GERALD EVERSLEY’S FRIENDSHIP

A STUDY IN REAL LIFE

BY THE

REV. J. E. C. WELLDON

HEAD MASTER OF HARROW SCHOOL

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1895

[All rights reserved]

[1]

It was a day in September 186-. It was between five and six o’clock in the afternoon. The railway station of St. Anselm’s seemed to be asleep save for the movement of four people, or, more strictly, of two pairs of people, who were pacing up and down at opposite ends of the platform, apparently awaiting the arrival of the same train to take them to London. Each pair consisted of a gentleman and a boy. It was evident that the two pairs were not acquainted one with the other. Once, but only once, in their patient promenade they approached and passed each other; and in so doing each of the two boys eyed the other with the curiously distant inquisitiveness of English schoolboys who have not met before, but who are dimly[2] conscious that, as members of the same great institution, they have entered, or are about to enter, into a mysterious relation; and, as soon as they had got out of earshot, each of them, turning at the same moment almost half round, whispered to his father, ‘I’m sure that fellow is a new boy; I wonder whose house he’s in.’ It was one of the many questions that are asked in life more for the sake of putting them than in the hope that they will be answered. But there would have been no disposition to answer it, if answer had been possible; for just then a train drew up at the opposite platform, and out of it poured a number of boys, of all sorts and ages, clamouring for porters, clamouring for luggage, greeting one another, chaffing one another, rushing out of the station to secure cabs or other conveyances, rushing back to recover articles which they had left in the racks or under the seats of the carriages, turning the quiet of the little station into such a Babel or Bedlam as can be caused by no human beings but English public school boys in the last half-hour of freedom before the ringing of the bell which marks the fatal time when they must be all in their boarding houses—the end of the holidays, the beginning of a new term.

At last the train, looking desolate when it had discharged its freight of youthful humanity, moved on;[3] the platform on which the boys of St. Anselm’s had alighted was deserted once more, and the two fathers and their sons, who had watched the scene with unmistakable amusement and interest, resumed their walk on the other side of the station. The pairs were strangely different in appearance. One of the gentlemen was tall and strongly built; his face was sunburnt; he possessed the indescribable athletic, unliterary air of an English country gentleman. He walked with a rapid step, spoke in hearty, cheery tones, appeared to be in good humour with himself and with the world, and it was difficult, in looking at him, to mistake the characteristics of easy temper, ample fortune, and high breeding. The boy at his side, lithe and stalwart, whose bright complexion and soft blue eyes were passports to favour, even without the radiant smile that played now and again, like a wandering sunbeam, on his mobile features, was a type of generous, healthy English boyhood. No being, perchance, is so distinct, none so beautiful or attractive, as a noble English boy. He is open-hearted, open-handed; there is not a cloud upon his brow; he looks the world in the face; for him all life is, as it were, sunshine without rain. Such a boy was Harry Venniker. He was like his father, yet with a delicate grace that was not altogether his father’s. He was now nearly fourteen years of[4] age, and he seemed a little older than his years. The boy at the other end of the platform, who was nearly of the same age, though he looked younger, was thin and pale; he wore spectacles, and stooped a little in his walk, and there was a certain nervous anxiety, not unmixed with a fine intelligence, in his demeanour whenever he met the gaze of any man or woman, even of one of the porters in the station, directed towards himself. His father was a country clergyman (like so many another) with a small income and a large family—an income growing unfortunately smaller and a family growing, shall it be said fortunately? larger—who, though he had come down a little in the world, as he would at times rather sorrowfully confess, had set his heart upon giving his eldest son—the only child of the first Mrs. Eversley—a good education; and, finding him clever, much above the average of boys in his own rural experience, had been so far encouraged by his success in winning a scholarship and by the generosity of a wealthy friend, a near relative of the first Mrs. Eversley, who had offered to undertake all responsibility for his educational expenses, that he had resolved, not without many painful misgivings, to send him to school at St. Anselm’s. There was an aspect of bygone gentility about Mr. Eversley; he looked like a man who had seen better days, though[5] nobody could tell or guess how long it was since he had seen them. The memory of those days was somehow written upon his face; and yet, if the truth must be told, a casual observer would have been more likely to notice that his coat was a little threadbare at the elbow, and his clerical hat a little soiled about the brim, than that his personal appearance was not unworthy of a better garb.

Different, however, as the fathers were and the sons, the conversation at the two ends of the platform was not entirely dissimilar. ‘Train’s due, Harry,’ said Lord Venniker, taking his watch out of his pocket and looking at it with just sufficient attention to forget in half a minute what the time was when he looked. ‘Here she comes. Now here’s a 5l. note for you, and when you want more, you must write for it; don’t spend it all, you young rogue, at the tuckshops. Go straight back to Brandiston’s as soon as I’m off and make yourself happy.’ Then, after a brief pause, ‘You’ve not got to earn your living, you know, so you need not work your eyes out; I’d much rather you got into the eleven; but do your duty like a Christian; don’t swear, don’t cheat, don’t ...’ and Lord Venniker’s speech, one of the longest he had made in his life, was cut short by the train. He had barely time to add, as a summary[6] of moral wisdom, ‘Whatever you do, don’t do anything unworthy of a gentleman—and a Venniker.’

At the same time, but at the other end of the platform, Mr. Eversley was saying in a low voice, ‘My dear Gerald, before the train, which is to part us for so long, comes in—she is signalled now—let me say this last word to you. You are going to an expensive school, more expensive, I am afraid, than it is right for me to afford; but I have longed to give you a good education—for your dear mother’s sake, and your own, Gerald—and when I have done that, you must make your own way in the world. Work hard then; remember that Satan finds some mischief for idle hands. You have been brought up in the faith of Christ as your Redeemer and your Master; be true to Him, pray to Him every morning and night, and, whatever you do, don’t forget what is expected of you as a Christian gentleman, and always ask yourself what He would wish you to do, if He were present.’

The train drew up. Lord Venniker stepped into a first class, Mr. Eversley into a third class, compartment; a few hurried last words—the world-old effort to say in half a minute all that might have been said, and ought, it seems, to have been said, in the past half-hour—and there was a whistling, a waving of hands, a tear rising in the eyes that would[7] disown it if they could, and the parting was over. Who is there among us that has ever waved ‘Farewell’ and has not felt as though it were ‘Farewell for ever’?

Harry Venniker stood gazing after the train until it wound its way along the curve some three or four hundred yards from the station, and he could see nothing of it but the smoke-wreath fading away into thin air; then he turned quickly upon his heel, and as he turned almost ran into the other boy, who was making his way with slow steps towards the exit from the station.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I’m awfully sorry. I’m always doing that kind of thing.’ Then he looked at the straw hat and broad white collar which are the infallible marks of a boy at St. Anselm’s, and added, ‘I say, are you a new boy? So am I. Was that your governor? Whose house are you in? There’s no cab; those chaps have taken them all; we may as well walk up to the school together, eh? There’s time, isn’t there?’

Gerald Eversley made no attempt to answer the questions which came leaping from his companion’s lips, but contented himself with saying that he was a new boy, he had only once been at St. Anselm’s before, and then with walking quietly at his side. In his heart he could not help wondering how any[8] boy, being new to public school life, could feel so much at his ease.

Both boys, it is needless now to say, were taking the fateful step—more fateful perhaps than any other that is taken in life—of entering a great public school. Their parents had brought them earlier in the day to be introduced to the master in whose house they were to be placed, and after the introduction they had been permitted to see the last of their parents at the station. They had never met before; they did not know each other’s names; it was only by such a chance as has been described that they came to be walking together. Who can tell at any moment of his life that for him there may not be some one coming from a distant home, drawn onwards by divine guiding, some one whose name he has not heard, and yet whose destiny is indissolubly linked to his own?

For two or three minutes they walked in silence; but it was not in Harry Venniker’s nature to be silent for long, and he soon began to interrogate his companion with the good-natured, but almost brutal, frankness which is exclusively characteristic of schoolboys.

‘I say,’ was his first remark, ‘what’s your name, though?’

[9]

‘Gerald Simeon Eversley,’ was the reply, delivered in a low tone, and with something not altogether unlike a choking of the throat.

It was not, perhaps, a remarkable name; but Mr. Eversley had called his son ‘Simeon’ after the great Evangelical leader whose funeral at King’s College in Cambridge he had himself, as a young man, attended.

‘Oh! Eversley, is it?’ The name did not appear to awaken any reminiscences in Harry Venniker’s mind.

‘Whose house are you in?’

‘Mr. Brandiston’s.’

‘Brandiston’s! Bless my soul! why, so am I,’ said Venniker; but there was something in his tone which seemed to imply that the pale, spectacled boy to whom he spoke was not quite the kind of boy whom he had expected to find in Mr. Brandiston’s house, the most popular and fashionable house at St. Anselm’s. ‘They say he’s not a bad sort, old Brandiston, but awfully strict. However, I don’t mind that so long as he’s just. I know a lot of fellows there, some of them were at my preparatory school; it’s cock house at cricket; it has got five of the eleven in it, and one of them is the captain—Stanley, you know. But, I say, what school have you[10] been at? Were you in the eleven there? What was your top score?’ But here he paused, as if a gentle voice had reminded him that the boy at his side was not quite likely to have achieved reputation as a cricketer, and he repeated his first question quickly, ‘What school?’

Gerald Eversley was fain to confess that he had never been to school before—in fact, had never left his home; and he felt that the confession somehow lowered him in his companion’s eyes, and would lower him in the eyes of all his schoolfellows at St. Anselm’s. It certainly seemed to make a breach at the moment between his companion and himself; they walked nearly fifty yards without speaking. But again Harry Venniker’s spirits were too buoyant to make prolonged silence natural or possible. His conversation took an air of superiority—that unconscious, unintentional superiority which is the prerogative of greater knowledge or wider experience. He felt somehow as if he had spent half his life at St. Anselm’s, and, being long familiar with its practices and observances, were called upon to initiate a young novice into the secret of them. He began to realise in himself a sense of patronage, a duty of protection, to the boy who was walking at his side. Just because Gerald was so ‘green’ (as schoolboys phrase it), and[11] wholly unversed in the ways of the world, it was his office to give him a helping hand. A boy of duller or coarser temperament than Harry Venniker, even if he had abstained from teasing or harassing such a creature, would have left him severely alone. But Harry Venniker was full of manly, generous impulses; he was conscious of strength, but not less conscious of the obligation to use it beneficently; and while he would not himself have submitted to any bullying, he would have felt it a shame to let another weaker boy be bullied without coming to his rescue.

He resumed the conversation in a more sympathetic tone, turning it to those subjects which seem to be eternally interesting to males of thirteen years of age who are entering upon school life—a boy’s sisters’ names, his pocket-money, the sport he has had at home, and the means of satisfying a master’s requirements with the smallest possible expenditure of personal trouble. But he discovered—and the discovery was a great surprise to him—that these subjects, so natural among schoolboys, were nearly all painful or difficult to Gerald Eversley.

Boys have been always strangely sensitive about their female relations. They have often felt, or affected to feel, a shame of their sisters—though, heaven knows the sisters had generally far more cause to be[12] ashamed of their brothers than their brothers of them—and it has been a point of honour to conceal their names and their very existence. Boys have been known to deny that they had sisters, though at the time they were receiving letters and presents from them. It is said that a boy once carried his dislike of the female sex to the point of denying that he had ever had a mother. Gerald Eversley was not experienced in the ways of school life; but when he was asked for his sisters’ names, he found a difficulty in admitting that he had eight sisters possessing an accumulated total of nineteen Christian names; and Harry Venniker, who had only one sister, and had not conceived the possibility of anybody having as many as eight, grew conscious, after hearing some half-dozen of the names, that his question was rather an awkward one, and he did not press for a complete answer to it.

He was not much more successful in introducing the subject of sport. To most British schoolboys, of the upper classes at all events, sport is a subject of fascinating and absorbing interest. Not to be a sportsman is in their eyes not to be an English gentleman. There is a story that a clever schoolmaster, who was conscientiously opposed to vivisection, offered a prize to any boy who should come back to school after the summer holidays without[13] having killed any living creature; and the prize was not claimed, probably not because there was no boy in the school who had not handled either a gun or a rod in the holidays, but because there was not a boy bold enough to admit in the presence of his schoolfellows that he had spent the holidays in so unsportsmanlike a manner. But the 12th of August and the 1st of September were only common days to Gerald Eversley; they enjoyed no mystical significance in his eyes. Mr. Eversley, his father, was not a sportsman; he had neither the means nor the taste for ‘killing’ (as he would himself have said) ‘God’s dumb creatures.’ To say the truth, it is probable that he felt, like Sir Thomas More, a secret astonishment at finding that so many sober, responsible, Christian gentlemen experienced a pleasure or exhibited a pride in the magnitude of their slaughter. So it was that Gerald Eversley had never thought of handling a gun. A gunshot was apt to send a tremor through his body. It happened once that, as he was walking with a book of poetry in his hand in the covert immediately adjoining a part of his father’s glebeland, he came upon a number of pheasants that the keepers who were out with a shooting party had left—bedraggled, bleeding, some of them hardly yet dead—to be picked up in the evening when the day’s sport was[14] finished. The sight was so painful that he turned away from it as if it sickened him, and the tears came into his eyes, and he wondered if any satisfaction derived from killing these beautiful creatures could be greater than his in being innocent of their blood. It was not much use, then, to talk to Gerald Eversley about sport; the subject was unwelcome to him, and Harry Venniker instinctively dropped it.

His growing conviction that his companion was a ‘rum ’un’ was not diminished when it appeared that Gerald had not come to school with any thought of waging war against the masters, or with any animosity towards them as the natural enemies of boyhood; that he was not looking forward to any ‘larks;’ that he did not understand what a ‘beak’ or a ‘crib’ was; that he hoped to be left alone to study by himself; that he cared more to know where the library was than where the cricket-field was; and that he shrank at heart from contact with a company of strangers, not the less because those strangers were public school boys. But his astonishment reached its height when at the mention of pocket-money and of the ways of spending it on a large scale—Harry Venniker having a 5l. note in his pocket and being empowered to write home for more as soon as he wanted it—his companion, who had been sent to school with only half a sovereign (though[15] he did not confess the amount), and that a sum which his father had given him with the solemn air of one who is making a sacrifice that it would be impossible to repeat, stammered and faltered, and at last broke into tears. He had lived a solitary, sheltered life until then; he was quite unworldly; he had never known what it was to receive gold as a present; and it was more than he could bear to listen to a boy of his own age talking about ‘fivers,’ not at all boastfully, but in the most natural manner possible, as if they were matters of almost everyday experience. He did his best to check his tears, but they would come.

Harry Venniker looked at him with a mingled sentiment of surprise and commiseration. He had an awkward consciousness (to express his own thought) that he had ‘put his foot into it,’ and that, if he had chosen his topics of conversation with more delicacy or discretion, this ‘scene’—disagreeable as ‘scenes’ always are to boys—would not have occurred. For the moment it was difficult to avoid a feeling of contempt for this strange, emotional creature. Boys have a horror of tears; they think them fit only for women or for Frenchmen; they regard them as essentially un-English. But Harry Venniker’s heart was touched to sympathy; he realised the fact of sorrow, and tacitly blamed himself for being, although[16] unwittingly, the cause of it. He wanted, if he could, to make amends, though he hardly knew how, and so, after hesitating for a moment, he put out his hand and said hastily, ‘I say, never mind; don’t blubber. You’ll want a little more pluck, I can tell you, if you’re to get on among fellows; but I’ll be your friend; I’ll stick up for you—I swear I will; I’ll be your friend, whatever happens.’

By this time they were ascending the short, steep road which leads to the crest of St. Anselm’s hill. Harry Venniker had not long finished speaking when they came in sight of Mr. Brandiston’s house—it juts out a little into the road just beyond the chapel—and without another word they walked to the door of it and entered, passing through a group of boys who were clustered by the entrance, and who stared at them with the supercilious curiosity of older and superior beings at the sight of a new boy.

‘I say,’ cried Harry Venniker, who had been holding a brief but earnest consultation with the butler, ‘you fellow, Eversley; we’re in a room together, No. 13; come along, let’s have a look at it.’ And so saying, he hurried the butler and Gerald up two flights of stairs and along a narrow, tortuous passage, actually known in the language of the house as the ‘corkscrew,’ to a room which bore the external signs of being[17] intended for the conjoint but exclusive occupation of two boys. The walls were bare; for its former occupants, whether they had left the school or had only migrated to some better room in the house, had bequeathed to their successors no traces of decorations except the nails which had supported their pictures and now remained without any apparent use, like ghosts of an ancient and departed glory; but it contained two beds, which it was the fashion to fold up during the day and let down at night, two chairs, two tables deeply scarred with the names of several generations of boys who had occupied the room, two bookcases, two washstands and basins—in a word, all the conventional phenomena of a dual existence. The butler—a venerable character in the house—stood quietly by while the two boys surveyed the scantily furnished apartment, the virgin soil, as it were, which they were destined to cultivate; then he claimed the privilege of long experience by giving vent to the hope that they would ‘chum along all right together,’ and left them alone, telling them they must come down to the hall when the bell rang for prayers.

While they were unpacking their boxes, which were, it must be admitted, widely different in character and contents, Harry Venniker received a good many visits from old friends who had known him at home[18] or at school, who greeted him and were greeted by him with much cordiality, passed some merry jokes with him at the expense of two or three of the masters and of their houses, which were declared to be in all respects vastly inferior to Mr. Brandiston’s, so that the boys professed themselves unable to imagine how ‘any decent chap’ could go into such ‘holes,’ and informed him in a congratulatory spirit that Stanley had been heard to express the intention of conferring upon him the singular honour of choosing him as one of his fags. Nobody asked for Gerald Eversley, or addressed any word to him, though to one of the boys who came into the room Harry Venniker introduced him as ‘an old friend of mine,’ using a form of speech not unnatural to schoolboys to whom a day is a long time, and a ceremony or practice which came into use a year ago is as if it had existed since the Creation. The business of unpacking boxes, interrupted as it was by numerous sallies of Harry Venniker to the window or the door, for the purpose of taking observations or renewing acquaintances, filled a considerable time. Then there was the further business of adorning the walls with pictures and trophies. Poor Gerald endured a fresh mortification at finding that he was expected to have brought certain decorative ornaments with him, and that he had not brought[19] them. But Harry with great good nature did his best to set him at ease. He produced from the bottom of one of his boxes a number of engravings, all of a sporting kind, exhibiting with rare uniformity the triumphs of human skill over wild boars, elks, tigers, bears, and lions, to say nothing of the various species of British game, an enormous stag’s head—a ‘royal’ he called it, but Gerald had no idea what he meant—the trophy of his father’s prowess in sport, a clock, a hand-screen, two cabinet photographs of his father and mother, and the picture of a beautiful girl whom he explained a little apologetically to be his sister Ethel, a year younger than himself, ‘a real good sort, you know, for a girl; it was she who gave me this knife just as I was starting. Now we’re beginning to look a little shipshape,’ he continued; but just then the bell rang, and the two boys went downstairs with all the others for prayers in the hall.

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[20] 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[21] 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[22] 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!’

[23]

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[24] 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[25] 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.

Oh! the sorrows of a young heart, how strong they are and how terrible! penetrating, agonising, possessing themselves of the whole being, and turning the rich, prolific life into a wilderness! We speak of childhood as the time of cloudless joys, of unsullied happiness; but it is also the time when sorrow is most helpless, and the anguish of an hour is as that which endures eternally.

Harry Venniker returned to bed and slept. In the morning he made no allusion to the incident of which the pale moon, throned in heaven, was the sole arbitress. Never since has he referred to it in conversation with Gerald Eversley; nor is there anyone who has learnt from him or will learn what took place.

It has been cynically remarked that the young have no faults; they have only the faults of their parents or their teachers. Certain it is that the knowledge of parents is a clue to the understanding of their children. Without that knowledge the teacher enters upon the study of character as upon a property that has never been surveyed. For we are creatures of circumstances; we are what others who live before us have made us; nor is it possible for any man, however chequered his life may be, to emancipate himself from the determining influences of his home life.

Harry Venniker and Gerald Eversley were alike the creatures of their homes. But how different were those homes! It is a strange thought that men and boys may live side by side, and may see each other every day, and yet be as far apart as if they were dwellers in opposite continents.

Harry Venniker was the elder son of an English peer, who possessed a stately ancestral seat at Helmsbury,[27] in one of the Midland counties, and a house in Grosvenor Square. His father’s time was divided between Parliamentary attendance, which he regarded sometimes as a relaxation, but more frequently as a bore, and sport, which he considered to be the serious business in life. If Lord Venniker lived a good part of the year in town, he was never at home there. He remembered a few words of an old Horatian stanza, which he had learned by heart as a schoolboy—something about fumum et opes strepitumque Romæ; it was his solitary Latin quotation, and he was fond of making use of it to express his satisfaction at escaping from the business and bustle and vaporous fogs of the great city into rural peace and felicity. It is possible that he had not realised all the causes which rendered London distasteful to him. One of them was that he was unconsciously intolerant of a place where there were people who did not know him or salute him. At Helmsbury he was everybody’s friend and everybody’s master. He deserved his popularity and enjoyed it. His family had been settled in that part of England since the Revolution; and the house, which had been built in Queen Anne’s reign, had scarcely been altered, except in some of its sanitary details, during two centuries. When he drove his four-in-hand along the country roads, the silver bells jingling upon the necks[28] of his handsome bays, the villagers would come out of their cottages and bow or curtsy in the doorways, and in answer to his kindly greeting would say, ‘Good morning to you, my lord; God bless your lordship!’ It would in those days have seemed as unnatural, as contrary to the established and recognised system of human affairs, that they should not be respectful to him and his family as that he should not be just and generous to them. His social superiority was taken for granted by them as much as by himself. It was the foundation of society in Helmsbury. Could it be denied or disputed, the world would come to an end; so he thought, and so his neighbours thought with him. But he was alive to the duties as well as to the rights of landownership. It was his boast that he knew the names and histories and had set foot in the farmhouses or cottages of all the tenants on his estate. One touch of feudal or patriarchal distinction he jealously retained. He was fond of arriving just a minute late on Sunday morning at the village church, in the hope that the rector, out of deference to his rank and dignity, would allow him a little grace and would not begin the prayers until he had taken his seat, after burying his face for two or three seconds in his tall hat and then depositing it on the cushion, when he would give a sort of nod to[29] the reading-desk, as much as to say, ‘I am ready now.’ The long avenue of chestnuts stretches from the Hall to the Park gates, and the church is just outside them across the road, so that the sexton, who was set to keep watch, could see ‘my lord’s party’ coming churchwards and could give the signal for the rector to leave the vestry. Lord Venniker never failed—not even in the worst weather—to occupy his seat at the morning service in the square, tall family pew with its red baize cushions and hassocks, and the little grate in which his lordship, if the sermon were too long, would somewhat ostentatiously poke the fire, and the hatchments of the Venniker family looking down from the walls above it. He was a good and worthy man, Lord Venniker, but he believed in the world as it was, with a noble Venniker always supreme at Helmsbury Hall. He hated what he called ‘ideas,’ though it would seem that the opinions of the lord of Helmsbury were not ‘ideas.’ He belonged politically to the country party, and all Helmsbury, including its voters, belonged to him. There were three epithets which he was in the habit of hurling at such persons as were the objects of his animosity or aversion, and it was believed that the epithets represented ascending degrees of iniquity; but he did not always use them with a nice discrimination. If a person of different political or economical[30] views gave him offence (as was generally the case if they came into contact with him at all), he would probably call him an ‘agitator.’ If the offence was aggravated, he would call him a ‘Chartist’; for he remembered the days of blazing hayricks and farm-buildings, and it was his conviction that a ‘strong hand’ was needed to crush the early symptoms of revolution. But there was a worst epithet of all not often employed, but reserved for such outrageous persons as presumed to dispute the natural right of the lords of Helmsbury to rule and homage in their own domains: Lord Venniker would speak of them as ‘atheists.’

His family consisted of Lady Venniker, two sons, the elder Harry, whose full Christian name was Henry Alfred Brabazon, and a younger boy, now six years old, and the daughter Etheldreda, or, as she was always called, Ethel, whose portrait has been already mentioned as adorning (along with the stag’s head and other trophies) the wall of her brother’s study at St. Anselm’s.

If Lord Venniker’s influence was visible everywhere, as, indeed, I think it was, in the village of Helmsbury, it was the influence of his wife that gave charm and character to the home. Lady Venniker was one of those rare beings who seem born to diffuse happiness without knowing it. It would have surprised her to[31] be told that she did good; she would have said that her ill-health, limiting her activities, made it impossible. But she did good in the only way in which it is sure to be done—by being good. Her personal beauty, marked as it was with that wonderfully sanctifying transparency which nothing but congenital delicacy can impart, was irradiated by the light of virtue. There are some faces, women’s faces especially, that excite an unwilling admiration; we look at them, and look again, but we do not care to remember them. Other faces there are—not so beautiful, perhaps, theoretically—that linger as sweet memories in the mind and heart. Lady Venniker’s was a beauty, not of feature only, but of expression. Though she was generally confined to her couch, yet her interest in her family and household and in her neighbours never failed. No word of complaining, no word even of recognising her own sufferings, escaped her lips. Her thought was for others, not for herself. It was not without reason that the villagers, who seldom saw her unless illness or misfortune drew them to her side, would speak of her as ‘the good lady.’

But upon no one was Lady Venniker’s sweet influence felt so powerfully as upon her husband. He had loved her when she was a girl of seventeen, the only daughter of a country gentleman in the same county,[32] and as a lover he loved her still. Time had wrought no change or lessening of his affection. Between him and her no cloud had ever spread. Her pleasure was the law of his life. She did not bend him to her will; he did not need to be bent. Abrupt and imperious as he was at times in his dealing with others, it seemed as if his manner were softened and his voice subdued when he came into her presence. There are marriages which preserve to the end the dream—who will dare to call it a delusion?—of the wedding morning, and such had been his. In his eyes she was still the same as when he had seen and loved her sixteen years before. She was still the same when she died. She has long been dead now; but the villagers of Helmsbury, some of whom never saw her, still speak of ‘the good lady.’ No one so good, no one so beautiful, has been known to them since.

Harry, her eldest born, in face and manner resembled his father. The mother’s beauty, something too, perhaps, of her delicacy, reappeared in her daughter. There was the same pale lustre, the same transparency, the same (yet not the same) foreshadowing of death. A stranger looking at either of them would have said that she was one of those whom the gods love too well. To her children, as to her husband, Lady Venniker seemed ever as a vision of[33] delight—a being too good, too fair, too sensitive for earth.

Born and bred in such a home, Harry Venniker, if he looked to his future life, must have seen it traced for him in clear and definite lines. To go to St. Anselm’s, the school in which his family had been educated for four generations, to distinguish himself not so much in work as in cricket and football, to get into the army, to spend a few years in the House of Commons and then to become a respectable peer and country gentleman, to be in fact what his father had been before him, and his grandfather before his father, was his ambition, if anything so natural and, as it seemed, so inevitable, could be strictly called an ambition. He was at this time, like so many English boys when they enter upon public school life, a splendid animal, healthy, vigorous, proud, elate, with no low tastes, possibly without any high aims, taking life as it came, and being content to enjoy it fully, but having no special sense of a vocation or mission in life. After all, the world’s missionaries are but few, abroad or at home, and the world would not be so comfortable if they were numerous. For it is the missionary’s business to disturb and upset established things, and there are secular missionaries (who are sometimes called ‘bores’) as well as spiritual. Harry Venniker[34] must not be blamed if his vocation or mission remained obscure to him in boyhood. But he owed to his mother not only his sunny smile (although his had not as yet, like hers, a tinge of sadness) and his rich curling auburn hair, but the generous sympathy—derived from her example still more than from her precept—which made it impossible for him to resist the silent appeal of suffering or to withhold his aid if it were invoked in the cause of weakness and sorrow. It was this sympathy, spontaneously elicited, which had led him to swear eternal friendship with a boy so dissimilar to himself as Gerald Eversley. Until now Harry Venniker had had no great friend, or his only friend had been his sister.

The contrast between the stately pile of Helmsbury, which was Harry Venniker’s home, and the vicarage of Kestercham, where Gerald Eversley had spent the first thirteen years of his life, was strongly marked. But the two boys, when they met at St. Anselm’s, were not conscious of it, as neither of them had ever seen the home of the other. If I can succeed in delineating both these homes, the progress of this story will be more easily understood. Fortunately, in speaking of Kestercham vicarage it is possible to use some letters of Gerald’s—written partly to Harry Venniker and partly to another—which lie before me.

[35]

The village of Kestercham is situated in the heart of the most beautiful of English counties. It is hidden, I had almost said, it seems to hide itself, from human eyes. The rare traveller who should happen to pass through it, making a slight détour, perhaps, to catch the view of the cathedral which bursts upon the eyes at the sharp turning where the road emerges from the valley of Depedown, about a mile and a half from Kestercham, would be likely to judge (and not unreasonably) that it was cut off from the affairs of the outer world. The large manufacturing town of X—— lies at a distance of some ten miles from Kestercham; its tall chimneys rise like giants into the air; but the smoke dies away, and the din of the great city, long before you come to the blacksmith’s shop where the three roads meet, and the left arm of the time-worn signpost bears the inscription ‘To Kestercham.’ In one of Gerald Eversley’s letters, written some years after the beginning of this story, the following passage occurs:

‘How well I remember that blacksmith’s shop! Often and often, when driving home on winter evenings with my father from one of the neighbouring villages where he had been doing duty, have I strained my eyes to catch the jolly inspiring glow of the blacksmith’s stithy, and I think the drive always seemed[36] less cold and dreary when once the ruddy flame, shining through the little windowpane, came into view. The blacksmith himself was my particular friend. I remember how I used to stand by his side, when I was a child, in silent eager admiration of the force with which he brought down the large hammer on a bar of red-hot iron, sending the sparks in wild confusion through the stithy, like so many fireworks, and what a delight it was to me—never to be forgotten—when he took my little arms in his brawny black hands and let me play at producing the same luminiferous effect. I do not know or did not reflect in those days that it was an operation used long ago by a sacred writer to exemplify the multitude of human troubles. The blacksmith was kind to me, and I think he was my first boyish hero. Certainly, if anyone had asked me in these days what was the profession that most satisfied my ambition next to the clerical (for I always put the clerical first, as being my father’s), I should have answered “the blacksmith’s.”’

A little afterwards in the same letter he says: ‘From there (i.e. from the blacksmith’s shop) to Kestercham every inch of the way is familiar to me. The tall late-flowering limes—I never knew why they were so late in flower, but they always were—the hedgerows in which it was my boyish pleasure to search for the[37] clematis and the wild rose, or to whisk off the heads of the ox-eyed daisies for violating my father’s rule that flowers, like young ladies, ought not to be staring, the two trim high-gabled farmhouses, hardly distinguishable one from the other, between which the road passed (the daughter of one of the farmers in these houses was a teacher in the Kestercham Sunday school), then the cottages, straggling at first, but gradually becoming closer until you descend a steepish hill and come upon a gully where a torrent rushes across the road in the winter or even in the summer if it is unusually wet, and you go through the green gate where the path turns off the high road and leads to the vicarage. That green gate was a great feature in the life of the vicar’s family at Kestercham; it marked the boundary between the vicarage and the world, the world being the parish of Kestercham with its barely three hundred souls. A walk to the green gate was a regular incident of the day; my father and I took it always, even if we did not go farther, after breakfast. I think he must have taken that walk nearly five thousand times since we came to Kestercham. Perhaps a hundred yards or a little more before reaching the gate on the way from X——, if you lift your eyes, you may catch a distant glimpse of the church nestling sleepily among the elms (unless it is summer, and the foliage so thick[38] as to spoil the view), or if the wind is from the south, and your ears are sharp, you may hear the cawing of the rooks from their immemorial home in the churchyard. No gun was ever pointed at those rooks, or at the old owl that lived in the venerable riven elm between the churchyard and the Grange; for Mr. Seaford, the farmer who occupied the Grange, protected the owl as being the enemy of the mice which infested his farm and stackyard, and the rooks were the traditional favourites of my father, who looked upon them as possessing a special right of sanctuary within the precincts of the church.’

The vicarage, as this letter shows, lies off the high-road, nearly half a mile away from it. You go through several fields of oats and barley (or perhaps of mangoldwurzel and turnips, if it is the turn for root crops), then through a hay-field, generally the last to be cut in the village, then past the church and the moated Grange, and finally a sharp turn in the road or lane brings you in sight of the single cadaverous-looking poplar by the vicarage gate. The house itself is invisible until you stand at the front door; it is literally embedded in the trees.

This was Gerald Eversley’s home; he had never known any other. A quiet, sober red brick house with a facing of flint-stones built into the rubble; two[39] rooms on the ground floor, looking into the garden, one of them the drawing-room with its ample bay-window, the other the dining-room, though in Gerald’s mind it was associated with lessons as much as with meals; above these rooms two corresponding bedrooms, in one of which Mr. Eversley had slept ever since he became vicar of Kestercham; on the other side of the house, which extended some way backwards, other bedrooms above the kitchen and the morning-room (which was seldom used until the afternoon) and Mr. Eversley’s study. Just outside the front door a noble birchtree raised its branches high above the roof of the house: how those boughs would creak and whistle in the north wind! Gerald had often lain awake in the still hours of the night listening to the rhythm of their moaning and wondering how long it would be before one of them fell with a thunder-clap to the ground. In front of the doorway was an oval grass-plot with a flowerbed, containing a large cactus in the middle, and a gravel carriage drive encircling it; beyond, a level bowling-green carefully kept and overshadowed by firs. There had been trees at the far end of the bowling-green as well as at its sides when Mr. Eversley came to Kestercham; but they had been cut away so as to allow a clear view from the vicarage of the church and the meadows leading to[40] Kestercham Green. For it is a peculiarity of Kestercham, rendering the life at the vicarage still more solitary than it would otherwise have been, that the church and the vicarage are removed by a long distance—a mile and a half, even if one takes the short cut across the fields—from the ordinary scenes of the village life. It would seem that the church was originally designed to subserve the spiritual needs of several hamlets (for it is fully as near to the confines of Ripenham or Coddington as it is to Kestercham Green) and that the vicarage was built in due proximity to the church. The result is that at Kestercham the spiritual centre—the church—and the secular centre—the public house—are as far divided locally as possible. There is not a human habitation near the vicarage or in sight of it except the Grange, and even that is not visible from the vicarage itself. The vicarage stands in a solitude which may be felt.

But to Mr. Eversley, and therefore, of course, to Gerald in his early days, the heart of Kestercham parish—the building to which it owed its unity and sanctity—was the church. Mr. Eversley, who had some slight knowledge of architecture, would delight in pointing out to his young son the traces of many hands and different ages in the structure of the church—the outline of the old Norman archway at the west end,[41] the six (would be) decorated windows of the nave, the groined roofing in the chancel and the massive tower built in the reign of Henry VII. by Edward Rickling, then the head of the Rickling family who for many generations owned the manor of Kestercham and lived at the Grange—it was then called the Hall—before it passed into the hands of the Seafords. The Ricklings have left many marks of their importance upon the church, perhaps the most striking being a large monument on the north wall representing the same Edward Rickling laid out after his death, and his wife and three sons and two daughters weeping beside him. Nearly opposite to the memorial of the Rickling family is a monument in brass supposed (though nobody knows) to have borne the name of a certain Balthazar Gardereau, a French Huguenot and silk-merchant of Lyons who settled at Kestercham, when he had been driven out of his own country by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, acquired the great tithes of the living, and presented to the church the service of Communion plate which still exhibits the letters B. G. in monograph. But this is history, or it is legend, the best of which Kestercham is capable.

The Kestercham folk were not, it may be supposed, loyal to the Crown in the seventeenth century, or, as is more probable, they displayed no interest in politics[42] or war, and so escaped the anger of Cromwell’s army which is said to have been once encamped somewhere in the neighbourhood; for there is a royal coat of arms of Charles I., with the date 1640, hanging in the church, and it can hardly be thought that the Roundheads, if they had caught sight of it, would have left it there. Mr. Eversley, as a loyalist and a believer in the divine right of kings, was very proud of it. The south porch of the church is or was a little remarkable; for under its gable was the figure of a flying angel bearing a scroll with the legend, ‘Gather my saints together unto me,’ the church being dedicated to All Saints. When Mr. Eversley came to Kestercham a tall cross rose behind the figure of the angel and surmounted the gable. Mr. Eversley left the angel, not without a qualm of conscience, but he caused the cross to be taken down at the same time as he removed all traces of a holy-water basin which some workmen in repairing the porch had brought to light.

Gerald Eversley’s earliest recollections were associated with Kestercham church. Twice every Sunday, in the morning and the afternoon, he accompanied his father thither. Its simple services impressed themselves upon his mind. They represented his ideal of public divine worship. In after days, when his thoughts and feelings had become liberalised, he[43] was fond of dwelling with a certain irony upon some quaint prehistoric customs which lingered on at Kestercham. But these very customs seemed venerable to him as a boy. The church had no vestry, but a curtain (which Mr. Eversley himself provided, for before his time there had been none) hung in front of the belfry—if, indeed, it can be called a belfry, when there was only a single bell—and behind that curtain, underneath the tower of the church, Mr. Eversley would assume his surplice before the prayers, and would exchange it for his black gown before the sermon. He had a commanding air—so Gerald felt—as he slowly walked the length of the church, joining heartily in the hymn that was being sung. He did strange things, or things which would seem strange in more modern times, for he was exempt from the fear of criticism which affects the minds of men, and especially of clergymen, living in the eye of the world. The parishioners of Kestercham did not regard or read the newspapers; they did not care to inquire what other people said. Thus it was, for instance, that Mr. Eversley would pause in his sermon and address some poor woman whose infant exhibited signs of crying, saying kindly, ‘Never mind. Stay where you are. Better a screaming baby than an absent mother!’ So, too, he has been known, in[44] passing up the church, to ask a parishioner about his health or his family. All this would seem odd nowadays, perhaps irreverent; but nobody thought it odd at Kestercham.

Mr. Eversley, ever since he was appointed vicar, had been troubled in mind by certain established and apparently immutable local practices, against which he waged war long and valiantly, but with less result than his courage and persistency deserved. For instance, it was a rule of the village, and had always been so within the memory of the oldest parishioner (though nobody justified it, nobody could tell how it had grown up), that the men and women, and the boys and girls too, should sit on opposite sides of the church. Whatever the origin of this ritualistic rule had been at Kestercham, it was certainly not ritualism. Mr. Eversley argued that husbands and wives should sit together; he preached upon the propriety of husbands and wives sitting together; he went so far as to call upon some members of his flock, and to beg that they would sit together. They assented, or seemed to assent; but on the next Sunday they were not in church, and on the Sunday after they were sitting on opposite sides. Nothing is so hard to change, in the country especially, as a thoroughly irrational custom; it is proof against all the resources[45] of civilisation. The males and females of Kestercham had always, it was whispered, sat apart, and apart it seemed that they would always sit.

