Gerald Eversley's Friendship: A Study in Real Life

by J. E. C. Welldon

Next morning Gerald was expecting him at breakfast, but he did not come; he sent word by a lower boy that he had a cold and a slight headache. Gerald went to see him in his room, but reported that he ‘did not look very bad.’ It seemed probable that he had stayed out in the rain too long, receiving his numerous congratulations, after the match, and had caught a chill; at all events that was the opinion of the captain of the football eleven, who, as being the chief authority on football, was in the boys’ eyes equally an authority on health. The school doctor, who was called in to see him, spoke of his case as an ordinary cold, and said, if he were kept out of school for a day or two, he would be all right. Mr. Brandiston, though always punctual in writing to parents of boys who were ill, did not think it necessary to inform Lord Venniker of his son’s illness. In the evening, despite a slight rise of temperature, Harry was reported to be better; he inquired, with much interest, what house Mr. Brandiston’s had been drawn against in the second ‘ties’ of the house matches. But he passed an uneasy night, and when the doctor came in the morning he detected some symptoms of ‘lung trouble,’ and advised Mr. Brandiston to write to Lord Venniker, though not in such a way as to cause him anxiety. The doctor ordered Harry’s removal to the sick-room, which was at the top of the house, well separated from the boys’ rooms.

Harry was much worse next day, feverish and restless. It was clear that he was suffering from inflammation of the right lung. Lord Venniker was telegraphed for; he arrived in the evening.

Twenty-four hours later the other lung had been attacked. Sir William D——, the great London specialist, who was called in, pronounced the patient’s condition to be critical.

After prayers that evening, Mr. Brandiston, addressing the house, said in a voice which betrayed the depth of his emotion, ‘I should like you all in your private prayers to-night to remember Venniker; he is very ill indeed, almost at the door of death.’ There was absolute silence even before he spoke these words—for the boys anticipated what he was going to say—and there was absolute silence afterwards. Tears rose to the eyes of not a few among the boys; but they brushed them quickly away. That Mr. Brandiston should speak in that manner—he who was so stern and self-controlled, and so seldom used the language of religion—made the case seem doubly critical. And Harry Venniker was so young, so popular.

Nowhere is the presence of sickness or death so awful as among the young. One whose spirit was not always serious has written of his own great loss: ‘O Death! thou hast right to the bold, to the ambitious, to the high and to the haughty; but why this cruelty to the humble, to the meek, to the undiscerning, to the thoughtless? Nor age, nor business, nor distress can erase the dear image from my imagination. In the same week I saw her dressed for a ball, and in her shroud.’

To the old Death cometh as a friend. But to the young he is a stranger, a foe. His cold step is abhorrent to the joy, the motion, the strong, happy, buoyant life of youth. It is the sense of contrast which creates this painful feeling. Who is there that has passed from the sick-room where one boy lies tossing between death and life through the playing-fields where all the others are at their games, and has not marvelled that the sickness could be possible—or the play? In the chapel of one of the great public schools of England is a memorial tablet recording the name of a boy who died during his school life, to the eternal sorrow of his parents, and on it are the words: ‘Beside him they had neither son nor daughter.’ What a tale! what a tragedy is there!

And should Harry Venniker be cut off, the light of his parent’s home, the idol of his school? Was there no pity, no compassionateness for him? It was but five days since he had been seen, strong and beautiful, a hero among his comrades—and now! O Death, Death, is there no mercy with thee?

The boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house were touched with the sympathy of a new undreamt-of sorrow. Their footsteps were hushed as they moved about the house, their voices stilled; though he, their schoolfellow, was far removed, and no sound of theirs would reach his ear, they felt instinctively that haste, noise, thoughtlessness, impatience would be ill-timed. It was observed that no one used an oath in the house during those days. Even the selfish and giddy seemed subdued. With full hearts they asked each day in the morning if the worst were past, and at night their loving solicitude shaped itself in such a prayer as this: ‘O Lord God, who art all-merciful, suffer him to live.’ But no boy prayed, or could have prayed, for him like Gerald Eversley.

The tragic nature of the situation was made more acute because Lady Venniker, whose health had become even more delicate than before, was peremptorily forbidden by her medical advisers to undertake the journey to St. Anselm’s. Harry longed for her presence with passionate intensity. More than once in his moments of delirium he was overheard to be murmuring ‘Mother.’ But she could not come to him. It was a bitter pang to her. It needed all Lord Venniker’s influence, as well as the authority of her medical advisers, to keep her at Helmsbury. After all, it may be doubted whether the anguish of being kept away from Harry’s bedside did not endanger her life as much as any railway journey. But medical men are wise—and sometimes heartless.

Lady Venniker being left at Helmsbury, where her daughter remained as her companion, was wholly dependent upon the information sent to her from St. Anselm’s. Her husband wrote to her often. Mr. Brandiston wrote several times, though rather formally. But her most frequent correspondent in that anxious, torturing time was Gerald Eversley. In his own heartrending anxiety, quickening, as it did, his sympathetic intuitions, it occurred to him to seek the consolation of his sorrow in trying to console one yet more sorrowful than himself. He felt so much for Lady Venniker, especially as she was prevented from coming to St. Anselm’s, that he could not help informing her of his feeling. He wrote to her timidly and half-apologetically at first; but afterwards, as he found she welcomed his letters, with a larger freedom, telling her of the medical reports (though these she knew from others), of the hopes and fears of the school, of the boys’ sayings, of Harry’s popularity, of his own great love for him, what Mr. Brandiston had said, how Dr. Pearson had asked the prayers of the whole school in chapel, and had spoken in his sermon of the cloud which hung over it, and what a stillness of awe prevailed all over the house. The unconscious pathos of the letters was a truer comfort to Lady Venniker than any assurance conveyed in them. Her daughter generally replied in her name, giving him her mother’s heartfelt thanks, and her own, for his thoughtfulness. Every day, morning and evening, the letters were sent. They were the simple natural outpourings of a sorrowing soul. But they created a sympathy—a sympathy that was destined to be of enduring value—between Lady Venniker and her son’s friend. She ceased to call him ‘Mr. Eversley;’ she called him ‘Gerald.’ ‘We feel,’ wrote Miss Venniker, ‘that you are indeed one of ourselves, from your love of our dear Harry, and we can never think of you as a stranger any more.’