It wanted some ten minutes to eleven o’clock when Mr. Eversley, coming out of his study arrayed for church on that Sunday, called ‘Gerald.’ He always called him in this way, and they walked to the church together. No answer came. He called again, ‘Gerald, Gerald.’ Still no answer. It was clear that Gerald was not in the house. It was just possible that he had gone on ahead with Mrs. Eversley or one of his sisters. He did so on rare occasions, but not without giving his father notice. Mr. Eversley had just time to open the kitchen door and say to the cook:
‘Jane, have you seen Mr. Gerald start for church this morning?’
‘I see him go out ’alf an hour ago,’ answered the cook, ‘but he’d got a book in his ’and and went towards the Green.’
Mr. Eversley’s heart sank. With a faltering step he walked to the church. The vicarage pew could not be seen from the vestry, but he could not wait until the beginning of the service; he took the bell-rope from the clerk’s hand and told him to go and see who were in the pew. The clerk brought back word that Mrs. Eversley was there and the young ladies, but not Mr. Gerald.
The congregation was unusually large. The communicants were more numerous, by two, than ever before. Mr. Seaford expressed audible satisfaction at the amount of the offertory. But Mr. Eversley’s thoughts were not in the church. How he got through the service he knew not. It was observed that he gave out the wrong hymn before the sermon. He preached as one might preach to the deaf. On the first Sunday of the year—the great Communion Sunday—Gerald, his son, his best-beloved, had turned his back upon the house of God!
Mr. Eversley, as he walked home from church, begged his wife not to make any comment, ’before the children especially,’ on Gerald’s absence. ’It will be my most painful duty,’ he said, ’to speak to him myself to-night.’
Accordingly, when prayers were over in the evening, Mr. Eversley said quietly, ’Gerald, will you come with me into the study? I have something to say to you.’
Gerald followed his father into the study. Mr. Eversley did not speak in anger. Had he spoken so, it would have been easier for Gerald to endure his words. Nor did he dwell upon the injury done to his own spiritual influence by an example of irreligion in his own family, though he quoted, as if in self-reproval, the text, ’If a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?’ But he spoke with shame and horror of the sin of indifference to holy things. ’My dear, dear Gerald,’ he said, with tears in his eyes, ‘how can anyone who has felt the burden of his own sins, and has seen that burden rolled away at the foot of the Cross, who knows that he carries within him an immortal soul, ransomed by the precious blood of Christ, consecrated by the indwelling Spirit of God, destined to an eternity of bliss or woe—how can he treat the ordinances of God as light or common things? what blessing in the world can be so great as the blessing of communion with Him in the worship of the sanctuary? And, O Gerald, shall it be the joy of an earthly father’s heart to see his son, as it has ever been mine to see you, obedient and loving, and shall not the Almighty Father have pleasure in His saints when they lift the voice of praise and prayer to His throne in Heaven?’
It was more than Gerald could bear. His father was thinking of him as careless of a duty, felt and acknowledged—and it was the duty itself, the religious belief on which the duty rested, that was in doubt. At last he said, his voice half choked with tears,
‘Father, I cannot believe all that.’