Another practice which greatly exercised Mr. Eversley’s mind was this. It was the habit of the farmers and labourers, or of a considerable number of them, to seat themselves in the church porch half an hour or more before the beginning of divine service, and, while sitting there, to discuss secular parochial affairs in strident tones, and sometimes to smoke, until the clerk ceased tolling the solitary bell, and Miss Seaford, the farmer’s daughter, began playing a hymn-tune, which served as a voluntary, upon the harmonium; then they would come into the church by two and two according to a rough but recognised order of precedence, all alike dressed in their best Sunday clothes, and would follow Mr. Eversley, like the mutes in procession at a funeral, up the church until they dropped into their various places on the south (or masculine) side of the church, the most important of the farmers sitting nearest to the chancel, and Mr. Seaford himself, in virtue of his churchwardenship, in a large pew immediately under the pulpit. It was rumoured that in Mr. Eversley’s early days at Kestercham two or three of the parishioners had been known to sit in the porch, enjoying the gossip, until[46] he emerged in his surplice from behind the curtain, and then, instead of entering the church, had retired to meditate and smoke in the fields during the hours of divine service. But this must, I think, be a calumny. Nothing was more curious or characteristic of Kestercham, and nothing was a source of greater trouble to Mr. Eversley, than the extreme suspiciousness with which any stranger who might happen to enter the church while divine service was going on, was regarded by the whole congregation. The people of Kestercham had no idea of admitting casual or occasional worshippers to their church; they expected a person to worship there regularly or never. The unhappy visitor found himself the object of a hundred inquisitive and indignant eyes. He became conscious that he was an alien, a heretic, a Gentile, who had no right to set foot within the sanctuary. Not being a parishioner of Kestercham, he possessed no title to enjoy the spiritual privileges of that favoured locality. There might be vacant seats in half the pews, but nobody invited him to occupy one of them. It happened not seldom that Mr. Eversley himself, after making futile signs to the churchwarden who was staring at the interloper over his spectacles, would leave his reading-desk and escort the stranger to a seat in the vicarage pew, running the gauntlet, as he[47] did so, of all the farmers who looked daggers at him for being so foolish or immoral as to encourage the presumption of trespassers upon the spiritual preserves of Kestercham parish.

It would be easy to multiply instances of the eccentricity or exclusiveness that prevailed in Kestercham during Gerald Eversley’s early days. But this chapter is long enough; it may fitly conclude with an extract taken from one of his own letters.

‘The place I loved best in Kestercham,’ he wrote once, ‘was the churchyard. The solemn stillness entranced me. I spent many hours there. I knew by heart most of the inscriptions on the gravestones, and I sometimes wondered, though I never dared to ask my father how it was, that the world, or the parish of Kestercham at least, had grown so much worse in the last few years; for the people buried in the churchyard seemed nearly all to have been virtuous and godly, and yet I often heard my father say in church that the people whom he knew and saw every day and got on with very well, were “miserable sinners,” and their hearts “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” But to me Kestercham churchyard was holy ground. My mother’s grave was there, under the yew tree by the chancel of the church. It was there that she had wished to be[48] buried; the spot was so peaceful (she said) and the trees shaded it so beautifully except on the east side, where the morning rays fell upon it, and she would lie in the midst of her own people. Next to her grave is a space reserved for my father when he dies. Sometimes, when the grass was green above the dead, I would take a book and lie all the summer’s afternoon by the graveside, looking up to the blue heaven. I used to think I should be laid to rest there too. I cannot remember my mother; she died when I was born. All that I can think of her is fancy, imagination. It may be false, but I love the thought that it is true. For now and then, in the early morning, in the golden time between sleeping and waking, a vision comes to me of a sweet calm face, with wistful eyes looking far into the future. It is a vision only; it endures but a little while; then it vanishes, and I see it no more. But I awake, and it is as if I had beheld the face of my mother.’

Mr. Eversley did not long remain a widower. He was, it may be supposed, one of those persons of warm hearts and transient affections who imagine that the sincerest compliment which can be paid to a wife who is dead is to marry another wife as soon as possible. He announced his approaching happiness to such of his people as he chanced to meet in his parochial visitations, by saying that he was going to ‘give his little boy another mother,’ Another mother! The words fell painfully upon Gerald’s ears at a later time when he had begun to make an idol of his own mother. Lying by her grave and gazing upwards to the heaven of heavens, he had dreamed of meeting her again. It had not occurred to him that she could be replaced.

Mr. Eversley’s habits were not much changed by his second marriage. He had never cared for society,[50] but had lived much to himself. Visiting is always a serious matter in the country; it cannot be undertaken without a good deal of thought and trouble; it involves a long drive, and that is often difficult (as the readers of Miss Austen’s novels will remember) unless there is a moon, and even so the moon is not to be depended on. But Mr. Eversley at the time of his bereavement got out of the way of associating even with the neighbouring clergy. He seldom received a visit, seldom paid one. He devoted himself to his parish and to his son. They were his world—the only world that he thought of or cared about. For them he felt himself responsible to God; for all beyond the responsibility rested with others. Except when he helped the clergyman of an adjoining parish during illness or absence by taking an evening service after his own regular services at Kestercham, or attended (occasionally, but with decreasing regularity) the annual missionary meeting at X——, he hardly ever left his home. Once after an attack of bronchitis he was persuaded by medical advice to go to the seaside for a month in the hope of recruiting his health, but that was his one holiday between the death of his first wife and the beginning of Gerald’s schooldays at St. Anselm’s, and he was heartily glad when it was over. He was fond of describing himself[51] as a ‘home bird.’ He disbelieved in the migratory tendencies of the age. That a rolling stone would gather no moss was one of his favourite proverbs. It did not, I think, occur to him that if the stone never moved at all, the crust of superincumbent moss might possibly in the lapse of years become excessive.

The second Mrs. Eversley did not alter his opinions or his practices, except accidentally by the introduction of an annual infant, and in one year of twins, into the household. She was not young when he sought her hand in marriage; her enemies might perhaps have called her middle-aged. He had become acquainted with her by correspondence in the prosecution of some charitable undertaking, when she had offered to collect money for an evangelical cause which he had at heart; then he had met her, and after a time he had married her. It could hardly be said that she seemed much nearer to him after the marriage than before it. Her affection was indifference with the chill taken off. But then the feelings of a man and a woman in respect of matrimony are not always the same. The man loves the person. The woman sometimes loves the state. The one desires to marry a particular woman, the other desires to be married.

It would require a skilful artist to paint the[52] character of the second Mrs. Eversley. Whatever she did she did always from a sense of duty. Duty was the keynote of her life. It did not prevent her doing disagreeable things to other people; but it comforted her (not the other people) when she had done them. If it generally happened that her sense of duty coincided with her inclination, that was only what might naturally be expected in a universe ordered by Providence with due regard to the circumstances of the second Mrs. Eversley. Not that Mrs. Eversley ever looked upon her performance of duty as constituting a title to the divine favour; she knew that her righteousness (like other people’s) was no better than ‘filthy rags.’ She belonged to ‘the elect;’ other people, or nearly all other people, did not belong to ‘the elect,’ but to some other body. Mrs. Eversley’s principal horror was of ‘the world.’ She fought a hand-to-hand fight with that mysterious impersonation, which seems to be the sum total of all that a narrowly minded religious man or woman is unwilling that other people should do. If she spoke of a neighbour as ‘worldly,’ there was no hope for him or her. To save her own soul in the first instance, and in the second the souls of her husband and her family (Gerald being included by a sort of special compliment), and in the third, if the Electing Power[53] were so gracious, the souls of the people of Kestercham, was (in Mrs. Eversley’s eyes) the lifework of Mrs. Eversley. It must not be said that her desire was hypocritical. The motives of human action are always hard to classify. They are generally mixed, partly good and partly bad. Two things only may be said to have been clear about Mrs. Eversley, one, that she was a good woman, the other, that she did not make goodness particularly attractive.

Being such as she was, and having been so for a greater number of years than she would perhaps have been willing to confess, it was not to be expected that she would draw Mr. Eversley out of his solitary, meditative mode of life. Apart from other reasons, there is in women, especially in such women as are married late in life, a specious selfishness which takes the form of keeping their husbands perpetually at their sides; but this selfishness appears to them so true a virtue that I have known a woman (who in the phraseology of religious society would have been called ‘a good woman’) take a positive pride in maiming and crippling the active beneficence of her husband’s life. If Mrs. Eversley had been asked why she kept her husband more and more within the confines of his own parish, she would have said that it was not for those who had been ‘converted’ to[54] take a pleasure in the ‘beggarly elements’ of the world. But if anyone else had been asked, he would have said that the reason was—not perhaps wholly, but principally—that she liked to monopolise his society.

Certain it is, however, that Mr. Eversley, after his second marriage, was not less assiduous—he was, if possible, even more devoted than before—in the discharge of his regular parochial duties. Day succeeded day with easy welcome monotony. The morning, after prayers and breakfast, he would devote to reading and writing, or, as the years went on, to teaching Gerald, or sometimes to conversing with his parishioners upon subjects of general or local interest which to them were all-important; in the afternoon, wet or fine, he would visit his people, striding along the road with Gerald at his side; the evening was again a time of study, except on Sundays when Mr. Eversley read aloud a Sunday book or expounded a passage of the Bible. The people of Kestercham felt an affection not unmingled with awe for his tall figure, associated as it was, or would be, with the solemn incidents of their history—baptism, public worship, marriage, sickness, death; one old lady seeing him set out on a snowy evening wrapped in his long Inverness cape remarked that he ‘looked like a warrior.’ But there was not a case of distress[55] or suffering that he did not seek to relieve, nor was he ever weary in his efforts to reclaim and reform those who in the dark theology of his household were known as ‘vessels of wrath.’ It might be thought that his treatment of spiritual and moral evils erred a little in the way of uniformity; he dealt with them all alike, believing, as he used himself to say, that there was ‘one Gospel for all, rich and poor, bond and free,’ and one sole remedy provided by that Gospel for all the varied ills of sorrow-stricken humanity. But it had been well for the Church of England if all her ministers had been as devoted as Mr. Eversley. He won from church-people and dissenters alike the respect which is due to a consistent and God-fearing character. Gerald in all his early years could conceive no idea of a higher or more beneficent life than his father’s. It was his hope, his ambition, to follow in his father’s steps, though he looked forward to finding as much difficulty in keeping pace with those steps in after life as he now found in keeping pace with them in his parochial rounds. He was generally, almost invariably, his father’s companion in visiting his people. As a rule, when Mr. Eversley entered a cottage to bring solace to the distressed or exhortation to the erring, he would leave Gerald outside; but now and then—if[56] the sickness was of a touching kind—Mr. Eversley would take him in, on the principle that it was not good for any Christian soul, however young, to live in ignorance of the dark or painful side of life.

‘I don’t want you, Gerald,’ he would say, ‘to think life is all sunshine; it is often dark, my dear boy, and full of sadness, but to the Christian conscience the shadows, no less than the sunshine, attest the presence of the Sun.’

Mr. Eversley’s manner of visiting his sick people was simple. He generally began with some reference to the sufferer’s health, or family, or worldly circumstances; he showed much kindness in inquiring about them; then he offered prayer, or, in the current phrase of the village, ‘engaged in prayer,’ kneeling reverently by the bedside; then he opened his well-worn Bible and read a Psalm—the 90th and the 103rd were, I know, his favourites—interspersing it with comments, or a passage of the Gospel, most frequently of St. John, and when he had done reading, and perhaps had given some slight pecuniary relief, if it were needed, he took his leave with a divine benediction, solemnly spoken. ‘Always end with the pure word of God’—that was his rule—‘it leaves a taste in the mouth, maybe a savour of life unto life.’

One strange feature of Mr. Eversley’s parochial[57] visitation Gerald seems to have remembered with interest; for I find it recorded long afterwards in one of his letters. ‘It was characteristic,’ he says, ‘of my father, who was a man of very few words, that the observations which he addressed to a sick person were often punctuated by long pauses. I have known him sit for as long a time as five minutes in a sick-room, saying nothing, and without a word being said by anybody. Such silence would seem intolerable. But as between him and his parishioners it did not excite any feeling of constraint. I have sometimes wondered in later days how they could endure it. It appeared that they liked it. There was a subtle sense of sympathy between him and them; he felt for them, and they realised that he felt for them; there was no need to put the feeling into words. I have noticed that lovers in the country will walk for a long time on a summer’s afternoon, hand in hand, but not speaking a word, only conscious of each other’s affection, and delighting in it; that is what was called “keeping company” at Kestercham. Consecutive speech, which is so easy to the cultivated, is to the ignorant an effort or a pain. My father’s parishioners did not always take in the meaning of such words as he used in speaking or reading to them; one old labourer, to whom he had read the[58] fourteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, I have heard repeating over and over the words, “Arise, let us go hence,” as if they were full of comfort to his soul. The parishioners did not need that my father should sustain a conversation with them, it was enough that he was at their side in the dark hours; they were sure of his sympathy, and content with it.’

Living such a life in such surroundings, and feeling Kestercham to be his one world, and the world of all whom he knew, Gerald Eversley would, perhaps, have called his life dull if he had realised the possibility of any other life. But his glimpses of the outer world were few and far between. He had no companions of his own age; for there was not a gentleman’s family in Kestercham, and the few young children in the farmhouses were such that Mrs. Eversley, who prided herself (so far as she would admit the possibility of pride) upon the uncontaminated gentility of her birth, would not hear of his associating with them, except upon terms of distance and superiority. She was sorely afraid of his losing his ‘gentlemanlike’ manners and sinking to the level of ‘common people.’ For Mrs. Eversley was haunted by a singular dread of any person or any thing that could be called ‘common.’ Whether she imagined herself to be the model of distinction it is difficult to[59] say; but she certainly thought she was the antithesis of what was ‘common.’ The scriptural direction to ‘call nothing common or unclean’ was not interpreted by Mrs. Eversley as having any relation to her own view of her neighbours. Mr. Eversley, in one of his rare humorous sallies, told her once that he could not help doubting if, in her heart, she really approved the Book of Common Prayer. Mrs. Eversley possessed a wonderful scent for the faintest suspicion of ‘commonness’ in friend or foe. To dissenters she was radically hostile, not only because they were ‘aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,’ or because a godly dissenting minister resident in one of the neighbouring parishes had the impudence (as she regarded it) to institute open-air services in the summer months on Kestercham Green, but chiefly because they were so ‘common.’ It was a ground of self-complacency in her mind, nor did she feel it to be in any sense unchristian, that at a meeting in behalf of the British and Foreign Bible Society she had refused to shake hands with a dissenting minister. He was a worthy little man—Mrs. Eversley did not deny that—he had laboured for a great many years in a quiet way on a miserable pittance among the scattered members of his flock in Kestercham and some half-dozen villages lying around, but nevertheless, in Mrs.[60] Eversley’s eyes, he was a spiritual poacher, against whom she would, if she could, have invoked the protection and the penal severity of a whole code of spiritual game-laws; and, above all, he was so ‘common.’ So the unhappy minister was doomed to forego the privilege of grasping Mrs. Eversley’s hand. It was not known that he ever spoke of this denial, but probably he felt it, and it did not make him love the Church.

The visitors were few who came to Kestercham vicarage in Gerald’s early days. Some cousins, boys and girls, the children of Mr. Eversley’s only surviving sister, who had married a well-to-do stationer—a union which excited something like a qualm in Mrs. Eversley, as the stationer’s deportment, especially his manner of drinking his tea, was not altogether above suspicion—two or three maiden ladies, friends of Mrs. Eversley before her marriage, and, like her, interested in ‘good works,’ so that, when they arrived, she was generally closeted with them for some hours every day, and the room in which their conference had been held was found to be strewn with a débris of calico and tracts; and now and again a college friend of Mr. Eversley, who was always a clergyman, and nearly always preached two sermons for a Missionary Society. Gerald did not take much notice of these guests, except of the clergymen, who[61] left on his mind the impression that clergymen were all grave and tall, and had long beards, and spoke in rather loud nasal tones, wore white neckcloths and stiff collars which must have caused them a great deal of chin-agony, and rejoiced in an almost exclusive, but quite indubitable, possession of a mysterious and all-important commodity called ‘the truth.’ When they were gone, he used to reflect with mingled feelings that some day he would be such a person himself.

Mrs. Eversley’s relation to her stepson, though eminently proper and conventional, was, it may be supposed, not marked by any undue display of warmth. Not one stepmother in a hundred can enter into solemn feelings of the past without intruding upon them. Mrs. Eversley did her duty, or what she conceived to be her duty, by Gerald. She looked after his meals, his clothes, and his prayers; but, for the most part, she left him alone. It was impossible that sympathy should exist between them, for during her early married life she was much occupied with ‘good works,’ and afterwards with the care of her children—an office which by ladies of her disposition is generally distinguished from ‘good works.’ She was not what would be called a good mother; she was a good stepmother, and a good stepmother is,[62] I am afraid, a bad thing. At all events, Mrs. Eversley’s influence upon Gerald’s life was essentially refrigerating and depressing. But she did her duty, and she said she did it.

The result of all these circumstances—the isolation of life at Kestercham, the lack of domestic sympathy, the limitation of experience—was to throw Gerald more and more into the society of his father. They lived not two lives but one. They had few thoughts apart. The father came more and more to treat his son as his equal in years and worldly knowledge, asking his counsel, or seeming to ask it, upon a hundred little matters of parochial interest which it was impossible for a boy of eleven or twelve years to understand. The son looked upon his father as a friend; he had no secrets from him as so many boys have in early boyhood from their fathers: he talked to him freely, laid his soul bare before him, and invited, nay, entreated him, to scan it. For instance, it was taken as the most natural thing in the world that, if a letter came for Gerald—he was not the recipient of many letters—Mr. Eversley should open and read it. It may be that this perfect intimacy of father and son is hardly attainable except where circumstances create an isolation around them. They knew so much of each other because they knew so[63] little of anyone or anything besides. It is possible at Kestercham, it is not possible in London, but wherever it occurs it is precious and beautiful. Mr. Eversley lived for Gerald, lived in him. Of him, if of any living father, it might be said in the sacred words, ‘His life is bound up in the lad’s life.’ He was a stern man, one of those men who veil intensity of feeling beneath an austere and unemotional exterior; but once when Gerald was lying ill of fever and it was thought that he would die, Mr. Eversley’s passion of grief was terrible. He said nothing, but his face in the morning was like the face of one who had passed the night in weeping, and the servants, who had lain awake in the room above him, said that at every hour they had heard his voice ascending in prayer.

Great as had always been the interest which Mr. Eversley displayed in Gerald’s every action and every thought, it was increased as he became aware that his son possessed unusual intellectual powers. He was so little a man of the world that he had never thought of comparing Gerald with other boys, until one day the Rural Dean, whose annual inspection of the church and the church property was a great occasion, having found him reading Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates’ in a corner of his father’s study,[64] and having questioned him upon it, remarked, ‘That’s a very clever boy of yours, Eversley; why don’t you run him for a scholarship somewhere?’

Gerald was now nearly twelve, and he had gained a good deal of rather curious knowledge. He had read much with his father, and more by himself. The books in Mr. Eversley’s library, some of them heirlooms bearing ancient dates, were familiar to him. One advantage too he enjoyed which many boys lack. It had been his father’s practice, when walking with him around the parish, to impart such information as was possible about the natural world. Thus, Mr. Eversley, who was a fair botanist, had taught him the names of all the common wild flowers and the principles of botanical classification. Mr. Eversley was no devotee of natural science, he had rather a distrust of it as tending to infidelity, but he thought the flowers harmless. He had taught him too the names and positions of the stars and something about the illustrious men who had been the founders of modern astronomy, but hardly ever without alluding to the famous epitaph written by Copernicus for his own tomb, or perhaps by another in his honour; and Mr. Eversley, with his scholarly instinct, would point out that the false quantities in the epitaph, much as they were to be regretted in speaking of so great a[65] man, did not affect the true evangelical character of the theology.

Gerald, then, was different from most other boys and knew more than they did, but neither his father nor he had as yet thought of the time when his education could not be carried on at Kestercham. Thus it was that the casual remark of the Rural Dean came upon them as a revelation. Rural Deans are important personages in places like Kestercham; their words are as weighty (and sometimes perhaps as ambiguous) as oracles, and the compliment paid by the Rural Dean to Gerald’s ability opened a vista of splendid possibilities before the eyes of Mr. Eversley. He set about cultivating his son’s powers with a new zest. They read together for some hours every day the old classics, Cæsar, Virgil, Herodotus, Sophocles, which gained for Mr. Eversley himself a new and living interest by the rapid interchange of question and answer, and above all Homer, the unfailing well of delight to youthful minds. It was no less a surprise than a happiness to Mr. Eversley to observe with what keenness of appreciative sympathy Gerald entered into the wonderful story of the Odyssey, that story which is to the intellect of every schoolboy what the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ is or should be to his spirit. Mr. Eversley was a believer in Latin versification,[66] not on any theoretical ground, but as somehow creating the indefinable distinction of a ‘gentleman.’ So Gerald, like many another boy, wrote Latin verses, and wrote them better than most boys. Mr. Eversley was a good scholar, but in mathematics he was not proficient, though he succeeded in teaching his son arithmetic and a good part of algebra, and three books of Euclid. Modern languages were not taught in Kestercham vicarage. It came to be understood that Gerald was to compete, in his fourteenth year, for a scholarship at some public school. What the school should be was long debated, as Mr. Eversley, who had not been at any public school, discovered some pecuniary, or social, or theological objection to nearly all of them; but at last the rich relation of Mr. Eversley’s first wife, who has been already mentioned, not only recommended St. Anselm’s, his own old school, but generously offered, if Gerald was successful there, to defray the necessary expenses of his education, having unfortunately no son of his own. Mr. Eversley took this offer as a providential leading. He accepted it gratefully. It was decided that Gerald should aspire to become a scholar of St. Anselm’s. But how many doubts arose in Mr. Eversley’s mind, as soon as the decision was made, and kept him awake during long hours of the night! Would Gerald succeed in winning[67] a scholarship? and would the success, if it were given him, afford him happiness—the divine happiness which alone in Mr. Eversley’s eyes was worth possessing? Would he learn extravagant ways, above his proper station in life? Above all, would he lose the simplicity, the uprightness, the pure and cloudless faith of his old days at Kestercham? These were not light questions to Mr. Eversley. He debated them anxiously, prayerfully. Eager as he was for the scholarship, it is but just to say that he would unhesitatingly have cast away the hope or thought of it could he have foreseen that it would create a coldness or severance of heart between the son who was so dear to him and himself.

At the time of the examination Mr. Eversley himself took Gerald to St. Anselm’s. The occasion was so special that it seemed to demand a breaking up of Mr. Eversley’s established way of life. They could not get rooms in the little hotel at St. Anselm’s, but were quartered in the village over a saddler’s shop. Gerald had never seen so many boys before, he was bewildered by the sight of them; he had not thought there could be so many boys of his own age in the world. The examination papers frightened him. The examiners, dressed in cap and gown, astonished him. He did his best but the other boys[68] looked so clever and talked so knowingly that he felt sure he should be nowhere.

How slowly the two days passed after the examination was over before the result was known! It was to be announced on Friday evening at seven o’clock. Gerald spent the days at home. So great was Mr. Eversley’s own excitement, as the fateful hour drew near, that he had arranged for a telegram to be sent at once to Wickeston, the postal town nearest to Kestercham, and a special messenger to be despatched with it from Wickeston—a distance of four miles—to Kestercham. He did not tell Gerald of the expected telegram, fearing it might not arrive owing to some mistake. It arrived between nine and ten o’clock. Gerald had gone to bed. Mr. Eversley went up to his room, the telegram in his hand, and opened the door gently. Gerald was asleep. The expression on his face was a little anxious, even in sleep. Mr. Eversley stood over him for several minutes, uncertain whether to wake him or not. At last he resolved to leave him in his peaceful slumber, and turning away he retired to his study and humbly rendered thanks to God. Nor did he omit to pray that the event which seemed so happy might in its issue prove a blessing for his son and for himself.

[69]

Early next morning Gerald awoke. He became conscious that a face was bending over him. He muttered wearily, ‘Oh! this dreadful day! When shall we hear?’

‘It is all well, my dear boy,’ said his father’s voice. ‘You are elected; you are third.’

And the father and son embraced each other.

Kestercham vicarage was a scene of rejoicing that day, and for many days afterwards. Even Mrs. Eversley’s heart warmed towards the boy who had conferred distinction upon her name and household, and she caused a large birthday cake to be made for tea-time. The neighbours, lay and clerical, who had never taken much notice of Gerald before, called to congratulate Mr. Eversley, not a few of them, especially the ladies, declaring that they had always discerned conspicuous classical ability in his son, and predicted his success. Gerald’s scholarship was the topic of general conversation in the porch of the church before the morning service on the following Sunday, not that the farmers and labourers who forgathered there knew anything—good honest souls!—about scholarships, but they had a vague idea that the vicar’s clever son had somehow passed into a higher sphere than their own; and two or three, as a sort of delegation, went behind the[70] curtain after the service to wish Mr. Eversley (who was just taking off his black gown) joy of the event.

‘Oh! Master Gerald,’ said Mr. Seaford, who, when Gerald was very small, had often let him put his little legs astride of the big cart-horses as they drew the heavily laden wains into the stackyard under the bright harvest moon, ‘ye’ll be too great a man to sit astride o’ my Captain any more; it’s ye who’ll have to give us a lift now!’ and with that he laughed a hearty laugh, and put out his hand to Mr. Eversley who clasped it warmly.

Everyone was glad, everyone admitted that no such honour had been done to Kestercham since the First Lord of the Admiralty, who was staying at Wickeston Manor, had walked over some eight years ago to the afternoon service in Kestercham church; everyone felt himself or herself to be somehow involved in the halo of glory surrounding the name of Kestercham.

At family prayers that night Mr. Eversley gave thanks in grave tones, his voice trembling with emotion, for ‘the light which has to-day shone upon this household,’ imploring that it might be a light which should ‘shine more and more unto the perfect day.’

When prayers were over and Gerald was going[71] to bed, his father said feelingly, ‘God bless and keep you, my dear boy! This has been indeed a happy day.’

Gerald replied with simple truthfulness, ‘I am so glad, papa, for your sake.’

Mr. Eversley stooped down and kissed him; his heart was too full for speech.

What need to tell of the preparations for school-life; the stir and bustle of the house, the fitting on of clothes (the tailor being deaf, and the interviews with him being in consequence long and vociferous), the packing and unpacking and packing again, the anticipations, the promises of letters, the thousand and one things that need to be done, and yet seem always to leave the most important things undone after all?

At last the eve of Gerald’s departure came. Then the excitement gave way to anxiety. Most parents are anxious when they are sending their boys to school for the first time. Mr. Eversley, so inexperienced as he was in the world, felt the enhanced anxiety which is the outcome of ignorance. Who would not be anxious, for himself or for others, if he could foresee the trials, disappointments, sorrows, victories, of the coming days?

Mr. Eversley was even graver than usual that[72] night. He took Gerald into his study, and talked to him earnestly and long. His was not the counsel of a man of the world reviewing the experiences of his own life. It was the counsel of a man of God looking with prophetic vision upon a society in which the Divine Name is or may be dishonoured. His concluding sentences lingered long in Gerald’s mind. ‘My dear boy,’ he said, ‘you are going now into the world of school. I never knew it myself, but I know it is perilous. I cannot help you except by prayer. I shall pray for you every night and morning—at other times too. But pray for yourself. Fear God. Don’t fear man or boy. Remember that right is right, if there is only one soul that believes in it. Never let the devil get the thin end of the wedge in. Principiis obsta. I can say no more to you. The path of heaven is not easy. The way is narrow, the gate is strait. Oh! Gerald, my dear boy, be true to Christ.’

Then the father and the son knelt down side by side.

Mr. Eversley said no more about the future until he parted from his son, as has been said, on the platform of St. Anselm’s.

There was once a certain person called Procrustes who is said, in his reception of his visitors, to have adopted a simple and uniform procedure. He invited or compelled each one of them to pass a night in his house. He offered each a bed. He offered them all the same bed; he insisted upon their occupying it. It was a bed so constructed as to suit a man of mediocre size and stature. If any guest of Procrustes was too long for the bed, the superfluity of his limbs was lopped off. If any one was too short, his limbs were stretched to the proper length. It was only the guest whose stature exactly corresponded to the dimensions of the bed that escaped without mutilation.

The modern bed of Procrustes is or was a public school. Nowhere in the world is there so keen an appreciation of those who adapt themselves to local[74] tone, temper, and custom. But nowhere is departure, however slight, from the recognised standard of propriety, visited with consequences so unfailing. The society of a public school is a world in itself, self-centred, self-satisfied. It takes but slight account of the principles and practices which obtain in the world of men. It has its own laws, its own fashions, its own accepted code of morals. To these all persons must submit, or the penalty of resistance is heavy. Its virtues are not altogether those of men and women, nor are its vices. Some actions of which the world thinks comparatively little, it honours with profound admiration. To others, which the world thinks much of, it is indifferent. Mere physical courage, for instance, is esteemed too highly. Self-repression is depreciated. Hypocrisy is loathed. But the inverted hypocrisy—the homage which virtue pays to vice—or, in other words, the affectation of being worse than one really is, is common among boys and is thought to be honourable. Truth, again, is not esteemed as a virtue of universal application, but is relative to particular persons, a falsehood, if told to a schoolfellow, being worse than if told to a master. Nobody can be intimate with a community of schoolboys and not feel that a morality so absolute, yet so narrow, and in some ways so perverted, bears a certain resemblance[75] to the morality of a savage tribe. It is rather the germ of morals than morality itself.

It is true that the general softening of manners, which is the one clear gain that the world seems to make as it grows older, has in some degree affected even schoolboys. Public school life is not what it was in the days of ‘Tom Brown.’ Thirty years ago, at the epoch of this story, a boy who entered a public school was sure to suffer a certain number of annoyances, if not of positive hardships. To-day, it is probable that the only boys who are actual sufferers are those shy, delicate, sensitive creatures who do not understand the rough give-and-take of life, who imagine injuries and brood upon them, who have no sense of humour nor any such companionableness as is necessary in a society of human beings. Public school life is milder than it was. The sum of happiness in it is increasing, the sum of misery is diminishing or disappearing. But this story relates to thirty years ago; things were rougher then than they are now. Still it is not difficult even now to discuss the traces of what may be called the uncivilised or unsoftened spirit in public school life. It is seen in the homage paid among public school boys to physical faculties and performances. Of the achievements of the intellect, if they stand alone, public school opinion[76] is still, as it has always been, slightly contemptuous. But strength, speed, athletic skill, quickness of eye and hand, still command universal applause among schoolboys as among savages.

It is this uncivilised character of the young which accounts for the lack of sympathy—nay, the positive indignation and contempt—with which they regard anything like eccentricity or individualism. Science teaches that the progress of the species depends upon the preservation and improvement of varieties. Perhaps the reason why schools have made so little progress is that they have never encouraged variation, but have suppressed it. The bed of Procrustes is not favourable to varieties. Individualism among the young is looked upon as a form of conceit. Far stricter, and enforced by far more terrible penalties than the rules which masters make for boys, are the rules which boys make for themselves and for each other. Woe to him who consciously or unconsciously transgresses them! Their absurdity is itself the measure of their severity. It is not long since a mother, walking with her boy through the muddy streets of St. Anselm’s after a thaw in mid-winter, suggested to him that it would be a good thing to turn up his trousers at the bottom, and he told her with a biting scorn (which was provoked not by the rule but by her[77] ignorance in needing to be informed of it), that the turning up of trousers was a privilege reserved to the select mysterious beings who are known as ‘swells.’

A public school, then, is the home of the commonplace. It is there that mediocrity sits upon her throne. There the spirit which conforms to custom is lauded to the skies. There the spirit which is independent and original is apt to be crushed. And yet to these public schools of England come boys of all sorts, conditions and characters, strong boys, delicate boys, rough boys, impudent boys, sensitive boys, unhappy boys, boys who have many friends, boys who have no friends, boys who are capable of fighting their way against odds, and boys to whom every harsh or inconsiderate word is a pang; they are all sent without discrimination to live as they may, and to shape their own characters or the characters of others by the simple primitive process of rubbing down inequalities through constant friction. Parents and schoolmasters often assume that the English system of public school life is suited to all boys, and that, if boys dislike it, it is all the better for them. It is forgotten how many boys of highest temper and keenest feeling have derived not benefit but injury from their school. There is no reason to deny that the public school system is good for the majority of boys. But[78] it has its victims. How often has it happened that the boys, whose names have in after life been the glory and pride of their schools, have been ignored, depreciated, persecuted in their school lives! It is not needless—it cannot be wrong—to plead for a kindly sympathetic forbearance from masters and boys, yes, from masters as much as from boys, towards the stricken, suffering, despised members of the flock. For of these was Gerald Eversley.

It will, perhaps, be thought that the masters of a public school, as being presumably men of wisdom and experience, should correct the sympathies and prejudices of their pupils. But to think so is to exaggerate the power of masters. Masters have less influence upon a school than is sometimes supposed, perhaps than they themselves suppose. They do not always create public opinion, and often they follow it. They take their tone from the boys, as well as the boys from them. Sometimes they admire the boys whom the boys themselves admire; they ignore those whom the boys ignore. It is only here and there that a master has the courage and the self-denial to leave the popular, pleasant, responsive boys to themselves and seek those who are destitute and out of the way. There are masters who do this, and they deserve great credit for it. But too often masters waste[79] their favours upon those who do not need them, and the misunderstood boys whom their schoolfellows neglect are equally neglected by their masters.

Mr. Brandiston, in whose house Gerald Eversley had been placed, was what is sometimes called ‘a master of the old school.’ It does not exactly appear what is the meaning of the phrase, though it may be presumed that the master, who is so described, does not altogether belong to the present school of masters. He was a tall and handsome man; in youth he must have been very handsome. Even now, when his hair was silvered and his figure a little bent, it would have been difficult to pass him without tacitly complimenting him on his appearance. He had held a boarding house at St. Anselm’s for over twenty years. It was a very popular house, and if Mr. Brandiston had a weakness, it lay in his belief that all the virtue and all the distinction of the school were centred in that one house. That a considerable part of the virtue and distinction were centred in it was undeniable. Mr. Brandiston’s critics (who were rather numerous) were wont to say of him that he did not care for any boy who was not either an aristocrat or a scholar. He would have admitted a weakness or predilection for scholars, but he would have said that the aristocrats came to his house of[80] themselves. At all events they came. Mr. Brandiston was so upright a man that his word, especially in regard to his own house, deserved to be accepted unhesitatingly. There was only one reason—and it might not occur to everybody—for harbouring a suspicion that he would perhaps not altogether shrink from a purely accidental connection with the aristocracy. Mr. Brandiston was in politics a Radical.

But there can be no doubt that the boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house were proud of their house and of him. The conversation which Gerald Eversley heard on the first night of his school life exhibited that pride. If Mr. Brandiston’s boys found fault occasionally with him themselves, they never suffered a boy who was in any other house to find fault with him. It was the general fashion of the house to assume that its traditions and its methods were the best possible. This fashion the boys derived from Mr. Brandiston. They went so far as to maintain that the food provided by Mrs. Brandiston was superior to the food provided elsewhere. It was not so, and boys are critical of their food, however excellent it may be; but loyalty to the house and to Mr. Brandiston forbade the admission that other boys ate as good bread and butter as his. A master who[81] excites this kind of loyalty is not an unsuccessful schoolmaster.

Mr. Brandiston excited loyalty by two qualities. One was a certain bluff straightforwardness of manner; to use the boys’ phrase, ‘there was no humbug about old Brandiston.’ Boys do not mind bluffness, roughness, or even gruffness of manner; what they hate is humbug. And they are apt to assume that anyone whose manner is at all effusive or demonstrative is a humbug. They do not, as a rule, themselves indulge in forcible eulogistic expressions; ‘not bad’ is one of their strongest forms of eulogy. It is somewhat curious that boys, whose expressions of censure or condemnation are so vehement, should be so moderate in their expressions of approval. But so it is, and they are often distrustful of anyone whose words or actions go beyond their own usual practice. But Mr. Brandiston was admitted to be as good as his word.

And he was just. Boys admire justice, and Mr. Brandiston was just. It may be that he plumed himself a little upon his justice. If so, the boys were not unwilling to forgive him. Boys despise weakness, and are wholly unmerciful in taking advantage of it. But they do not resent severity, so long as it is impartial. They are strangely impatient of undeserved[82] punishment, forgetting how often they escape punishment which is richly deserved; but if they have done wrong, and are fairly detected in doing wrong, they do not mind being punished, they expect punishment, and rather like it.

One point in Mr. Brandiston’s favour it would be unfair to pass over. It is that he was generally called ‘old Brandiston.’ The epithet ‘old’ is apt to be taken as descriptive of age. It may denote age, but it may denote something quite different. There are some persons who in the vocabulary of boys are always ‘old,’ and always were ‘old.’ They are persons varying in age, character, and experience. But I do not recall any instance of a man or boy being known in a school as ‘old,’ if he was permanently unpopular among the boys. Mr. Brandiston was just, and he was called ‘old Brandiston.’ More fortunate than Aristides in the ancient story, he did not forfeit his popularity by his justice.

Mr. Brandiston, or ‘old Brandiston,’ if for once it may be permitted to call him so, took a definite and precise view of the duties of school life. His formality of view was rather like his formal manner of going round his house at night. He held that boys ought to work and ought to play. If a boy both worked well and played well, he set him on a pedestal[83] in his affections. If he either worked well or played well, he regarded him as a not unworthy member of his house. But if a boy was not distinguished in work or in play, it was Mr. Brandiston’s opinion that he ought to have gone to some other house. Yet even this is not a complete exposition of Mr. Brandiston’s educational theory. For he expected his athletes to work with sufficient assiduity to obtain respectable places in the school, and he expected his scholars to follow the regular recognised lines of public school education. He had no idea of any athletes who were not cricketers or football players. He had no idea of any scholars who were not good at Latin and Greek, or at mathematics; he was sometimes suspected of not setting much store even by mathematics. It would have been as disagreeable to him that any of his pupils should achieve distinction in Chemistry or German as that they should achieve it at hoops or marbles. He was a worshipper of the mens sana in corpore sano. The thing which he disliked most cordially was ‘loafing;’ but under ‘loafing’ he included not only idling about the street or lolling in the confectioners’ shops, but the irregular studious habits of boys who sat reading books in their rooms or in the library, instead of taking part in the games.

[84]

Such being Mr. Brandiston’s theory of school life, it is easy to imagine what sort of language he would address to his two pupils, Harry Venniker and Gerald Eversley, when they were successively called into his study on the morning after the first night which they had spent as schoolfellows and companions in the same room. He had purposely placed them together, not so much from the love of paradox as on principle, because it was a fixed article of his belief that boys of widely different characters and antecedents, by being placed together, did each other good, rubbing off angles (as he said), the shy scholar becoming more a man of the world, and the athletic aristocrat imbibing a qualified love of learning.

To Harry Venniker, who entered the study with his usual sunny smile, Mr. Brandiston expressed the hope that his mother, whose delicacy he had heard of, was better; he alluded to his father and other members of his family who had been at St. Anselm’s; then he added: ‘I dare say you will soon make friends, or find them ready made in the house. I shall expect you to work and get up the school, for the credit of the house. I hear you are a good cricketer, a lefthand bowler; is that true?’

Harry said ‘Yes, sir, I bowl a little,’ with a flush of pleasure mantling upon his cheek.

[85]

Well, you must get into the Eleven,’ continued Mr. Brandiston, ‘and I shall look to you to win the great match.’

It was in a different spirit, timid and trembling, that Gerald Eversley entered the study. A tête-à-tête with his house master was to him like the ancient ordeal of fire or water. He did not venture to lift his eyes from the floor until he heard Mr. Brandiston say kindly:

‘Well, Eversley, and how do you like St. Anselm’s?’ A pause. ‘But it is too early to ask that yet. Rather strange, is it not? You have not finished unpacking yet, I see,’ looking, as he spoke, at Gerald’s neck and chin, so Gerald thought. ‘Your father tells me you have not been at school before. All the more credit to you,’ he added, seeing the boy’s look of pain, ‘to have won a scholarship straight from home. You must try for some of the classical prizes soon. I hope you will do the house credit. I shall expect you to be captain of the school some day. Now you may go and get your books from Arkwright’s.’

