DRIFTING APART
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.
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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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.
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?’
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 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 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.’
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.
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. 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 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 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
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 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 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. 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 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.’