Gerald Eversley's Friendship: A Study in Real Life

by J. E. C. Welldon

It was the rule of Mr. Brandiston’s house that, as soon as prayers and supper were over, all boys (excepting the Sixth Form) should return to their rooms and silence should be observed until bedtime. The interval between supper and bedtime was perhaps half an hour. The lights were extinguished at ten, or soon afterwards. Then Mr. Brandiston would begin the tour of his house, looking into all the rooms to assure himself that the boys were in bed, and wishing them ‘Good night.’ It was a kindly practice, and it might have been useful, but it was so methodical as to lose the chief part of its value. The boys knew that he came, and knew the precise hour of his coming. A good many of them were fast asleep before he opened the doors of their rooms—so light and facile is the slumber of boyhood—and it may be suspected that a still larger number feigned to be asleep. Mr. Brandiston, like other masters of boarding houses, had acquired in the process of years a comprehensive insight into the manners and attitudes of boys in bed. The boy who sleeps hidden deep down under the bedclothes, so that it needs a careful investigation to discover that there is a human being in the bed at all; the boy who starts up at the flash of his master’s candle, and makes a fierce attack upon his master’s legs; the boy who mutters ‘What’s that?’ or ‘Go away, do,’ and turns heavily to sleep upon his side again; the boy who sleeps sitting nearly upright or on his back with his arms clasped beneath his head; or the wakeful boy—rare creature, but real—who is seldom asleep, but lies with open vacant eyes the long night through—all these were familiarly known to Mr. Brandiston. He could have given an entertaining lecture upon the varieties of sleep; but, as a rule, the boys, being tired out with the fully occupied days of school life, fell asleep within a few minutes of going to bed, and however rude and rough the beds were at St. Anselm’s, it was their fixed unalterable belief that no other beds in the world were half so easy or soporific. Happy, thrice happy, the sleep of the young! Mr. Brandiston, himself a bad sleeper, had often watched it with envious eyes, and, as he softly shut the door, had whispered to himself ‘God bless them!’

To-night, the boys whose story I am telling had not much appetite for supper. As soon as prayers were finished, they went back to their room and made preparations for bed. Gerald Eversley, having divested himself of his jacket, knelt down by his bedside, took from his pocket a little volume of prayers which his father had given him, and prayed. He had been always in the habit of saying his prayers night and morning. It would be difficult to say whether he was conscious of a definite help or happiness in prayer. Perhaps it is truer to say that he would have experienced a pain or void if he had not prayed. Prayer was to him a natural act of life, like eating or walking. He had always been accustomed to pray; it did not occur to him that there could be any persons who did not pray. He was entirely free from the shyness which boys of greater worldly wisdom than his own feel about prayer. He knelt down, and his thoughts ascended to heaven. Will it be always so with him in after days? God grant it!

Harry Venniker, too, was in the habit of saying his prayers. His mother had taught him to say them, and many a time had heard him say them at her knee. She had begged him, when he first went to school, not to give up the habit of praying. But he did not always say them. Sometimes he omitted them in the morning, if he got up too late, or in the evening, if he felt too tired. Probably he would have omitted them on the first night at St. Anselm’s, his mind being full of other things, or would have hurried over them in bed when the light had gone out. But seeing Gerald Eversley kneel down, and seeing him lose all consciousness of another’s presence in the communion of his soul with its Maker, he too knelt by his bedside, spent perhaps a minute in devotion, then rose from his knees, having done all that he wanted or was wont to do. Gerald was still kneeling when Harry’s prayer was finished, his lips were moving earnestly, reverently, upon his face was the far-away look of one who sees visions. At last he rose, hardly before the light went out, and crept into bed.

‘Good night,’ said Harry cheerfully; ‘what a time you’ve been!’

There was a certain sadness, such as can hardly be defined, unless by the beautiful French expression, ‘tears in the voice,’ in the tone of the answering ‘Good night.’

It was not long before Mr. Brandiston’s step was heard in the passage. He opened the door; his candle played upon the faces of the two boys, and seeing they were still awake, he said, as if speaking to himself, ‘Let me see; yes, Venniker and Eversley; I have put you in a room together, I hope you will get on well. Good night, I will see you to-morrow.’

Harry Venniker wished the schoolmaster ‘Good night’; Gerald Eversley had not the courage to say it. And Mr. Brandiston went out, shutting the door softly behind him.

Harry Venniker turned on his side and fell asleep; or, if it was not sleep, it was the unconsciousness which anticipates sleep. He was awakened by a sound proceeding from a corner of the room. It was a noise so low that it seemed ashamed of itself. He sat up in the bed. He listened, but the noise was hushed; then it began again. He became convinced that it had some connection with Gerald Eversley. He got out of bed. The light of the moon was streaming through the window, and by the light of it he was aware that the boy, whose face was turned away, was sobbing with a heartbroken passionateness. His first thought, natural to a schoolboy, was, as it had been on the hillside, one of contempt. But again his kindness of heart guided him aright. He went and sat down on his room-fellow’s bed and laid his hand upon his shoulder. He was breaking a rule of the house in getting out of bed after the lights had been extinguished; but it may be that a Higher Authority than Mr. Brandiston would have acquitted him.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said in a whisper. No answer came, unless, indeed, it were a sob; but Harry knew by a sort of instinct that the boy was weeping for very loneliness and strangeness, and was experiencing that most honourable of human sentiments which is called home-sickness. It dawned upon him once more that he was called to be the friend and protector of this strange boy, his equal in years, though, if he had been asked what form his friendship or protection would assume, he could not have told it. After all, in this life, the deepest, holiest feelings are inexpressible. Gerald would not have understood him better, and would, I think, have trusted him less, if he had delivered a consolatory oration than when he put his hand upon his shoulder and kept it there. He said only, ‘Don’t cry any more. I’ll be your friend, I said I would, whatever happens, for ever.’ ‘For ever’ is not a long time in the parlance of schoolboys; it seems longer, perhaps, as we grow older.

At last the sobbing became less convulsive; the tears ceased to flow; Gerald laid his head anew upon the pillow, and was at peace.