Harry Venniker, who had been waiting for his companion in the passage outside the study, prevented the possibility of any remark that Gerald might have wished to make by his rapid questions.[86] ‘What did you think of him? Not a bad sort, is he? He asked me if I wasn’t a bowler, and told me he hoped I should get into the Eleven. What did he say to you?’

It was not necessary for Gerald to reply to the question respecting his opinion of his house master, for Harry ran on with his sentences like a mountain-stream flowing over the pebbles in its bed but not delayed by them; but he thought of Mr. Brandiston as the incarnation of law and order and felt disposed to worship him accordingly.

They went off to Arkwright’s, the bookseller’s shop.

‘I say, Arbuthnot,’ cried a little red-haired boy named Thornton, who had been watching the two new boys as they rounded the corner of the passage leading from the boys’ entrance of the boarding house into the street, ‘here’s a new chap come who has got “stick-ups” and a jacket.’

Thornton, as having been exactly one term in the school, had arrogated to himself the position of an authority upon scholastic etiquette. Seniority soon confers authority at a public school. It may be necessary to explain that the social solecism of which Gerald Eversley was thus pronounced to be guilty consisted in wearing the ‘stick-up’ collars which are[87] at St. Anselm’s the traditional accompaniments of a tailcoat, instead of the smooth flat-lying collars—sometimes known as the Eton collars—with a jacket. His costume had thus become a curious blending of the dress of the senior and the junior boys at St. Anselm’s. It offended the sentiments of both classes of boys.

Arbuthnot opened his eyes in astonishment. It seemed impossible to believe that any boy, however ‘green,’ would be ignorant of the immemorial laws of dress at St. Anselm’s.

‘No,’ he said; ‘that’s too rich.’

‘I swear he is though,’ was Thornton’s reply; ‘he’s just come out of Brandiston’s study. I wonder what the old ’un said to him.’

The impeachment of Gerald Eversley’s costume was unfortunately true. Mr. Eversley, knowing nothing of public schools, had not imagined that it could matter what kind of collars a boy in jackets might wear.

‘Well, he must be a “green,”’ said Arbuthnot.

‘I believe you,’ answered Thornton. ‘I took a wink at him this morning in Hall, and, my eye, if he hadn’t been blubbing all night! We’ll have some fun out of him when the fag-spotting’s over.’

It was the humane and merciful rule of Mr.[88] Brandiston’s house that a new boy might not be molested or persecuted by impertinent interrogations until twenty-four hours after his entering the house. The reason of it was that on the evening of the second day of the term all the boys liable to fagging (including, of course, all the new boys) were divided by a long-established principle of selection among the Sixth Form, and after that time, but not before, a new boy was felt to possess a natural patron or protector, and therefore to be a legitimate victim for the shafts of his natural enemies.

The ceremony of choosing the fags, or, as it was technically designated, ‘fag-spotting,’ deserves something more than a passing notice. It was a strange and almost barbarous ceremony. In some respects the nearest parallel to it may be said to have been the sale of slave girls in the market at Constantinople. The fags, or rather the boys liable to fagging, were marshalled after supper at one end of the Hall, and the Sixth Form boys stood at the other. Between them, seated at the different tables and turning their faces now to one end of the Hall and now to the other, according as they were interested in the deliberations of the Sixth Form or in the behaviour of the various candidates for their favour, were the mass of boys in the house, who had risen, by seniority or[89] by position in the school, above the obligation of fagging, but were still below, and some of them much below, the dignity of the Sixth Form who were alone entitled to choose or ‘spot’ fags. These boys constituted what may perhaps be called a neutral or buffer state between the fagmasters and their fags. The Sixth Form boys chose fags in turn according to an order of precedence which depended upon their rank in the school, and the choice might be made either by calling a boy’s name, or, if his name were not known, by walking up to him and laying a hand upon his shoulder. When every Sixth Form boy had chosen a fag, the choice began over again, and so continued until the number of the fags was exhausted, every one of them having now received his fagmaster. It was open to any Sixth Form boy to inspect these candidates (if they may be so called) for the privilege of waiting upon him, for cleanliness was a recommendation in a fag as well as attractiveness of appearance or alacrity, and it would happen not unfrequently that one Sixth Form boy, acting the part of the Præpostor Immundorum or Præpostor of the Dirty Boys in the ancient days of English public school life, would cause a boy, whom he thought of choosing, to hold out his hands amidst the critical applause and laughter of his schoolfellows. With the[90] fags it was a point of honour to be chosen early. Happy indeed was he who was so fortunate as to obtain the suffrage of the head of the house. Sometimes a fag was chosen on grounds of personal friendship, or of domestic interest, if a Sixth Form boy ‘knew him at home’ or had been specially asked to select him as a fag; but in general the choice was determined by the superficial merits or demerits of the fags themselves.

It was rumoured among the smaller boys of the house (though with what truth was not known) that Stanley, the captain of the Eleven, had announced his intention of making Harry Venniker his fag, and had in fact used his personal influence to prevent his being chosen by any Sixth Form boy higher in the school than himself. Whether that was so or not, it turned out that Harry had not yet been chosen when it came to Stanley’s turn to make his choice, and he uttered the momentous words ‘I’ll have that chap, Venniker.’ Meanwhile, as the choosing of the fags proceeded, it became probable that Gerald Eversley would be left to the last. No Sixth Form boy knew him or was interested in choosing him. He saw one companion after another named and taken from his side. He was left. The ignominy of being constantly passed over was like ‘the iron entering into his soul.’[91] He hoped, he ardently prayed, that he might not be left to the very last. But still the election went on, and still his name was not called. At length came the terrible moment when he remained alone. All eyes in the Hall were fixed on him. It fell to a Sixth Form boy named Browne—a boy who was not in any way conspicuous—to ‘spot’ the last fag.

‘I suppose I must have this fellow,’ he said contemptuously. ‘What’s your name—you in the “stick-ups”?’

There was a momentary profound silence in the Hall. The attention of all the boys had been called to the disgrace which Mr. Eversley’s ignorance of the rules of dress had brought upon his son. A boy in the fourth form whispered to his neighbour, who was also in the fourth form, that his nickname was sure to be ‘Stick-ups.’

‘Eversley, sir,’ he replied at last amidst a general outburst of laughter; for in his confusion he had addressed Browne as if he were a master. ‘Well,’ said Browne, ‘I see I’m reduced to you,’ then turning with a smile to his colleagues in the Sixth Form, he added, ‘Eversley’s my horse—rather a dark one.’

In this way Gerald Eversley became a fag. The ‘spotting’ of the fags being now concluded, and their[92] social destiny decided for the term, the Sixth Form, according to custom, left the Hall.

The boys who were not in the Sixth Form stayed behind, according to custom, for a second ceremony in which (as may be supposed) the inherent dignity of the Sixth Form forbade them to participate. It was called the ‘trying of voices.’ Like the ‘fag-spotting’ it always took place in the Hall on the second evening of the term. It was customary that the boy highest in the school below the Sixth Form, who was known as the captain of Hall, should choose a song: it was played by some boy who possessed sufficient musical knowledge to accomplish a tune on the piano, then the new boys sang it, or some verses of it, in turn. On this occasion the captain of Hall was a boy named Tracy, not a boy who enjoyed a very admirable reputation among his schoolfellows. He had brought down a comic song called ‘Uncle Sam’ which had lately acquired a certain popularity in the London music halls. It described, in language not particularly coarse, but on the other hand not particularly refined, how the hero of the song, Uncle Sam, had maintained an imperturbable demeanour amidst a variety of trials, partly financial, partly social, and partly conjugal, which were related with a good deal of detail. Like most songs of similar nature it[93] contained a chorus, sung at the end of every verse by the soloist and then taken up by all the boys. The chorus was in these words:

You may laugh, said Uncle Sam,
But I do not care a d—n;
I’ll be jolly, jolly, jolly as I am.

It is possible that the song is still remembered in some quarters.

The new boys were called upon to sing it, one after another. There were eight new boys in all. The first three of them sang it with more or less success, the second, indeed, less successfully than the other two; for he had no ear, and the sounds which issued from his lips bore at the best a dim and distant resemblance to the tune that was being played on the piano. But he persevered to the end, and was loudly cheered. Then the captain of Hall called ‘Venniker.’ Harry Venniker had a good voice; his appearance and manner were prepossessing, and he sat down amidst general applause. The same fourth form boy, who had whispered to his neighbour before, remarked now, though in a less audible tone, that he seemed ‘rather a good sort.’

All this time Gerald Eversley, holding the words of the song in his hand, was in agony of mind. It was not that he could not sing, as he was fond of[94] music, and possessed some little skill upon the organ. But there was a word in the chorus which his scrupulous conscience felt to be wicked. It was not a word that he had known to be used, except once, on a very hot day, by a labourer at Kestercham. But he conceived it to be an offence against God. He had heard his father speak of its solemn and terrible meaning in preaching upon the text—‘He that believeth not shall be damned.’ It was one of the words that he had promised never to use. No doubt he magnified the sinfulness of using it, if sinfulness there were. You who read this story are wiser than he was; you use it, perhaps, and think nothing of it. But would it not be better for you, in the presence of the angels, if your conscience were as pure and sensitive as his?

Another boy was called upon to sing after Harry Venniker; then Gerald.

He hesitated a little, and did not begin when the pianist began.

‘Look sharp, I say,’ said Tracy; ‘we can’t wait here all night.’

In a low tone, rather tremulously, he sang a verse; then, as he approached the words of the chorus, his voice showed signs of faltering. At the second line he stopped; the pianist left him behind again. The boys all looked at him in surprise.

[95]

‘I tell you what it is, youngster,’ said Tracy, ‘every new chap has got to sing a verse; that’s the rule of the house; and if you don’t choose to sing, it will be the worse for you.’

Gerald looked round the Hall as the victim at an auto-da-fé may often have cast his eyes around the ring of spectators without discerning a movement of sympathy on any face; the boys did not even understand what his difficulty was.

‘Now, then,’ said Tracy; and the boy at the piano began the chorus once more.

Gerald repeated the words:—

‘You may laugh ... said Uncle Sam,
But ... I ... do not ... care;’

then he broke down, hid his face in his hands, and rushed from the Hall.

The boys sat gazing at each other. Nobody spoke.

‘What the devil is the matter with the young fool?’ said Tracy at last.

‘Don’t you see?’ suggested another fifth form boy, Coleridge by name, next in seniority to Tracy, and of higher character, ‘he didn’t like the little word—d, a, m, n. That’s the fence which he refused.’

[96]

Immediately there was an outburst of discordant voices expressing astonishment, doubt, indignation, anger, and some few compassion, the boys all talking at once, and eagerly discussing the procedure to be adopted. Some boys (among whom Tracy was conspicuous) urged that Gerald ought to be brought back at once perforce, and made to sing, being subjected to corporal chastisement if he refused; others that his behaviour, as being an unprecedented violation of the rules and customs of the house, should be referred to the Sixth Form; others, again, that he should be sent to Coventry for a month; others, that he should incur a double measure of fagging. But there were not a few boys—and some of these the most influential—who felt in their hearts, and after a time began to express the feeling, that Tracy had made a mistake alike of taste and of judgment in choosing a song which contained any word of a questionable nature, even though it was one that boys used habitually without much thinking of it; it was a shame (they said) to compel ‘a kid like that’ to use the word at all, and the incident, if it got abroad in the school, would reflect no great credit on the house. The one point, therefore, upon which the whole house agreed was that the incident must not be allowed to get abroad. For the rest, as generally[97] happens when a multitude of counsellors deliberate upon a plan of action, it was resolved to take no action at all. But the ‘trying of voices’ was at an end for that night. The meeting broke up, and the boys stood in knots in the passages or outside the rooms, discussing what had taken place. It was universally felt that Gerald was ‘not up to snuff,’ and that the sooner he was initiated into that mystery, the better; but opinion was in favour of letting the initiation be effected by the gradual and subtle awakening process of school life, rather than by the searching test of the ‘trying of voices.’ This opinion was confirmed when it became known that the Sixth Form, who were the supreme arbiters of all moral or social questions in the house, had decided against inflicting any pains and penalties upon Gerald Eversley, and that the particular member of the Sixth Form who had chosen him, or had been reduced to taking him as a fag, had pronounced the treatment which he had experienced to be a shame.

When Harry Venniker returned to his room, he found Gerald Eversley weeping by the fireside.

‘Well, you young fool,’ he said, ‘you’ve made a pretty shindy. The whole house is talking about what’s to be done to you.’

Gerald was silent.

[98]

‘You don’t mean to say,’ continued Harry, ‘that you object to saying damn. Why, it’s what everybody says.’

‘But I promised I wouldn’t say it,’ replied Gerald amidst his tears.

‘Why not?’

‘My father says it’s a wicked word,’ was the answer.

It was an answer which Harry Venniker found some difficulty in meeting, for it was an article of his moral code that parental authority ought to be respected, however irrational it might be.

‘All I can say is,’ he continued after an interval, ‘that I don’t see how you are to get on if you are always thinking things wrong.’

‘But isn’t it wrong?’ said Gerald.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied Harry; ‘I suppose it is, if you look at it in that way; but it’s what everybody does, and, upon my word, I don’t see the harm of it.... However, if you object to it,’ he added, when he had meditated upon the problem for a few moments, ‘I suppose you are right, and if fellows try to bully you, I’ll let them know what I think, only you can’t exactly wear a pinafore in a house like this.’

And that was the limit of the sympathy which[99] Gerald experienced in his first protest against public opinion.

Still, it soon became known in the house that Harry Venniker, while regarding his room-fellow as ‘rather a muff, don’t you see?’ was not disposed to see him the victim of systematic persecution. He was reported to have ‘punched’ the red head of the boy Thornton, who had intruded with malicious purpose into the room, whistling the tune of the song which had proved fatal to poor Gerald’s peace of mind, and making two or three mimetic pauses in the first lines of the chorus. This tacit championship was of the highest value to Gerald Eversley. For boys possess a singular faculty (if they care to exercise it) of making other boys’ lives intolerable. They are masters of the art of annoyance and irritation. They understand how by speech, and still more by silence, to convey the killing sense of their displeasure. I will undertake to say that half a dozen small boys, without committing any such action as could bring them within reach of the law, will drive a schoolfellow to the verge of despair. But against this organised, though indeterminate, persecution, the voice of one boy, if clear and courageous, possesses great weight. Gerald Eversley owed more than he was aware of to the stalwart, if somewhat[100] unsympathetic, defence of Harry Venniker. But for that, it is probable that his social error in coming to school with ‘stick-up’ collars, and his moral error (for so it was widely considered) in refusing to sing a song selected in due order by the captain of Hall, would have brought him into considerable trouble. As it was, however, the boys did nothing worse than leave him very much to himself; they would look at one another in a knowing way, and perhaps shrug their shoulders, when he passed, or one of them would nudge his arm at dinner to prevent his eating with absolute equanimity, or ask him the Latin for a saint, or inquire if his mother or his sisters knew that he was out; once or twice he found his boots filled with water in the morning, or a blot of ink upon his carefully written exercise; or his hat was hidden away, to make him late for chapel; or he received on the first of April a packet of ‘stick-up’ collars as a present.

Boys’ memories are generally short-lived. Nine days’ wonders do not last nine days in a school. Events follow each other with such rapidity and variety that neither successes nor defeats are long remembered. The nickname ‘Stick-ups’ adhered to Gerald Eversley for about five weeks, and then, as the original cause of it had disappeared after the first two or three days[101] of the term, it dropped. The incident of the song was remembered a little longer; but its only permanent result was that the Sixth Form decided not to leave the choice of songs to the captain of Hall, but to prescribe a song of which a verse should be sung by all new boys, and after much consideration the ‘March of the Men of Harlech’ was adopted for this purpose as being at once simple, moral, and inspiriting.

There came to be a tacit understanding among the boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house that Gerald Eversley was not altogether like others, and that it was necessary to treat him differently from them, that he was a fair subject for good-humoured chaff, but that it was a ‘chouse’ to bully him, and that as Venniker (who was admitted to be a downright good fellow) could put up with him in his room, the boys generally could put up with him in the house.

Harry Venniker wrote home to his father a long letter telling him that the ‘chap’ whom they had seen on the platform was in his house and in his room, that he was ‘awfully pious,’ and Harry doubted if he had ever been out of his nursery; that he had got himself into trouble by refusing to sing a song in which the word ‘damn’ occurred, and that Harry did not know what a boy was to do ‘with notions like that;’ but, added Harry at the end of his letter, ‘he[102] is not such a bad fellow, though a terrible milksop, and if other boys are down upon him, I mean to stick up for him as well as I can.’ In addition, Harry said that he was ‘getting on all right,’ and life at St. Anselm’s was ‘good fun on the whole.’

Gerald Eversley, in writing to his father, made no allusion to the ‘trying of voices;’ he did not know whether he ought not to tell his father about it, but he could not make up his mind how to describe it, though he began it several times, but after fully describing the other incidents of his first days at St. Anselm’s, and especially his association with Venniker, he went on to say that he found school-life very different from his expectation, a great many things of which he had had no experience were said and done in it; he could not say he liked it at present, but he hoped he should come to like it better as time went on. Mr. Eversley read the letter more than once, then wrote Gerald, No. 1, on the envelope, and put it away in his desk by itself.

It is not the object of this story to describe in detail the progress or system of public school life. That story has often been told. One public school does not differ greatly from another in character, or sentiment, or interest; and the life that is lived in one is essentially the life of them all. I am concerned only with the strengthening or development of friendship between the two boys who are the heroes of this narrative.

What is it in this life that is the secret of friendship? Is it voluntary or involuntary? Is it formed by likeness or by opposition? Does it spring up of itself? Does it need cultivation and tendance? Is it not true that there are persons whom we feel we ought to like more than we do—very estimable persons, very dutiful, but not quite those of whom we make friends? and other persons who are not free[104] from reproach or criticism and yet for whom we cannot help in our own despite cherishing an affection? Does friendship depend upon character or upon circumstances? The one thing certain seems to be that it is not a matter of the reason. We cannot make friends at will. We may say to ourselves perhaps that we will unmake a friendship, that we will not hold intercourse with a person any more (though that too is difficult), but nobody ever yet resolved that he would be the friend of a person, whether he liked him or not, and became his friend and remained so for life. Like all the most sacred things in human experience, friendship is a boon, in some sense independent of human volition. It cannot be acquired by perseverance or resolution. God reserves it like personal beauty, like the appreciation of beautiful sounds and colours, in His own hands. It is His gift; He bestows it where He wills; we can but accept it with grateful and reverent hearts when it is given.

Probably there were no two boys at St. Anselm’s whose lives might be deemed to be parted by a wider gulf than Harry Venniker and Gerald Eversley. They came from opposite poles of society. Except in the universal human functions, such as eating and drinking, and the universal experiences of life, they had no[105] common ground. Conversation between them, apart from topics of school interest, was limited by the lack of sympathetic understanding. If the one had spoken of dances or shooting parties, or the other of Bible readings and parochial visits, he would have seemed to his companion to be living in a different world from his, and to be using a language of which he had no comprehension.

And the gulf threatened to grow wider as time went on. Harry Venniker plunged more and more eagerly into the brimming waters of school life; Gerald Eversley stood trembling more and more fearfully on the bank. It was only within the walls of the room which they occupied together, that they could be said to have a common existence.

Harry Venniker advanced every week in popularity. His frank manner, his good humour, his manly disposition, won the hearts of his schoolfellows. It was a common saying that he had never been known to lose his temper. He was eminently unselfish, always ready to do a good turn and never anxious to spoil it by claiming credit for what he had done. His sense of fun was keen, and he took a leading part in the ‘larks’ of his house, though he never went the length of giving pain to boys or getting into serious trouble with his masters. He enjoyed too the conspicuous[106] advantage of excellence in games. He had plenty of pluck, the virtue which in the schoolboy code of honour is supreme. Even in his first term his ‘runs’ and ‘charges’ on the football field excited the admiration of veteran players. But when the summer term came, and it began to be rumoured in the school that so good a left-handed bowler as he was might actually have a chance of getting into Mr. Brandiston’s house Eleven—for had not the great Stanley himself been heard to remark that ‘that young Venniker kept a good length,’ and ‘he could make the ball break both ways’?—then Harry Venniker tasted for the first time the delicious joy of fame, so dear to all finely tempered minds, but to none dearer than to minds that are young and ardent. Several boys high in the school or prominent in athletics began to take notice of him, one or two of them invited him to breakfast, and there was a general feeling in Mr. Brandiston’s house that he was ‘the coming man.’ Nor was he less a favourite with the masters than with his schoolfellows. It is true that he was not intellectually distinguished; but he was not idle, he was always pleasant and cheerful, he kept a very fair place in his form, generally somewhere about the middle, he was seldom in punishment, and his athletic distinction appealed to the sympathetic[107] feelings of masters as well as of boys. Mr. Brandiston was obliged to own that he was a boy who would do his house honour in one of the two lines recognised by Mr. Brandiston himself. At the end of his first term at St. Anselm’s, Mr. Brandiston had written to Lord Venniker, congratulating him upon ‘the excellent start that his son had made,’ and bearing testimony that ‘his lordship had every reason to be proud of his son.’ ‘He is,’ he added, ‘a boy who works well and plays well, and I have the highest opinion of him.’ It is only fair to add that Harry retained his simplicity, and was in no sense injured by the praises showered upon him.

Very different was the case of Gerald Eversley. It was not that he was ever involved in a serious trouble. He was not a boy who incurred or deserved punishment. But there was nothing in him that attracted popular favour. It was reported in the school that he was ‘awfully clever.’ It was beyond dispute that he was ‘a dreadful sap.’ Some of the more discerning boys or masters may have ventured upon the prediction which can hardly be considered as unduly hazardous that ‘he would do something some day.’ But that ‘something,’ if it were destined to be done, would be apparently as far away from the sympathy as from the ambition of other boys. His[108] tastes were not theirs. He lived in a different world from them. They were glad sometimes to avail themselves of his assistance, and I am afraid they availed themselves of it rather freely, in the preparation of their lessons; for his knowledge was multifarious, and it was believed that he had once or twice proved capable of answering questions which had puzzled Mr. Brandiston himself; but an oracle is not consulted except for a special purpose, and, when it is not required, it is treated with indifference. So it was with Gerald Eversley. Perhaps there is no isolation like that of a sensitive spirit surrounded by others which never come into contact or sympathy with it at all. It is what Byron has described in some memorable lines.

Gerald Eversley was not unhappy in his isolation, of which others were more conscious than himself. He had always led a lonely life (except for the society of his father), and it was no surprise to him or disappointment that his life should be lonely now. Besides he had his consolations, as the lonely often have. There is a pleasure in solitude itself. The old Roman was not wrong in his assertion ‘that he was never less lonely than when he was alone.’ There is a pleasure even in being misunderstood, though it is a pleasure that belongs to age, when the[109] heart is soured a little and has become cynical, rather than to youth. But Gerald was old beyond his years. When his schoolfellows were at cricket or football he went for a walk, if he took any exercise at all, his eyesight disqualifying him for games. He was clever, and always high in his form; but he derived less pleasure from his high place than others who had striven for it more anxiously. The beautiful library of St. Anselm’s is known to all visitors, and there in a corner of the great oriel window he sat for hours, never looking at the view of the wide champaign that stretches beneath it, but scanning books of all kinds—novels, travels, biographies (of which he was especially fond), poetry, books of science (particularly archæology) and art, even sermons and books of controversial divinity. Whatever he read he assimilated. I do not mean that it was all remembered, but it soaked down into his mind and became a reservoir of knowledge upon which he would draw in hours of need. He realised what so few who are young, nay, indeed so few who are old, can be said to realise—the love of learning in and for itself, without the thought of prize or praise. Learning, alas! will some day be smothered by its own children, examination, competition, the calculation and publication of results.

[110]

In every school there are some boys to whom a library is more valuable than any classroom. For it is not what the young are compelled to do, but what they do of themselves and for themselves, that is the lasting educational result. Education rightly considered does not follow narrow hard lines—that perhaps was Mr. Brandiston’s mistake—it expatiates in a wide and ample domain, and its country walks are sometimes worth more than its dusty high road. Gerald Eversley had other tastes than literature, though none perhaps so dear, so delightful. He loved music, he heard in it, as so many have heard, the voice of heaven. When he had been some time at St. Anselm’s, he obtained the privilege of going now and then on weekdays into the chapel. Seated there at the organ in the little gallery, with the shadows of the evening gathering around him, alone and happy, he would fill and thrill the sacred building with the voluminous strains of some passages taken from a noble and dearly loved oratorio, the ‘Creation’ perhaps, or the ‘Elijah,’ or the ‘Messiah,’ and listening to their strains, so mighty, so unearthly, so much vaster and grander than the hand which called them forth, as the echoes of them faded and died away in the distance amidst the memorials of the dead who were dear to St. Anselm’s, he felt as if the angels of[111] God were ascending and descending upon him in that holy place.

For the chapel had other hallowed associations. To most boys perhaps religious services at school are apt to appear mechanical if not irksome duties. It was not so with Gerald Eversley. To him the great act of communion with God was a vivid reality. It seemed as if his very alienation from the practices and thought of ordinary boys drew him nearer to the Divine Presence. Sunday was not, nor had it ever been, a dull day to him. He had always reckoned his life from Sunday to Sunday. But the parts of the Sundays which he liked best at St. Anselm’s were the evening services when Dr. Pearson preached. Dr. Pearson’s sermons seemed different from other people’s, not only because he was the head master, but because he was Dr. Pearson. Others spoke of the temptations, trials, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, of boyhood, as though they stood outside them. But he spoke of them as one who had lately passed through them, and had not forgotten the art of expressing them. Other preachers in addressing the boys generally said you; Dr. Pearson said we. That was perhaps why the boys liked to hear him. Gerald wrote one Sunday evening to his father that he did not see how a boy could go on[112] sinning willingly who listened every week to such sermons as these.

Yet one more point of his life must not be omitted. In front of the old church at St. Anselm’s is a terrace commanding a wide, impressive view of the wold. To this he would resort in the evening when the sunset tinged the horizon and the hills and woods beneath with an exquisite wealth of colouring. Under its elms he would stand, thinking and thinking. Somehow, whether from association with the graves or from the setting of the sun, the view, beautiful as it was, impressed him with a feeling of sadness; or perhaps it was that few views so extensive are so free from the traces of human habitation. Anyhow it harmonised with his own solitary temper. Thus it was by a strange coincidence, that, as at home, so at school, a churchyard became an element of his life. He was fond of it because he was naturally serious, and it made him more serious still. But nobody knew how often he went thither.

So divergent in all outward appearance were the lives of the two boys, living together at the same time, in the same school; yet between them a strong mutual attachment was springing up. They were still occupants of the same room. They might have[113] changed; sometimes they thought, or at least Harry did, of changing; but they remained together, though they might have had rooms to themselves.

The motives of this singular intimacy were not the same.

On Harry Venniker’s side it was in the main a generous sense of protective obligation. Since the night when, in an impulse of sympathetic emotion, he had promised to be Gerald’s friend for ever, he had somehow felt that it would be a dereliction of duty to leave this strange unsophisticated boy to shift for himself. Harry believed that he could help him, and that nobody else could or would, and that, if he were left alone, he would be sure to be bullied. Helplessness is itself a title to the service of generous souls. The mean, cruel soul may impose upon it, but the noble soul reverences it, and nobility of thought and action was native to Harry Venniker. It ought to be said, too, that he was in some sense an admirer of Gerald’s intellectual ability. Being no student himself, he could not help respecting a life devoted to study. And, in proportion as learning assumed for him the general aspect of a difficult and irksome duty, he looked with a reverential surprise upon one who loved it as a mistress.

Gerald Eversley’s feeling for his friend was of a[114] different kind. Although standing to some extent outside the common interests and quarrels of school life, he was not unappreciative of those who shone in them. No one can live in a busy and intent society without thinking somewhat of the subjects of which it thinks much. And there had arisen in Gerald’s mind a passionate admiration, a sentiment akin to hero-worship, for the boy, his inferior in intellect, but so brilliant, so prominent in the common ways of school life. It was a sentiment of which he could give, or did give, no account to himself. But he felt, as others felt, the charm of Harry’s presence. To be near him was a delight. To be parted from him was a bereavement. If the exquisite Aristotelian test of love be true, that it is not so much the sense of pleasure in the presence of the beloved one as the sense of pain at his absence, it was satisfied by Gerald Eversley. In his admiration for Harry Venniker there was no tinge or trace of jealousy. He looked up to him as to a being of higher order. That his own intellectual distinction could be weighed in the balance against Harry’s popularity and athletic powers, was an idea that never entered his mind. Who will say that it had been better if he had formed a more just estimate of human worth? What would not the world lose in happiness, nay in sublimity,[115] if there were no souls exalted by strong, unspoken reverence for those whom they mistakenly deem higher and nobler than themselves?

Harry Venniker was totally unaware of the devotion which he had stirred in the deep places of his friend’s heart. He knew that Gerald was kind to him, and even submissive, but he was not unaccustomed to kindness and submissiveness; they were the attributes of his position and character, and he regarded them as matters of course. Could he have known how his lightest word was cherished by the boy who was so near him, and yet so far away, he would have been filled with a sentiment of awe.

He who has many friends knows not, and cannot know, the value of one. To Gerald Eversley Harry Venniker was all in all.

When boys become friends they begin to talk about their homes. No sign of friendship is surer than this. It is true that Gerald was generally the listener; for what could he tell about Kestercham Vicarage that was worth telling? Besides, he knew something of Harry Venniker’s father, who had paid his son a good many visits at St. Anselm’s; he had spoken to him, and had once been invited by him to luncheon at the hotel. Harry, of course, talked chiefly about his father. But he often spoke[116] of his mother, of her grace and gentleness and goodness, of her long illness and her never-failing patience.

‘I don’t think,’ he said once with unwonted gravity, ‘I don’t think I could ever go far wrong, for fear of breaking her heart.’ He spoke of his sister too, the beautiful girl, so like her mother, whose portrait hung above the mantelshelf; she was only a year younger than himself, and they had never been separated until he went to school, and he wrote to her every week; she was so thoughtful, that he always consulted her about everything in his life, and found her opinion better than anybody’s—except his father’s. Once he held out the hope of inviting Gerald to stay for a few days at Helmsbury in the holidays, but the idea was forgotten, or some difficulty came in the way of it, and the invitation did not arrive. Gerald was partly disappointed, but partly relieved, as he did not know exactly how he should adapt himself to the ways of aristocratic society.

One reason, no doubt, why Gerald clung so passionately to Harry Venniker was that he was himself not understood by masters or boys. Mr. Brandiston in particular misunderstood him. He liked, as has been said, a boy who worked upon the regular recognised lines of school life. He preferred a boy who was first in his form to one who was second; and[117] a boy who was second, to one who was third. It was his opinion that Gerald, as being an elected scholar, ought to be first. With the studies which occupied so much of Gerald’s time and thought in the library he did not sympathise. Happening one day to come upon him when he was reading Lyell’s ‘Elements of Geology,’ he told him he had better not waste his time. That Gerald’s ability was remarkable he did not doubt. But he thought it might be better employed. He wrote to Mr. Eversley that he wished his son (with whom he had, as he admitted, no positive fault to find) would ‘concentrate himself more,’ and would not be ‘always taking up some new subject that did not bring in any marks.’ The association of Harry and Gerald, in one sense, did not appear to him to have been entirely successful. It had left Harry a healthy, bright, athletic boy; that was well enough. But it had left Gerald what he was at the first—awkward, shy, erratic, studious, recluse. Mr. Brandiston was not wrong in his view of his two pupils; but was he right? Summum jus, says the proverb, summa injuria. The teacher’s profession demands a fine combination of qualities. It needs justice, and justice Mr. Brandiston possessed; the suspicion of favouritism, that one unpardonable offence among boys, never attached itself to his name,[118] and justice, standing by itself, satisfies the needs of ordinary boys—and ordinary boys or men are always (fortunately for the world) the large majority—but there are the few who need not justice only, but the tender, sympathetic insight which is, if any human grace is, the gift of God, and this was not Mr. Brandiston’s. Between him, then, and his strange pupil the gulf widened, slowly, almost imperceptibly, but it widened. Yet Gerald Eversley was not left to fight his way in the school without any appreciation from the masters. The sympathy for which he longed he did not find in his house master. But he found it, by a strange event, in a young master with whom he had never been brought into official connection—Mr. Selby. No story of St. Anselm’s in the years of Mr. Selby’s mastership would be complete without some reference to him. He was not a man whose name was known outside St. Anselm’s. He did not wish to be known. He evaded society. He lived in lodgings in the village, having only three rooms. It was believed that he was poor, that he made himself poor; some said by supporting a large family of nephews and nieces, whose father had gone bankrupt; others said by giving large sums to charitable institutions. It was believed, too, that at some time of his life he had gone through a great sorrow; nobody knew what[119] the sorrow was or when it happened, nor did Mr. Selby ever allude to it; but it was noticed that he always wore a black hatband, and that sometimes, when the conversation was gay at dinner parties or on other festive occasions (if he ever attended them), he would become suddenly silent, and a look of pain would pass over his face; then he would collect himself by a forcible effort, and plunge into conversation again. The boys all felt a deep respect for him as for one who had passed through the shadows of the dark valley which they knew not. They often went to him—he encouraged them to go—when they were in trouble. They were sure that he was their friend. He stood nearer to them than other masters. They felt that, if he could do them any service at the cost of a great personal sacrifice, he would not shrink from doing it. They knew, or at least it was the common belief, that he prayed for them. I think the knowledge of a master’s intercession has a wonderful effect even upon rough and coarse boy-natures. They could not help noticing that in chapel, when the sermon was over and the boys and masters rose from their knees almost immediately, Mr. Selby would remain kneeling often until the chapel was nearly emptied, his face (when it was not hidden in his hands) illumined with a spiritual radiance, and[120] his manner showing the absorption of one whose soul was prostrated by the realisation of the Awful Divine Presence. Mr. Selby was a bachelor and a clergyman.

Gerald’s introduction to Mr. Selby happened in this way. He was sitting one day alone in the library, when Mr. Selby came in. Gerald had a book in his hands as usual, but he was not reading it; he had let it fall on to his knees. He was looking straight before him, meditating upon something that had lately occurred in the house. Mr. Selby, while taking a book from its shelf, caught sight of his face. He went up to him—his power of sympathy had given him an almost intuitive understanding of boys’ thoughts, especially when they were troubled—and said,

‘Is not your name Eversley?’

Gerald, who was surprised at his name being known, answered, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘My dear boy,’ said Mr. Selby, ‘I am sure you are in some trouble. Do tell me what it is; perhaps I can help you.’

And he sat down by Gerald’s side and laid his hand upon his arm.

If Gerald had been like other boys, he would perhaps have tried to parry the question. Or if there had been other boys in the library, it would have been[121] difficult for him to open his heart to a master; nay, it is possible that Mr. Selby would have sought another opportunity of speaking to him. But they were alone. There was something in Mr. Selby’s voice and manner that made deception difficult.

Gerald hung his head down and said nothing.

‘What is it, my dear Eversley?’ Mr. Selby repeated.

Then Gerald told him the following story—not all at once, for Mr. Selby helped him by a good many kindly suggestive questions, and the story was drawn out of him only slowly, but he told it in the simple confidence of truth.

‘Please, sir,’ he said, ‘they think I have sneaked of them.’

‘Who are they?’ said Mr. Selby.

‘Please, sir, the fellows in the house,’ was the answer.

‘What makes them think so?’ asked Mr. Selby.

‘Because Mr. Brandiston caught them boxing on Sunday, and they say I told him,’ answered Gerald.

It appeared (although Gerald was careful not to mention any names) that some boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house who were proficients in the noble art of self-defence, Tracy being one of the ringleaders among them, and a boy named Vansittart another, had[122] arranged for a grand display of pugilistic skill at five o’clock one Sunday afternoon. They chose that day and that time, not as having any special desire to violate the law, divine or human, of the Sabbath, but because it was then that Mr. Brandiston, as was well known, devoted himself to his family and friends and perhaps a few boys who were invited to join his domestic circle at tea. Nobody had ever heard of Mr. Brandiston appearing among the boys of his house on Sunday afternoon. The pugilists had, therefore, assumed that it would be safe to begin operations at that time. The boxing would be doubly offensive to Mr. Brandiston as being calculated to bring discredit upon his house, partly because it was itself an exhibition which was wholly opposed to his feelings, but still more because it took place on a Sunday, a day which ought, in his opinion, on grounds of social etiquette even more than of religious obligation, to be kept sacred. But if he had dreamed of the possibility of his house becoming the scene of Sabbatarian pugilism, he would have entertained the further objection that pugilism in a boarding house is at the best only a disguised form of bullying; for it is sure to mean, not that the boys who box are experts or volunteers, but that pressure is put upon young and delicate boys to enter the lists against boys a great[123] deal stronger than themselves. And this was actually the case; for the combatants consisted not only of fifth form boys who were allowed to arrange sparring-matches among themselves, but of lower boys who were expected to box against anybody who might be chosen as their opponent by lot, or more probably at the discretion of Tracy and his friends. These considerations, however, Mr. Selby mentally supplied; they were not part of the story as told to him. What he learnt from Gerald was that the company had assembled on Sunday afternoon in one of the largest rooms of the house; the tables had been pushed back, a ring had been formed, an immense assortment of boxing-gloves of various sizes and colours had been produced; Tracy and Vansittart, acting at once as seconds and umpires, had seated themselves, with towels and sponges in their hands, on chairs at opposite extremities of the ring; two lower boys who had been told off to begin the boxing had divested themselves of their coats and waistcoats, donned the gloves, and sparred a couple of rounds amidst as much applause as was deemed compatible with the secrecy of the proceedings, when the door was suddenly and quietly opened, and in walked—Mr. Brandiston.

A meteorite falling from the sky would not have created deeper consternation than the appearance of[124] the house master at that time among the boys of his own house.

Mr. Brandiston surveyed the scene with an air of terrible but repressed indignation.

‘And this,’ he said at last, ‘on a Sunday afternoon in my house!’

It was but the work of a moment for him to take the names of the boys who were present.

‘Go to your rooms, all of you,’ he said, ‘and remain there (except during chapel) for the rest of the day. I will see you all at nine o’clock to-morrow morning.’ Then, turning to the seconds and umpires, he added, ‘You, Tracy and Vansittart, are, I suppose, the ringleaders in this disgraceful affair; pick up these gloves and carry them at once to my study.’

Slowly the two boys, their arms laden with boxing-gloves, made their way to the study, where they deposited the gloves on the floor in a rude pyramidal heap like the pile of cannon-balls at an arsenal. The other boys, none venturing to speak a word, dispersed to their rooms. When all had gone out, Mr. Brandiston shut the door. The echoes of his footsteps as he strode along the passage rang in the boys’ ears. It was remarked after chapel that evening that some of the boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house looked unusually pale.

[125]

The interview with Mr. Brandiston next morning, the reporting of the guilty boys to the head master—Mr. Brandiston reported them all, but recommended the lower boys, as being only reluctant accessories, to mercy—the stern rebuke and severe sentence of the head master, belong to the secret history of St. Anselm’s.

But in the house the question was, How had old Brandiston got to know about the boxing?

