Gerald Eversley's Friendship: A Study in Real Life

by J. E. C. Welldon

The old Greek adage says, ‘Call no man happy until the end.’ Happy, it might have been deemed, was Gerald now: his unpopularity gone, his favour assured, the masters and boys all courting his acquaintance. Yet success and sadness are near neighbours sometimes, and the entrance into the sanctuary of sorrow is made through the portals of honour.

Gerald Eversley was entirely happy that day, but never again—save for one brief interval—was he happy afterwards.

The story passes to a somewhat later time. The scene is Kestercham Vicarage.

Mr. Eversley had thought for some months past that his son’s relation to himself was not exactly what it had been. Had he been asked, he could not have told anyone what the change was; it was not visible, but he felt it, and instinct is a truer judge of sympathy than induction can be. It was the feeling of a haze or darkness rising between him and the object of his love, the sort of feeling that a man has when his eyesight, which has always been so sure, begins to fail, as Sir Joshua Reynolds felt in painting Lady Beauchamp’s portrait; only the darkness was of the soul, not of the vision. It was as if Gerald had always something to tell him and could not tell it, or could tell it but would not. That was the secret of his cautious, guarded letter, which Gerald could not help resenting, about the examination paper. He did not like to make the admission, he would not have made it in answer to a challenge; but it was not now utterly incredible to him (though most improbable) that his son should cherish a silent consciousness of a deceitful action. One secret, even if it be a guilty one, is perhaps no great thing. How many of us have more, or had more when we were of Gerald’s age! What sudden rendings and convulsions of intimacies would there be if the secrets of hearts could be unsealed! And yet if between two human hearts there has been no reticence, no disguise; if each has been open to the other as the merry earth lies open to the sunshine——. There passes a cloud before the face of the sun in the heaven, it endures but for a moment, and it is gone, but the earth is conscious of its chillness.

Mr. Eversley reasoned with himself that he was making too much of trifles. If there had been any definite overt mark of altered sentiment, he would have written, perhaps, or spoken to Gerald about it; but he could not say it was so. They were still father and son, still all that father and son should be to each other. Why, then, did Mr. Eversley look so often at the daguerreotype upon the desk in his study and sigh? Human nature has its presentiments of good and evil; how irrational they are! and how infallible! Does a lover need to be told in words that he is loved? Nay, love is a fire, it cannot burn and glow unfelt. Heaven have mercy upon him who searches for it and finds not its glad warmth!

Mr. Eversley still reasoned with himself. It might be that Gerald’s letters from St. Anselm’s had been less full or less regular than of old. Mr. Eversley reflected that more than once on a Tuesday morning he had walked as far as the green gate to meet the postman and there had been no letter. He had never complained of its absence. At one time Gerald had been so much occupied with his friend’s illness and recovery, then with the incidents of the summer term, then with his own competition for the Balliol scholarship; it was only natural that he should fail to write now and then. So Mr. Eversley reasoned, longing—good soul!—to persuade himself against himself. And yet would Gerald always have preferred his friend to his father? Would he have forfeited the Balliol scholarship if he had spent a few minutes on Sunday in writing home? Mr. Eversley sighed again. He had never complained of the absence of letters, but he thought of it now.

Then he took several letters out of his desk and read them once more. What was it that he missed in them? He could not tell. He dared not tell. Time had been when every letter was full of allusions to the events and interests of Kestercham, its church, its sermons, its village festivals, the life of its people. The little world that was all in all to the father had been all in all to the son. Was it so now? In the letters which Mr. Eversley held in his hand there was not a word relating to Kestercham, except one sentence in which Gerald hoped that his father was not ‘growing tired of the village.’ But then the round of life at Kestercham was so unvarying that Gerald had made all the possible remarks upon it many times. Still the letters seemed to Mr. Eversley a little artificial, the compositions of one who wrote from a sense of duty, not the outpourings of a loving soul to its one best friend. Mr. Eversley put them back into his desk. He resolved to say nothing, but to watch his son more carefully in the holidays. It was near Christmas now. In a few days Gerald would be at home.

When he arrived, the eager greeting with which he met the various members of his family, his apparent joy in being at Kestercham again, his modesty in receiving congratulations (for he had come out at the top of the school in the examination) relieved, if they did not dispel, Mr. Eversley’s anxiety. He seemed unaware that his letters had been less regular; he still spoke of writing home every week. He resumed the old life naturally. He did not indeed propose to go and see Mr. Seaford; but when Mr. Eversley asked him if he did not think of paying Mr. Seaford a visit, he went. Mr. Eversley thought he must have formed more acquaintances among his schoolfellows; for he mentioned a good many names which Mr. Eversley did not remember having heard before.

It was on the fourth morning of the holidays that Gerald, coming down to breakfast a little late, found some letters lying on his plate. He began to read them.

‘Well, what do your correspondents say?’ observed Mr. Eversley, when Gerald put the letters down.