking of the first holidays—none of the ill effects which Mr. Eversley apprehended as possible were seen in Gerald. He was still as frank and genuine as ever, as full of interest in all that made up the life of Kestercham. He seemed not to need, not to desire, any companionship but his father’s. He seemed to have no secrets from him. He showed him all his letters, and among them one or two from Harry Venniker. He consulted him upon all his doings at St. Anselm’s. He spoke with the same certainty as before of being a clergyman; it did not seem that any other calling presented itself to his mind. In a word, he was still the same simple, dutiful, religious Gerald as before. Mr. Eversley thanked God for that; it was all that he had wished and prayed to find.

So the first holidays passed, and so the succeeding holidays. It would not accord with the purpose of this story to say more of them. Gerald passed from thirteen to fifteen or sixteen, and Mr. Eversley was conscious of no change, or of none such as caused him any disquietude. A developed character indeed, a deeper thoughtfulness (though discernible only when something called it out), a wider knowledge of human things, a multifarious information which at times surprised his father, a somewhat more critical tone in speaking of the school—these things Mr. Eversley saw or felt; but no moral or spiritual change—no change in his boy’s relation to himself. They had, in his own words, lived one life until Gerald went to St. Anselm’s; they lived, or he thought they lived, but one life still.

One morning, when Gerald was just sixteen, as he was sitting at breakfast with his father and Mrs. Eversley, the letters were brought in, and an envelope bearing a coronet upon it was handed to him. He recognised the handwriting at once; it was Harry Venniker’s; but, as he read the letter, a flush mantled upon his cheek. The flush did not escape Mr. Eversley.

‘What is it, Gerald?’ he said; ‘I see there is something important in your letter.’

‘It’s from Venniker,’ was Gerald’s reply, and he passed the letter to his father.

The letter, after various allusions to the affairs of school life, and to a certain ‘spree’ which Harry had been enjoying in the holidays, went on to say that Harry’s mother wished him to ask if Gerald could come and spend a few days at Helmsbury before going back to St. Anselm’s; she had heard so much about him (Harry said), but had never seen him, and being an invalid, and unable to bear the journey to St. Anselm’s, she was afraid her only chance of making his acquaintance lay in the hope that he would give them the pleasure of his company at Helmsbury. ‘Mind you come,’ added Harry on his own account; ‘this is an awfully jolly country, and we can give you a mount if you like; and if you don’t care about shooting, there is Ross Abbey and Sedgefield within a drive, and you can go there with Ethel.’