It was a question more easily asked than answered. The first theory was that he must have derived his information from the butler or one of the servants. But upon inquiry it came out that the butler had himself been in total ignorance of the boxing, and it was in the highest degree improbable that, if he had been ignorant of it, it could have been known to any other servants. The secret had been well kept—and yet had leaked out. But if the traitor was not a servant he must be a boy; for that some traitor there had been nobody doubted. The boys argued that ‘Old Brandiston would never have come into the house at that hour and gone straight to No. 3 if he had not been told what was going on there; besides, he looked as if he expected to come upon it.’ At last the suggestion was made—it was impossible to say by whom—that the only boy who could have ‘peached’[126] was Eversley. It was remembered that he would of course entertain a strong conscientious objection to Sunday boxing. It was remembered, too, that he had evinced a great dread of boxing when it was proposed before, and had begged to be excused it; but Tracy had insisted upon him sparring, and he had been a good deal ‘bruised’ by a bigger boy. And then a small boy, Thornton or some other, testified to having seen him come out of Mr. Brandiston’s study, or somewhere near the study as if he had just come out of it, that very morning.

This was the sort of evidence upon which the boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house, or at least the majority of them, including all the lower boys, decided that Gerald Eversley deserved to be branded as a ‘sneak.’ But boys are bad judges of evidence. It is possible that they are not above forming their opinion first and supporting it by evidence afterwards. But the evidence, such as it was, was not put before Gerald; he did not hear it, did not know of it; he had no opportunity of meeting and refuting it; it was bruited about, it passed from mouth to mouth, being exaggerated as it passed, and poor Gerald became conscious that a painful unpopularity was descending upon him like a cloud, without at first understanding how it had sprung up. Boys in the house turned away from[127] him. In Hall there was a gap on his right hand and on his left. Harry Venniker did not out him, but Gerald thought he was cooler than usual.

‘But, my dear boy,’ said Mr. Selby, ‘what in the world made the boys fix upon you?’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ was the reply; ‘but you see, sir, I’m not popular like Venniker.’

There was a gleam of fire in Mr. Selby’s eyes at the thought of the injustice which this innocent boy was suffering at his schoolfellows’ hands.

Is it only among public-school boys, Mr. Selby, that unjust suspicions arise and spread themselves and poison life? Does not human nature all the world over possess a strange faculty of seeing what it wishes to see, and not seeing what it wishes not to see? and what is harder than to overcome prejudice, all the more when it is blindly unreasonable?

Had Mr. Selby been a man of the world, it would have been no surprise to him that public opinion in the school should form so quickly and so cruelly against Gerald Eversley. As it was, he said only ‘Well, never mind about popularity; that is not the great thing.’ And he added solemnly, as if speaking to himself, ‘The blackest crime in history was the act of one who wanted to be popular;’ then aloud, ‘But was there any ground at all for the supposition[128] that you would tell Mr. Brandiston about the boxing?’

‘No, sir,’ replied Gerald; ‘only once before when I was made to box, they saw I could not bear it. You know, sir, I’m no good at games, like Venniker; and some of them laughed when I was “punished,” as they call it, and then the other boy hit out at my face worse than ever. And this time it was on Sunday, and it’s wrong to box on Sunday, isn’t it, sir?’

‘Certainly it is wrong,’ said Mr. Selby; ‘but it is worse to make small boys box who don’t like it.’ Then he added, after a pause, ‘But you are sure Mr. Brandiston cannot have heard of the boxing, directly or indirectly, through you?’

‘Yes, sir,’ cried Gerald, talking up, ‘quite sure.’

‘You didn’t speak to anybody about it?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then I will clear you, my dear Eversley,’ said Mr. Selby, emphatically, ‘I will clear you.’

And with one gentle pressure of his hand upon Gerald’s shoulder, he left the library.

Gerald’s heart felt lighter; he took up his book again, and read.

Mr. Selby’s action was simple, yet not free from difficulty. It was clear that, if Gerald Eversley’s tale[129] was true, as Mr. Selby fully believed it to be, the one person who must know the truth of it, the one person who could set him right in the eyes of the house, was Mr. Brandiston.

To Mr. Brandiston, therefore, Mr. Selby resolved to go. The resolution demanded more courage than might be supposed. For Mr. Brandiston, priding himself, as has been said, upon the excellence of his house, was known to be extremely impatient of all interference with his administration of it. If it was true that he did not mind punishing his boys himself, it was not less true that he minded other masters punishing them. Any criticism of his house, any censure or dispraise of it, he resented. He liked to find out the faults of his house (supposing there were any) for himself; he did not like to be told of them. And the long years of his mastership at St. Anselm’s had rendered him a little vain of his experience. He was apt to quote it as an argument in the presence of younger masters. But experience is not an argument; it is not even a guarantee of prudent conduct; it is the most overrated of the virtues—nay, it is not a virtue, for it makes the wise better, but it may make the foolish worse.

It was therefore with no slight hesitation that Mr. Selby sought a favourable opportunity of referring[130] to the subject of the Sunday boxing in Mr. Brandiston’s house. He approached it from the side of Gerald Eversley’s unhappiness. Mr. Brandiston had not noticed that he was unhappy; but he said that some boys would be unhappy anywhere. When he found that Mr. Selby was leading up to a subject which was naturally distasteful to him as a house-master, he interrupted him, saying, ‘I tell you what it is, Selby. When you have been a schoolmaster as long as I have, you will think twice before you begin trying to set other masters’ houses in order.’ Still he listened to Mr. Selby’s burning words. It was repugnant to his sense of justice that a boy in his house should be left to labour under wholly unmerited suspicion. He admitted at once that Gerald Eversley had not been the source of his information. As being a man of experience, he did not reveal what the source of his information had been. But he gave Mr. Selby to understand that, if he would leave the matter alone, it should be set right. Mr. Selby was more than content. So long as Gerald Eversley was delivered from unpopularity, he cared not who might enjoy the credit of the deliverance. That same night Mr. Brandiston summoned the head boy of his house into his study.

‘Powis,’ he said, when the door was shut, ‘I hear[131] there is an impression in the house that it was Eversley who told me about the boxing on Sunday.’

‘Yes, sir,’ answered Powis. ‘I believe the boys do think so.’

‘Has anything been done to him by the Sixth Form?’ asked Mr. Brandiston.

‘No, sir,’ said Powis, ‘not by the Sixth Form, but I heard one or two fellows talking against him, and I am afraid he has had rather a bad time of it.’

‘Well, then,’ continued Mr. Brandiston, ‘I should like you to know and to let it be known in the house that he had nothing whatever to do with it.’

‘Certainly, sir,’ said Powis. ‘I am very glad. I don’t think the boys would have been so hard on him, only he is such a queer fellow, they can’t make him out.’

‘Nor can anybody else, I think, Powis,’ Mr. Brandiston replied. ‘But it would not be creditable to the house to victimise an innocent boy.’

‘No, sir,’ said Powis, and he went away.

News travels swiftly in a boarding house; and before the lights went out that night it was known to every one of Mr. Brandiston’s boys that Gerald Eversley was not the ‘sneak’ who had revealed the Sunday boxing to Mr. Brandiston.

One or two of the baser spirits, such as Tracy,[132] muttered that his innocence had not been conclusively established, forgetting that the suspicion of his guilt had not been established at all. But for the house generally the acquittal pronounced by the Sixth Form to whom Powis had reported Mr. Brandiston’s words, was sufficient.

As Harry Venniker was undressing that night, he said, ‘Eversley.’

Gerald looked up.

‘I’m awfully glad,’ continued Harry, ‘that you’re cleared. The house was pretty well down upon you, I can tell you, and upon my word it looked bad; but I told them I didn’t believe you would “peach.”’

So ended Gerald’s first trial. Mr. Selby, meeting him soon afterwards in the street, stopped to ask if it was all right, and when he heard that it was, smiled and said only ‘God bless you, Eversley.’

The secret of Mr. Brandiston’s information was never disclosed.

It will be believed that Gerald’s return from school to Kestercham for the holidays succeeding his first term was eagerly anticipated by Mr. Eversley. It is no figurative expression to say that he counted the days to it. He would, perhaps, have been ashamed to own that, when Gerald went away to St. Anselm’s, he did what is more commonly done by schoolboys in anticipation of their holidays than by their parents, i.e., he placed upon the desk in his study a calendar showing all the days from the time of his departure to his return, and every night, before he went to bed, carefully drew his pencil through the number of the day that was verging to its close with a feeling of thankfulness in his heart that he was so much nearer to the longed-for reunion. For if Gerald had been lonely in his school life, he had not been so lonely as his father at home. He had exchanged his home for[134] other scenes and interests; he had companions, if not friends, at his side; but his father, left at home, found nobody to fill the place of his son. The second Mrs. Eversley, as her family grew up, became increasingly occupied with domestic affairs; there was even a danger that her ‘good works’ would be neglected; nor had she ever been the centre of his hopes, as Gerald was.

Gerald’s letters, which arrived every Tuesday morning, were a never-ceasing spring of interest to Mr. Eversley. There was no post-office at Kestercham; the letters were brought by a carrier who walked from Wickeston. If he walked briskly, he ought to arrive at the vicarage before breakfast; but he was rather a loquacious person, and, having a large and not very prosperous family, was apt to linger at the cottages and shops of his acquaintances, or at other places, to lament the happiness of one whose domestic quiver was, through no fault of his own, unduly full—a happiness guaranteed (as he was wont to say) by sacred authority, and the more familiarly known to him from the circumstance of his acting on Sundays as parish clerk in Kestercham Church. Instead of ‘speaking with his enemies in the gate,’ Mr. Dawes (for that was the letter-carrier’s name) was not ashamed to be found speaking with his friends in the public-house. This garrulous dilatoriness was a[135] great annoyance to Mr. Eversley, who wanted his letters, and in the early part of Gerald’s school life went near to costing Mr. Dawes his official position in the parish church. On the Tuesday mornings when Mr. Dawes was behind (not his usual, but) his proper time, Mr. Eversley’s impatience would not suffer him to sit down to breakfast before the arrival of the post; but he would walk as far, or nearly as far, as the green gate to meet him and take the letters—or one particular letter—from him; and Mrs. Eversley, as she waited for him—the most exact and punctual of men on other days—would see him walking slowly up the lane, poring eagerly, as if he had no other thought in the world, over the big boyish characters of the letter which he held in his hand, and apparently unconscious of his home or wife or breakfast. On one such occasion she remarked to the parlour-maid, who was putting the poached eggs down to the fire to keep them warm, that ‘she believed her master cared for nothing and nobody but that boy.’ Sometimes Mr. Eversley read the letters or parts of them to his wife; but always he numbered them, as he had numbered the first, on the envelopes and put them away carefully in his desk. The letters themselves were not altogether unworthy of Mr. Eversley’s devoted attention. They were frank[136] natural letters, full of the details which are so wearisome if the heart of the reader is not at one with his who writes, but when they are at one, so delightful. Gerald related whatever interested him, and all that possessed an interest for him interested his father. Perhaps they differed a little from the ordinary letters of schoolboys, and were not the less attractive, by their freshness, as exhibiting the sense of wonderment or surprise which public-school life aroused in the boy who had never known anything like it before. There is always a charm in the narrative of one who observes the phenomena of Nature or Life as if no one had observed them before him. It is the charm of Homer’s similes. Mr. Eversley noticed with the keenest pleasure that the letters showed no sign of alienation from the circumstances of thought and habit at home. Gerald manifested all his old interest in the life of Kestercham. He asked many questions, not only about his family, but about the church and its congregations, about the Harvest Thanksgiving Service which was held at the end of October, about the farmers and their affairs, especially about Mr. Seaford’s horses, and whether the village pond had dried up during the drought, and how many sixpences his father (as his custom was) had paid the school children for the discovery and destruction of wasps’ nests.

[137]

The letters, too, were full and candid in their account of St. Anselm’s. One incident, as this story has shown, Gerald did not relate to his father, and his father was never informed of it. But the common events of daily life, the lessons, the games, the books read in the library, the half-holidays, the meals, the fagging, his place in form, his association with Harry Venniker, ‘the son of Lord Venniker,’ the decoration of their room, their conversation, the names of the masters, of those especially with whom he came into personal contact, Mr. Brandiston’s words and doings, all carefully recorded, were delineated with the simple confidence that, as they were supremely interesting to the writer, so would they equally be to his correspondent. Nor did it surprise Mr. Eversley that Gerald should experience some slight unhappiness in the early days of school life; he looked upon it as a part of the discipline which the children of God are called to endure in the world. But nothing pleased him so much as the spirit in which Gerald spoke of the pleasure that he found in the chapel services, and most of all in Dr. Pearson’s sermons, from which he would sometimes quote passages or phrases. Mr. Eversley did not feel quite so happy about the sermons themselves. They did not appear to be always what he would call ‘Gospel sermons,’ instinct with the sentiments[138] of human depravity, divine redemption, and eternal judgment. But Mr. Eversley hoped for the best.

When Gerald was coming home to spend his first holidays, it was a question whether he or another boy who had been his rival all through the term would come out head of his form in the examination at the end of it. He had written home several times about his chance of winning the highest place; and his father had replied, urging him not to be disappointed if he were second, as he ‘would do his best,’ and ‘the issue was in God’s hand,’ but plainly showing—he was too simple a man for disguise—how great his own longing was that he should be first. The list would not be read out until the morning of the day on which he came home. He would reach X—— about four o’clock in the afternoon. It was arranged that Mr. Eversley should go not all the way to X———he was prevented from doing so by some parochial duty—but to a little hill about halfway between Kestercham and X——, from which a view of the train, as it speeded by, was easily obtained; he was to be there in time for the train, and Gerald, if he were first in his form, was to wave his pocket-handkerchief from the window of his carriage; if not, there was to be no sign. It was a bitter day,[139] the snow lay upon the ground; but Mr. Eversley was at his post, waiting fully half an hour for the train. As it sped by, a white handkerchief waved in the cold wind. Mr. Eversley thought he could discern a happy boyish face half hidden behind it. He knelt down for a moment in the snow and gave God thanks. It was a bitter day, the winter was strong upon valley and wold; but the summer had come again to Mr. Eversley’s heart.

What rejoicings there were that night at Kestercham Vicarage! Gerald’s little sisters all sat up (except the baby) in honour of his home-coming. Mrs. Eversley’s sternness relaxed under the influence of the genial occasion, she kissed him with unusual warmth, looked him all over, and, while remarking that his clothes would need a good deal of mending, gave it as her opinion that he was ‘very much improved,’ and she ‘had never seen him look so gentleman-like.’ The servants, including the gardener, who was married and lived by the green gate, came in a body to welcome Master Gerald. And tea was hardly finished when the voice of Mr. Seaford was heard in the hall, inquiring if the vicar was within, and if ‘the young gentleman’ had got home safely ‘from that nasty ingin.’ For Mr. Seaford himself made it a rule not to travel by rail;[140] he firmly believed, and did not scruple to express his belief, that the locomotive engine was an invention of the Evil One; and by way of impressing his view upon his domestic circle, which was composed of Mrs. Seaford and an unmarried daughter—the same who played the harmonium in church—all the other members of his family being married and out in the world, he was fond of reading aloud on the winter evenings a detailed account of some terrible railway accident which had lately occurred, enriching it with a stirring commentary of his own, which was not calculated to mitigate its horror. The question addressed by Mr. Seaford to the maidservant in the hall would suggest that he imagined passengers by rail to occupy places on the engine; but, of course, he may have spoken inexactly. At all events, in the eyes of Mr. Seaford, Gerald’s safe return to Kestercham was not only a pleasure, but in some sense a surprise; he looked upon it as an instance of a special Providence. For Mr. Seaford’s own travels seldom extended beyond a drive in his brougham to attend the fortnightly market at Wickeston, or on rare occasions, and always under protest, with Mrs. Seaford to do some necessary shopping at X——.

Nothing would satisfy Mr. Eversley on the evening of Gerald’s return but that Mr. Seaford should stay[141] and drink a cup of tea at the vicarage, despite something of the nature of a protest from Mrs. Eversley, whose rigid adherence to the inviolable social distinction between the clerical and the agricultural classes seemed to be threatened with a serious assault. But Mr. Eversley’s enthusiasm was not to be gainsaid.

‘Now, Mr. Seaford,’ he exclaimed, ‘this is good of you. You must let Mrs. Eversley give you a cup of tea; you must indeed.’

‘My dear!’ interposed Mrs. Eversley, who foresaw an air of ‘commonness’ descending upon the house if a farmer like Mr. Seaford should be known to have taken a seat at her tea-table.

But Mr. Eversley would not hear of opposition; so his wife was fain to pour out the tea, and with her own orthodox hands present it to Mr. Seaford, who gulped it down, though it was so hot as almost to choke him, feeling a little awkward at the unwonted familiarity. He did not fail to inform his family, when he went home, that he had been invited to take tea at the vicarage, but he paid a delicate compliment to Mrs. Seaford by protesting that the tea was ‘nothin’ like his own home-brewed.’

But the cup of tea was not the only privilege accorded to Mr. Seaford on that memorable evening; for Mr. Eversley bade Gerald run upstairs and bring[142] down the prize which he had received as being head of his form, and Mr. Seaford, after inspecting it for some time with an air of enlightened admiration, returned it to its owner, observing that an intellect which yielded such a crop as that must have had ‘a pretty sight o’ manure.’ High farming and wide reading were parallel forms of cultivation in Mr. Seaford’s view.

Who will doubt that Mr. Eversley, when he retired to his study that night, lifted up his voice in reverent thanksgiving to the Eternal? He read the story of Joseph and his meeting his father in Egypt; it seemed appropriate to the occasion in his own life. Tears of joy were in his eyes as he read it. When at last he went upstairs, he could not resist the satisfaction of peeping into Gerald’s room just to see that all was well with him; the boy was asleep, sleeping as peacefully as on the morning when Mr. Eversley had stood over him with the telegram announcing his election to a scholarship at St. Anselm’s; he stooped down and kissed him. Oh! happy, blessed self-forgetfulness of love! We live two lives, our own and our children’s, and it is often in our children’s lives that we live most truly. What success that could have happened to Mr. Eversley would have given him as much pleasure as his son’s? What preferment in[143] Church or State would have been equal in value to that little volume that lay upon the drawing-room table with the arms of St. Anselm’s on its cover?

The old life at Kestercham seemed to revive the next morning. Once more Mr. Eversley in the morning sat in his study with Gerald at his side, though I think he found it necessary, more often than of old, to interrupt his work for the sake of putting questions which, if the truth must be told, were somewhat alien from the sermon upon which he was engaged. Once more when he visited his parishioners in the afternoon Gerald trudged at his side, and there was not a farmer or labourer whom they passed but wished the boy well, some remarking in their rough honest way that he ‘fared hearty,’ others that he ‘had grown wonderful,’ and others again that they were ‘right glad to see him back with all his larnin’ in little Kest.’ The people of Kestercham did not ‘hold with’ education, at least in Kestercham; they did not feel that the village of Kestercham stood in need of it; but they supposed that for the unfortunate outer world, whose affairs were in general not so well ordered, it was desirable, and perhaps even necessary. Once more, too, when Sunday came, Gerald accompanied his father to church, took his old seat in the vicarage pew in[144] the chancel, immediately behind the labourers and schoolchildren who formed the choir, and Mr. Eversley listened with grateful satisfaction to his young voice joining fervently, as of old, in the responses and hymns.

There was much to think of, much to talk of, it will be believed, in the long winter evenings of the first holidays. But the days and nights passed only too quickly, and still the father and the son found ever new topics of conversation. For conversation is not the conveying or receiving of knowledge, but the interchange of sympathetic feelings.

One of the topics to which Mr. Eversley referred in almost the earliest of their walks through the fields was the suspicion entertained against Gerald of having reported the Sunday boxing to Mr. Brandiston. Several letters about it had already passed between them. Gerald had not failed to tell his father of the kind part played by Mr. Selby. He was convinced, though he could not have proved, that he owed his deliverance from suspicion to Mr. Selby’s advocacy. Mr. Eversley had expressed the hope of being able some day to thank Mr. Selby personally for his kindness. But of the boxing on Sunday he spoke in emphatic terms. He looked upon it as a definite act of sin, the violation of an express divine commandment.[145] He regretted extremely that any boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house should have been guilty of it. He thought that the house, having been implicated in the sin, ought to make some sort of special atonement for it. But he accepted the suspicion which had lain upon Gerald as part of the discipline which the children of God are called to undergo in a wicked world. He was not anxious that Gerald should escape it; he was only anxious that he should bear it in the spirit of Christ. The story of Joseph, which was much in Mr. Eversley’s mind just then, afforded an example of unmerited accusation and of good resulting from it under Divine Providence.

But the subject on which Gerald talked most eagerly, and his father listened with the keenest interest, was his friendship with Harry Venniker. To his father Gerald descanted in terms of generous enthusiasm, and even more during later holidays than at first, upon the achievements and attractions of his boyish hero. Mr. Eversley heard him with somewhat mingled feelings. It was only a partial pleasure to him to learn that his boy’s heart had been so drawn out towards a schoolfellow. No doubt he appreciated the sympathy and protection which Gerald owed—more, perhaps, than he was aware of—to his robust and popular friend. It is possible, too,[146] that he felt a secret satisfaction in his boy’s connection with a member of the social class which he had himself always regarded with a distant and respectful veneration as being in some unexplained manner a necessary part of the constitution. But he could not conceal from himself that the friendship was not altogether free from danger. It might excite in Gerald’s mind ideas and ambitions which a country clergyman like himself could not hope to satisfy. It might render him indifferent to the narrow circumstances in which he had been brought up, and in which his father and his family were destined to live. It might—oh! painfullest thought of all!—it might alienate Gerald’s affection from himself. For deep down in Mr. Eversley’s mind there was a jealousy (though he himself understood it not) of whatever could come between his dear boy and himself. Nor could he be blind to the fact that Harry Venniker, though a good average Christian English boy, had not been trained in the strictly orthodox evangelical lines of the theology which ruled in Kestercham Vicarage.

Still, Gerald was so happy, so ardent, so enthusiastic in his friend’s favour, that Mr. Eversley would not have had the heart, even if he had had the wish, to interfere with the friendship. After all, as he[147] reflected, great and terrible is the responsibility of one who cuts a young soul adrift from the moorings of innocent friendship. Is not friendship sanctified by the Divine Example? Did not He whose life on earth is the model of all human lives say to His disciples in the most solemn hour of His soul’s history, ‘But I have called you friends’?

And for the present at least—I am speaking of the first holidays—none of the ill effects which Mr. Eversley apprehended as possible were seen in Gerald. He was still as frank and genuine as ever, as full of interest in all that made up the life of Kestercham. He seemed not to need, not to desire, any companionship but his father’s. He seemed to have no secrets from him. He showed him all his letters, and among them one or two from Harry Venniker. He consulted him upon all his doings at St. Anselm’s. He spoke with the same certainty as before of being a clergyman; it did not seem that any other calling presented itself to his mind. In a word, he was still the same simple, dutiful, religious Gerald as before. Mr. Eversley thanked God for that; it was all that he had wished and prayed to find.

So the first holidays passed, and so the succeeding holidays. It would not accord with the purpose of this story to say more of them. Gerald passed from[148] thirteen to fifteen or sixteen, and Mr. Eversley was conscious of no change, or of none such as caused him any disquietude. A developed character indeed, a deeper thoughtfulness (though discernible only when something called it out), a wider knowledge of human things, a multifarious information which at times surprised his father, a somewhat more critical tone in speaking of the school—these things Mr. Eversley saw or felt; but no moral or spiritual change—no change in his boy’s relation to himself. They had, in his own words, lived one life until Gerald went to St. Anselm’s; they lived, or he thought they lived, but one life still.

One morning, when Gerald was just sixteen, as he was sitting at breakfast with his father and Mrs. Eversley, the letters were brought in, and an envelope bearing a coronet upon it was handed to him. He recognised the handwriting at once; it was Harry Venniker’s; but, as he read the letter, a flush mantled upon his cheek. The flush did not escape Mr. Eversley.

‘What is it, Gerald?’ he said; ‘I see there is something important in your letter.’

‘It’s from Venniker,’ was Gerald’s reply, and he passed the letter to his father.

The letter, after various allusions to the affairs of[149] school life, and to a certain ‘spree’ which Harry had been enjoying in the holidays, went on to say that Harry’s mother wished him to ask if Gerald could come and spend a few days at Helmsbury before going back to St. Anselm’s; she had heard so much about him (Harry said), but had never seen him, and being an invalid, and unable to bear the journey to St. Anselm’s, she was afraid her only chance of making his acquaintance lay in the hope that he would give them the pleasure of his company at Helmsbury. ‘Mind you come,’ added Harry on his own account; ‘this is an awfully jolly country, and we can give you a mount if you like; and if you don’t care about shooting, there is Ross Abbey and Sedgefield within a drive, and you can go there with Ethel.’

At the time when this letter was written Harry Venniker and Gerald Eversley were not living on quite the same terms of intimacy as before. The progress of school life had parted them a little from each other; they were no longer occupants of the same room. But Gerald, being now in the Lower Sixth Form, enjoyed the privilege of having breakfast and tea in his own room, and of inviting a friend, whenever he wished, to share them with him. It is needless to say that that friend was always, or almost[150] always, Harry Venniker. The friendship between them was thus maintained in its integrity, and Gerald had the happiness of reflecting that he was able to confer a slight favour while receiving so many. There was also a tacit understanding that they should, if possible, go for a walk together on Sundays—how many school friendships have been consecrated by the happy rule of Sunday walks!—or, if the weather was too bad for a walk, that they should meet for a long talk in the room of one of them. Thus the friendship, so vital to them both, continued. It was in a sense even purified, as being free from the petty frictions and bickerings which are the incidents of great and constant propinquity, which sometimes occur, it is said, even between husband and wife. Harry and Gerald did not now need to meet unless they chose; but their meetings were the more highly valued. Perhaps, however, it was because they saw less of each other during the term that Harry had thought of asking Gerald to his home in the holidays. There was much talk in Kestercham Vicarage at breakfast and afterwards about the unexpected invitation to Helmsbury Hall. Mr. Eversley and his wife were at one in assuming that it could not be refused. Mr. Eversley had once or twice—not oftener—been invited to dinner with a noble lord who possessed a[151] mansion (to which he seldom came) in the neighbouring parish of Wickeston—it was known as Wickeston Manor—and who owned a great part of the land in Kestercham, and he had always looked upon the invitations as commands. The feudal feeling for the great lords, which is dying out among the farmers and agricultural labourers, will, I think, find its last resting-place in the breasts of the country clergy. Mr. Eversley anticipated the visit to Helmsbury with some anxiety; for might it not exalt Gerald’s ideas above his station? He reminded him that all men were equal in the sight of God. Mrs. Eversley opined that the visit would give him ‘polish,’ though she exhorted him to be on his guard against ‘the world.’ However, the result, which had been visible enough from the first, was that Gerald wrote, and Mr. Eversley revised, a letter, saying how grateful he was to Lord and Lady Venniker for the honour done to him, and that he would gladly come in the week before returning to St. Anselm’s.

Such arduous and absorbing questions as the clothes he must wear on week-days and on Sunday, the money he must take with him (as if he would be expected to pay a subscription every day), the style of language he must adopt, and the attitude he must assume, towards his hosts having been settled at last to the satisfaction of Mr., and still more of Mrs.,[152] Eversley, Gerald was put into the little carriage with the old grey mare and driven to X——, where he was to take the train for London; after that he was to take a cab and drive across London and so catch the train to Helmsbury. Mr. Eversley accompanied him to the station at X——, and took leave of him with the remark that wherever he was he would (Mr. Eversley felt sure) behave like a gentleman and a Christian.

Gerald Eversley’s stay at Helmsbury was limited to a week. During that week he wrote as many as five letters home. Mr. Eversley noticed that after the first two letters, in which he described the size and grandeur of the house, especially its picture-gallery with the works of many artists whose names he had never heard of, but one or two masterpieces—a Murillo and a Titian—that awoke strange memories and imaginations in his mind, and the organ in the hall, Gerald referred more frequently to Lady Venniker than to anyone else. Her delicacy of health prevented her entertaining many guests. Lord Venniker and Harry and such friends as were with them spent the days in sport, so that Gerald (whose defective eyesight would have disqualified him for sport, had his inclination led him to it) was left for a good many hours to the study of books in the great library—a privilege[153] exceeding his highest expectations—and to the society of Lady Venniker. Once, but only once, he mentioned Miss Venniker, as a beautiful girl, rather like Harry, but with softer and more sensitive features than his.

The transition from the simple country vicarage, where his step-mother would often lend a helping hand in laying the cloth or clearing away, to the ancestral home of a noble family, with its army of male and female servants, could not but impress, and might easily have disturbed, the mind of a boy less unworldly than Gerald Eversley. But Lord and Lady Venniker, though so different in character, were alike in possessing the exquisite tact which prevents wealth from being felt as a burden, or rank from appearing in the light of a reproach. They soon made Gerald feel at his ease. Instead of reminding him of the points of difference in his life and theirs, they drew out whatever was sympathetic between them. They understood the art of leaving him alone. It is only when the guests feel bound to be amused and the host feels bound to amuse them, that life in a country house becomes intolerable.

Gerald took several drives with Lady Venniker, who was able to go out sometimes in the summer months, and on one of these an incident occurred which formed a bond of union between them. They were[154] returning from a drive to Ross Abbey and were nearing a cottage which belonged to one of Lord Venniker’s tenants, when at the turning of the road, near the foot of the hill, a little girl, attracted by the sound of the carriage, ran out of the wicket-gate at the entrance to the cottage-garden and came, as it seemed, actually under the horses’ feet. Lady Venniker, seeing what was inevitable, gave a faint scream, and fell back in the carriage as if in a swoon. Gerald, who dreaded what the effect of the shock might be on one so delicate, turned to her.

‘Never mind me,’ she said in a low voice, ‘look after the child.’

The coachman had pulled the horses to the side of the road, and the child lay in the middle, screaming. The footman had already descended from the box and was standing by her side, doing nothing, as the way of servants is in an emergency. Gerald got out of the carriage and passed his hand rapidly over the child’s body. It seemed that when he touched her left leg, her screaming grew worse. He told Lady Venniker that he was afraid one leg was broken, but that the child was as much frightened as injured.

Neither the father nor the mother of the child was in the cottage. Gerald said he would stay with the child until one of them came back. By this time she[155] was screaming less convulsively, though she continued to lay her hand on the injured leg. Lady Venniker, whose face was deadly pale, said she would drive for the doctor, whose house was three miles distant. The evening was closing in, and there was a chilly feeling in the air; but she insisted upon fetching the doctor herself. Meanwhile Gerald, who with the footman’s help had carried the child into the cottage, sat by her side, doing his best to soothe her pain. A neighbour, who had seen the accident, was sent for the child’s mother; but she was in the harvest-field, and it was some time before she could be found. When the doctor arrived in the carriage with Lady Venniker he pronounced that the child had sustained a fracture of the tibia—probably one of the horses had trodden upon her leg—but it was a simple fracture, and he did not doubt it would do well. Lady Venniker and Gerald drove back to Helmsbury; neither of them spoke a word. Lady Venniker looked very ill. She retired at once to her room, and did not appear any more that night. Next morning she was said to be suffering from the combined effects of cold and fright, and the doctor expressed anxiety about her. It was some days before she left her bed. But she did not fail to send each day some article of food or dress, and a kindly message with it, to the mother of the[156] suffering child. Gerald did not see her any more; for on the second day after the accident he left Helmsbury. But she sent him a message through her daughter, to say that she was better, and to thank him for his kindness to the child and to herself; she hoped he would come to Helmsbury again.

Gerald, upon his return to Kestercham, learnt to his surprise that the news of his adventure was already known. It had got into the papers, as affecting Lady Venniker, and most improbable and grotesque accounts of it were in the air. That he had carried a peasant’s child out of a burning house; that he had saved a child from drowning; that he had been wounded in warding off a blow aimed at Lady Venniker; that he had gallantly stopped her ladyship’s runaway horses—these and other versions of the story were current. He found himself the hero of the hour in Kestercham and the neighbouring parishes. At one of the clerical parties to which Mr. Eversley occasionally went and took his son, the conversation turned almost exclusively upon his feat of daring. The clergy and their wives and daughters were forward in congratulating him. A comical incident connected with this party may be mentioned here; for Mr. Eversley and he sometimes laughed over it in after-days. Among the guests at the party was an[157] elderly clergyman, so deaf that it was practically impossible for him to join in the general conversation. He understood, however, that something unusual was astir. To him, as he sat in a corner of the room, Mr. Eversley made his way, partly out of kindness and partly to escape the embarrassment of so much talking about Gerald.

‘A fine afternoon, Mr. Drummond,’ he said to the old gentleman, raising his voice a little, for there was a buzz of conversation everywhere.

‘What?’ said the old gentleman, in a state of excitement.

‘I only said it was a fine afternoon,’ repeated Mr. Eversley.

‘What do you say?’ cried the old gentleman. ‘I cannot hear what you say. You must speak louder.’

Mr. Eversley repeated his striking observation once more. But the old gentleman did not catch what was said; so, raising his voice to a stentorian pitch, he called to his wife who was at the other end of the room.

‘Harriet, come here, my dear. Mr. Eversley is making some observation; it is important, and I cannot hear what he says.’

By this time the attention of the whole room had[158] been attracted to the old gentleman and Mr. Eversley, and there was a breathless silence as Mrs. Drummond made her way across the room and said, with a pleasant smile,

‘Will you be so kind as to tell me what it was that you said to my husband? He is so very deaf, but he cannot bear not hearing what is said to him, and he will never be satisfied now until he is made to hear what it was.’

Mr. Eversley, his face turning crimson at the predicament in which he was placed, repeated in a low tone that he had casually remarked it was a fine afternoon.

Mrs. Drummond turned to her husband, who was exhibiting every sign of impatient curiosity, and, making a speaking-trumpet of her hands, shouted with great deliberation:

‘My—love—Mr. Eversley—says—it is—a fine—afternoon.’

A burst of laughter from all quarters of the room attested the merriment of the company at learning the remark which had excited this visible commotion. The old gentleman alone did not seem amused; he turned away, muttering something which sounded like ‘Why did not he tell me that before?’ But the laughter, and the incident which gave rise to it,[159] diverted the thoughts of all who were present from Gerald’s adventure; it was not referred to any more.

In this way is reputation won, and in this way too, perhaps, it is lost.

Gerald Eversley’s first act upon returning to school was to inquire after the health of Lady Venniker. He learnt from Harry that she had not suffered permanent injury from the fright experienced at seeing the girl run under the horses’ feet, and that her recovery had been accelerated when she knew that the girl was getting well of her fractured leg and would soon be able to walk about again. ‘It was lucky, old man,’ said Harry, ‘that you were in the carriage with her; I don’t know what would have happened if she had been alone.’

It was the Michaelmas term of 186—, three years since the two boys had come to St. Anselm’s. There was good hope that, before the term came to an end, Mr. Brandiston’s house would be the cock house at football. By a strange chance the house was drawn in the first round of the matches against one[161] of the two houses which were expected to be its most dangerous rivals; in fact, the prevailing opinion of the school was that if the house was successful in its first match it would be successful in all. The match was played on a fine afternoon at the end of October. A stiff wind was blowing down the ground. Sometimes, when the two sides in a football match are very evenly balanced, the winning of the toss is decisive of the issue, for it gives one side the right of beginning play with the wind at its back, and as the goals are gained alternately by the two sides, the side which is playing with the wind having always the advantage, the side which obtains the first goal wins the match. The side opposed to Mr. Brandiston’s won the toss. The match was hotly contested from the ‘kick-off’ to the finish. Every one who has been a spectator at a house football match in a public school knows the volleys of cheering which attend the efforts of the two sides, and the torrents of rebuke, invective, exhortation, applause, poured out at critical moments of the game upon the players. Nowhere perhaps in human life is so much irresponsible advice given as at such a time, and nowhere is it so futile. Great indeed was the excitement on this day. It was a point of honour with all the members of the two contending houses to be present at the match,[162] and to make their presence known by loud vociferation. According to custom, the boys of Mr. Brandiston’s house stood on one side of the match-ground, and the boys of the rival house on the other side, their feelings being presumably too much excited to allow of their coming without peril to closer quarters. Loud and eager were the cries as the balance of the match shifted this way and that—while Zeus, in Homeric phrase, ‘held the cords of battle even’—such as ‘Play up,’ ‘Well played,’ ‘Back up, will you?’ ‘Off side,’ ‘Well fouled,’ first one player and then another being held to cover himself with an eternal weight of glory or of ignominy. At last there remained only ten minutes—eight minutes—six minutes to the call of ‘time.’ The score of the two houses stood at three goals each. The wind had somewhat abated. A fine rain was beginning to fall. It became clear that whichever side obtained the next goal, if any were obtained, would win the match.

Not to have been educated at a public school is not to understand the thrilling, enthralling excitement of such a moment. In some sense a house match is more exciting than a match between rival schools; for all the players are intimately known to all the spectators, and every incident is criticised not only in itself, but in relation to the player who is[163] concerned in it. It would need the pen of a Thucydides depicting the scene in the great harbour at Syracuse to convey an idea of the conflicting emotions and expressions and the energetic actions by which the partisans of one house or the other testify their own vivid interest in the match. Nor is any occasion of human life fraught with reminiscences so terrible of mistakes that are made. Lifelong friendships have been formed—friendships, too, I am afraid, have not seldom been broken—by the events of a house match. It is difficult for the most Christian mind to forgive, quite impossible to forget, the mistake which lost the match. There are elderly gentlemen leading quiet respectable lives in remote parts of the country who cannot now meet after fifty years without exchanging words like these: ‘You remember that catch;’ ‘My dear fellow, why did you let that ball go through your legs?’

The youthful champions in Mr. Brandiston’s house match were not unaware of the great issue dependent upon their prowess. They performed untold feats of gallantry and daring. They ‘ran’ and ‘charged’ and ‘passed’ as if their lives, no less than their reputations, were at stake. Hardly more than three minutes of ‘time’ remained when the ball[164] was forced by Mr. Brandiston’s boys into the neighbourhood of the enemy’s goal, and one of the players attempting to ‘middle’ it sent it by a too violent kick a good way past the centre of the ground to a spot where the two players who would have the best chance of reaching it were Venniker and one of the ‘backs’ (as I think they are technically called) belonging to the opposite side. Both boys made for it amidst the cheers of the spectators. The ball bounded on towards the ‘back;’ he made ready to give it a mighty kick before Venniker was upon him; his leg flashed—it was literally a flash—in the air, and a loud shout rising from both sides of the ground—of exultation on one side, of indignation on the other—told that he had missed the ball. Whether it was that Harry Venniker was so close upon him as to disturb his aim, or that he did not allow for the unevenness of the surface along which the ball was rolling, he missed it and fell sprawling on the ground. It was but the work of a moment for Harry to ‘dodge’ past him and turn the ball in the direction of the goal. So sudden, so unexpected had been the manœuvre that in a straight line between Harry and the goal stood the goalkeeper only. ‘Shoot, shoot!’ was the cry raised instantly by Mr. Brandiston’s boys. But Harry was still too far from the goal to[165] be sure of success. He gave the ball a short sharp kick which brought it into line with the goal-post; the goalkeeper hesitated for a moment—that fatal moment!—uncertain whether to run forward and ‘charge’ him, or to fall back upon the goal and take the chance of being able to stop the ball when it was kicked; Harry followed close upon the ball, steadied himself for an instant, and then, just as three of his enemies were within a yard or two of him, kicked it hard, and full in view of all the spectators it passed clear over the goalkeeper’s head between the posts. There was a shout that rent the heavens. The spectators rushed upon the ground—for they knew there was no hope of resuming play—the members of Mr. Brandiston’s house clustering around the victorious eleven, most of all around Harry Venniker, applauding on the ground and all the way up the hill and along the street and through the courtyard into the house. It was a striking and inspiring sight. Boys are the only beings who know how to clap or cheer, all other clapping and cheering seems impotent after theirs, and Mr. Brandiston’s boys made full use of their knowledge. Mr. Brandiston himself, meeting Harry Venniker at the entrance to the house, remarked with more than his usual graciousness that he had done the house good service;[166] he added, ‘You will never be a greater person in life, Venniker, than you are to-day.’

