FATHER AND SON
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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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. 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 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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
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 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.
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 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 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 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.