Gerald Eversley's Friendship: A Study in Real Life

by J. E. C. Welldon

‘And Job spake, and said, Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived. Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.’

CHAPTER XI
THE LIGHT THAT ARISETH IN DARKNESS

This story of a youthful friendship hastens to its close. It is time to resume and complete it.

Since the day when Harry Venniker and Gerald Eversley left St. Anselm’s, the streams of their lives, like torrents descending from the same mountain height, had been parted farther and farther. They saw comparatively little of each other. The experiences of the university were as alien to the one as the experiences of the army to the other. If the one never shouldered a rifle, it must be admitted that the other seldom opened a book. They exchanged letters, not perhaps every week, as Harry had promised on the last days of their life at St. Anselm’s, but at frequent intervals, and their letters were marked by the same open-hearted, affectionate frankness as before; it was not any fault of the letters which made the difference, it was that they were only letters, and a manuscript, however legible, is a sorry substitute for a grasp of the hand or the smile of loving eyes. Gerald’s solitude was intensified by the loss of the daily intercourse, which had been his one human treasure. While Harry Venniker was making new friends every week, his one friendship was slipping from his grasp. Love in absence is so rare and so inconstant. Reader, have you a friend whose face you have not seen for years; and if you should meet him again to-day, would you be quite the same—and he? Is there no lover who has come home in joy of heart and found despair? Has not a son returned after long wanderings to his father’s fireside, expecting to occupy the old familiar chair that was his in youth, and lo! it is another who occupies it, or the chair itself is gone? Harry Venniker and Gerald Eversley were living separate lives; was it possible that they could remain the same to the end? The parade, the mess-room, drills, balls, horses, dogs, on one side; spiritual conflicts on the other—what agreement can there be between these? But if the friendship should languish, this at least was certain, that the loser would be Gerald Eversley. The rich man, with his flocks and herds, can afford to give up many a head of cattle without missing it; but the poor man misses his solitary ewe-lamb.

Still the visits to Helmsbury continued. They were as dear to Gerald as ever, nay, if the truth must be told, they were dearer. As he became a frequent visitor to the Hall, and especially since Harry’s illness, it was natural to treat him there with less constraint or ceremony. Lady Venniker admitted him more freely to her confidence. Even Miss Venniker seemed to regard him as one of the family.

It would be possible, if it were not sacrilegious, to assert that the family at Helmsbury Hall had been divided by Nature into two sections as well as into two sexes. The father and the son stood on one side, the mother and the daughter on the other. It may be so in other families, but I do not know. Nobody could mistake the fact that Harry was Lord Venniker’s son. But not less clear was it that Ethel was Lady Venniker’s daughter. The resemblance was one not of feature only, but of disposition. And it had been strengthened by circumstances. As Lord Venniker’s eldest son, Harry had been thrown into close and constant intercourse with his father, and he had become imbued with his father’s love of sport, his preference for a rural life, his kindly aristocratic feeling, and his scarcely veiled depreciation of literature. What Harry Venniker possessed, and his father did not, was a peculiar softness of manner, perhaps too of heart, and this was Lady Venniker’s gift to him. It is possible that Ethel Venniker would have sympathised more completely with her father’s tastes and opinions, had she not lived so much alone with her mother. But many long hours, when the father and son were tramping the moors, the mother and daughter spent in reading or talking of literature (of which they both were fond), or topics of the day, or in forming plans for the happiness of the tenants in Helmsbury and the neighbouring villages. Still Ethel Venniker was a good horsewoman, and she loved riding. The meetings of the two sections of the family in the evenings (if Lady Venniker were well enough to come downstairs or to let them join her after dinner in her sitting-room) were always interesting. They were all more or less on common ground then. The daily ordering of their life, the administration of the estate, the progress of politics, the formation and changes of public opinion, the relation of classes, and now and again the state of the Church, were (among many others) the subjects discussed. They were subjects which, as the children grew older, appealed to all, though especially to Lord and Lady Venniker, and to them from somewhat different points of view. In discussing the condition of the poor, where he was the landlord, she was the philanthropist. In affairs of the Church, he was the churchman, she the Christian. Sometimes when he thought of men’s bodies, she thought of their souls. He believed more in law, and she in love. He was anxious to reform institutions, she was rather anxious to reform individual lives. He was apt to insist upon the rights of property, but she would dwell upon its duties.

It has been already said that while Gerald Eversley was at Helmsbury he spent a great part of his time with Lady Venniker and her daughter. When he was not with them, he was often in the library. He did not accompany Lord Venniker and Harry on their expeditions. But Lady Venniker’s delicacy of health made it impossible for her to leave the house in severe weather; and even in the summer she could not, at the best, walk beyond the garden, but was obliged, if she went out at all, to go for a short drive in the carriage. There were times, too, when she was so ill all day, or even for several days, that she could not see anyone except her husband or her daughter. Thus it happened that, if there was a walk to be taken into the village, Gerald became almost of necessity Miss Venniker’s companion, often with her little brother running at his side, but sometimes without him. It was with no sense of embarrassment that they took these walks; they were old friends, they had always Harry to talk about, they were the only persons to walk together, and so they walked together.

But it was an unexpected pleasure to Gerald Eversley when it dawned upon him in the course of these walks that Miss Venniker had been led—whether by native generosity of character or, as is perhaps more probable, by inheritance of thought and principle from her mother—to enter into some degree of sympathy with some of his views which would be treated as heretical in the majority of country houses.

For instance, Miss Venniker did not look upon an aristocracy as a divinely appointed institution deserving to be maintained at all costs. She thought that it was in the order of Providence that there should be different strata or classes of society. She thought (and here, no doubt, she reflected her mother’s opinion) that the world was likely to be better off if the distinction of rich and poor continued—supposing the rich recognised their duty of generosity and the poor their corresponding duty of gratitude—than if all persons possessed the very moderate amount of property which would be theirs if wealth were equally distributed. But she admitted that privileges such as rank and riches were designed for the general good. She did not dissent from a remark which Gerald made only half-seriously, that ‘people upon the whole enjoyed as much respect as they deserved, some people rather more.’

‘You don’t believe, then,’ she said, ‘that the lower classes—perhaps they are higher in God’s sight—that they are losing the sense of respect for their betters?’