Gerald Eversley, who was not often seen on the football field, had watched the match with an interest in which his zeal for Harry’s success overshadowed all other feelings; it was no surprise to him that Harry should become the hero of the hour, he felt a sort of reflected honour in the honour paid to his friend; he did not venture to offer him congratulations in the presence of the shouting throng, but as soon as Harry had retired to his room Gerald went to it and said, ‘Oh! how are you? Are you all right? How splendidly you played! I am so glad. All the school are talking about it.’

Harry Venniker shook hands with him, but said only, ‘Thanks, dear old fellow.’

Gerald thought he seemed weary.

Next morning Gerald was expecting him at breakfast, but he did not come; he sent word by a lower boy that he had a cold and a slight headache. Gerald went to see him in his room, but reported that he ‘did not look very bad.’ It seemed probable that he had stayed out in the rain too long, receiving his numerous congratulations, after the match, and had caught a chill; at all events that was the opinion of the captain of the football eleven, who, as being the[167] chief authority on football, was in the boys’ eyes equally an authority on health. The school doctor, who was called in to see him, spoke of his case as an ordinary cold, and said, if he were kept out of school for a day or two, he would be all right. Mr. Brandiston, though always punctual in writing to parents of boys who were ill, did not think it necessary to inform Lord Venniker of his son’s illness. In the evening, despite a slight rise of temperature, Harry was reported to be better; he inquired, with much interest, what house Mr. Brandiston’s had been drawn against in the second ‘ties’ of the house matches. But he passed an uneasy night, and when the doctor came in the morning he detected some symptoms of ‘lung trouble,’ and advised Mr. Brandiston to write to Lord Venniker, though not in such a way as to cause him anxiety. The doctor ordered Harry’s removal to the sick-room, which was at the top of the house, well separated from the boys’ rooms.

Harry was much worse next day, feverish and restless. It was clear that he was suffering from inflammation of the right lung. Lord Venniker was telegraphed for; he arrived in the evening.

Twenty-four hours later the other lung had been attacked. Sir William D——, the great London[168] specialist, who was called in, pronounced the patient’s condition to be critical.

After prayers that evening, Mr. Brandiston, addressing the house, said in a voice which betrayed the depth of his emotion, ‘I should like you all in your private prayers to-night to remember Venniker; he is very ill indeed, almost at the door of death.’ There was absolute silence even before he spoke these words—for the boys anticipated what he was going to say—and there was absolute silence afterwards. Tears rose to the eyes of not a few among the boys; but they brushed them quickly away. That Mr. Brandiston should speak in that manner—he who was so stern and self-controlled, and so seldom used the language of religion—made the case seem doubly critical. And Harry Venniker was so young, so popular.

Nowhere is the presence of sickness or death so awful as among the young. One whose spirit was not always serious has written of his own great loss: ‘O Death! thou hast right to the bold, to the ambitious, to the high and to the haughty; but why this cruelty to the humble, to the meek, to the undiscerning, to the thoughtless? Nor age, nor business, nor distress can erase the dear image from my imagination.[169] In the same week I saw her dressed for a ball, and in her shroud.’

To the old Death cometh as a friend. But to the young he is a stranger, a foe. His cold step is abhorrent to the joy, the motion, the strong, happy, buoyant life of youth. It is the sense of contrast which creates this painful feeling. Who is there that has passed from the sick-room where one boy lies tossing between death and life through the playing-fields where all the others are at their games, and has not marvelled that the sickness could be possible—or the play? In the chapel of one of the great public schools of England is a memorial tablet recording the name of a boy who died during his school life, to the eternal sorrow of his parents, and on it are the words: ‘Beside him they had neither son nor daughter.’ What a tale! what a tragedy is there!

And should Harry Venniker be cut off, the light of his parent’s home, the idol of his school? Was there no pity, no compassionateness for him? It was but five days since he had been seen, strong and beautiful, a hero among his comrades—and now! O Death, Death, is there no mercy with thee?

The boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house were touched with the sympathy of a new undreamt-of sorrow.[170] Their footsteps were hushed as they moved about the house, their voices stilled; though he, their schoolfellow, was far removed, and no sound of theirs would reach his ear, they felt instinctively that haste, noise, thoughtlessness, impatience would be ill-timed. It was observed that no one used an oath in the house during those days. Even the selfish and giddy seemed subdued. With full hearts they asked each day in the morning if the worst were past, and at night their loving solicitude shaped itself in such a prayer as this: ‘O Lord God, who art all-merciful, suffer him to live.’ But no boy prayed, or could have prayed, for him like Gerald Eversley.

The tragic nature of the situation was made more acute because Lady Venniker, whose health had become even more delicate than before, was peremptorily forbidden by her medical advisers to undertake the journey to St. Anselm’s. Harry longed for her presence with passionate intensity. More than once in his moments of delirium he was overheard to be murmuring ‘Mother.’ But she could not come to him. It was a bitter pang to her. It needed all Lord Venniker’s influence, as well as the authority of her medical advisers, to keep her at Helmsbury. After all, it may be doubted whether the anguish of being kept away from Harry’s bedside did not endanger[171] her life as much as any railway journey. But medical men are wise—and sometimes heartless.

Lady Venniker being left at Helmsbury, where her daughter remained as her companion, was wholly dependent upon the information sent to her from St. Anselm’s. Her husband wrote to her often. Mr. Brandiston wrote several times, though rather formally. But her most frequent correspondent in that anxious, torturing time was Gerald Eversley. In his own heartrending anxiety, quickening, as it did, his sympathetic intuitions, it occurred to him to seek the consolation of his sorrow in trying to console one yet more sorrowful than himself. He felt so much for Lady Venniker, especially as she was prevented from coming to St. Anselm’s, that he could not help informing her of his feeling. He wrote to her timidly and half-apologetically at first; but afterwards, as he found she welcomed his letters, with a larger freedom, telling her of the medical reports (though these she knew from others), of the hopes and fears of the school, of the boys’ sayings, of Harry’s popularity, of his own great love for him, what Mr. Brandiston had said, how Dr. Pearson had asked the prayers of the whole school in chapel, and had spoken in his sermon of the cloud which hung over it, and what a stillness of awe prevailed all over the[172] house. The unconscious pathos of the letters was a truer comfort to Lady Venniker than any assurance conveyed in them. Her daughter generally replied in her name, giving him her mother’s heartfelt thanks, and her own, for his thoughtfulness. Every day, morning and evening, the letters were sent. They were the simple natural outpourings of a sorrowing soul. But they created a sympathy—a sympathy that was destined to be of enduring value—between Lady Venniker and her son’s friend. She ceased to call him ‘Mr. Eversley;’ she called him ‘Gerald.’ ‘We feel,’ wrote Miss Venniker, ‘that you are indeed one of ourselves, from your love of our dear Harry, and we can never think of you as a stranger any more.’

The critical time—the time of intense anxiety—lasted eight days. In the course of them Gerald wrote once to his father, describing the ebb and flow of anxiety in the school—he would have written oftener but for his correspondence with Lady Venniker—and Mr. Eversley replied most tenderly, assuring him that he was daily ‘wrestling with the Lord in prayer’ for his friend’s recovery.

At last the turn came. The delirium ceased. The breathing grew less difficult. The dark cloud lifted from the house. The doctors pronounced that Harry was better; then, that there was no cause for[173] immediate anxiety about him; then, that he was out of danger; and, finally, that his recovery was only a question of time. When he was able to sit up in the bed, Gerald was allowed to see him, at first only for a few minutes, and afterwards for a longer time. Lord Venniker, who had been profoundly touched by the sympathy—all the more expressive because so silent—of the boys, and by Gerald Eversley’s in particular, felt able to leave St. Anselm’s, though it was understood that he would return to take Harry home as soon as his travelling was permitted.

Those were happy days, it will be believed, for Gerald Eversley. To see his friend brought back by slow steps from the brink of the grave was a holy joy to him. He watched with more than brotherly eagerness the signs of reviving health. Lord Venniker having now returned to Helmsbury, Miss Venniker came to spend a few days with Mr. and Mrs. Brandiston and to assist in nursing her brother. She and Gerald were thus thrown together; sometimes they were the only persons with him in the sick-room. Gerald looked with admiring surprise at her tenderness, her solicitude, her thoughtfulness, which seemed a little beyond her years, and her skill or tact in anticipating wants. His own life had not afforded him much insight into the ministering charities of[174] womanhood. But as Miss Venniker sat at her brother’s bedside, holding his hand in hers, smoothing his pillows from time to time, or whiling away the long, long hours with talks of home, her eyes, her whole being illumined with the light of loving sympathy, Gerald could think of nothing so beautiful, unless it were the vision that came to him sometimes in his morning dreams, and he felt within himself that he had seen, as it were, the face of an angel.

It was five weeks and three days from the great house match when Harry Venniker was able to be moved from St. Anselm’s. On the Sunday before, Dr. Pearson had offered public thanks in the chapel for his recovery. When the day of his departure arrived, the invalid carriage in which he was to travel all the way to Helmsbury was brought to the door of Mr. Brandiston’s house. Quite a knot of boys had gathered outside the house as Harry was lifted into the carriage, and his father and sister took their places in it at his side. Gerald Eversley stood among them. A warm pressure of his hand and a hearty ‘God bless you’ from Lord Venniker, and a sweet smile from Miss Venniker as she gave him her hand and whispered, ‘We can never thank you enough for all you have done. I will write to-morrow and tell[175] you how he has borne the journey,’ were the rewards of his devotion. Harry Venniker waved his hand to the boys. His eyes met Gerald’s with a glance of deep affection as the carriage drove away. The boys all raised their hats in respectful sympathy. Gerald Eversley turned on his heel, without a word, and went to his room. He was bereft of his friend for a time; and he was bereft of him—though he knew it not then—at the time when he would have the sorest need of his presence.

After Harry Venniker’s departure, life at St. Anselm’s for such brief part of the term as was left, resumed its usual tenor. The memory of errors and sorrows is but short-lived, among the young especially—nay, among all men. God be thanked that it is so; for if we remembered all the past, the present would be unendurable. We sigh at times for a greater power of remembering; it were better to give thanks for our power of forgetting. Time, with its softening, sanctifying grace—Time, that makes the green grass spring and the golden corn wave over fields that once were reddened with human slaughter—Time is the divinely appointed healer of all wounds.

Yet Gerald Eversley did not soon emerge from the shadow of the dark weeks through which he had[176] passed. He was as one who moves in an unseen world. Though there came to him good news of Harry’s convalescence, and at last a few lines written by Harry himself, he could not succeed in fixing his thoughts upon his ordinary duties. He became more dreamy than ever; his mind was ever far from the book that he held in his hand, and his place in form was so much below the first that Mr. Brandiston felt it necessary to send for him, to urge upon him the duty of using his time well and conferring credit upon the house, and to threaten him with punishment if his work in the coming examination did not make amends for his indolence in the term. Mr. Brandiston, though he made some allowance for Gerald’s failures during the time when the issue of his friend’s illness was trembling in the balance, was not a man capable of imagining or appreciating any romantic explanation of a long-continued indifference to classical scholarship. He told Gerald that, as he was himself going to take part in the examination of his form, he should be able to see what he was worth.

Mr. Brandiston’s method of dealing with his examination papers was (like all Mr. Brandiston’s habits) simple and precise. The papers were printed in London. They were forwarded to St. Anselm’s by[177] post in a carefully sealed packet. Mr. Brandiston would open the packet of papers when he was alone in his study, take out one paper in order to satisfy himself that there were no mistakes in the printing, count the number of the papers, divide them, if necessary, into several packets (also carefully sealed) for the use of such masters as might need them, then put back the paper which he had taken out into its packet, lock up all the papers in one of the drawers of his writing-table, of which he alone possessed the key, and leave them there until the day of examination. He kept the key of the writing-table in his purse. He had acted so for more than twenty years. He acted so now. Mr. Brandiston was not the master of Gerald Eversley’s form, but he was examining it in two subjects. One of these was Latin translation. The printed papers reached him in the usual way. It was not necessary to divide the papers into several packets; for he was going to sit with the form himself, and it was the only form to which the paper would be set. He took one paper (as usual) out of the packet, found that it was accurately printed, all his corrections of the proof having been made, and locked up the papers in his drawer.

This was done on Tuesday evening. The paper was to be set on Friday morning.

[178]

Late on Thursday night, when the boys had all gone to their rooms after supper, Mr. Brandiston opened the drawer containing the packet of papers, to assure himself that, when he wanted the papers next morning, he would find them there. It struck him, rightly or wrongly, that they were not arranged in his ordinary exact manner. He took them out. He counted them again. The number was—one short. There had been fifty when he counted before; there were forty-nine now. He repeated the counting as many as three times, but always with the same result. One paper was missing. He looked into the drawer again, ransacked it thoroughly; but it contained nothing, except some few copies of old examination papers which had been left there casually. He unlocked the other drawers of the writing-table and searched them all. It was no good.

Mr. Brandiston was in a quandary. Had he counted the number aright in the first instance? or had the printers, by mistake, sent only forty-nine? That was a possibility, but it was not improbable. He telegraphed early next morning to the firm of printers; the reply was that the number of papers sent had undoubtedly been fifty.

It seemed clear, then, to Mr. Brandiston that[179] some one must have come into his study during his absence and taken a paper out of the drawer. If so, it was presumably some one who was interested in learning the contents of the paper.

That being his conclusion, his thoughts turned, naturally, to the two boys in his house who were members of the form to which the paper would be set. One of them was Gerald Eversley, the other a very good boy named Pomfret.

Mr. Brandiston tried to recollect what had happened since the sealed packet of papers came into his hands. He remembered opening it and putting it into the drawer. He remembered, or he believed he remembered, that as he was putting the packet into the drawer, just before dinner, he was called away by a message from Mrs. Brandiston, who wanted to speak to him about the invitations to be sent out for a proposed party. He remembered, too, that between nine and ten o’clock on the Wednesday evening—the evening before this—he had gone out of his study for a few minutes, leaving the key of his writing-table in one of the drawers—not, indeed, in the drawer which contained the examination papers, but in another drawer on the opposite side of the table.

Then he began to ask himself whether any one[180] could have been in the study while he was not there. His study was a sanctum. It was not a place to which people went freely. A maidservant cleaned it out in the morning; but the cleaning was in some sense superficial, for it was as much as her life was worth to disturb Mr. Brandiston’s papers or letters. The same maidservant came in the evening during dinner to look at the fire and sweep up the grate. Except for these purposes no servant would naturally enter the study, unless it were the butler, and he only for the sake of seeing if Mr. Brandiston was there when a master or somebody else wanted him; for it was Mr. Brandiston’s rule that nobody was to be shown into the study, if he himself was not there. The study was the place where Mr. Brandiston interviewed the boys of his house; but it was understood that they must come and see him at fixed times—at nine in the morning, or after prayers at night—unless there were some exceptionally pressing reason for seeing him. Still it was always possible that a boy would enter the study during the day. Mrs. Brandiston no doubt might come there, though she did not in fact come often; but he did not associate his wife with the thought of the stolen paper.

As Mr. Brandiston cast his mind over the time that had elapsed since the Tuesday evening when he[181] received the papers, he could recall various interviews with masters and boys, but he did not think that they had entered the study while he was out of it. Any one making his way to the study from the boys’ part of the house must pass by the butler’s pantry. Accordingly Mr. Brandiston rang the bell, and asked the butler if he remembered seeing any boy go into his study or come out of it between nine and ten o’clock on the evening before.

The butler, a rather sententious person, said he remembered hearing two boys—there might have been more, but he was certain of two—knock at the study door during that part of the evening—he would not like to swear, but he felt sure it was between nine and ten—and he saw them go by the pantry, though he did not take particular notice of them. Being asked who the boys were, the butler hesitated a good deal—he was a man who did not like committing himself—but finally expressed his belief that they were ‘Mr. Venables’ (who was now the head of the house) ‘and that Mr. Eversley’ (the ‘that’ meant only that the butler, like the house in general, looked upon Gerald as a rather curious, distinct, inexplicable creature).

That was the first step in Mr. Brandiston’s investigation. It did not lead him far, but he went[182] to bed in some disquietude. He did not tell the butler the reason of his inquiry.

The next thing, as Mr. Brandiston considered, was to see whether the work of the examinees themselves would shed any light upon the mystery. The examination was held in the morning. As soon as Mr. Brandiston had collected the papers, he glanced with eager interest at Gerald Eversley’s. It was a brilliant performance. If it had been done by him honestly, it was a proof of remarkable knowledge. One particular expression in it struck Mr. Brandiston especially. In a passage of Cicero which he had set, occurred the words quodcunque in solum venit. Not a boy, as it proved, except Eversley, had translated them rightly. But he gave the exact modern equivalent for them—‘whatever is on the tapis.’

Still, Mr. Brandiston was only puzzled; circumstances, he could not help feeling, were suspicious, but Gerald Eversley, although undoubtedly eccentric, had the reputation of being an unusually conscientious, as well as an unusually clever, boy.

Mr. Brandiston, however, could not help reflecting that he had lately threatened him with the consequences of failing in his examination, and especially in his own paper. He resolved, therefore, to[183] ascertain, if possible, whether Gerald Eversley had actually been in his study on the critical Wednesday evening. To avoid exciting suspicion, he sent first for the other boy whose name had been mentioned by the butler. Venables admitted at once that he had come to the study, but said he had come to bring Mr. Brandiston the list of the ‘placings’ of all the boys in the house. The ‘placings’ were the positions which all the boys occupied in their forms according to weekly order; and it was the regular duty of the head of the house to bring the list of them to Mr. Brandiston, though in this week they had been brought on an earlier day than usual, owing to the beginning of the examination. Venables added that, as he had not found Mr. Brandiston in the study, he had taken the list away; he offered to fetch it at once.

The butler having now been proved right in regard to one of the boys whom he professed to have seen going to the study, Mr. Brandiston thought it well to assume that he was right in regard to the other. Accordingly, when Gerald Eversley came into the room Mr. Brandiston addressed him in these words:

‘Eversley, will you tell me why you came to the study on Wednesday evening between nine and ten?’

[184]

Gerald looked surprised.

‘You know you did come, Eversley,’ continued Mr. Brandiston, assuming a confidence which was not altogether his at heart. This is not an uncommon way of some masters.

‘Yes, sir,’ answered Gerald.

Mr. Brandiston felt relieved.

‘Will you tell me,’ he said, ‘what you came for?’

Gerald hung his head down for a moment; then he replied,

‘Please, sir, I came to ask if I might “stay out.”’

(To ‘stay out,’ it must be explained, in the language of schoolboys, is to be absent from school with the permission of the house master.)

‘What was the matter with you?’ asked Mr. Brandiston.

‘I had a headache, sir,’ was the answer.

‘Did you go and see Mrs. Podmore’ (the matron) ‘as I was not in?’ said Mr. Brandiston.

‘No, sir,’ replied Gerald.

‘Why not?’ asked Mr. Brandiston.

No reply.

It was not known to Mr. Brandiston that Gerald Eversley and Mrs. Podmore had been for some time sworn enemies. Mrs. Podmore was ‘a woman with a temper.’ Most good servants, it is said, have bad tempers.

[185]

Mr. Brandiston proceeded.

‘Did you, in fact, “stay out” next morning?’

‘No, sir,’ answered Gerald.

‘But how was that,’ said Mr. Brandiston, ‘if you were ill?’

‘Please, sir, I felt better in the morning,’ was the answer.

‘Did you tell any one on Wednesday night that you felt ill?’ asked Mr. Brandiston.

‘No, sir,’ answered Gerald; but as he answered, his face became suffused with a deep blush. There was a rather awkward pause. Then Mr. Brandiston put a final question by way of disguising his real object.

‘I suppose you went straight back from the study, when you saw I was not here, to your own room?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Gerald, still blushing.

‘That is all I want, Eversley. You may go now. Good night.’

Gerald closed the door and went quietly away.

Mr. Brandiston remained plunged in profound meditation.

It was a strange story, he thought, that this boy had told him. There was nothing, indeed, to show that it was not true, but it was strange. Boys who seek permission to absent themselves from school,[186] as being ill, are not generally anxious to conceal their illness; they are more apt to exaggerate than to conceal it. Why, then, had Gerald Eversley not informed anybody that he was ill? What was the meaning of this sudden attack, this sudden recovery? It was strange, very strange. Mr. Brandiston was a man of experience; he flattered himself that he knew boys; he was confident that something was wrong. Then the blush, the hesitation in Gerald’s manner—they were suspicious. An honest boy had no reason to blush; why should he not look his master in the face and give him a straightforward answer? Mr. Brandiston was a man of experience; he flattered himself that he knew boys; he confessed he did not like that blush.

Mr. Brandiston knew boys; but did he know this boy? That was the question. Rules of behaviour, like rules of law, have their exceptions. Had he been familiar with Mr. Darwin’s scientific observations on the expression of human emotions, he would have understood that people do not always blush on the same occasions or for the same reasons. It is an error to assume that a blush is invariably a sign of guilt; it may be a sign of conscious rectitude or wounded honour. There are those who are pained as much by the suspicion of guilt as by detection in[187] guilt. There are natures that feel a doubt as a stab, and resent insinuation as a stain. Was it so here?

Two things only were settled in Mr. Brandiston’s mind. One was that he would probe the mystery of the stolen paper to the bottom. The other was that, if possible, he would probe it himself alone. He felt that it would be unjust to Gerald Eversley—may it not be added, unjust to Mr. Brandiston’s house?—to let anybody else know his suspicion of foul play. It was pretty obvious that the only chance of throwing light upon the mystery lay through Gerald Eversley himself. If he were guilty, he might be induced to make a confession, or there might be found in his room some evidence of his guilt. Mr. Brandiston resolved therefore—I do not know whether his resolution would be justified in the circumstances by schoolboy public opinion or not—to make an examination of his room late at night. It was past midnight when he entered the room. Gerald was fast asleep. Mr. Brandiston surveyed the room. He looked at a blotting-case that was lying on the table, and some papers, one of them the very examination paper done the day before; took down one or two books, a Cicero or a part of Cicero among them, from the shelves; picked up some fragments of paper that had fallen to the floor, and read them carefully.[188] There was nothing. Mr. Brandiston, not wishing to awake Gerald, felt he must retire baffled, yet somewhat relieved. Gerald Eversley was not a favourite of Mr. Brandiston; but he was after all a member of Mr. Brandiston’s house, and the good name of the house was involved in the proof of his innocence. It was with this feeling that Mr. Brandiston was closing the door of the room when his eye lighted upon some pieces of paper, more or less charred, that were lying, as if by accident, under the grate. One of them seemed to contain some printed matter. He stooped down and picked them up. They were all fragments of letters or exercises—all except that one. What was Mr. Brandiston’s horror when he perceived that the little bit of paper which he held in his hand was the corner of the same examination paper as the one that was lying on the table! It seemed to be the irresistible conclusion that somebody had intended to destroy the paper, and with that object had put it on the fire, but that this one fragment of it had fallen out of the grate before being consumed in the flames. And that somebody—who could it be but Gerald Eversley?

Mr. Brandiston shut the door with a heavy heart. He returned to his study and sat down in his armchair. What was he to do next?

[189]

Suddenly it occurred to him that the burnt paper might be Pomfret’s. He and Eversley might have been comparing notes (though this was unlikely as they were not intimate friends); he might have left his paper in Eversley’s room, and Eversley might have thrown it into the fire.

Mr. Brandiston lighted his candle again and went as rapidly as he could to Pomfret’s room. The school clock struck one o’clock as he entered it. Pomfret, too, was asleep. Sleep looks awful when it is associated with the suspicion of guilt. Mr. Brandiston glanced at the table; there, half hidden by a lexicon, was Pomfret’s paper with his name, G. Pomfret, written upon it, and his ink-marks against the questions which he had been unable to answer.

Mr. Brandiston retired to bed, but he hardly slept that night.

Mr. Brandiston’s mind was made up. Unless Eversley could offer some explanation of the finding of the fragment of paper in the fireplace of his room—and what explanation could be satisfactory?—there could be no doubt that he had been guilty of fraud.

Mr. Brandiston, as he lay wakeful in his bed, felt that his proper course of action was unmistakable. It was to send for Gerald Eversley next morning, lay[190] before him the evidence which appeared to justify the most serious suspicion against him, and, in the event of his being unable to meet it, to report him formally to the head master. Mr. Brandiston would be just—that was certain; but justice demanded the exposure and punishment of the guilty boy.

The interview with Gerald Eversley next morning was not calculated to set Mr. Brandiston’s suspicion at rest. It is true that Gerald Eversley throughout asserted his innocence. But his manner was confused; it was not, Mr. Brandiston thought, the manner of an innocent boy. He admitted at once that the paper found in his fireplace had not been borrowed from Pomfret or any other boy. He professed himself totally unable to explain how it came to be in his fireplace. Mr. Brandiston thought it best not to tell him who had found it there; but he assured him that there was no doubt as to its having been found. He concluded by saying that the facts which he had collected and weighed with scrupulous care, pointed, in his opinion, irresistibly to one conclusion—that the paper must have been stolen from a drawer in his study; that only two boys in the house, of whom Gerald was one, could have been interested in stealing it; that Gerald had been seen to enter his study at a time when it might have been stolen; that a charred[191] fragment of the paper had been found in his room, and that he could give no account of its being found there.

In the circumstances, Mr. Brandiston, after consideration, felt that he could not do otherwise than report Gerald Eversley to the head master for dishonesty.

By this time Gerald Eversley’s trouble had become known in the house, and a good many different opinions were expressed about it. Had the boys been perfectly acquainted with the facts, it is possible that they would have taken the same view of them as Mr. Brandiston. But as it was, starting with the general prepossession of boys in a schoolfellow’s favour as against a master, and looking upon the case as one of strong but not overwhelming probability, they were inclined to think that it was ‘hard luck upon Eversley’ to be sent on so grave a charge before the head master. Boys are not incapable of harbouring unfounded suspicions themselves, as Gerald Eversley’s experience in the matter of the Sunday boxing had shown; but they are unwilling that other people, especially masters, should harbour them. They strongly held, too, that a boy’s word ought always to be taken; and so it ought, if boys never told lies. In Gerald Eversley’s case, they argued that he was too clever to stand in[192] need of unfair procedure in examinations. And, though he was not popular and had no intimate friend but one, they had formed the impression that he was a boy who would not cheat or lie. It was an impression only; but the impressions of boys, as of women, are worth more than their reasons, or rather they are reasons not yet spoiled by imperfect expression.

Nevertheless, it was with an anxious, awful foreboding that Gerald Eversley looked forward to the ordeal of meeting the head master. He had not as yet come much into contact with Dr. Pearson. On two or three occasions he had received prizes, and with them a few kind, complimentary words from him. But for the most part, after the manner of boys, he regarded the head master as not a being of the same flesh and blood as himself and other boys. In the chapel—that one sacred meeting-ground where a head master can make himself known to all his pupils—he was wont to listen with solemn and attentive reverence to Dr. Pearson’s sermons. He hoped next term to get into Dr. Pearson’s own form, and so to come under his immediate notice. But he debated with a trembling heart how Dr. Pearson would deal with the charge of dishonesty laid before him by Mr. Brandiston.

[193]

A brief interval occurred before he was summoned into Dr. Pearson’s presence.

Dr. Pearson, before seeing Gerald, had taken time to consider his action, and to inform Mr. Brandiston what it would be. Being alone with Gerald, he went through the facts of the case one by one, pointing out their seriousness, and asking if he wished to offer any comment upon any one of them; he begged him to realise how strongly they told against him (to this Gerald assented), but he added that he gave him the fullest credit for his hitherto unblemished moral character. He concluded the interview in these words: ‘Eversley, I have now put the case fully before you. I do not wish you to answer at once. I wish you to take twenty-four hours to consider. Come to me to-morrow at nine o’clock, and I will ask you what you have to say in face of this strong evidence. I am sure you will tell me the truth.’

Gerald went away. Were the twenty-four hours a respite, or an aggravation, of his doom?

Just at this time he received a letter from his father. Mr. Eversley had been informed by Mr. Brandiston of the action which he had felt it his duty to take in Gerald’s case. The news shocked and staggered Mr. Eversley. It is possible that Mr. Brandiston, as taking a strong view himself, put his view in[194] too strong a light before Mr. Eversley. The desire that others should see things as we see them lies deep down in human nature. Or it is possible that the dread lest the charge should be true was the shadow cast by Mr. Eversley’s own affection for his son. He did not, indeed, write as if he believed Gerald to be guilty. He told him how earnestly he hoped that he were innocent. But he dwelt upon the heinousness of cheating, as a sin against God. He exhorted Gerald, if he had done wrong, if in a moment of weakness (and we are all weak) he had yielded to the Tempter, not to deny what he had done, not to defend or excuse himself, but, for his immortal soul’s sake, to make confession and reparation, and to endure any penalty rather than stain his soul with a lie. ‘And Joshua said unto Achan’—Mr. Eversley quoted the passage—‘My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto him; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me.’ Gerald read the letter, and re-read it, then he put it away in his pocket. His heart was sad.

Punctually at nine o’clock the next morning he stood before Dr. Pearson.

‘I have shown you, Eversley,’ said the head master, ‘what the evidence against you is, and[195] having done so, I put to you the question, Did you see Mr. Brandiston’s examination paper before the time when it was set to the form in school?’

‘No, sir,’ answered Gerald, ‘I did not.’

‘Have you any idea of the means by which a second copy of the paper came into your room?’ said Dr. Pearson.

‘No, sir, none at all,’ was the answer.

Gerald Eversley gave these answers with a blushing cheek; but Dr. Pearson, not being a man of so much experience as Mr. Brandiston, did not draw from it an unfavourable inference.

Dr. Pearson continued:

‘Eversley, I believe what you say. I think Mr. Brandiston could not have done otherwise than lay the case before me. But, strong as the evidence is—and you see how strong it is—it falls short of proof, and you, who have never been suspected of falsehood before, are entitled to be believed. I believe you. You may go now. I shall tell Mr. Brandiston what I have said to you.’

Dr. Pearson rose from his seat, and just as Gerald was preparing to go, he said, ‘I hope—I think—you will one day do something that will make Mr. Brandiston proud of you,’ and he added, with a kindly smile, ‘yes, and me too.’

[196]

Gerald Eversley left the head master’s presence with a profound and reverential feeling of gratitude. He had been believed. The head master had believed him. His word, standing alone, had been accepted. The thought filled his heart with pride, and brought tears of joy into his eyes.

Great, great is the potency of faith! It is faith that ‘removes mountains.’

But there was another person whose good opinion was to Gerald Eversley worth almost as much as Dr. Pearson’s, and he too did not fail him in his hour of need. It was Harry Venniker. To him Gerald had written, giving a brief account of the circumstances in which he found himself, as soon as he knew how grave a view Mr. Brandiston took of them, only begging him not to say anything to his mother or his sister about them. He received an answer on the morning of his first interview with Dr. Pearson. Harry was getting better now, and wrote in his own hand. He said, in his boyish way, ‘I declare it’s a beastly shame, old man. I wish I were at St. Anselm’s to tell old Brandiston what I think about it. But never mind; I will bet ten to one that you will come out all right. It’s very odd about the paper in the fireplace, but nobody who knows you could ever think you had done it. Anyhow, I don’t, and I won’t.’

[197]

Harry Venniker’s faith in his friend had grown stronger since the days of the Sunday boxing. The letter was signed, ‘Ever affectionately yours, H. V.’ Below the signature was a postscript: ‘My mother says you must pay us another visit in the holidays. When will you come? I want so much to see you.’

So Gerald had some ground for satisfaction. Mr. Brandiston, indeed, made no further allusion to the examination paper. He had always treated Gerald somewhat distantly, and he did not treat him more distantly now. In fact, he went out of his way once or twice to show that he did not think worse of him than before. But Dr. Pearson believed in his innocence. Harry Venniker believed in it. The boys in the house, with hardly an exception, seemed convinced of it, and glad to be convinced. His father wrote expressing his deep satisfaction that the head master had not lost confidence in his ‘dear boy’s character.’ Gerald began to feel, for the first time at St. Anselm’s, the favouring breeze of popularity. And, above all, there was the prospect of a visit to Helmsbury.

One word remains to be added. If this were an ordinary tale, it would be natural that the mystery of the stolen paper should be solved. It will not be solved here. Life is full of unsolved mysteries, fiction[198] is not. This is one of the ways in which fiction differs from life. No new fact to prove or disprove Gerald’s innocence ever came to Mr. Brandiston’s ears. But in after-days, if allusion was made to the mystery of the stolen examination paper, the butler used to say with bated breath that he knew nothing—he did not—but that, if he must say what he thought, he had reason to think that Mr. Brandiston, being disturbed in the moment of placing the examination papers in his drawer, might have let one paper drop on to the floor; that the housemaid, who came in as soon as he had left the study, might have gathered it up with the papers and letters which were strewn about in or near the waste-paper basket, and that it might have been used a day or two afterwards to light a fire.

Who knows? Who will ever know?

The year following Harry Venniker’s illness was a year remarkable in the life of each of the two friends whose history forms the subject of this narrative. Both, though in different ways, attained the summit of their ambition. Both for a moment shone pre-eminently in the eyes of their schoolfellows. It need not be said that such distinction appeared more natural to Harry Venniker than to Gerald Eversley; but to both it was exquisitely delightful.

Harry Venniker was the first to enjoy it. He did not return to school after his illness until the beginning of the summer term. It was thought, on medical grounds, to be desirable that he should not expose himself to the piercing winds of February or March at St. Anselm’s. By the beginning of the next term he was restored to perfect health, and his reappearance was heartily welcomed by the generous enthusiasm of his schoolfellows.

[200]

There was a special interest attaching to his return; for he was a left-handed bowler, as has been already said, and the school eleven was thought to be weak this year in bowling. It was believed, therefore, that he would have a good chance of obtaining a place in it. But in the early matches of the year he failed to ‘come off’; it was supposed that his illness had told upon his strength, and though he was tried in most of the matches, the vacant places in the eleven were all filled up in the course of the term, except two, and he had not yet been told to ‘get his flannels.’

Life at St. Anselm’s presents no more attractive scene than the ‘giving of the flannels’ on the Saturday before the great match of the year. The players, who are regarded as candidates for the last remaining places, are tested in the presence of a large company. Every wicket bowled, every run scored by any one of them is hailed by his supporters, who are usually the members of his own house, as a point in his favour. On this occasion Harry Venniker took three wickets in the first innings; he also scored eight runs, being ‘not out.’ In the second innings (which was not finished) he bowled only one wicket, but a ‘chance’ was missed off his bowling. Another boy—also a bowler—took two wickets in each innings. A boy[201] who was being tried as a bat got twenty-one runs. Another bat got only one run; he was generally considered to be ‘out of it.’

It is the annual practice that at the conclusion of this last match the players return to the pavilion, the spectators cluster around it—none but the players being allowed to enter its sacred precincts—then the captain of the eleven, in the interior of the pavilion, takes his cap—the cap distinctive of the eleven—and places it successively on the heads of the boys who are put into the eleven, and these boys, being thus decorated, emerge from the pavilion and show themselves to the admiring crowd outside. Sometimes a long interval elapses, or seems to elapse, before the last boy makes his appearance with the cap on his head, and the expectation then becomes intense.

A crowd of two or three hundred boys was gathered outside the pavilion railings. The door opened, and the boy who had distinguished himself in batting came out, wearing the coveted cap. He was loudly cheered. Then he retired. The crowd still waited. The buzz of conversation was loud. The long level shadows of the setting sun stole over the ground. Once or twice the door opened, and boys appeared, but they were old members of the eleven. It seemed a quarter of an hour, but I suppose it was only two[202] or three minutes, before the door opened again, and the last elected member of the eleven came full into view—Harry Venniker. What a cheering arose! What a waving of hats in the air! What enthusiasm of delight! When the excitement was dying away, there was still one voice giving a last cheer, one hat still waving in the air. It was Gerald Eversley’s.

He was sauntering up the hill when he heard a quick step behind him, and Harry Venniker seized his arm, saying, ‘Bless you, old man; I heard your old voice last of all.’

And Gerald, as he locked his arm in his friend’s, could only say,

‘I felt as if no fellow had so much right to cheer as I.’

Before the sun went down, the cap of the school eleven was hanging on the antlers of the stag’s head in Harry’s room.

That was Harry Venniker’s triumph.

What was Gerald Eversley’s?

Gerald had not forgotten the hope expressed by Dr. Pearson that he might do something of which the school should be proud. He had no chance of distinguishing himself in games, and indeed he would, I think, have been sorry if he had been brought into[203] any sort of rivalry with Harry Venniker. But it had been decided, mainly at Dr. Pearson’s instance, and not without much hesitation on the part of Mr. Eversley, that he should compete in the Michaelmas term at the famous college which there can be no harm in defining as Balliol. The desire of justifying the confidence reposed in him by Dr. Pearson, as well as his solitariness during the Easter term in the absence of Harry Venniker, led him to work with unwonted assiduity. It was not thought probable that he would win the scholarship, as he could compete for it again next year; but Mr. Brandiston hoped that, ‘if he did not dissipate his energies too much,’ he would do himself (and his house) credit in the examination. To nobody, except to Mr. Selby, did Gerald confide that he longed for success as the only return that he could make for the head master’s trust in his word; but Mr. Selby had always been kind to him, and invited him to his rooms, since the affair of the Sunday boxing, and Mr. Selby alone knew how great was the void created in his life by the illness and absence of Harry Venniker. Gerald had always been a multifarious reader; but he was weak in the technicalities of scholarship, and it was at Mr. Selby’s advice that in the six months preceding the examination at Balliol he devoted his time exclusively to classics.[204] He was modest about himself, and looked upon his candidature as hopeless this year.

During the examination he found time to send brief reports of his papers to Mr. Selby. Mr. Selby formed the opinion that he was doing well, in spite of two curious blunders in composition. Mr. Eversley wrote him a letter, which he found awaiting him on his return to St. Anselm’s, saying (among other things) that he should feel the issue of the examination to be ‘a Providential guiding;’ that if Gerald were successful it would be well for him to go to Balliol, but if not, it would be the will of God that he should go elsewhere.

The school was assembled for prayers one Thursday morning. It was Dr. Pearson’s habit, if some extraordinary success was achieved by one of the boys, to celebrate it by granting a holiday. Generally the success which merited the holiday was known beforehand. But on this particular day the school was taken by surprise when Dr. Pearson, whose expression of face revealed his satisfaction, said after prayers, ‘I shall give a holiday to-morrow in honour of the success of one of our number in winning a Balliol scholarship; I need hardly say that I mean Eversley.’ A cheer burst from the crowded benches of the school at this announcement. It was loud[205] and prolonged, for the holiday had not been expected. Gerald, who sat with his head buried in his hands, thought, as the cheering died away—it might be a mistaken idea, but he could not help thinking—that there was one voice even louder and more persistent than the rest, and that that voice was Harry Venniker’s.

To win a holiday for the school is to win the hearts of all its members. Gerald Eversley was overwhelmed with congratulations. Masters who had seldom or never spoken to him before stopped in the street to tell him that the school had cause to be proud of him. The boys, as he passed, remarked to each other that he was ‘the cleverest chap at St. Anselm’s.’ Mr. Brandiston’s usual reserve thawed under the genial feeling that, whatever Gerald’s faults were, he had justified his scholastic life by conferring distinction on his house. Somewhat different was the language of Mr. Selby, who invited him to tea that afternoon. Mr. Selby was full of joy. He knew so well how to ‘rejoice with them that rejoice,’ as well as to ‘weep with them that weep,’ and the joy he felt in Gerald’s success beamed from his countenance; but he said it always seemed to him that success, especially when it was as great as Gerald’s, was, if rightly considered, one of the most humbling things[206] in the world, as it laid upon the successful person such a responsibility for being worthy of it after it was won as he had been before it, and of justifying it by his after-life.

