Gerald Eversley's Friendship: A Study in Real Life

by J. E. C. Welldon

‘But it is so hard to see other people suffer pain,’ said Ethel.

‘Yes, indeed it is,’ said her mother; ‘but life would lose its preciousness if there were no pain, no sorrow to be relieved; for then there would be no sympathy, and that is the most divine thing on earth.’

Lady Venniker spoke once of the future unseen world. Her daughter was not with her then. Her thoughts dwelt much upon it in the silent night watches. That there was such a world she could no more doubt than that there was this world. ‘As life goes on,’ she said, ‘and the beloved ones whom we have known pass one by one behind the veil, so that we have more and more friends in that world and fewer in this, we come to feel that we should be more at home there than on earth. I have been sometimes very near to that world—my life was given up—but God spared me. One little girl of ours, younger than Ethel, He has taken to Himself. I tremble sometimes for Ethel; she looks very delicate, don’t you think so, Gerald?’

He did think so, but he knew not then why the thought was so painful to him. He tried to disguise it, saying that Miss Venniker seemed stronger than she was when he first came to Helmsbury—she could walk further—he hoped she would soon be quite strong—many persons outgrew the delicacy of their youth.

Lady Venniker put out her hand and pressed Gerald’s tenderly.

This conversation took place just before Harry Venniker and Gerald Eversley went back for their last term to St. Anselm’s. After that term they would be parted, and their lives would flow in different channels, except for occasional meetings at Helmsbury or elsewhere; for Gerald, as the reader knows, was going to Balliol, and Harry was destined for the army. It was therefore with solemnised feelings, as standing on the verge of a dreaded inevitable change in their lives, that they went back together to St. Anselm’s.

Since Gerald Eversley’s success at Balliol and the holiday that rewarded it, he had come to hold a different position in the eyes of the school. To say that he was generally popular would be misleading. He still lived very much to himself. Boys would still remark to one another that they could not understand what ‘Venniker saw to be so fond of in that fellow Eversley.’ But they regarded Gerald, with a sincere, though distant, respect, as a boy who was unlike themselves, and in some sense their superior, who possessed such attainments and accomplishments as they could not aspire to, and who would probably be remembered at St. Anselm’s when they were forgotten.

Harry Venniker, though he was not intellectually distinguished, and had only scraped into the Lower Sixth Form by the subtle and compassionate process of a ‘charity remove,’ was in the cricket and football elevens, and his bowling was the hope and stay of the school. He had grown up to be a tall, manly, splendid creature, with the old curly auburn hair and the old sunny smile and ringing merry laugh. He was said to be the most popular boy in the school. It was noticed that his achievements in the cricket field were more loudly applauded than any other boy’s. Little boys, fresh to the school, would sometimes cause their parents and friends, when they visited St. Anselm’s, to walk a hundred yards or more out of their way for the sake of catching sight of him as he went to or from the cricket field. His tastes and feelings, whether known or only imagined, formed the etiquette of public opinion. One little boy, even more enthusiastic than the rest, turned one day to his sister who was making some innocent remark in the street, and said, ‘Hush! Katie, don’t talk, here’s Venniker coming along; he doesn’t like girls talking loud; perhaps he’ll look at you, if you’ll hold your tongue.’ Yet amidst all this popularity Harry Venniker remained unchanged; he was still as modest and unaffected as when he came to St. Anselm’s, and it seemed as if everybody were conscious of the wonderful favour attending his life, except himself.

It is sometimes said that boyhood is the happiest time of life. I know not if it is so; perhaps the world is apt to confuse happiness with freedom from responsibility; but there can be no doubt that for most boys the happiest time of boyhood, at least in a public school, is the last year of school life.

There is a time—it is most mysterious, it cannot be predicted, it cannot be defined, but every schoolboy knows what it is—when a boy becomes a ‘swell.’ He is elevated then above the mass of his schoolfellows. He is ennobled, so to say, by the popular voice. He becomes a privileged person. Certain actions, which, if performed by ordinary boys, would subject them to the dreadful imputation of ‘swagger,’ are allowed as lawful and natural to him. These actions are not the same in all schools, but in every school the boys know them perfectly. A boy who is a ‘swell’ may carry a light cane at house matches and on other solemn occasions, or may be a member of a particular club, or he may wear a special cap or necktie, or special collars, or may adorn his waistcoat with brass buttons, or may fold up his umbrella, or walk up and down the middle of the street arm in arm with other boys who are also ‘swells’ in the late afternoon, when young ladies are supposed to be returning from lawn-tennis parties, or he may be distinguished in any one of a hundred other trivial ways; but whatever the distinction is, and however trivial, it is that which constitutes a ‘swell.’