Gerald Eversley's Friendship: A Study in Real Life

by J. E. C. Welldon

Or should he tell Lady Venniker? She had been his best friend. He could never repay her tender sympathy in his dark hours. She was like a mother to him; but not a word had she said which indicated that she looked, or could ever look, upon him in any other light than as a son. Once, some little time ago, in talking to him she had made an allusion to Ethel’s future; it was slight and casual, but it showed how little she thought of it as being even possibly connected with his own; the allusion gave him pain, and he turned the conversation away from it. It was only too probable that if he opened his heart to Lady Venniker he would lose her friendship—a friendship indescribably precious to him—without gaining, or being permitted to seek, her daughter’s love.

To speak to Lord Venniker or to Harry was alike impossible. They were too much occupied in their own pursuits to have any suspicion of the subtle, delightful, dreadful feeling that had sprung up in his heart. He was confident that the revelation of it would fill them with astonishment, perhaps with indignation. Lord Venniker had said to Gerald more than once that Ethel was growing up to be as her mother was when he saw and loved her. And Gerald, who knew Lord Venniker’s devotion to his wife, who knew the feeling of adoration with which he regarded her, heard in Lord Venniker’s words the prohibition of his soul’s hope.

But if Gerald Eversley was thus tongue-tied at Helmsbury upon the one subject of which his heart was full, what could he say about it at Kestercham? His visits to his home, as has been said, had become rare, and they lasted but for a few days. A feeling of reserve had grown up between his father and himself; they no longer walked and talked together as in old days. Still he went home from time to time, he had sometimes nowhere else to go; and Mr. Eversley, in spite of his great sorrow at his son’s alienation from religion—an alienation which in his theology involved eternal ruin—could not altogether resist a secret unavowed satisfaction at hearing of his remarkable academical successes. Still Mr. Eversley and his son had many secrets from each other now; and even in the days when the community of thought between them was greatest, Mr. Eversley would have felt that the mere idea of a matrimonial alliance with the aristocratic house of Venniker was a presumption bordering upon madness.

Yet it had occurred to Mr. Eversley, noting, as he did, every phase and symptom of his son’s religious speculations, that during the last two or three months there had been a change, not indeed definitely marked, but still unmistakable, in Gerald’s attitude towards religion in his home. He hardly knew what to make of this change. In his own simple way he put it down as an answer to prayer. He thanked God for it, and prayed yet more earnestly that it would please Him to lead his dear boy back again to the foot of the Cross. He did not venture as yet to say a word to Gerald about it. He did not dream of connecting it with any other cause than the converting grace of the Holy Spirit. That love itself could be a proselytising influence, that Gerald had in fact given his heart not to Christ only, but to Miss Venniker, were thoughts that would not enter into his father’s ingenuous mind. But it was a pleasure to him passing words that Gerald one day, without saying anything to him, appeared in church. He renewed his prayers once more. Who will doubt that such prayers as his are heard in heaven, though the answer is given, as it seems to us, in many strange ways?

It was at this juncture of affairs, when Gerald was at home, not long before returning to Oxford for the conclusion of his academical life, that he received a letter written by Miss Venniker herself in her mother’s name, asking him to spend a few days of his vacation at Helmsbury. ‘Harry says he hopes so much you will come,’ she wrote. ‘It is his birthday on Thursday week, and the tenants are going to have a dinner. Do come, if you can.’

Gerald debated with himself very much what he ought to do. He felt in his own mind that the intensity of his love, against which he believed himself to have striven so conscientiously, was getting the mastery of him. If he went to Helmsbury, there was great danger that he would do something or say something irrevocable. He would bring matters to a crisis. The veil would be torn away from his heart. He wished, and yet he did not wish, that Lady Venniker’s invitation had not come. To stay away from Helmsbury was pain, to go there was peril. His happiness in being near Miss Venniker was that supreme happiness which is akin to misery. He cherished the half proud, half regretful feeling of carrying in his breast a secret which was known to nobody, and which, if it were known, might alter his whole relation to his surroundings. It seemed a wrong return for the blessing of his second home, which had at one most critical time been his first or only home, that he should live there and associate with its inmates on a false footing. It occurred to him in his difficulty to consult his father as to the course which it would be right to take, but eventually he did not consult him.

At last, after a wakeful night, he resolved to take the bold and honourable course of declaring his love. He would shiver no more on the brink of the deep waters, but would plunge in. What would the issue be?

He sat down to write. He had just taken up the pen when Mrs. Eversley came into the room and asked him if he would mind getting up for a moment, as she must look for something in one of the drawers of the table at which he was writing.

The two letters which follow will explain themselves. They will serve better than any elaborate description of sacred feelings which are in their nature indescribable.

Kestercham Vicarage, September 4, 186-.