Gerald had not thought of it so before, but Mr. Selby’s words were not forgotten.

The old Greek adage says, ‘Call no man happy until the end.’ Happy, it might have been deemed, was Gerald now: his unpopularity gone, his favour assured, the masters and boys all courting his acquaintance. Yet success and sadness are near neighbours sometimes, and the entrance into the sanctuary of sorrow is made through the portals of honour.

Gerald Eversley was entirely happy that day, but never again—save for one brief interval—was he happy afterwards.

The story passes to a somewhat later time. The scene is Kestercham Vicarage.

Mr. Eversley had thought for some months past that his son’s relation to himself was not exactly what it had been. Had he been asked, he could not have told anyone what the change was; it was not visible, but he felt it, and instinct is a truer judge of sympathy than induction can be. It was the feeling of a haze or darkness rising between him and the[207] object of his love, the sort of feeling that a man has when his eyesight, which has always been so sure, begins to fail, as Sir Joshua Reynolds felt in painting Lady Beauchamp’s portrait; only the darkness was of the soul, not of the vision. It was as if Gerald had always something to tell him and could not tell it, or could tell it but would not. That was the secret of his cautious, guarded letter, which Gerald could not help resenting, about the examination paper. He did not like to make the admission, he would not have made it in answer to a challenge; but it was not now utterly incredible to him (though most improbable) that his son should cherish a silent consciousness of a deceitful action. One secret, even if it be a guilty one, is perhaps no great thing. How many of us have more, or had more when we were of Gerald’s age! What sudden rendings and convulsions of intimacies would there be if the secrets of hearts could be unsealed! And yet if between two human hearts there has been no reticence, no disguise; if each has been open to the other as the merry earth lies open to the sunshine——. There passes a cloud before the face of the sun in the heaven, it endures but for a moment, and it is gone, but the earth is conscious of its chillness.

Mr. Eversley reasoned with himself that he was[208] making too much of trifles. If there had been any definite overt mark of altered sentiment, he would have written, perhaps, or spoken to Gerald about it; but he could not say it was so. They were still father and son, still all that father and son should be to each other. Why, then, did Mr. Eversley look so often at the daguerreotype upon the desk in his study and sigh? Human nature has its presentiments of good and evil; how irrational they are! and how infallible! Does a lover need to be told in words that he is loved? Nay, love is a fire, it cannot burn and glow unfelt. Heaven have mercy upon him who searches for it and finds not its glad warmth!

Mr. Eversley still reasoned with himself. It might be that Gerald’s letters from St. Anselm’s had been less full or less regular than of old. Mr. Eversley reflected that more than once on a Tuesday morning he had walked as far as the green gate to meet the postman and there had been no letter. He had never complained of its absence. At one time Gerald had been so much occupied with his friend’s illness and recovery, then with the incidents of the summer term, then with his own competition for the Balliol scholarship; it was only natural that he should fail to write now and then. So Mr. Eversley reasoned, longing—good soul!—to persuade himself against himself.[209] And yet would Gerald always have preferred his friend to his father? Would he have forfeited the Balliol scholarship if he had spent a few minutes on Sunday in writing home? Mr. Eversley sighed again. He had never complained of the absence of letters, but he thought of it now.

Then he took several letters out of his desk and read them once more. What was it that he missed in them? He could not tell. He dared not tell. Time had been when every letter was full of allusions to the events and interests of Kestercham, its church, its sermons, its village festivals, the life of its people. The little world that was all in all to the father had been all in all to the son. Was it so now? In the letters which Mr. Eversley held in his hand there was not a word relating to Kestercham, except one sentence in which Gerald hoped that his father was not ‘growing tired of the village.’ But then the round of life at Kestercham was so unvarying that Gerald had made all the possible remarks upon it many times. Still the letters seemed to Mr. Eversley a little artificial, the compositions of one who wrote from a sense of duty, not the outpourings of a loving soul to its one best friend. Mr. Eversley put them back into his desk. He resolved to say nothing, but to watch his son more carefully in the holidays.[210] It was near Christmas now. In a few days Gerald would be at home.

When he arrived, the eager greeting with which he met the various members of his family, his apparent joy in being at Kestercham again, his modesty in receiving congratulations (for he had come out at the top of the school in the examination) relieved, if they did not dispel, Mr. Eversley’s anxiety. He seemed unaware that his letters had been less regular; he still spoke of writing home every week. He resumed the old life naturally. He did not indeed propose to go and see Mr. Seaford; but when Mr. Eversley asked him if he did not think of paying Mr. Seaford a visit, he went. Mr. Eversley thought he must have formed more acquaintances among his schoolfellows; for he mentioned a good many names which Mr. Eversley did not remember having heard before.

It was on the fourth morning of the holidays that Gerald, coming down to breakfast a little late, found some letters lying on his plate. He began to read them.

‘Well, what do your correspondents say?’ observed Mr. Eversley, when Gerald put the letters down.

‘Oh! nothing,’ answered Gerald.

In old days he would have handed the letters to his father. Mr. Eversley made a movement as if to[211] reach out his hand for them. But Gerald put them into his pocket. He seemed not to notice the movement of his father’s hand.

It was a slight thing, yet Mr. Eversley felt it. He did not want to read the letters, but it was a pain to him that Gerald should put them away. Gerald had never done so before.

Mr. Eversley was making a mistake. It did not occur to him that the progress of life from childhood to manhood changes imperceptibly the relation of parents to their children. How many a father has forgotten, in the very hour when it is all important to remember, the truth that his son cannot be a ‘boy eternal’! Mr. Eversley forgot it, and, alas! paid the penalty of forgetting it.

One afternoon in the same week Gerald and his father took a walk across the fields to visit a sick woman on the Green. Mr. Eversley, as they walked, put a good many questions respecting the past term at St. Anselm’s, and Gerald answered them, but he did not volunteer much information. The poor woman to whose cottage they went was so ill that Mr. Eversley left Gerald outside, while he entered it to administer the consolations of Christianity. Gerald occupied himself in cutting off with his stick such few withered thistle-heads as were still left in the hedgerow. When[212] Mr. Eversley came out of the cottage, it was evident from the tears standing in his eyes that he had been deeply touched by the spectacle of suffering. The woman was dying (he said) of cancer; she was in terrible agony, but her resignation to the Divine Will was complete. ‘O my dear Gerald,’ he added, ‘what power is there in all the philosophical systems of the world to give a dying man or woman the peace which that poor woman possesses, relying as she does upon the full atonement made for her sins by the blood of the Saviour?’

Gerald made no reply.

After a slight pause Mr. Eversley continued. ‘Yes, Gerald, and when you are a clergyman it will be your blessed privilege to stand by many such deathbeds as hers.’

‘Yes, if I ever am a clergyman,’ answered Gerald in a low tone.

Mr. Eversley looked at him. It was the first doubt that had been cast upon his son’s future.

They walked to the vicarage in silence, except for some casual remark which Gerald made about the likelihood of a frost.

Gerald was very kind in his home, playing with the children and helping to prepare the decorations for Christmas.

[213]

On the second Sunday of the holidays, Christmas day being the Monday after it, a little incident occurred which disturbed Mr. Eversley’s mind, perhaps unnecessarily. The distinction between Sunday books and weekday books—one of the most mysterious of human distinctions—was fundamental in Kestercham Vicarage. No one ever questioned it, or imagined that it could be questioned. Mrs. Eversley in particular prided herself upon possessing an infallible faculty of discriminating between the two species of literature. It did not appear that her faculty required for its proper exercise any perusal or study of the books which she approved, or, at least, which she condemned. On this Sunday it happened that Mrs. Eversley, looking in the afternoon into Gerald’s bedroom where he had been reading between morning service and mid-day dinner, caught sight of a novel lying open on the table. She did not communicate her discovery to Mr. Eversley, but brought her guns to bear upon Gerald at tea in the presence of the family, attacking him not in the front, but, as it were, upon the flank.

‘I hope, Gerald,’ she said, when she had served all the party with tea, ‘I hope you always read Sunday books on Sundays at school.’

Gerald parried the interrogation by another: ‘What is a Sunday book?’

[214]

There are questions which by their extreme simplicity are calculated to silence a whole battery of argument or invective. They excite in the minds of the initiated a feeling not so much of anger as of pity. If a person disputes the validity of one of Euclid’s axioms, what is to be said to him? It does not follow that these questions are always easy to answer.

Mrs. Eversley gave a short dry cough, and replied, ‘I did not expect to hear you ask such a question as that, Gerald. A Sunday book—I should suppose a Sunday book is a book that a Christian may read on a Sunday.’

‘I don’t see how it differs from any other book,’ said Gerald.

‘All I can say then is, Gerald, that I am sorry you don’t,’ retorted Mrs. Eversley, satisfied in her own mind that she had solved the difficulty beyond the possibility of appeal.

But at this point Mr. Eversley interposed, saying, ‘I think, Gerald, a Christian will naturally wish to spend Sunday in reading books of a serious kind, not light secular literature which perishes in the using, but his Bible and such other books as are profitable to his soul’s health.’

‘At all events,’ added Mrs. Eversley, ‘I hope you won’t leave novels and such-like books about the[215] house on a Sunday to put temptation in the way of your sisters.’

Gerald perceived that he had been detected in his profanation of the Kestercham Sabbath.

‘At Helmsbury,’ he said, ‘they read all sorts of books on Sunday.’

Mr. Eversley looked pained. His wife, however, returned to the charge.

‘And what if they do?’ she said. ‘I have always heard that the rich shall hardly enter into the kingdom of Heaven. I told you as much the first time you went there. But are the people of God to follow their example against His express law?’

Mrs. Eversley did not say what ‘express law’ of God it was that forbade novel-reading on a Sunday. So many people make laws for themselves (or for others) and then invest them with the thunders of the divine sanction. Gerald reflected that the Jewish law of the Sabbath was the one law which the Saviour of the world went out of His way to violate when He was on earth. But he said nothing. He was vexed by Mrs. Eversley’s attack on his friends at Helmsbury. He contrasted her silently with Lady Venniker. The essential nature of a Sunday book was therefore not further defined.

The distinction between Sunday and weekdays[216] being absolute in Kestercham Vicarage, Christmas Day was an amalgamation of the two. It was Sunday until after divine service in the morning; the rest of the day was holiday. It was not the fashion in Kestercham Vicarage to interchange wishes for ‘a merry Christmas,’ for merriment in the eyes of Mr. Eversley was not an attribute of the people of God; but he would wish the members of his family (including the servants) ‘a happy Christmas,’ and would sometimes remind them that happiness was not found in earthly things. Mrs. Eversley celebrated the birthday of the Prince of Peace by a peculiarly emphatic recitation of the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed. She noticed that Gerald, who was only divided from her in the pew by two of her younger children, did not join in reciting that creed. When the service was over, she took occasion to remark that she trusted he did not think he could be saved by works without faith—or perhaps he did not now feel the need of salvation—and she hoped he was not going to give up the habit of church-going.

Gerald was provoked by her words, and still more by her tone and manner of uttering them, into saying,

‘I dare say a man can be a very good man without going to church.’

[217]

Mrs. Eversley, who, whatever her faults, was at least not disposed to a craven compromise with the spirit of the world, replied bluntly,

‘No, he cannot.’

‘How many times must a person go to church on a Sunday in order to be a good man?’ asked Gerald, rather captiously, for he knew what the answer would be. Mrs. Eversley went to church twice on Sunday, never oftener and (except after her confinements) never less often; it was evident, therefore, that the orthodox thing was to attend divine service twice. Mrs. Eversley’s theory, though I am not aware that it was ever formulated in words, was that to go to church only once on Sunday was irreligion, to go twice was piety and propriety, to go three times was hypocrisy. It is possible that, if she had been in the habit of going to church once only, it would have been considered hypocritical to go twice. As it was, she answered, ‘Twice, of course, as your father and I have gone all through our married life.’

Gerald turned the conversation to the decorations of the church. They were meagre; indeed, Mrs. Eversley had some doubt as to decorations generally; but they were the results of her own taste and orthodoxy, and in praising them he felt he might hope to propitiate her.

[218]

Then he remarked that Mr. Seaford seemed to be ageing a good deal.

‘Yes, he is,’ replied Mrs. Eversley; ‘he is not so regular as he might be at church now in the winter months, but I don’t think he will miss the Sacrament on the first Sunday of the year.’

That was a hint to Gerald—at least, so he thought—that he had better not miss it himself.

The celebration of the Sacrament in Kestercham Church thirty years ago was a singular ceremony. It took place four times in the year. Some of its features it would be impossible to reproduce.

When the congregation withdrew from the church after morning service, a certain number of persons would linger in the porch as curious and rather critical spectators of what was going on. They were especially interested in observing whether the body of communicants would be augmented by any new comer; for participation in the Sacrament, despite Mr. Eversley’s strenuous efforts, remained among the Kestercham folk as a sort of social or moral badge, and the merits and demerits of any labourer or his wife who ventured to approach the Lord’s Table for the first time were severely scrutinised and debated by their neighbours. Mr. Eversley had done his best to check this practice, and he sometimes thought Mr.[219] Dawes, the clerk, himself must be in league (as was probable enough) with his fellow-parishioners in the porch; for if he caused the door leading from the porch into the church to be shut at the beginning of the Communion Office, it was sure to be opened by some unseen hand before the office was done. The few farmers were in general communicants, but not many labourers. It had been one of Mr. Eversley’s difficulties, when he came to Kestercham, that the farmers, who felt that their social precedence was somehow determined by the order in which they received the sacred elements, were all eager to be first in approaching the Lord’s Table; but it had at last been settled that Mr. Seaford, as churchwarden, and his family should communicate immediately after the vicarage party, and then the other farmers and their families according to the order of their pews, those whose pews were nearest to the chancel of the church communicating first, and the corresponding pews on the two sides of the nave being regarded as equal in merit. This arrangement had cost Mr. Eversley a great deal of trouble, and it still left some smouldering discontent.

Mr. Eversley had so far altered the practice of his parishioners at the quarterly celebrations of the Sacrament, but the collection of the offertory still[220] remained as it had been when he came to Kestercham. The amount collected was a matter of keen parochial interest. Mr. Seaford and another farmer were deputed to collect it from the communicants; it was taken by them to Mr. Eversley, and by him placed on the holy table. He then proceeded with the Communion. But such was always the excitement of Mr. Seaford and his colleague that they could not remain in their pews to the conclusion of the office; but when they had themselves communicated, they took up their positions, standing, the one on the north, the other on the south side of the chancel, just without the altar-rails, and, as soon as Mr. Eversley had pronounced the Benediction and even before he had risen from his knees, they darted within the rails, emptied out the alms upon the table and counted them over amidst eager and audible comments. Great was the delight if a gold coin, or large silver coin, appeared in the offertory—a delight so emphatically expressed that it arrested the attention, and gratified the expectation, of the spectators in the porch.

But the service, peculiar as no doubt it was (though no one in Kestercham was aware of its peculiarities), was redeemed by the grave and reverent solemnity of Mr. Eversley’s own demeanour. Even[221] casual and careless worshippers were awed by the tone of his voice as he spoke the words, ‘The body of the Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee.... The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was shed for thee ... preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.’ It was not only that the Body and Blood were so sacred in his eyes. It was that the Everlasting Life was so real, so tremendous.

The first Sacrament of the year was a great event in Kestercham parish. Mr. Eversley would exhort, nay, entreat his people to partake of it. It was a virtual consecration of the year to God. A person who had been ‘converted’ during the year (if such there were) would probably make his first communion then. What a joy it was to Mr. Eversley if one who had long been walking in sin were seen slowly and timidly moving up the church to the Lord’s Table on that Sunday! All the regular communicants were always present.

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[222] 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[223] 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[224] 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.’

Mr. Eversley asked him what it was that he could not believe. Gerald could not tell him all; but he tried to say that, if Christ were only man, so much nearer to us than if removed by the great gulf of so-called Deity, and yet were so good, so gracious, so altogether lovely, then His example of goodness and purity would be a much more effectual help to the struggling, suffering children of men.

Mr. Eversley did not attempt to reason with him.[225] His own soul was too deeply agonised for reasoning. But he proposed that they should kneel down together in prayer; and there, in the stillness of the night by the flickering embers, he prayed that God would, in His mercy, illumine the gloom of his dear boy’s spirit, and that for him, as for so many another plucked ‘as a brand from the burning,’ the end of all doubts and strivings might be peace. Then he kissed him, and Gerald went to bed.

But it was yet two hours before Mr. Eversley himself retired. To him the failure of faith in the Son of God was not an intellectual error nor a moral calamity; it was a sin against the Holy Ghost. What (he argued) had been the guilt of the Jews of old, but that, when the Lord Jesus ‘came unto His own,’ they received Him not? Whether the rejection of His divine light were due to worldliness or to moral obliquity, or, as he feared in Gerald’s case, to pride of intellect, did not in his eyes constitute the vital difference. The soul of every man either received Him as the Saviour or it did not. It did not, therefore, enter Mr. Eversley’s thoughts to try to meet his son’s difficulties by argument. He held that the remedy for unbelief lay not in arguments of probability, but in the prostration of the human intellect before the Unseen; and what was needed, where unbelief rose[226] like a noxious vapour, was not a conviction of the reason, but a purification of the heart. Accordingly Mr. Eversley, when he was left alone, sank upon his knees and for an hour and more poured out his soul to God, imploring that, though He had justly punished him for his shortcomings by the alienation of his son who had been the joy of his life, yet He would not suffer that dear son to perish eternally, but would open his eyes to see in Jesus the one Saviour and Redeemer of the world. Then he took out his diary—it was always his last act before going to bed—and wrote in it these words: ‘Most painful interview with Gerald, who is sinking in the slough of unbelief. O God, help my dear boy. Bring him back to Thy Light and Thy Truth. And oh! forgive me if sin of mine have led to his fall. We lived but one life once. It is not so now. Forgive me, forgive me if the fault be mine, for Thy Son’s sake.’

During the remainder of the holidays Gerald Eversley attended the services in church regularly, and no word upon religion passed between his father and himself. Mrs. Eversley was constant in the performance of ‘good works.’ She remarked more than once that Gerald was ‘getting very dull.’

One consolation Gerald Eversley possessed amidst the trials of which the last chapter has afforded a specimen. It lay in his visits to Helmsbury. Since the time of Harry Venniker’s illness it had become an almost understood thing that he should pay a visit to Helmsbury during all holidays. Lady Venniker’s tender heart had not lost the sense of gratitude for the sympathy he had shown when Harry was so near to the gates of the grave. He had become almost one of the family. He was permitted to enter into their intimate thoughts, and to tell them his own. It is true that Harry was unaware of his friend’s religious doubts and difficulties, nor would he have been able to appreciate them if he had been aware of them. His was not a nature that troubled itself about such things, and he would have been likely to dismiss speculations of a sceptical kind upon the Being of[228] God and His relation to the souls and consciences of men as being, in his rough boyish phraseology, ‘all rot.’ But Lady Venniker, with true womanly instinct, divined that Gerald was not so happy in his mind as he used to be, that his unhappiness was occasioned by the stress of spiritual conflict, and that his spiritual conflict was in some way embittered by the circumstances of his home. Not that Gerald ever referred in censorious language to his home. On the contrary, he spoke of his early days at Kestercham as the happiest in his life, and of his father as the best man whom he had ever known.

In one respect Lady Venniker’s view of religion was so different from that in which Gerald had been brought up, that it came upon him as a revelation. She looked upon religious belief not as in any sense a burden or an obligation, but as a boon. She was only sorry for a person who did not believe in God; she was not angry with him at all, she could not imagine how anybody could be angry. She thought of one who had no sense for spiritual things as of one who had no ear for music or no eye for colour. She was very anxious, not so much to restore faith to him as to restore him to faith, or, in other words, to place him again in such a position that faith might seem to him not difficult, but easy and natural. She would[229] sometimes remark that if a person is not moved by a beautiful scene, it is not the scene which needs changing, but the person. Only she did not think the change was best made by preaching, still less by scolding, but by living oneself in the light of the Divine Life. Our Lord (she would say) had never argued very much about God; only He lived the God-like life, and it was impossible to live near Him and not believe in God. The sunshine does not argue with the night shadows; it simply shines them away. And if Gerald ever expressed any surprise at the pure intensity of her faith, she used to say that by her long months of lying on the couch of sickness she thought God had given her more insight into the realities of the spiritual world than He gave sometimes to the strong and healthy who had not so much leisure for meditation.

Ethel Venniker, who was growing up from girlhood now into the dawn of a rich and beautiful womanhood, would often sit by when Gerald Eversley read some of his favourite passages of literature to her mother or discussed with her religious and other topics. Gerald could not help noticing the quick intelligence of her comments upon the reading, and how her cheek would flush at any deed or word of cruelty, and her eyes fill with tears at a tale of suffering.

[230]

‘O mamma,’ she cried once, ‘why is there so much misery in the world? I feel as if everybody ought to be happy as we are.’

‘It is, I think,’ her mother replied, ‘that those who are as happy as we are may try to make others happy too.’

‘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[231] 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.[232] 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,[233] 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,’[234] 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.’

In point of fact, ‘swelldom’ (like some other highly coveted human distinctions) consists not so much in the possession of privileges as in the general belief that those privileges are possessed by the ‘swells.’

Mysterious indeed, except to the initiated, are the outward and visible signs of ‘swelldom,’ but not less mysterious is the fact of ‘swelldom’ itself. At St. Anselm’s (for of that school only is it necessary to speak) there were some boys who became ‘swells’ by prescriptive title, such as the captain of the school, and the boys of a year’s standing in the cricket and[235] football elevens. About them no question could arise in any well-ordered mind. But a number of other boys there were who stood, as it were, on the borderline of ‘swell-land.’ They might or might not at any time be privileged to cross the border. Until or unless they could cross it, they were like the spirits which Dante saw in the first circle of his ‘Inferno.’ How a boy came to cross the border, he himself could hardly explain. But as a boy spends many days perhaps, or weeks, trying to swim, and all but swimming, and then one day, without any direct assignable cause, feels that he can swim, so a boy might aspire to ‘swelldom,’ and live close to it for ever so long a time and be excluded from it, and then at last wake up some morning and feel that he was a ‘swell,’ like the great poet who awoke to find himself famous.

Harry Venniker had been a ‘swell’ for a long time, ever since the term in which he ‘got his flannels.’ So good an athlete, so popular a boy was admitted to the charmed circle as of right. Gerald Eversley, it will be believed, had never dreamed of ‘swelldom;’ the ‘swells’ were the last boys with whom he would naturally associate. But it was the practice of the ‘swells’ to co-opt occasionally, though only on rare occasions, some boy who, by his position or character or attainments, might be thought not[236] incapable of shedding lustre even upon their distinguished order. Gerald Eversley was now the third boy in the school. He was acknowledged to be the cleverest boy. He had won the school a holiday by winning the Balliol scholarship—and he was Harry Venniker’s friend.

The ‘swells’ were divided in opinion about co-opting him into their order. Some of them had hardly spoken to him, and doubted how they should get on with him. Others thought that he was ‘the kind of fellow to be encouraged.’ But it was Harry Venniker’s warm support that carried the day; Gerald Eversley might be passed over, but Harry Venniker’s friend could not. It was intimated to Gerald, according to the mysterious freemasonry of public-school life, that he might consider himself as exalted (not altogether through his own merit) to the august hierarchy of the ‘swells.’

If Gerald Eversley cared at all for being a ‘swell,’ it was only because his admission to ‘swelldom’ destroyed the last remaining barrier between himself and his friend. There was now no scene of life at St. Anselm’s to which he could not accompany Harry Venniker. They could talk more freely; they had more interests in common. They were more frequently seen together. Some one in the school[237] began to call them ‘the inseparables.’ Never had their friendship seemed so intimate or complete as in their last days at St. Anselm’s. And yet what a gulf, that no man thought of, stretched between them!

Almost all boys whose lives in their public schools have been honourable, experience a sadness—a sinking of the heart—as they draw near to the time of leaving them for ever. They know the trials and dangers as well as the delights of school life; they do not know what may come after it. They have been sailing in waters where every reef and shoal is mapped out for them, and they are going to put forth on the untravelled illimitable ocean. The counsel which they valued, even when it was rejected, will be theirs no more. There will be no familiar hand, as of old, to bear them up, no voice to guide them aright. It is the mysteriousness of the future that appals them. If only they could foresee the worst, it would be less dreadful. Besides this, Harry Venniker and Gerald Eversley stood at the parting of the roads. They would be friends perhaps, but at a distance. The old daily intercourse of the last four years was dying, and it could not be revived or replaced.

It was to this cause, and only to this, that Harry[238] Venniker attributed the depression of spirits which he thought he noticed in his schoolfellow.

‘Cheer up, old man,’ he said one day. ‘You must not mope. I’ll write to you every week, and so must you to me; and you’ll come to Helmsbury in the holidays; it will be almost as good as being at St. Anselm’s.’

Light-hearted promises! Ah! how many a one has fondly deemed that the future would be as the present, and it never, never is the same!

But life is saved from the paralysis which reflection would cause by the blessed necessity of action. If there were more time for reflection, it would become impossible to act. But because the habitual daily duties of life demand action, we can live, and not live in vain. Thus it is that the saintliest Christians, like Bishop Wilson, who entered most deeply into the joy of communion with the All Holy, have yet given the preference to an active over a contemplative life.

In the stir and eagerness of the last days at St. Anselm’s Gerald Eversley had not much time for thought.

On the Saturday evening before the last Sunday Harry Venniker asked him if he were going to communion the next morning, and rather than excite suspicion of his spiritual state (though he somehow[239] felt that he was acting a part) he answered Yes. The two friends knelt for the last time side by side in the memorial of the Divine Passion. There were very many communicants; the service was not over until nearly two o’clock.

The last Sunday evening service at the chapel at St. Anselm’s was always an impressive occasion. Who could look without emotion on such a multitude of young lives gathered for the last time in that place of holy memories and associations? So often had they worshipped together during their school lives. When would they all meet for worship again?

At all times the striking feature of a school service is its unity. A common parochial congregation is made up of diverse elements, the young and the aged, the rich and the poor, masters and servants, men, women, and little children; they meet, as it were, accidentally, their lives are various and separate, they are bound by no strong personal ties each to the other; and the preacher, if he appeals to one class from the pulpit, is necessarily oblivious or neglectful of another. Among the boys of the same great school it is not so; they are one in sentiment, tradition, association, life; the honour of each is the interest of all; they are trustees, the weakest as well as the strongest, of the name and fame of an institution greater than[240] themselves, and in the congregation itself they are not one element out of many—they are all. And some of them are in the morning of their days as yet unclouded, and some in the chequered midway of school life, and some on the very verge of the great change, going forth into the world; and there are those who will make shipwreck of faith or morals in after-days, or will be wasted with suffering, or will die heroic deaths in far-off lands, and those who will rule senates or parliaments, or expand the confines of learning, or mitigate the sufferings of the poor, and those, too, who will lead the forlorn hopes of philanthropy and plant the Cross where the tortured slave kneels down to die.

It is not hard to believe that such thoughts as these filled Dr. Pearson’s mind as he looked in silence upon that congregation before beginning his sermon. He chose as his text the words, ‘Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men.’ A profound stillness reigned in the chapel while he spoke. Even in dark days afterwards, Gerald Eversley did not forget that sermon. At two or three points of the sermon some boys sitting on the front benches drew their handkerchiefs from their pockets, then hastily thrust them back again, as if ashamed of themselves.

[241]

It is not possible to give an abstract of the sermon. Some few phrases of it Gerald seems to have written down the same evening; they were probably such as struck him most. Dr. Pearson began by speaking of the intimacy of his own relation to the school. ‘Nobody,’ he said, ‘except, perhaps, your parents, can have the same interest in any one of you—no one the same interest in you all—as I have had.’ There must have been some direct reference to the achievements, perhaps also to the failures and shortcomings, of the school; for he spoke of the common corporate life at St. Anselm’s, ‘a life in which the honour of each one of us has been the honour of all, and if any shame has fallen upon any one of us, even the humblest, we have felt it, every one, as his own personal stain.’ And then, addressing the boys who were so soon about to leave the school, he told them that it was for them, when the enforced discipline of school life should come to an end, to see that their lives were ever controlled and inspired by the more sacred, because more arduous, self-discipline that Christ taught. He bade them remember that it was harder to live nobly than to die nobly; and he begged emphatically that, if they knew any boy who was coming back to school to be in danger of going wrong, they would not—even if[242] in the past they had done wrong themselves—leave St. Anselm’s without asking him to give it up. The last few sentences of his sermon were somewhat as these: ‘I have spoken to you, my dear boys, many a time in this sacred place. To some of you—to those who are leaving—I am speaking now for the last time. Let me then ask of you all, and of them especially, these three things—I ask them as a personal favour in my Master’s name—first of all, that you will never say, or permit it to be said in your presence, that the thing which is right, however difficult it may be, cannot be done, or that the thing which is wrong, however tempting it may be, must needs be done; secondly, that, whatever your profession may be, you will take some part, though it be but slight, in ministering, directly or indirectly, to the relief of human suffering, and so in making this world, or some corner of it, a little better for your lives; and thirdly—knowing, as I must know, what are the difficulties of religious faith in a time like this—that you will not altogether break at any period of your lives with the ordinances of religion, above all, that you will not abandon the privilege of prayer.’ And he told them in a few sacred sentences what the religion of Christ had been to his own soul. Dr. Pearson pressed these requests with an affectionate[243] and pathetic earnestness as one who felt in his heart of hearts his responsibility for the young souls committed to his care. The boys were sobered and melted by his words. They remained kneeling for an unusually long time after the sermon. It was followed by the hymn that long usage had consecrated in the minds of the boys of St. Anselm’s, and of other schools too, as pre-eminently suited to the last Sunday of the school year, with its touching prayer for those who are leaving, and its equally touching prayer, no less needed, for those who will come back:

Let Thy father-hand be shielding
All who here shall meet no more;
May their seed-time past be yielding
Year by year a richer store;
Those returning
Make more faithful than before.

The sermon was over. The tender notes of the voluntary, ‘O rest in the Lord,’ sounded on the organ as the boys slowly and reverently left the chapel.

O sacred beloved spot on earth—the chapel of a great school! It is there, if anywhere in the world, that worship is realised in its purity, far away from the discords of contending creeds—there, if anywhere,[244] that the angels meet us, and we feel in our souls the benediction of the Eternal.

But Gerald Eversley was as one who saw and heard not.

The service being over, there remained a few minutes before the ringing of the lock-up bell would call the boys to their houses.

‘Let’s go up to the churchyard,’ said Gerald to Harry Venniker, who had joined him just outside the chapel.

They walked up the hill, talking of Dr. Pearson’s sermon.

‘By Jove!’ said Harry, ‘how well the doctor preached to-night! There’s nobody like him. He seems to know what fellows are thinking.’

‘Yes,’ said Gerald, ‘but it’s hard to do what he says.’

‘What’s hard?’ asked Harry.

‘Why, you see, a person may be able to act as he likes, but he can’t believe as he likes,’ said Gerald.

‘I don’t see that,’ answered Harry. ‘I know I find it a great deal harder to keep straight, though it’s plain enough what one ought to do.’

‘That’s not quite what I meant,’ was Gerald’s reply.

They had reached the churchyard by this time.[245] They were standing under its elms, gazing out over the wold. There was a deep and almost awful stillness in the air. Only the rooks were cawing overhead.

‘Somehow,’ said Gerald, after a pause, ‘this always seems to me such a sad view.’

‘Nonsense!’ answered Harry; ‘that’s only because you are in a sad frame of mind just now.’

‘I think,’ said Gerald, not taking notice of his objection, ‘it’s because it’s all so level—so unbroken; there is no hill and dale, and there are no houses after you get clear of St. Anselm’s.... It’s very beautiful.’

Harry Venniker replied, ‘I rather wish now I had come here oftener. I knew it was fine, but I didn’t think much about it. I suppose you have been here very often, Gerald.’

‘Nearly every Sunday, I think,’ said Gerald.

His companion was going to make some remark, when he checked himself and said, ‘There’s the bell. We must go back to the house. Let’s go by the road.’

The two boys walked quickly down the footpath which runs at right angles into the road. They had then a part of the hill to climb. It was the same way as they had walked together on the first day of their life at St. Anselm’s. They had been silent[246] then, and they were silent now. When they reached the turning of the road where Mr. Brandiston’s house came in sight, jutting out a little into the road just beyond the chapel, Gerald said:

‘Do you remember the first time we came here?’

‘You mean the day we came to St. Anselm’s?’ said Harry.

‘Yes,’ was the reply. ‘We have learnt a good many things since then.’

‘We’ve learnt to love one another and St. Anselm’s,’ said Harry.

Gerald looked at him with a look of ineffable gratitude.

By this time they were drawing near to the house. The bell ceased ringing as Harry spoke. There were still two minutes before the doors would be locked.

Gerald stopped.

‘Do you remember,’ he asked, ‘the promise you gave me that day? It was just over there.’

‘No,’ said Harry, ‘I don’t think I do.’

‘You promised to be my friend always, whatever happened,’ said Gerald.

‘Did I?’ answered Harry. ‘I hope, old man, I have been as good as my word.’

Gerald Eversley answered, with solemn, intense[247] feeling, ‘You have indeed. I have never had a friend like you.’

‘Well, who knows?’ said Harry, as they entered the house; ‘it may be that the end is not yet.’

Two days later they both left St. Anselm’s. Mr. Selby was the only master (except Mr. Brandiston) to whom Gerald Eversley bade farewell.

It is a hard thing to write the history of a soul. The human soul is not a simple study; it is constituted of so many parts, faculties, emotions, sympathies, antipathies, as to render its diagnosis imperfect, nay perhaps impossible. We seldom understand one another’s motives; we do not always understand our own. We are a mystery, each of us, to his neighbour; I had almost said we are a mystery each to himself.

Yet this is the task which must be undertaken in this chapter—to relate the spiritual agonies of a soul. It will be necessary to show by what process of reason or conviction one who had been trained in the safe though narrow path of Christian evangelical orthodoxy became, as it were, a wanderer, homeless and hopeless, how he passed from certainty to doubt, from doubt to negation, and at length went down[249] into the valley of darkness from which there is often no return.

In the history of a soul, its own confessions, its own introspections, are the only guides. All else is conjecture, imagination. Such papers or letters as Gerald Eversley has left will therefore be used here, for in them he speaks for himself, and the record, though incomplete, is not untrue. But the difficulty in using them is that they lack date, method, consecutiveness; they are like the volcanic upheavings of a soul’s fiery unrest; the doubts which possessed him, and the reactions of his faith are welded together. Yet who is there that is at all times equally religious or equally irreligious? Is not every man a believer sometimes, a sceptic sometimes? Has not faith its days of sunshine and of cloud in every life? It is not perhaps faith or unfaith that discriminates mankind; it is rather the longing for faith, the anguish of unfaith, or the opposites of these.

Doubts of God break upon the soul as the waves upon the shore, surging, retreating, engulfing one another with incessant flux and reflux in measured advance until the flood or in measured ebb-tide, but alas! defertilising, devastating it always, and leaving it strewn with the débris of weed, shingle, shifting sand, and the wreckage of men.

[250]

How impotent, too, are words as images of thought! They pursue ideas, beliefs, reflections, with halting steps; for between the thought and its expression lies an interval, brief or prolonged, and while the mind is expressing itself, it moves. Men are often doubters before they confess their unbelief, and when they proclaim it, they are drawing near to faith again.

He whose spiritual history is here recorded was a youth. He lacked the moderating, chastening experience of age; he had seen only two-and-twenty years when this story comes to an end. His view of religion might have been calmer had his years been more; but it would not, I think, have been more touching or more tragical. The experienced Christian, the confirmed Agnostic may both alike smile—it were more fitting, perchance, that they should weep—at the half-reasonings, the lights and shadows of belief, the exaggerations and recoils in the lonely pilgrimage of this young soul. And yet this at least is sure, that if the fate of a human soul battling in the great waters within the sight and hail of the shore, and going down alone, does not profoundly move and thrill the nature of any one of us, it is ill for him; he is far—very far—from the kingdom of God.

Let it not be deemed that Gerald Eversley ever[251] fell into the sophistry of treating religious belief as a thing indifferent. That miserable thought could not be his. Early hallowed associations possessed him. The beauty of a life ordered by religion was before his eyes. In the hours when he had drifted farthest from the sanctuary of God he would still, I think, have owned that life without religion, though it might be lived, and lived not selfishly nor unprofitably, yet was not, nor could ever be, the same thing.

And if he asked himself Is religion needed? he could give but one answer. The world around him, the world within him, were his witnesses. Human nature is not so constituted that it can afford to dispense with its strongest motive to morality. ‘Is it said,’ he writes, ‘that the belief in God does not make men moral? To say so is to deny the influence of belief upon action altogether. Why do men act in one way rather than in another? Because of their beliefs. Belief is the sole curb of passion. A man’s creed determines soon or late his deeds. Man, so far as he is a rational being, must be guided by his reasonable expectations of consequences, i.e. by his beliefs. What absurdity, then, to imagine that a belief in man’s responsibility for his actions—public or obscure—for his words, for his very thoughts, to an Infallible, Eternal and Almighty Judge, is not an[252] infinitely potent cause of moral action! The man of belief and the man of unbelief stand on different platforms. It is the former who provides, the latter who accepts, the sanctions of morals. Infidelity may appeal to public opinion as a restraining force; but what created public opinion? Faith.’

Then he seeks to meet the objection that religion does not always moralise human lives. ‘It is true, but what if it is? Motives do not always produce their natural results; they may be counteracted by other motives or by passions stronger for a time than themselves, for man is not simply rational, he is a creature of emotion, impulse, passionate desire. The sea, high-swollen by gales, overleaps its walls, dashes its salt spray for a brief while above the cliff. Are the walls then useless? were it well to pull them down? Better to strengthen them, deepen them, heighten them. No; religion may be false, but it has no substitute.’

It is clear that when he wrote these words—and they were never cancelled—he longed to believe; he realised the beauty, the blessedness of belief. Would that beauty and blessedness be always his? He saw the storm descending upon him from afar, and he cowered before it. He ‘feared as he entered into the cloud.’ Men talk sometimes of ‘giving up’ religious[253] belief; but no belief that is worth possessing was ever ‘given up;’ it is torn away by some cruel power irresistible, and the soul is left lacerated, bleeding from the wound. To Gerald Eversley (if he had ever known them) would have come home those wonderful lines which show that Goethe passed through deeper spiritual waters than he was fain to confess:

Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass,
Wer nie die kummervollen Nächte
Auf seinem Bette weinend sass,
Er kennt Euch nicht, Ihr himmlischen Mächte.

Ihr führt ins Leben uns hinein,
Ihr lasst den Armen schuldig werden,
Dann überlasst Ihr ihn der Pein,
Denn alle Schuld rächt sich auf Erden.

Let us try to follow him in his wanderings.

All unbelief begins in a distrust of the goodness of God. To be able to say ‘I believe in God’ is to have a religion, nay, if the truth be told, it is to have all religion. That majestic article of belief is so high a triumph over the apparent faults, schisms, lapses, miseries, agonies of Nature, that he whose heart can say ‘I believe that God is good’ is prepared for other beliefs as developments of that.

