Gerald Eversley

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
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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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”