Consider how great a belief it is—great in its difficulty, great in its august beneficence. ‘I believe in the All-Good,’ or, as Christ put it, ‘I believe in God the Father.’ Marvellous it is that Theist or Deist should[254] have been a term used reproachfully. To believe in a superintending gracious Providence; to believe that in life’s sorrowful straits an Everlasting Eye oversees us, an Almighty Voice still bids us be of cheer; to believe that there is a soul of goodness in things evil, that life is a riddle of which the key is held in divine invisible hands, and that we see as yet but a fragment of the scheme that extends from eternity to eternity—is not this the heart of religion? is it not a solace, guidance, discipline of the soul? ‘I marvel,’ says Gerald Eversley in one of his letters, ‘that the mere faith in God, apart from prophets, priests, mediators, revealers, has not exercised a more sacred, divine influence among men. But I marvel yet more at the tenacious strength with which men in all ages and in all quarters of the world have adhered to that belief, so antithetical as it is to moral experience. The warrant of it lies not, methinks, in the phenomena of Nature or Life. It lies in the constitution of the human heart. Fecisti nos ad Te, as St. Augustine says, et cor nostrum inquietum est donec requiescat in Te. We cling to the faith in God, not because it is open to no objection, but because, when our vision is clearest, not chequered or distorted by pride, passion, cupidity, self-deception, no other faith than that is possible. I believe in God.’

When Gerald Eversley in his lonely meditations[255] found that the belief in God (which he had always taken as axiomatic) was gravely questioned, it was as though the earth were quaking under his feet. The extinguishing of the sun or moon in the heaven would not be a more terrible shock than is the loss of God to a young soul. It is altogether desolate if bereft of Him. It is so trustful, so generous, so positive; it leans so hard upon its faiths, and is so sure of their ability to endure whatever assault of criticism may be opposed to them, that to lose aught is to lose all; and, when the faith in God fails, the man, from a sentiment of having been abused and cheated, plunges many a time headlong into sin. Oh! the pity that God should fail men in their bitter need of Him!

I find this passage in one of Gerald Eversley’s papers, written, it would seem, not long after the date of his leaving St. Anselm’s. It is like much that men have thought and written since the world was.

‘What is the voice of Nature? Is it love? I see a wild battling of forces, ruthless, inexplicable, working out good—such good as exists—by agonies of evil. I see the strong trampling on the weak, life issuing from suffering and death, pain inflicted every day upon the innocent and unoffending; everywhere violence, cruelty, pestilence, cataclysm the laws of the universe. No, the voice of Nature is not love.

[256]

‘What is the voice of History? Is that then love? Has the progress of man been effected by beneficent agencies? Are the hands of civilisation stained with no bloodshed? Everywhere the pages of human history exhibit the red fires of tyranny, injustice, persecution, conscience sacrificed at the stake, virtue outraged and expelled, vice enthroned in the palace, nay, in the sanctuary of God, armies of men slaughtered for a tyrant’s will, butcheries, fusillades, dragonnades, noyades, the axe, the scaffold, the guillotine. Everywhere, everywhere.

‘Why should the Almighty, if He be All-Merciful, permit this carnage? There is no answer.’

The revolt of souls against religion is more often moral than intellectual in its origin. It is when the moral sense is shocked that the intellect sharpens its sword in the cause of unbelief.

The growing humanity of life—a humanity which is the one clear compensating gain for many defaults—rises in protest against the severities of religious history or religious doctrine. The murderous deeds wrought by the heroes and heroines of the Old Testament did not offend the Covenanters as they offend their late descendants to-day. It would not seem that the teaching of Christ, in regard to the future life and its punishments and rewards, aroused so much as one[257] faint murmur of indignation among His contemporaries, who were the vigilant jealous enemies of His Messiahship. Yet that teaching, interpreted with the literalness which would wring the last latent drop of bitterness out of metaphor or allegory, has come to be so keenly resented by sensitive consciences as to imperil the claim of His religion to be the divinely appointed satisfaction for the spiritual needs of humanity.

Gerald was led on—it is but a step—from doubting the justice of God in this world to doubting it in the next. His spirit revolted at the inequalities and disproportions of the present life. But it revolted still more at the thought of an immutable inequality between the destinies of men in the unseen life. His father had always assumed this inequality as an element of revelation. He had spoken of the ‘great gulf fixed,’ of the eternity of bliss, and the eternity of condemnation. It was as sure to him as the Incarnation itself; nay, he would argue, if there was an Incarnation of the Eternal, can the penalty of rejecting Him be less than eternal?

There is no mistake in religion so great as that of being too logical. In the affairs of man and man logic has its place, for they are confined within the boundaries of the reason. But in the relation of the[258] Infinite to the finite, in the problem where one factor is Infinity, logic is the most dangerous, the most fatal of possible guides. From Augustine to Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, it has been the vice of theology. Mr. Eversley did not ask himself, Can one man sin and the consequences for man be everlasting, and shall a God die and the consequences of His death end for most men with threescore years and ten?

Strictly considered, the revelation of the Divine Nature is and must be not single, but twofold. Every truth of God has two sides, like a medal, and it is impossible to view them simultaneously. The nearest human approximation to such truth will be found to lie in a harmony of conflicting propositions. Logical contradictions are an absurdity in human things; in divine things they are sometimes the only possible expressions of truth. The divine severity and the divine forgiveness, like necessity and free will, run in parallel lines which know no meeting in this life, but may perchance meet in the eternal Life of Heaven.

Gerald Eversley seems to have had some inkling or presentiment of this fact, for I find somewhat later a reference to Isaiah lv. 8, 9, as a passage affording the solution of religious difficulties. ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are[259] higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’

But it was the last flicker of the dying flame. On the very same page there is a sentence showing how the bitter herb of unbelief had already begun to poison the spring of happiness in his life.

For no sooner is the goodness of God denied or doubted than a sense of dissatisfaction arises in the human mind. Things are well as they are, if they are the expression of a divine (though inscrutable) will. They are not well, if judged in and by themselves.

Gerald Eversley found himself impatient (as so many before him) of the circumstances of his being, nay, of his being itself. Instead of thanking God for his creation, he censured his father for it. Questions such as these welled up in his soul: ‘Why was I born, when it were so much better not to have been than to be? Τὸ μὴ φῦναι ἃπαντα νικᾷ λόγον. Why has man no option in his birth? why may he have none in his death? Where is the right of parents to bring children into life, knowing not if it will be to them a misery, a curse? How can he who believes that the vast majority of mankind are predestined to an everlasting woe, augment, with a light and laughing heart, the number of the damned?’

[260]

And again:

‘The honour of parents hangs upon the belief in God. The duty of parents to the children whom they have begotten, perhaps to those children’s bitter pain, is a law of Nature. But the duty that children owe to parents needs a revelation of the Divine Will. And what if the revelation fails?’

Thus Gerald for the first time in life began to look with angry eyes upon the father who had once been his ideal of human goodness. Mr. Eversley held that children were ‘an heritage and gift that cometh of the Lord;’ he had been known to say that, where God sent the mouths, He would send the bread to feed them. The theory can hardly be said to be justified by experience. Gerald resented and condemned it. He argued that the parent was responsible for his children’s welfare here and hereafter. Unhappy, wretched he was in his view; it made his home (with its widening circle of open-mouthed little sisters) intolerable to him; his father ceased to be any more his friend, and became to him as a stranger, and for many months in the early days of his college life, Kestercham—the once loved village of his boyhood—saw him not.

His vision being thus disturbed, his soul embittered, he turned a fierce scrutiny upon the evidences[261] of Christ’s religion. He treated them fiercely, almost vindictively. He resolved to give them no quarter. He would be true to his conscience—logically true—be the cost what it might. He seemed to delight in tearing his old beliefs to shreds. Human nature is strangely capable of finding pleasure in self-inflicted pain.

It is not the function of a religious creed to solve all difficulties. Difficulties, physical, intellectual, spiritual, are the stimulus of humanity. Do them away, and humanity becomes contented and enervated. Lessing said, not less forcibly than nobly, that the possession of truth belongs to God; it is the search for truth that is the dignity of man. In this light Pilate’s question gets a new meaning, What is truth?

No evil could happen to human nature so great as the loss of its unsolved and as yet insoluble mysteries.

Religion does not affect to solve religious difficulties. Difficulties are inherent in the relation of the divine to the human. God may be apprehended but not comprehended. Were it possible to comprehend Him, it would be impossible to worship Him. The blessing of religion is not in solving the mysteries of life or nature; it is in showing that there is a solution, and that God keeps it in His hands.

[262]

But Gerald Eversley’s mind was already decided for negation (though he knew it not) when he applied himself to the study of Christianity. That it was so is clear from such words as these in one of his papers:

‘Can it be supposed that God, if He were good and would that all men should be saved, would leave His revelation in doubt? A revelation which can be denied is no revelation. Would He have committed it to fallible men and to yet more fallible records and documents of men? Would He not have written it in flaming characters across the heaven, like the sacred sign that made the Emperor Constantine a Christian? Who will stake his all upon an hypothesis? Who will die for a superior probability? It cannot be a divine providence that loving souls, eager to believe, should be tossed to and fro as on a wild sea and be never at rest. Give me certainty, not an agony of doubt and fear. O God, if Thou be God, prove Thyself God.’

Oh! Gerald, Gerald, it is not the certainties of life (they are few enough) for which men die. The theories, hypotheses, uncertainties—these, and only these, may claim the supreme self-sacrifice.

It is distrust in the goodness of God, I say again, which is the beginning of all unbelief. Gerald Eversley thought himself unfairly used by religion, and[263] his reprisal lay in using religion with more unfairness.

The truth is that if God be good, if He be, as the Wisdom has it, a ‘lover of souls,’ then it is a natural presumption that He should anticipate the need of His children, by establishing an understanding or sympathy between Himself and them. Granted the goodness of God, inspiration and revelation, however understood, cease to be intrinsically difficult; they are natural, almost necessary. The one eternal paradox would be that God should care for men and should take no means to assure them of His care.

But a treasure is not the less a treasure because it is in earthen vessels. The human record of a divine revelation may be looked at either broadly or in detail. If it be scrutinised microscopically, many flaws, fissures, faults will come to light. The element of humanity is in all things the element of error. It is only in the inviolate works of God in Nature that the microscope reveals ever new wonders of beneficence and beauty. But religion can never depend upon disputed points of authorship and chronology. Truth is self-luminous; it matters not who discovers or describes it. Names, places, dates, are the accidents of a religion; they are not of its essence. We need no proof of the sun in heaven. We need[264] no proof of the Divine Life on earth. He who lived that Life called Himself the Son of Man. That one who is mere man should call Himself the Son of Man, were arrogance. But that one who is higher than man, stooping for a time to human estate, should call Himself the Son of Man, is the perfectness of condescension. More it is not necessary to define. ‘If you do not ask me,’ says the philosopher, ‘I know.’

Gerald Eversley fell into the mistake of pressing details. It is the mistake of one who would contemn a hero for an error in dress. Revelation is not infallibility. Life is spontaneous, erratic; death is rigid, immaculate, complete in itself. God speaks by revelation; revelation is life.

Gerald Eversley argued himself into his own predetermined conviction. He did not believe in God, therefore he did not believe in revelation. He mistook his premiss for his conclusion.

He stood then in his thoughts face to face with Christ. We all stand so one day. The ages of history are as one vast columnar gallery, and at its head looms the one pathetic Divine Figure, saying to every individual soul of man, What thinkest thou of Me? It is the one eternal question, ever ancient, ever new; there is no other question in the world.

[265]

The life of Christ is unlike other lives. Its features are distinct and pre-eminent. All depends (though Gerald failed to see it) upon the way of looking at them.

It is possible to argue from miracle to Christ. Or it is possible to argue from Christ to the miracles. Gerald reasoned that miracles could not occur; therefore Christ did not work miracles; therefore He is not the Son of God.

But what means that phrase, The Son of God? Is it literal, sufficient truth? Is it not metaphor? and is not metaphor the sole expression of divine relations?

Sonship implies two things in the human conception of it—posteriority and inferiority; but no sooner does the Creed declare Him Son of God than it declares that He is neither posterior nor inferior to His Father, and yet it calls Him Son. It denies in one clause what it asserts in another. It is self-contradictory, but it is not therefore false.

Why, then, does the Christian Church make use of metaphor? Partly, perhaps, because it is natural to human language to express the spiritual in terms of the sensuous; are not conception, apprehension, religion itself, terms of the senses? But partly, too, because metaphor appeals to the emotions; its very vagueness[266] is suggestive, stimulating, inspiring, and it is by the emotions that religion lives. To say, then, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, is not to say that that is intrinsic absolute truth.

Gerald Eversley had surrendered his faith in the divine nature of Christ. But he still clung to faith in Him as the highest or archetypal man, understanding so His self-chosen title ‘the Son of Man.’ This is the confession which, it will be remembered, he tried to make once to his father. He essayed to speak of Christ as perfect man, though not divine. He forgot that, if there were a perfect man, he would be more than man. Imperfection is an attribute of humanity.

Yet how infinitely touching is at times the desire of those who no longer believe Him divine to acknowledge and reverence Him as the head of the whole human family! They still speak of Him as ‘the Great Master,’ ‘the Holy One,’ ‘the Lord,’ nay even as ‘the Saviour.’ It is the glow that flushes the horizon when the sun has already sunk into the waves.

Gerald Eversley, in this phase of his belief or unbelief, said to himself, ‘He is nearer to me than he was, now that I think of him as man. Time was when his voice came to my ears, as it were, through long and distant avenues. Now I speak to him face to[267] face. He is my elder brother, like myself, yet oh! how much higher! I grasp his hand. He goes before me on the dark and lonesome road. What need to dream of him as descending from heaven, or emptied of a divine glory? It is enough that one who walked upon the earth, a man among men, living the common life of men, tempted as men are, suffering like men, yet lived so sublime a life as to extort from human souls the vain ascription of divinity. That is my comfort, greater than if he had been the firstborn of Creation, and legions of angels had waited upon his word.’

Gerald Eversley did not long deceive himself with the imagination that the residuary Christ of his speculations was the same Being whom he had known and adored in childhood. It is the idlest of idle superstitions that modern reason or sentiment can rewrite the Gospel. Human thought did not create Christ, as Rousseau’s Vicaire Savoyard knew well. Neither can it re-create Him. And if the re-creation were possible, there would be a new Christ. If the angels of God were not obedient to His summons, His strong forbearance in not calling upon them was a mockery. If He could not have saved Himself from death, then His death is no longer meritorious. If he was, like other men, of the earth earthy, where[268] then is the condescension of His humanity? Such a Christ may be a Friend, an Exemplar, a spiritual Leader; the world’s Saviour and Redeemer He is not.

For a while Gerald Eversley flattered himself that this was enough. The miraculous (he said) does not happen. Then there is no Christ. Gerald Eversley manufactured his own Christ and sought to worship Him; but the prayer died away upon his lips.

Yet, after all, this manufactured Christ did not content him. It is easy to make a selection of His words and teachings that please the individual, and to leave the rest. It is easy, but it is not satisfying. And the worst is, that one person is as much entitled to make his selection as another. Gerald, being honest with himself, could not but own that there are words, and actions too, of Christ which do not harmonise with any such selective process. It was a pain to him that so much must be left out. The divine and the human elements are the warp and the woof in the sacred biography. The result of selection is destruction. An accomplished critic, in the exercise of his selective faculty, has decided that Christ could not have spoken the parable of the Prodigal Son. Is the result to discredit the parable of the Prodigal Son, or to discredit the principle of[269] selection? Heaven help us when the Christ of God is dissolved in the crucible of critical taste!

I do not say that a human Christ is not worth having; I only say that he is not the Christ of Christendom. Perhaps Gerald Eversley felt it to be so too; for he wrote, ‘No man is happy in a God whom he fashions for himself. The objects of worship are given, not made; they proceed from God to man, not from man to God. Science can analyse, but it cannot create. It can explain every hue of the rainbow, but it cannot set the rainbow in the heaven.’

He had ceased to worship the divine Son of Man; was it likely that he would worship His shadow? Jesus Christ was to him one whom he could admire or reverence, like Socrates or Marcus Aurelius; He was no more a Guide for life and for death.

So Gerald Eversley faced faith on the ocean of life like a vessel without rudder or compass. The sanctions of his life, its encouragements, its consolations were lost. He was without faith in the world.

To the obligation of the moral law he still clung. It was not in his nature to commit the baseness of discovering in infidelity a pretext for sin. The supremacy of honour, truth, charity, purity, was still the law of his life. Whether these high principles[270] of conduct were self-sufficient, whether they could for ever flourish in a climate that knew not the golden sunlight, he did not ask, he did not wish to ask. He was trying to live the Christian life without Christ. He was not happy.

In the academical society to which he migrated from St. Anselm’s, he was subjected to a new and penetrating experience. His intellectual distinction won him, from the first, admission into a cultivated society. He was struck by the conversation of his associates. It was brilliant and fascinating. It sparkled with jest and epigram. It overran in festive good humour. But it lacked seriousness. It seemed remote from the realities of life. There was in it no sense of responsibility, of awe, of the sense of sin, of the longing for righteousness. The froth upon the cup was high and shining; but in the wine was no strength, no virtue. One of Gerald’s frequent companions at Balliol was heard to say that he did not see what good religion was; for he was doing his duty, and he could not do it better if there were a hundred Gods to punish him. Gerald thought of the Pharisee and the Publican, and of the reverential solemnity with which his father had been wont to repeat the words, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner.’

Yet the stream carried him away. How hard it[271] is to live in the stream and not be borne away by it! And Gerald came to feel the absence of belief to be as natural as belief had once been to him. He took it for granted. He said to himself that nobody believed, because he and his half-score of friends were unbelievers. It began to seem to him a thing incredible that he had once enjoyed a simple unquestioning faith in God and Christ.

It may be that, if it were the Divine Will to test the worth of human souls, no better test were possible than the withdrawal of religious faith. Better, in God’s eyes it may be, than the soul that believes, is the soul that acquits itself nobly in the absence of belief. To steer straight on when the waves of the deep run mountain-high, and neither sun nor moon appears for many days in heaven—this is the triumph of a faithless faith. O soul, that deemest thyself forsaken of God, thou bearest within thee a God whose name is conscience.

And yet the desolation of being faithless—how great it is! Never had Gerald been so solitary before. He shrank more and more from going home. The meeting with his father was painful to him, for he had given up the habit of going to church. And if he knew that his father prayed for him, that was but one witness more to the vanity of prayer.

[272]

At college the men whom he met habitually were either the votaries or (more often) the enemies of religion, and he was neither. Except at Helmsbury, and there only on the rare occasions of conversation with Lady Venniker, he could look for sympathy nowhere. He found it not in the earth nor yet in the heaven, and he knew not that it could ever be found.

Unhappy then he was, and daily unhappier. If he asked, ‘Is there a God? do I stand in relation to Him? Has there been One who spoke on earth in the accents of heaven? Is man responsible except to man? Is there a hereafter? Whence came I? Whither am I going?’—the only answer was the echo of his own voice. Culture could tell him all things, save the one thing that his soul needed to know. It might be that that knowledge was for ever hidden. But if so, if the questions that man is compelled to ask are the questions to which an answer is denied, then is life vain, nebulous, self-torturing, nay, it is death.

Lonely was Gerald, indescribably lonely. One extract from his papers, written when he had been at college a year and more, may be given here; it will not unfitly bring this chapter to a conclusion.

‘I lay wakeful one night until the night was[273] passing into morning. It was more than I could bear—that aching, terrible void. I could have chosen death rather than that living pain. At last I rose from my bed, half dressed myself, and went out. The night had been rainy. The lamps in the courtyard were just flickering on the verge of extinction; they seemed to me emblems of my own dying faith. For a time I stood upon the bridge, gazing downwards into the dark, sluggish water. Many thoughts, weird and dreadful, coursed through my mind; I can scarcely recall them. But I know I said, standing there, “Is life then worthy to be lived, if such be life? What is it that constrains me to suffer and live? Religion teaches that life is a service, and the living man a soldier set at his post by Divine Will, and it is treachery or cowardice to quit it until He gives the command. But I have done with religion. And if my life is my own, and death is sweeter, or less bitter, than life, why live?” So I said—but not yet, not yet. The roseate light began to play on the eastern horizon. I crossed the courtyard, and returned, not as I had come, but under the shadow of the old ivy-grown wall. When my servant came in the morning I was asleep.’

To this had Gerald Eversley come.

‘And Job spake, and said, Let the day perish[274] 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.’

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[276] 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[277] 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.[278] 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[279] 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,[280] 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[281] 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?’

‘No,’ said Gerald, ‘not if their betters are really better. It always appears to me that the persons who complain most loudly about the loss of respect are the persons who least deserve to be respected.’

‘I always find the poor so very respectful and so very grateful,’ said Miss Venniker. ‘It is so little that one can do for them, and they seem to value a kind word so much.’

‘Respect,’ answered Gerald, in rather a low tone, ‘is not a feeling that can be manufactured at will. It springs up naturally where goodness deserves it. No doubt the poor and uneducated may make mistakes, they often look up to the wrong people; but they are only too eager to show respect where it is justly evoked.’

‘What a great deal of harm,’ Miss Venniker continued, ‘a bad prince or even a bad nobleman must do!’

[282]

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Gerald, ‘he makes it so difficult to be loyal; he injures the people by drying up the spring of loyalty that rises in their hearts.’ He paused a moment, and then added, ‘Why, if the aristocracy were all (as the word implies) a ruling class of the best citizens, there is nothing that they might not do; they would have the whole country at their feet.’

‘That is what mamma has often said to me,’ Miss Venniker replied.

‘If people were all like Lady Venniker,’ said Gerald earnestly, ‘there would be no more any discord of classes; I think the world would become as the heaven that the saints have dreamt of.’

The flush of pleasure that passed upon Miss Venniker’s face was her only answer.

Lady Venniker, when her health allowed, delighted in visiting the homes of the poor. Her daughter was always her companion. No visitors were so welcome as they. It seemed natural for them to be there. The poor felt a part of their sufferings to be charmed away when they saw Lady Venniker’s sweet pale face at the wicket-gate. As a rule she did not quit the carriage when her daughter entered the cottages bearing some little present, it might be, of food or clothing, or a message of sympathy more valuable[283] than all else; but the cottagers would come out of their humble homes and cluster around her carriage, and sometimes a sick child would be lifted from its bed to the window to catch a glimpse of ‘the good lady’s’ smile and would go back to bed, feeling better for having seen her. But there were times, too, when Lady Venniker could not refrain from sitting, at whatever personal cost, by the bedside of suffering. It was so when the illness was prolonged or painful or drew near to death, or when she was the only person whose presence could bring relief. Lord Venniker, at her desire, had built a small cottage hospital where the sick poor could be nursed in critical hours. One poor girl, lying in the hospital, who was sentenced to undergo an operation, said to the nurse that she could bear it better if Lady Venniker would hold her hand; and Lady Venniker, hearing her wish, came and sat by her and held her hand in hers until her fears and pains were over. Such was her example of the gracious noble influence that a beautiful soul, high in rank but higher in nature, may display. What wonder that her ladyship was loved and almost worshipped in Helmsbury? It was winter time for the poor folk at Helmsbury whenever she was away; she did not go away now, but in old days, when she was a bride, she had gone to London for the season;[284] it was always spring when she returned, even if the snow was lying on the ground.

Ethel Venniker, as the dispenser of her mother’s charities, had acquired, perhaps, a graver view of life than would be thought wholly natural to her years. Or rather her character (at least, in the eyes of Gerald Eversley) was such a union of lightheartedness and seriousness, of merry frolicsome humour playing upon a surface of deep reverential gravity, as is, in a sense, the perfection of a true womanly nature. She did not shrink from talking, though she was unwilling to talk often, of the sad side of life. She was fond of music and dancing; the theatre, on the rare occasions when she went to it, was an inspiration to her; but she had known the spectacle of death. Her religious feeling was simple and profound. Above all, she had learnt from her mother that rank or wealth was itself a responsibility and, unless utilised to holy ends, a spiritual danger. ‘I used to think,’ was one of Lady Venniker’s favourite remarks, ‘that our Lord’s words about the difficulty of a rich man entering into the kingdom of Heaven were a hard saying, but as I have grown older and have seen more of the world, I have come to realise the truth of them.’

Among other topics, Gerald Eversley found that Miss Venniker did not altogether dissent from his[285] estimate of sport. Here again her opinion was originally her mother’s. Sport was the one point of difference, though of perfectly amicable difference, between Lord Venniker and his wife. He, like all Englishmen of his rank, was a devotee of the great goddess Diana. Without hunting and shooting, life would have appeared to him intolerable, if it had not been unintelligible.

Gerald Eversley, as this story has shown, was no sportsman. It is probable that, like a good many people who have not in their youth enjoyed the opportunity of becoming sportsmen, he did scant justice to the motives and sentiments of sport. In speaking of sport as cruel, he was apt to forget that the cruelty is just what the sportsmen are unaware of. They would like it as well, perhaps better, if the excitement could be obtained without any cost of animal suffering. And, after all, the opponents of sport are not above eating a grouse or a partridge. But one day, when Lord Venniker and Harry had gone out shooting, Gerald Eversley asked Miss Venniker, with whom he was walking, what she felt about sport.

‘I cannot say I quite like it,’ was her answer.

He continued. ‘It always seems to me so strange that people should like killing and actually be proud of it. Your father, for instance, and Harry, who are[286] so kind-hearted. People seem to be made heartless by sport. They lose their humanity—I mean, they lose it for the moment. I suppose it is a survival from the time when men lived in daily terror of wild beasts and paid honour to those who destroyed them.’

‘I am sure,’ she said warmly, ‘papa and Harry are not cruel; nobody is kinder than papa; but they enjoy the fun and exercise so much they never think of any cruelty in sport.’

‘It is the word “sport,” said Gerald, ‘that I object to as much as the thing. No doubt it is necessary that the animals should be killed for human life. But the killing of them is a painful necessity; it is a thing to be done reluctantly, not a thing to be fond of or proud of. That anybody should shoot hundreds of beautiful living creatures and leave others to perish in silent agony, and then that he should make a boast of what he has done and call it “sport”—that is what strikes me as so surprising. It will not be so always. I think the time will come when sportsmen will be looked upon only as a superior kind of butchers.’

‘Well, I don’t mind you calling them so,’ said Miss Venniker, adding, with a laugh, ‘all except papa and Harry, of course. But I think that time will be a long while in coming.’

‘You may disapprove a thing,’ said Gerald, ‘without[287] condemning the people who do it. No one can be blamed for being in advance of his age. Mr. Newton, of Olney, never enjoyed sweeter hours of communion with God than when he was sailing to the West Indies with a cargo of slaves.’

There was a slight pause, and then Miss Venniker resumed.

‘What I do wish,’ she said, ‘is that when some rare beautiful bird makes its way to England it were not immediately shot by somebody. That seems so selfish. One man gets the pleasure—if it is a pleasure—of shooting it, but how many would be pleased if England could become once more the home of beautiful creatures that are now extinct!’

‘Yes,’ said Harry, ‘that is the very height of selfishness. But you remember Wordsworth’s lines—I think they just express what we have been saying—

“Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”’

Another day they talked of politics. Lady Venniker was present then. It was intended that Harry should one day stand for the county. The Vennikers had represented it, with some few intervals, in the House of Commons for nearly a century. In the old days the seat was considered safe in itself. It was still rendered safe by the personal popularity of Lord Venniker. But[288] Lady Venniker feared that politics had a tendency to blunt the delicate edge of the moral sense. She thought the danger was not that public men, in a democracy, would do the thing which they believed to be wrong, but that there was nothing which they would not believe to be right.

‘Vox populi vox Dei,’ said Gerald. ‘There is a divinity, I suppose, in numbers, and the will of the people ought to be done. That is the fundamental principle of democracy.’

‘Yes,’ said Lady Venniker, ‘but it does not follow that you are the person who ought to do it. I cannot think that any preponderance of votes or opinions can alter the law of conscience for the individual. Ought not a statesman to say frankly what he thinks right, and, if something else is to be done, to let others do it?’

Impracticable, ideal vision of an invalid!

‘But Harry,’ said Miss Venniker, ‘will say what he thinks, and what he thinks will be right. All good people are Conservatives now.’

Gerald Eversley smiled.

‘If it is so,’ said Lady Venniker, ‘it is a bad thing for the country. There can be no greater misfortune than that the aristocracy of a country should be all on one side, even if it is the right side.[289] For the aristocracy are the natural leaders of the people, and it is important that the leaders, whatever side they belong to, should have the same instincts and traditions of conduct, the same principles of action, the same moral feelings. If not, they have no common ground.’

‘That is certainly true,’ said Gerald. ‘You cannot play any game—least of all the game of politics—without a certain conventional code of honour. If people who play a game are bound by nothing but the rules, it cannot be played. The conventions of society are worth more than its rules. Unscrupulous men will always evade rules, but a sense of honour is a law to itself.’

The subject of religion was not avoided among them. How could it be, when it entered so much into the lives of two of them? Miss Venniker spoke of it with perfect naturalness. Gerald Eversley never knew whether she was aware that he had been long troubled by religious doubts. At all events she never referred to them. But her own faith was unclouded, unsullied. It illumined and sanctified her life. She felt the Saviour to be not far off, but a present Friend. She spoke of Him as if He were at her side. She had no doubt at all that He could hear her prayers and help her.

[290]

‘I am sure,’ she said once, ‘that if mamma were to tell me something that seemed very strange and incredible I should believe it, for I should know she would not deceive me; how then can I help believing what Jesus Christ says? I am far more sure that He would never deceive me.’

‘I wish I could feel all that you do,’ said Gerald.

‘You cannot prove goodness,’ she replied, ‘but you know it. Jesus Christ was very good. When He tells me about God, I can trust His word.’

‘I will trust Him too,’ said Gerald.

‘Sometimes,’ she added, ‘when I pray, I seem to feel that He is very near me, so near that I can almost place my hand in His. Oh! what will it not be to see Him face to face and to be like Him! how sorry shall we be then that we ever doubted Him!’

If indeed the Saviour be present whenever a pure heart is lifted to His throne, He may well have been near to Ethel Venniker as she prayed.

The influence of her words and her example upon Gerald Eversley’s life was surprising. He has left no record to account for it; but there is no doubt of it. He had accumulated facts and arguments against religion, and they fell away. In the presence of this simple fervent soul he stood abashed. He was her[291] superior intellectually; he could easily have confuted her in argument. But it was nothing that she said, it was she herself that made the change in him. He felt as if he were becoming a Christian again despite himself. His old boyish feeling for religion began to revive. Once more he could breathe a prayer and not wholly despair of its being heard—that most moving of prayers, ‘Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.’ He accompanied her to the village church. The sight of her face there, far removed from earthly thoughts, upraised to heaven, irradiate with the glow of a divine sanctity, was a lesson to him, a revelation. A new life awoke within him. He began to be happy again. The discords of his nature were harmonised. He was at peace. He owed his conversion (if it may be so called) not to reading, not to reasoning, but to the magic of a pure and holy life.

Was it only religion that worked this sudden change in him? Was there not springing up in his heart another sentiment, not alien from religion and yet not a part of it, a sentiment which he could not deny, yet dared not confess, even to himself?

It is dangerous when young souls, a youth and a maiden, are thrown together a great deal without restraint. Nature has a strange way of evolving[292] sympathies and discovering affinities. ‘The way of a man with a maid’ is still one of the things that no one understands. And when a man does not want to confess the truth, it is so easy for him to deceive himself—so much easier than to deceive others—by calling his sentiment kindness, friendship, sympathy, brotherly interest, anything in fact but just the thing that it is, and by pretending to himself that it is only to help or encourage another or to give her advice that he is found so often at her side. Could Gerald have been told a few months or weeks before that he was falling in love with Ethel Venniker, he would have said No, it was impossible, she was too far above him, he could never win her, never be worthy of her; but his heart would perhaps have whispered Yes. What could he give her upon which she would not have looked disdainfully—he a poor clergyman’s son, isolated now from his home, without rank, without money, without hope of influence, not knowing as yet how he should make his way in the world? Ah! but there is only one thing that love asks for, and it is what everyone, even the poorest, can give—it is the heart. Rich or poor, high or low, rash, methinks, is the man or woman who disdains the infinite treasure of another’s heart.

[293]

Then, too, there was what I may venture to call a presentiment of love in Gerald Eversley’s relation to Miss Venniker. It lay in his old affection for her brother. Life is full of such presentiments, fuller than we know. But is it wrong to say that there are those whom it is natural to love? We love them for their own sake, but partly too we are predisposed to love them by the love we bear for others. It is as if a pre-established sympathy, a sort of communion of saints, existed between them and us, even when we have never seen them as yet. Miss Venniker was endowed in Gerald Eversley’s view not only with her own charm, rare as it was, but with her brother’s too. To be linked to her was to be linked to him, to him perpetually. The old schoolboy friendship would be consolidated, nay, it would be sanctified by a deeper and holier sympathy. Is the thought fanciful? is it visionary? Have I not known elsewhere instances of men who have loved the brother first, and then—with a still stronger love—his sister? and can there be any guarantee more beautiful for the perfectness of the married life than this meeting, this blending of the old love and the new in one deep, holy, peaceful current of devotion?

It must be remembered, too, that Ethel Venniker had come in Gerald Eversley’s eyes almost naturally[294] to seem an idol. She stood above him. He could not look upon her without feeling that his thoughts were raised. She was so far better than anybody or anything that he had known at Kestercham, that her presence was ever as a delightful surprise. It was not her beauty alone or her grace or her goodness that told upon him; it was the union of them all.

How wonderful, how sacred is the feeling of a first love! All the world seems to be smiling on that day. It is a feeling that can never come again. All the highest experiences of life come once only. To have been in love, as it is said, twice is never to have been in love once. How pure the feeling is and precious and all-absorbing!

O dass sie ewig grünen bliebe,
Die schöne Zeit der jungen Liebe!

Gerald Eversley was in love. He had entered into that paradise of hopes, fears, dreams, anticipations, ecstasies. Why is it called ‘falling in love’? I can never tell. It is not a falling, but a rising to the gates of heaven. Gerald Eversley knew that in the tangled path of life there was one hand that by its touch thrilled his spirit, one voice above all others that was music in his ears. To be with her, to see her, to listen to her was heaven. He dared not tell his love, he did[295] not even desire to tell it yet; he lived in the present, he shrank from knowing or imagining the future.

And Ethel Venniker—did she never guess his secret? There is nothing to show. But human nature has many languages, and it may be that the language of the eyes and of the heart is more eloquent than that of the lips. It is not easy to keep from a woman a secret concerning herself.

But what should the end of it all be? Gerald Eversley, absorbed as yet in his unrevealed passion, could neither admit nor deny that it was hopeless. To speak of it would be to shut the gates of Helmsbury in his own face. Was it probable that Lord Venniker, proud of his rank, proud of his only daughter, as he was, would consent to her union with a penniless student? Could she herself be brought to care for one whose relation to her family was simply that of grateful and profound indebtedness?

So Gerald reasoned, and he reasoned rightly; but there was one thing, though he knew it not, which even in Lord Venniker’s eyes might plead for consideration. His rising reputation in the university was not altogether unknown to the family at Helmsbury Hall. It was rumoured—Harry Venniker had heard it from an old schoolfellow whom he met in the country—that Gerald was the best man of his year at[296] Oxford. Already he had won some of the highest academical honours. One of the tutors of Balliol was reported to have said that ‘there was nothing that Eversley could not do, if he liked.’ And in a country house, especially in one where the intellectual life is not cultivated, there is always, even among sportsmen, a faint admiring, if somewhat condescending, respect for a scholar. Harry Venniker himself felt this respect, he had always felt something of it at St. Anselm’s, and his sister shared it to the full.

To whom in these circumstances could Gerald Eversley speak of his love? and how could he speak without destroying it by the mere breath of his lips?

Should he speak to Miss Venniker herself? It would, he feared, be dishonourable to seek her affection without the knowledge of her father and mother; nor could he suppose that she would listen to him. Was not the world open before her? Who could imagine that she would bestow a thought on him? And if she rejected him——

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[297] 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?[298] 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[299] 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[300] 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?

[301]

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.

Four days elapsed—days that seemed to Gerald like years. He began to think that Lady Venniker had acted upon his suggestion of silence as a means of indicating refusal. On the fifth day there was a letter bearing the Helmsbury postmark, written (not without difficulty) in Lady Venniker’s own delicate handwriting. It was in these words:

Lady Venniker did not say, but it was easy for Gerald Eversley, reading between the lines of the letter with the quickened instinct of love, to apprehend, that it was her own sweet influence, exercised in his behalf, which had won her husband’s consent to her writing this letter. Lord Venniker was moved by the natural aristocratic sentiment in favour of a[308] high marriage for his only daughter. But in Lady Venniker’s beautiful and selfless mind considerations of rank were not weighed against the natural feelings of two young souls. If Ethel and Gerald were destined by Providence for each other, she would thankfully assent to their union. And she who had known most of Gerald’s spiritual troubles knew best the Christian spirit in which he had borne them. She thought and hoped that, in uniting his life to Ethel’s, he would find his way back to his Saviour.

It did not escape the keen observation of Mrs. Eversley that, when Gerald received the letter with the familiar postmark of Helmsbury, but in a handwriting which Mrs. Eversley did not remember to have seen before, his face became suffused with a sudden deep blush as he read it, he scanned the last part of it hurriedly and (she thought) as if he were ashamed of it, and soon afterwards, without finishing his breakfast, made some excuse for going out of the room. She had fancied for a day or two before that he was unusually restless, like one who is exerting himself to suppress some strong emotion, and that he looked with singular anxiety each morning to see if a letter had come for him. Her curiosity was not lessened when Gerald returned half an hour after leaving the breakfast table, saying that he had received[309] an unexpected invitation to Helmsbury, and that he must go there at once. But his visits to Helmsbury had been so frequent that Mr. Eversley saw nothing strange in this invitation, and Mrs. Eversley soon ceased to trouble herself about it amidst the multitude of her domestic duties and her ‘good works.’ Gerald left Kestercham the same day in time to catch the train indicated in Lady Venniker’s letter.

Lord Venniker’s brougham was awaiting him when he reached Helmsbury Station, and he drove to the Hall. His heart sank a little as he passed through the long avenue of chestnuts leading to the draw-bridge outside the great gates of the courtyard. Lord Venniker greeted him with his usual hearty good nature; but as he shook hands with him he said only, ‘Well, Eversley, your train must have been in good time. Fortune favours the brave, you see’—a remark which Harry Venniker, who was sitting with his father in the small drawing-room when Gerald came in, did not wholly understand. Lady Venniker, who was alone in her boudoir, said nothing upon the subject that was next her heart and his, but he thought that the pressure of her hand was even warmer and tenderer than of old. Miss Venniker, as has been said, was away from home; she would return[310] to-morrow. To-morrow! So Gerald enjoyed a respite of a few hours. It seemed strange to him that Harry—his friend of long eventful years—should be the one person left in ignorance of the great secret.

In Helmsbury Park, beneath a spreading ancient cedar, is a rustic bench, which for a time—a short time only—was known to the family at the Hall as The Lovers’ Seat. It is never so called now. There it was that Gerald Eversley found his opportunity of revealing (if indeed it was a revelation) all his love to the delicate and lovely girl who had made his heart her own. It happened in this way. Lord Venniker and his son and daughter and Gerald himself had gone out for a walk after luncheon. By a curious accident (which has never been satisfactorily explained) Gerald and Miss Venniker, lingering a little behind the others—for the others would walk so fast that it was impossible to keep pace with them—chanced to take one turning at a place where two roads parted, when Lord Venniker and Harry had taken the other. They did not discover their mistake until it was too late to retrieve it. Then they turned back and sat down on the rustic bench beneath the cedar. Gerald poured out his soul in those pure passionate words, ever old and ever new, which lovers have used, with[311] more or less identity of phrase, since the days of the Garden of Eden, and yet no lover (it would seem) has ever used so truly as he who uses them to-day. It would be a sacrilege to try to report them here. Miss Venniker listened to them with downcast eyes and flushing cheek. When they were done—nay, before he had quite finished speaking them—she put her hand, without saying a word, in his. Just then a cloud which had veiled the sun for a minute passed away, and they were bathed in the effulgence of light. Did not a cloud too pass away from a human heart?

If life be a wilderness, it has its oases where the grass is green and the music of sweet waters is low.

The beautiful autumnal day was sinking to rest when Gerald Eversley and Ethel Venniker, walking slowly, drew near to the Hall, and, without saying anything to anybody, went to their bedrooms.

There was a small dinner party at Helmsbury Hall that evening.

‘I say, Gerald,’ said Harry in the presence of some of the guests as soon as Gerald Eversley entered the reception-room, ‘what became of you and Ethel this afternoon? Why did you not come with us?’

[312]

‘We lost you,’ said Gerald. ‘I suppose we must have taken a wrong turn.’

‘What did you do?’ asked Harry, innocently.

‘We sat a good while on a seat in the park, talking,’ was the answer.

‘I hope,’ said Harry, ‘you found your conversation interesting.’

‘Very,’ said Gerald, with a glance at Ethel, who was sitting on an ottoman not far off. She blushed slightly.

‘What did you talk about?’ asked Harry.

‘Oh! various things,’ replied Gerald.

A captious critic would perhaps have remarked that the reply was not strictly accurate, as they had talked of one thing only.

Late that same night, when the party had broken up, Ethel Venniker made her way to her mother’s bedroom.

Lady Venniker was sitting by the fire.

Ethel went up to her and put her arm around her neck and whispered, ‘Mother dear, I have something to tell you.’

Lady Venniker looked up with a sweet smile.

‘Perhaps you need not tell it me, darling,’ she said. ‘I think I can guess what it is.’

Ethel fell into her mother’s arms, and they kissed each other fervently.

[313]

Then they sat by the fire talking until Lady Venniker was weary and could talk no more, Ethel telling of the strange new feeling that had sprung up in her heart, and wondering how and when her mother had found it out, Lady Venniker dwelling upon the holy and blessed duties of the married life, and pointing out, in softened tones, how much a maiden may do to help and elevate the man to whom her heart is given.

The next morning Gerald Eversley was the recipient of congratulations from Lord Venniker and Harry. It was Harry’s birthday. Lord Venniker spoke with a certain reserved dignity or gravity of demeanour, as though he could not forget, and did not altogether wish his interlocutor to forget, that in winning the hand of his daughter he had won a treasure such as his natural expectations and ambitions could scarcely have aspired to.

But Gerald was not likely to minimise his own good fortune, and in his present mood he did not resent, but rather gratefully accepted, the words which reminded him how great it was. Harry received him with all his old frank enthusiasm. There did not seem to be in his mind a thought of any condescension that his sister was showing, or any unmerited blessing that his friend had obtained. It was enough for him[314] that the friend of his boyhood was to be allied to him by a closer band than before. Enough that two souls most dear to him on earth were soon to become one. He only protested a little that they had not treated him with the candour for which he might have looked.

‘It’s too bad,’ he said, ‘old man. You ought to have given me a hint. I never thought of anything between you and Ethel. But she is a downright good girl, and if I were not her brother, I declare I would marry her myself.’

‘Would you, though?’ said Ethel laughingly. ‘Perhaps I should have had a word to say about that.’

And so he turned upon his sister, asking her if he and she had not always been the confidants of each other’s secrets, and complaining that she had deceived him for the first time.

Poor Harry! If he had lived longer in the world, he would have known that Love carries the secret of deception in his pocket. The lover, until he is successful in his love, will hide it from his best and nearest friend. It needs a woman to penetrate that disguise.

So Harry Venniker’s birthday was celebrated in a way that nobody had thought of. In the evening[315] Gerald Eversley remarked that he hoped he had given Harry a welcome birthday present.

It was arranged that Gerald should acquaint his father and Mrs. Eversley privately with the change that had come over his prospects in life. He did not write to Mrs. Eversley, but he wrote to his father a long letter full of Ethel’s virtues and graces, and of all that she had said and done, and all that Lady Venniker had said and done, and so on; he asked him to let Mrs. Eversley know the contents of the letter.

Two days later he received answers from them both. They were very different.

Mr. Eversley wrote that the news had come as an overwhelming surprise, it was beyond what he could have dreamt of, but Gerald had made his way into a society of which his father and mother had had no experience; he could have no other desire or prayer than the welfare of his dear son—the son for whom his affection had been always so intense—he rejoiced to learn that the noble lady whom he had chosen for his wife was a humble follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, he would give her a welcome ‘as to my own daughter, if she will permit me,’ to his home and his heart, and he knew that there was no blessing on earth like a marriage cemented in the fear of heaven.

[316]

Mrs. Eversley wrote more briefly, congratulating him upon forming an alliance that must elevate his social position and exercise a refining influence upon his manners, hoping he would not forget that the first would sometimes be last in the kingdom of Heaven, but wishing him and the Honourable Miss Venniker every happiness in this life and in the next.

Gerald read his father’s letter to Ethel Venniker—only leaving out the part relating to social conditions. ‘What a dear man he must be!’ she said; ‘I long to make his acquaintance.’ He did not read her Mrs. Eversley’s letter.

Oh! that this story could end where it is now! But it must be told, if told at all, to the end. There seems to be a tacit assumption among story-tellers that every story that is told should issue in happiness. That is the way of stories; it is not the way of life. Life is full of tragedies, often known, oftener unknown, that find no satisfaction in this world. It is not permitted to man to see the ending of them; the fierce light beyond the veil will discover it.

Gerald Eversley’s engagement took place in September. He spent the remainder of his vacation at Helmsbury. How bright, how beautiful the days were! For the first time in his life since childhood—and ah! for the last—Gerald Eversley seemed to himself to live as the Blessed live. Whatever restraint had lain upon his association with Ethel Venniker was now done away. His place was at her[318] side. He was no more open to the fear that, in allowing himself the luxury of accompanying her, he might be doing her a wrong. Day followed day in bliss unalloyed. The mornings were spent in reading and discussing the masterpieces of literature, Gerald exposing to her view literary treasures of which she had no idea; the afternoons in long walks over the downs, often with the object of paying a visit and ministering relief to some one who was in sickness or distress; then before dinner and in the evening they would have music, which was always a strong bond between them, or they would sit in Lady Venniker’s room, and she would give them her experience of life, and would watch with tender interest how each of them seemed more and more to find a complement in the other. It pleased her to fancy that, when they were man and wife, each would be the better and the nobler for the other. Now and again, too, she would speak of marriage, sometimes religiously, saying that it was the symbol of the Saviour’s spiritual union with His church, and, as it was so, wife and husband must be infinitely faithful and tender each to the other, nor must any word or thought come between them to desecrate the sanctity of that relation.

‘Try to think, dear children,’ she added, ‘of some[319] work that you may do in common for His sake. My cottage hospital has been a great delight to me. Your father, Ethel, built it for me in the first year of our married life, and I think he has cared for it so much because I cared for it, and he has been so good in helping the poor children when they were convalescent, and many of them who have been nursed there write to me now. I seem to have a little family scattered all over England and even beyond it, and I know it will be a happiness to you both to do some such work as this from the very first.’

One question that arose in those happy days at Helmsbury, and was discussed afterwards several times, was the question of Gerald’s profession. No one suggested that he should take Holy Orders. But he was now within sight of a fellowship, the crowning ornament of an academical career. When that had been gained (if it should be gained) it would be necessary for him to decide upon his profession.

Lord Venniker, who possessed considerable political influence, was anxious that he should enter one of the Government offices, thinking that he was not qualified for public life, but that in such a sphere his conspicuous ability would bring him to the front. It was a line of life for which Gerald himself displayed some taste, though he had an inclination towards[320] work in a university, or at least under the shadow of a great library. He reflected, however, that much of the best literary work in the world had been done by men who were not strictly students, but devoted to learning the fragments of leisure of which they had made better use than other men of a whole lifetime. Lady Venniker, though she often spoke of his profession, did not expressly state what she wished it to be; but it is probable that in her heart she cherished the hope (and Miss Venniker seems to have shared it) that he would yet see his way to entering upon the parochial ministry of the Church of England. To her it seemed that the profession of the clergyman, if it were conscientiously embraced, offered the blessing, which so few professions offer, of being in itself purely useful and beneficent; he who embraced it did not need to seek opportunities of doing good or to make them for himself apart from his professional life, but they came to him every day in the natural course of his duty; she thought no one could do so much good as a good clergyman, and once she quoted Coleridge’s description of the rural clergyman’s home as ‘the one idyll in English life.’ But Lady Venniker would never let the free choice of a profession, especially one so sacred as the clerical, be compromised or influenced by any deference to her own understood[321] wish. Therefore Gerald was left to make his own choice.

One incident of this time may not be passed over. Mrs. Eversley, after much anxious consultation with her husband, had decided that it would be ‘the right thing’ to invite her future daughter-in-law to spend a few days at the beginning of the new year in Kestercham Vicarage. It would not be true to say that the invitation proceeded from Mrs. Eversley as a matter of grace; it was rather (like so much else that she did) a matter of duty. ‘You see, my dear,’ she said to Mr. Eversley, ‘it is clearly the right thing for us to do. If she is going to be Gerald’s wife (as I suppose she is), she must come to know some day what sort of people we are, and what our life is like, and it is better she should know it before marriage than after. If she turns up her nose at our humble way of living, she need not come here any more. But I think, or at least I hope, she will do her duty as a good wife ought.’

Mr. Eversley assented to this view, though he would perhaps have expressed it rather differently.

So the invitation was sent to Helmsbury Hall. Rather to Mrs. Eversley’s surprise, it was at once gratefully accepted.

It was an anxious day when Ethel Venniker came[322] to Kestercham. Mr. Eversley went himself with Gerald to meet her at the railway station of X——. Mrs. Eversley, whose culinary conceptions were circumscribed and generally resulted, on the rare occasions when she ‘entertained company,’ in doing what she was wont to describe as ‘falling back upon a hash,’ had made great preparations for receiving her in a manner not wholly unworthy of her social position. Judging by the number and variety of the provisions congregated in Mrs. Eversley’s store-room, one might have surmised that social position was marked in England by an unparalleled development of the appetite. She had ordered new dresses for herself and all the children, except the two youngest, whom it was proposed to confine to the nursery. She had persuaded her husband that the stair-carpet ‘had a common look,’ and must be renewed in anticipation of the visit. She understood that ladies of quality like Miss Venniker always brought a ladies’ maid with them, if they did not bring two, and she had made arrangements for receiving these invariable concomitants of rank, and for giving them meals suitable to their status, which appeared to be about midway between her own family and the servants. But Miss Venniker did not come attended by any retinue. She came alone, simply and quietly. Her costume[323] was not impressive in its grandeur. She found no fault with the food. She said how much she liked the view from her bedroom window. It seemed that she was contented with everything. She went into the nursery and played with the children; she had actually brought presents for some of them. She captivated the hearts of Mr. and Mrs. Seaford by paying them a visit at the Grange and taking tea with them, and expressing an interest in agricultural matters; she even promised to accompany Mr. Seaford in one of his morning walks over the farm. Mr. Eversley himself she treated with a respectful delicacy which won its way to his affection. She entered eagerly into all the affairs of the parish. She begged leave to go with him on his visits to his sick people, saying how much she was in the habit of paying such visits, as her mother’s representative, at Helmsbury; she was even to be seen walking at his side and, in spite of his repeated protest, carrying a basin of soup to a poor woman who had just been confined. She volunteered to take a part in the choir at church; and the villagers, who had been duly apprised of her rank and title by Mrs. Eversley, listened in open-mouthed admiration to her sweet voice, and said it seemed to them as if they had heard a voice from a better world. Mr. Eversley[324] found to his delight that she loved her Saviour. It was enough for him; he did not ask if she had been ‘converted,’ but he spoke of her afterwards as ‘an elect soul.’ Perhaps Ethel Venniker did not need ‘conversion;’ there are some souls that do not seem to need it.

But nothing awoke in Mr. Eversley’s heart such fervent satisfaction, nothing was to him such a subject of pious and devout thanksgiving, as her evidently strong spiritual influence upon Gerald. If there had been any roughness, any cynicism noticeable in his manner during the dark days of his doubtings, it disappeared when she was at his side. The old simplicity of faith returned to him, or was as if it returned. It happened that the period of Ethel Venniker’s stay at Kestercham included the first Sunday of the year, the day of the great Sacrament, to which reference has been made in an earlier chapter. Gerald had never attended the Sacrament in Kestercham Church since that first Sunday of the year when he absented himself so tragically. Judge, then, what was Mr. Eversley’s joy, how he lifted his heart in reverent praise to the Almighty, when he saw his son and his future daughter-in-law kneeling side by side, and, without his having said a word to either of them, receiving from his hands the memorials[325] of the Divine Passion. It was almost too much for him; his eyes were filled with tears. The cloud was lifted from his life. Once more, after many days, there was peace—a sacred peace—in Kestercham Vicarage. Once more the relation of father and son was perfected. Once more the old familiar intercourse returned. The two lives became, as it were, one again. Mr. Eversley took out his diary and drew his pen through one ominous entry made there long ago. And she who had done it all, and done it unconsciously, was the beautiful girl who had promised to be Gerald’s bride.

It was more difficult for Ethel Venniker to conquer Mrs. Eversley. Mrs. Eversley’s sense of duty had raised a strong partition-wall between her visitor and herself. There are some people whose sense of duty approximates to a sense of the duty which other people owe to them. Mrs. Eversley, while admitting Miss Venniker’s social superiority, was very careful not to take any such steps as would imply an acknowledgement of her own inferiority; and she wasted a good deal of time in the vain occupation (to which other ladies besides Mrs. Eversley are sometimes given) of thinking what her visitor would think about her, when her visitor was not thinking about her at all, or was only thinking how to please[326] her. But the time came when Mrs. Eversley was called upon to preside at her annual mothers’ tea-party on Twelfth Night. ‘You must not dream of coming to it,’ she said to Miss Venniker on the morning of the party. ‘They are only a number of old women, the labourers’ wives, very common people, as all ours are, and they do not know how to behave; but I think it right to have them. It gives them pleasure, poor things. Mr. Eversley or Gerald will amuse you in the drawing-room.’

But Ethel would not hear of being left out. She brushed aside all Mrs. Eversley’s kindly objections, that she was looking pale and tired, and must not over-fatigue herself. She insisted upon waiting on the old women herself, pouring out cups of tea, carrying round plates of bread and butter and buns, and persuading them to consume more than was good for their health, and to put something in their pockets for their children or grandchildren. When the tea was over, she asked if she might sing to them for a short time. They had listened, or some of them had, to her in church, and they were eager to listen again. So she took her seat at the piano, and for half an hour poured out in rich, liquid tones a series of simple melodies, ending with ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ which so worked upon the simple, uncultured natures[327] of her audience that there were few dry eyes when the music died away. ‘Thank you, miss; God bless you, miss,’ they said at parting, as she shook hands with them all, and more than one of them on the way home were heard to remark that ‘it was somehow like being in heaven.’

Ethel Venniker was not conscious of having done any great thing. She had acted in the way that was most natural to her. The stars are not conscious of the holy thoughts that they kindle by their shining, nor the flowers of the beauty of their petals. It was her pleasure to make others pleased. But hers was the blessing of those who lay their graces and talents at the foot of the Throne, where the poor of God may gather them up.

Ethel Venniker was to return to Helmsbury on the day following the mothers’ tea-party. Gerald was to accompany her home, and go from Helmsbury to Oxford. Before she left Kestercham, two of the mothers to whom she had sung brought her a wreath of holly leaves and berries, saying, in the name of them all, that they wanted so much to thank her for singing, and did not know how they could express their thanks but in this way.

Her last act while she was at Kestercham was to go with Gerald (unknown to Mr. and Mrs.[328] Eversley) into the churchyard. There he showed her his mother’s grave under the yew tree. It was a lovely spot, even in the winter. They stood looking at the lettered headstone.

‘Poor Gerald,’ she said, tenderly, ‘you do not remember her at all?’

‘No,’ he answered, ‘she died when I was born.’

‘I wonder if she was like mamma,’ said Ethel.

The thought had not occurred to Gerald before, but he answered, ‘I think she must have been—I mean, I hope so.’

As they turned away, Miss Venniker added, ‘I do not think life would be possible without mamma.’

Gerald Eversley tore himself away from Helmsbury for a critical event. It was no less than his examination for a fellowship, which was to take place almost immediately. A fellowship is the natural consummation of a distinguished academical life. Lady Venniker and Ethel were alike anxious that he should win it. They were only afraid that the disturbing influence of his engagement had somewhat interfered with his work.

He had now obtained, through Lord Venniker’s mediation, a nomination for the Treasury. His marriage with Ethel Venniker was to take place soon[329] after Easter. They were to begin their married life in Lord Venniker’s London house.

Gerald Eversley spent at Oxford the fortnight immediately preceding the examination for the fellowship. As soon as it was over, he went back to Helmsbury. He was sitting in the boudoir with Lady Venniker and Ethel, when a telegram announcing his election was placed in his hands. It was easy to see by the flush on his face that he had been successful. He handed the telegram to Lady Venniker, and she pressed his hand affectionately.

‘Gerald,’ said Ethel, ‘this is the greatest prize you have ever won, is it not?’

‘No,’ said Gerald, ‘I think I have won a greater prize than a fellowship,’ as he stooped and kissed her.

It is no part of this story to relate in detail the events of the weeks between the election to the fellowship and the wedding-day. Gerald Eversley spent them principally at Helmsbury. His life was secure and serene. Nothing remained—not even the thought of an examination—to mar its exquisite felicity. He and Ethel could be always together. The thousand and one things which need to be settled even before an ordinary wedding—but what wedding was ever ordinary in the eyes of the persons most concerned[330] in it?—occupied and engrossed their thoughts. Mr. Eversley would, of course, take part in the service; so would the worthy rector of Helmsbury; but the bishop of the diocese would marry them. Mrs. Eversley would be present in her new silk gown, and one of her daughters was to be a bridesmaid. Harry Venniker would not hear of anyone being the best man but himself, and indeed Gerald Eversley had no other intimate friend. Slices of wedding-cake would be sent to innumerable friends and acquaintances, not omitting Mr. and Mrs. Seaford as representatives of the secular or agricultural life at Kestercham. Lady Venniker took care that all the tenants on the estate, men and women and their children too, should participate in the general rejoicing. If there was any malevolent person who thought of suggesting that Miss Venniker was not making very much of a match, the answer was ready in the language of the village carpenter, that he supposed ‘she know’d her own feelin’ best,’ and she looked ‘as happy as a cherubim, bless her soul!’

And what of the spiritual conflict that had made Gerald Eversley’s life so bitter? Was it reasonable that religious doubts should be dissipated by the glow of affection for a beautiful girl? It was not reasonable, but it was human, it was true.

[331]

When the soul of man is at peace, it is easy to believe. How could Gerald, to whom the greatest of human blessings had been vouchsafed in the hour of his despair, deny any more the goodness of God? A great poet said he was always most religious on a fine summer’s day. Gerald lived now in the sunshine of summer. The love of man or woman facilitates the love of God. To live in the presence of the good and holy is to believe in Him who is All-Good and All-Holy. One man sees in Nature only the earthquake and the pestilence. Another sees the peacefulness of the evening, the sunshine, and the soft and beauteous rain. It is not Nature that is different, but it is man or the mood of man.

Mr. Eversley made no allusion to Gerald’s profession. Perhaps a place in the Treasury would seem to him to involve some danger of ‘laying up treasure upon earth.’ He had a vague idea, however, that Gerald would get on in the world, by his own ability or by Lord Venniker’s influence, and that it would not be well for him to interfere. But in the secrecy of his heart he could not surrender the hope that his dear son—the child of so many prayers—would yet be guided by the Divine Light to take upon him the sacred profession which fulfilled all the deepest emotions and the loftiest aspirations of his own heart.[332] Could he see that result, he felt it would be easy for him to ‘depart in peace.’ That was his soul’s desire. He did not know that Lady Venniker, perhaps Ethel herself, desired it too. Even Gerald himself did not know it. They spoke of his life in the Treasury as settled and permanent. Women do not as a rule gain their object by asking directly for it; they have other ways of gaining it.

But how happy was Gerald in being encompassed, on the eve of his marriage, by the prayers and influences of these devout souls!

There were yet three weeks—three weeks only—to the marriage. It was an exceptionally cold spring. But everybody said the warm weather would come in time for the marriage.

Gerald Eversley went back to Oxford. It was necessary that he should arrange to close his residence there and remove his effects with a view to beginning married life in London. He was sorry to leave Helmsbury, still more sorry to leave Ethel; for she had not been very well for the last two or three days, and was confined to her room with a sore throat. Still the time was short, and he could not without discourtesy to his college omit some customary ceremonial duties before quitting it for good.

He wrote to Ethel from Oxford, saying that the master of the college had expressed much interest in his marriage, and sincere regret at his leaving the[334] university; he had also sent him a wedding present. He added that he found himself involved in so many engagements at Oxford that he doubted if it would be possible for him to return to Helmsbury (except perhaps for one night) until a day or two before the wedding. He begged her to let him know that she had got over the cold and was feeling well again.

The answer to his letter came from Harry Venniker. He said that Ethel could not write herself, as she was in bed, suffering from a slight feverish attack following on the sore throat, but the village doctor had seen her and did not take a serious view of her case; there was no reason why Gerald should make any change in his plans. If Ethel should not be so well, Harry would telegraph. Gerald was disturbed in mind; he resolved to go to Helmsbury the next day if the medical report were not entirely satisfactory.

Next morning he received the news that she was better. It was again Harry who wrote, but Ethel had added at the foot of the letter the words, ‘Don’t be anxious, Gerald dearest. I shall soon be quite well.’

A day later she was in much the same state. Gerald would wait no longer, but would go on Monday to Helmsbury.

[335]

On the evening of Saturday, March the -th, 187-, he was going into Hall—he was actually halfway up the length of the Hall—when a telegram was put into his hand. It was in these words:

‘Come at once. Harry.’

He turned and left the Hall. His heart was as lead. Nobody in the Hall knew why he turned back. One or two of the fellows of the college who were sitting at dinner noticed his disappearance; they supposed he had forgotten something, perhaps an invitation to dinner in another college. But the servant who had handed him the telegram, and had looked at him while he read it, remarked that he was afraid Mr. Eversley had got some bad news.

Gerald Eversley, after leaving the Hall, rushed to his rooms. He flung his cap and gown on the sofa. The sense of hunger was dead within him. Hastily he began putting a few clothes—he hardly knew what they were—into a small travelling-bag. Stopping himself in the act of packing, he seized his hat, ran across the grass plot to the porter’s lodge, and told the underporter to order a fly at once. Then he looked at the table of trains. There would be a train starting for London in three-quarters of an hour.[336] Whether he could get on to Helmsbury before next morning he did not stay to ask.

The telegram left room for the worst fears; it did not say that Ethel was still alive. He would go to London and take his chance. In a few minutes his packing was finished, and he stood under the great gateway of the college, awaiting the fly.

‘Is there anything wrong, sir?’ said the underporter, impressed by his manner. ‘I hope you....’

But here he caught sight of Gerald’s face. There was that in his face which forbade words.

O the horror of that wintry night-journey! The sky was flecked with dark ominous clouds. The moon looked gibbous. It was bitterly cold. Here and there large patches of snow still lay on the ground. Gerald gazed at them now and again through the frozen window-pane. But for the most part he sat in a corner of the railway carriage, wrapped in his rug, his head bent forward and buried in his hands.

O darkness of dread fear! when the worst is not known. Nothing is so awful, so appalling as that.

It was near midnight when he reached London. The train was an hour late. No hope of proceeding to Helmsbury that night. But he drove across[337] London. He would sleep, if sleep he could and must, as near as might be to his beloved.

The drive through London at night is always an impressive experience. The vast suspended animation of the great city of men solemnises the mind. But Gerald thought not of that. Onwards he drove until the stir of life had died away, and scarce a soul was moving in the desolate squares. It was Sunday morning!

The last night-train to Helmsbury had started an hour ago. He could go by the first train in the morning. For that he waited. Of sleep he could not think. Pacing the platform or sitting uneasily in the waiting-room, never at rest for more than a few minutes together, he spent the hours of that chill night. Once somebody spoke to him on the platform, but he knew not who it was, and he made no answer.

In the grey light of early morning he reached Helmsbury. Harry Venniker was at the station to meet him. They clasped hands.

‘Is she better?’ whispered Gerald.

Harry Venniker shook his head, and said only ‘Come.’

They took their seats in the brougham.[338] Like a gasp came the question from Gerald, ‘She is not dead?’

Harry Venniker said, ‘No.’

They drove to the Hall. Neither of them spoke again. It was not until afterwards that Gerald heard that Ethel had become suddenly worse the day before. Sir William D—— had been summoned; he had arrived last night, and had pronounced her to be in imminent danger.

The carriage drew up at the Hall door. A lamp was burning faintly on the great staircase. By its light Gerald saw Lord Venniker standing there. His face looked haggard; he was shedding tears. He embraced Gerald with passionate sorrow, crying, ‘My poor boy, you are too late. She died half an hour ago.’

There was a heavy thud upon the floor. Gerald had fallen. Lord Venniker and Harry raised him from the ground and laid him on a sofa. The shock of his fall had restored consciousness. He asked where he was.

The sore throat from which Ethel Venniker had been suffering when Gerald left Helmsbury had, it seemed, been the premonitor of dire disease. Unhappily the local doctor had not understood its early symptoms. When Sir William D—— arrived, he[339] pronounced it to be acute diphtheria. The breathing was already difficult. The end was at hand. No human skill could have saved her.

It was thought afterwards that she had contracted the disease in visiting one of the cottages where the drainage was bad. Her act of charity had been fatal to her. O God!

The days that follow are a blank. Lady Venniker was so ill that grave anxiety was felt for her life. The doctors never left her.

Gerald sat in the chamber of death until he was led away lovingly by Harry. On the fourth day was the funeral. Gerald was the chief mourner. He seemed dazed. Next to him walked Lord Venniker and Harry.

The bishop of the diocese, who was to have performed the marriage, came at his own desire to officiate at the funeral.

The orange-flower was exchanged for the cypress leaf.

The church was crowded with the villagers all dressed in mourning. At the words ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ the bishop’s voice broke down, and it was as though a sob arose from all that multitude.

When the mourners of the family had withdrawn, many lingered around the grave, weeping. It was[340] growing dark before the last mourner went home. The coffin was covered with wreaths and crosses. At the lych-gate two women, farmers’ wives, who had a long-standing quarrel, chanced to meet, and, hardly realising what they were doing, one of them clasped the other’s hand, saying fervently amidst her tears, ‘She loved us all.’

Lord Venniker and Harry sobbed like children, standing by the grave. Gerald alone remained unmoved, as if insensible.

On his return to the Hall he went to his bedroom and locked the door. A packet of letters was waiting for him on the table. He looked at the envelopes and put them down, all except one. It was in the handwriting of Mr. Selby.

Just as he was about to open it there came a gentle knock at the door, and the voice of the old family butler was heard inquiring if he could do anything for him. Gerald answered, ‘Nothing.’ He heard the butler’s steps returning along the passage, and it seemed that the butler stopped once not far from the door and listened.

Gerald opened Mr. Selby’s letter and read it. It was written on black-edged paper. At one place the paper was blistered a little, as if a tear had fallen upon it; but that might be fancy. Mr. Selby wrote[341] that, being away from home, he had only just heard of Gerald’s bereavement. It was so terrible, so personal, that he feared to intrude upon it, even by a word of sympathy. But Gerald would forgive him for writing. He could never forgive himself if he did not write. And there was something (he said) which seemed to give him perhaps a title to write such a letter; something beyond the privilege of friendship, something which he had never told to anyone at St. Anselm’s. Nobody knew it, nobody guessed it. (Perhaps that was not quite so, Mr. Selby.) ‘Many years ago,’ he went on, ‘it was my own blessed privilege to know and love one so much higher than myself in life and character, that now, after all those years, I can only wonder how it was ever permitted me to win her love. We were going to be married soon. She died. O my dear Eversley, may not my affliction minister to yours? The world has not been the same to me since then; it can never be. There is not a day of my life when I do not dwell upon her memory, and in the thought and hope of seeing her again death has lost for me its sting.’ It was idle, Mr. Selby’s letter proceeded to say, to seek to minimise such sorrows; it was only the base or the shallow who could forget the past, or live as if it had not been; but God, who is all-merciful, did send with human[342] grief the grace to bear it, and at last the consciousness of a blessing underlying it. ‘And what inspiration of good,’ said Mr. Selby, ‘can be so potent as the memory of a saintly life now veiled in heaven?’

Gerald folded the letter again. It had done for him what the funeral service had not done. It had touched the fountain-springs of his heart. He wept.

An hour—two hours—three hours passed away, and then the butler knocked again, bringing him some food. He opened the door and took it in. ‘Mr. Henry thought you would like it best here, sir,’ said the butler. Gerald placed it on the table. He tasted it, but could not eat it.

A little later, perhaps in consequence of something that the butler had said, Harry himself entered the room. He made the excuse of bringing him some verses which had been found lying in his sister’s room with the inscription, ‘For dear Gerald on Good Friday.’ Gerald remembered that they had been talking, when he was last at Helmsbury, about the Divine Passion to which that day is sacred. Whether the verses were her own or another’s did not appear; probably another’s, but it has not proved possible to trace them.

Gethsemane, Gethsemane,
My spirit yearneth to be free
[343]From sin and shame at thought of thee.

There did the Saviour’s blood-sweat rain
In agony of mortal pain
Upon thy soil—oh! not in vain.

Friendship’s default, the lying kiss,
The serried spite of enemies,
This was His soul’s experience, this.

Gethsemane, Gethsemane,
Oh! that thou wouldst reveal to me
That which thine olives once did see!

And what in that fierce strife with hell
He suffered none may dare to tell,
But the Lord God remembereth well.

For in that solemn hour He bore
The sins of all that sinned before
Or shall sin till sin be no more.

Gethsemane, Gethsemane,
From thy deep shades of silence He
Passed to His death upon the tree.

He died—and all the angelic eyes
Looked in adoring strong surprise
On that eternal sacrifice;

And He who sits upon the throne
Declared the deed divinely done,
And God and man for ever one.

Gerald read the lines mechanically. The two friends sat side by side. Never had Harry’s character shown itself so tender and beautiful as now. He forgot himself in his sorrow for his friend. He said not a word of his own loss; he spoke of Gerald’s. He said his mother was very ill, dangerously ill, but it was her deep desire to see Gerald, if only for a[344] minute, to-morrow. With a true instinct of sympathy he poured out his reminiscences of Ethel’s life, telling how she used to write to him every week when he was at St. Anselm’s, and used often to mention his great friend Gerald Eversley, and ask after him; how the people of Helmsbury loved her, and would do anything for her sake, and could never speak of her since her death without weeping; how she had been delicate even from childhood, and could not bear unkindness or roughness; how fond she had been of all living creatures, and would never hurt any one of them, but treated them (like St. Francis of old, though Harry did not say so) as brothers and sisters, and would not let them be deprived of their native liberty. Poor Harry! he reproached himself bitterly if he had ever acted against her wish. Death makes little disagreements or disobediences seem terrible. Then he went on to tell how she had spoken to him of her love for Gerald, saying with womanly self-forgetfulness that she was unworthy of him—he was so clever, so far above herself—but she would try to make him happy when she was his wife, and to sympathise with his interests and pursuits, and to live for him alone.

So Harry Venniker ran on, making talk a duty, not without tears. It may be that no better comforter could have been found—so artless as he was and[345] generous and sympathetic. Yet the comfort was vain. It is thought that Nature contains in herself a remedy for every physical ill to which humanity is heir, though the remedies so often lie hid; but there are spiritual ills for which no remedy exists.

Harry Venniker did not quit Gerald’s bedroom until he had persuaded him to lie down and rest. He lay like one in a swoon. He moved not at all. Hour succeeded hour. The great clock in the courtyard told the hours. The shadows had long since stolen across the room in which he lay. It was night. Who can enter into the pathos of his thoughts? He had been lonely in his life and misunderstood. He had yearned for sympathy and had not found it. He had gone down into that dark spiritual valley into which all deep human souls descend and from which they do not all emerge. He had looked upon the earth, and had found no consoler there. He had lifted his eyes to heaven and had seen no God. Life had been terrible in his eyes, and it had been his all. In the anguish of his soul he had cried for help—for any help, however faint—in heaven or earth, and no help had come to him—none! Then from this misery, of which no man may fathom the depth, he had been delivered by a passion so intense, so delightful, that it absorbed and enthralled his whole[346] being. He had contemplated an ideal goodness. He had been permitted to call it his own. The measure of his misery had been the measure of his deliverance. Having won back faith in a human soul, he had won it in God. Once more the heaven above him had become bright. Beautiful with a sacred beauty had life seemed to him. He was as a man restored from the grave. And now she who had brought this change in him—the idol of his soul—lay dead; in a moment, without a word of farewell, without a loving glance, she had been cut off from him. He was alone again. Was there then a God in heaven? Did He live only to mock and cajole the children of men? What right had He, if He were good and gracious, to hold the cup of blessing to human lips, thirsting for His love, and then to tear it ruthlessly away? Gerald Eversley cursed God in his heart.

The clock in the courtyard struck midnight. He heard what seemed to him like a howling far off in the dark.

Another hour he waited—more. Sleep was not for him that night. He rose from his bed. The embers were still aglow in his fireplace. He sat down and leaned his head upon the writing-table. There stood a Bible upon it, but he threw the Bible away.

He took a sheet of notepaper out of one of the[347] drawers. His hand shook palsiedly as he wrote on it these words: ‘I can bear it no more. Life is hateful to me. I follow her to death. My body will be found by the willow at the south end of the lake. Tell my father. When you read this, I shall be a corpse. Forgive me, Harry. Beg your mother’s forgiveness. Ask her to pray for me. If there is a God, he will hear her prayer. Gerald.’

He put the paper in an envelope, addressed it ‘For Harry,’ and placed it in the centre of the writing-table.

Then he read over the verses which Harry had given him, kissed them, and put them in his pocket. They seemed to make him hesitate for a moment.

Then he opened the door stealthily and listened. Not a sound in the house. He stole down the stairs. The key of the garden door was in the lock. He turned it and went out. The night was dark. The wind was sighing in the trees. A bitter rain blew in his teeth. There were still a few patches of snow upon the ground.

Silently, looking back at times to see if he were followed, he made his way to the lake. It is nearly half a mile from the Hall. At the south end of it a large willow hangs down to the water’s edge. There beneath it Gerald stood for a few minutes, gazing[348] at the cold surface of the water. Then he took off his coat, wrapped it round a large stone, and flung it into the lake. It sank, and the wavelets caused by its falling came rippling to the margin.

He sat down until the last wavelet had spent itself. The wind drove them fast to the shore. Then he rose, clasped his hands, peered down into the deep black water, and——

A hand was laid sharply on his shoulder. He stood transfixed.

Harry Venniker, pale as a ghost, stood at his side.

For nearly a minute they remained by the water’s edge, the one turning half round with his face towards the lake, the other holding him back.

At last Harry Venniker whispered hoarsely, ‘Come away.’

‘How did you come here?’ was the reply, spoken also in a whisper.

‘I could not sleep,’ said Harry, rapidly. ‘I was sitting up. I heard you get up and open the door and go downstairs. As you did not come back, I went to your room. I found this lying on the table. It told me where you would be. I ran after you. You did not hear my steps; the wind was so loud.[349] I came up just as you threw your coat into the water. I waited and watched. Come away.’

Not a word passed between them as they returned to the Hall.

Gerald flung himself again upon his bed. He hid his face in his hands, sobbing convulsively.

Harry Venniker sat by his side until morning broke. He was calmer then.

Fearing that his presence in the room might excite observation, Harry bent over his unhappy friend and said, ‘I think I must go now. But, Gerald, you must give me your word that you will not do this dreadful thing.’

Gerald said faintly, ‘I promise.’ Then he fell back upon the bed.

Just as Harry Venniker was leaving the room Gerald called ‘Harry.’

Harry Venniker returned to the bedside.

‘Harry,’ he said, ‘you remember promising to be my friend for ever, whatever happened.’

‘Yes,’ replied Harry solemnly, ‘but I never thought of this.’

The only answer was, ‘You have saved me to-night.’

‘Yes,’ said Harry, ‘thank God.’

Harry Venniker went out.

[350]

He has never told to man or woman the incident of the night following his sister’s funeral.

Next morning it was noticed by the servants that neither Harry Venniker nor Gerald Eversley appeared to have slept in his bed.

Gerald Eversley was to leave Helmsbury that day. Before he left, Lady Venniker sent word that she would see him for a minute. He was taken into her bedroom. She was lying in bed, pale and anguished, as one who is not far from the portals of death. Her eyes were suffused with tears, but she held out her delicate hand to him, and he raised it to his lips.

‘My poor dear Gerald,’ she whispered; then after a pause, ‘she was too good for this world. His will be done.’ But even as she said the words, her voice was choked with weeping. Recovering herself by a strong effort she proceeded, ‘When she knew she was dying, she said, “Give Gerald this.”’ It was an ivory crucifix which had hung over her bed, the memorial of the Sorrow that is the solace of all sorrows.

It was evident that Lady Venniker’s strength was failing. ‘Kiss me,’ she said, ‘dear Gerald.’ He kissed her with such reverence as he might have kissed the brow of an angel. Then he went out.

An hour later a carriage rolled away from the gates of Helmsbury Hall. Two figures clad in deepest[351] mourning were seated in it. They parted at the station. One journeyed alone to London. The other went back to the Hall.

Gerald Eversley never stayed again at Helmsbury. As soon as summer came the doctors decided that the only hope of saving Lady Venniker’s life lay in moving her before the cold months came to a southern clime. She died at Mentone in the autumn. Lord Venniker seemed unable to settle anywhere after her death. He travelled from place to place with his younger son. Harry was ordered with his regiment to India.

Helmsbury Hall was shut up. Lord Venniker could not live in it, and would not let it; he could not bear that the voice of strangers should be heard in the home of his joy and his bereavement.

Lady Venniker’s grave is beside her daughter’s in the little churchyard at Helmsbury. The villagers still lay fresh flowers upon them. Upon the headstone common to both are graven the words hallowed by so many sacred and pathetic memories:

‘They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.’

Every year, at some time in Passion Week, a lovely garland of choicest flowers was laid upon each grave. No one in Helmsbury knew whose were the hands[352] that laid them. But it was told in the village that once a labourer, returning home from the next town long after midnight, saw in the distance what looked like the figure of a man dressed all in black kneeling by the graves, and in the morning the garlands were there.

There was, until the other day, a man living in a great commercial city of the north of England. He was a man beloved and honoured, taking a foremost part, though still comparatively young, in all the varied activities of civic beneficence and charity. He never went into society. He lived much to himself. But wherever any social good was to be done, labour to be provided, thrift to be fostered, temperance to be promoted, sorrow to be relieved, he was found there. He was never married.

When he came to that city and began to be known there, people said, ‘He is sure to marry soon;’ after a time they said, ‘It is a strange thing that he has never married;’ at last they said, ‘He will never marry now.’

Could they have read his secret, they would have seen that he wore ever next his heart a small golden[354] locket containing the portrait of a beautiful and delicate girl, and on the shell of the locket, in pure enamel, the one word

ETHEL.

He is dead now.

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