THE LIGHT THAT ARISETH IN DARKNESS
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 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 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. 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 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,
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 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!’
‘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 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; 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 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 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 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 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.
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.
‘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 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 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.
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 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 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
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 other light than as a son.
Once, some little time ago, in talking to him she had made an allusion
to Ethel’s future; it was slight and casual, but it showed how little
she thought of it as being even possibly connected with his own; the
allusion gave him pain, and he turned the conversation away from it.
It was only too probable that if he opened his heart to Lady Venniker
he would lose her friendship--a friendship indescribably precious to
him--without gaining, or being permitted to seek, her daughter’s love.
To speak to Lord Venniker or to Harry was alike impossible. They were
too much occupied in their own pursuits to have any suspicion of
the subtle, delightful, dreadful feeling that had sprung up in his
heart. He was confident that the revelation of it would fill them with
astonishment, perhaps with indignation. Lord Venniker had said to
Gerald more than once that Ethel was growing up to be as her mother
was when he saw and loved her. And Gerald, who knew Lord Venniker’s
devotion to his wife, who knew the feeling of adoration with which he
regarded her, heard in Lord Venniker’s words the prohibition of his
soul’s hope.
But if Gerald Eversley was thus tongue-tied at Helmsbury upon the one
subject of which his heart was full, what could he say about it at
Kestercham? His visits to his home, as has been said, had become rare,
and they lasted but for a few days. A feeling of reserve had grown
up between his father and himself; they no longer walked and talked
together as in old days. Still he went home from time to time, he had
sometimes nowhere else to go; and Mr. Eversley, in spite of his great
sorrow at his son’s alienation from religion--an alienation which in
his theology involved eternal ruin--could not altogether resist a
secret unavowed satisfaction at hearing of his remarkable academical
successes. Still Mr. Eversley and his son had many secrets from each
other now; and even in the days when the community of thought between
them was greatest, Mr. Eversley would have felt that the mere idea of
a matrimonial alliance with the aristocratic house of Venniker was a
presumption bordering upon madness.
Yet it had occurred to Mr. Eversley, noting, as he did, every phase
and symptom of his son’s religious speculations, that during the last
two or three months there had been a change, not indeed definitely
marked, but still unmistakable, in Gerald’s attitude towards religion
in his home. He hardly knew what to make of this change. In his own
simple way he put it down as an answer to prayer. He thanked God for
it, and prayed yet more earnestly that it would please Him to lead his
dear boy back again to the foot of the Cross. He did not venture as
yet to say a word to Gerald about it. He did not dream of connecting
it with any other cause than the converting grace of the Holy Spirit.
That love itself could be a proselytising influence, that Gerald had
in fact given his heart not to Christ only, but to Miss Venniker, were
thoughts that would not enter into his father’s ingenuous mind. But it
was a pleasure to him passing words that Gerald one day, without saying
anything to him, appeared in church. He renewed his prayers once more.
Who will doubt that such prayers as his are heard in heaven, though the
answer is given, as it seems to us, in many strange ways?
It was at this juncture of affairs, when Gerald was at home, not
long before returning to Oxford for the conclusion of his academical
life, that he received a letter written by Miss Venniker herself in
her mother’s name, asking him to spend a few days of his vacation at
Helmsbury. ‘Harry says he hopes so much you will come,’ she wrote. ‘It
is his birthday on Thursday week, and the tenants are going to have a
dinner. Do come, if you can.’
Gerald debated with himself very much what he ought to do. He felt in
his own mind that the intensity of his love, against which he believed
himself to have striven so conscientiously, was getting the mastery
of him. If he went to Helmsbury, there was great danger that he would
do something or say something irrevocable. He would bring matters to a
crisis. The veil would be torn away from his heart. He wished, and yet
he did not wish, that Lady Venniker’s invitation had not come. To stay
away from Helmsbury was pain, to go there was peril. His happiness in
being near Miss Venniker was that supreme happiness which is akin to
misery. He cherished the half proud, half regretful feeling of carrying
in his breast a secret which was known to nobody, and which, if it were
known, might alter his whole relation to his surroundings. It seemed a
wrong return for the blessing of his second home, which had at one most
critical time been his first or only home, that he should live there
and associate with its inmates on a false footing. It occurred to him
in his difficulty to consult his father as to the course which it would
be right to take, but eventually he did not consult him.
At last, after a wakeful night, he resolved to take the bold and
honourable course of declaring his love. He would shiver no more on the
brink of the deep waters, but would plunge in. What would the issue be?
He sat down to write. He had just taken up the pen when Mrs. Eversley
came into the room and asked him if he would mind getting up for a
moment, as she must look for something in one of the drawers of the
table at which he was writing.
The two letters which follow will explain themselves. They will serve
better than any elaborate description of sacred feelings which are in
their nature indescribable.
Kestercham Vicarage, September 4, 186-.
MY DEAR LADY VENNIKER,--Thank you very much for your kind invitation.
It seems strange and almost wicked in me to hesitate about accepting
it, for to stay at Helmsbury has been for the last six years the
joy of my life. I have had no pleasure so pure or constant as that.
You know, too, apart from the pleasure of seeing Lord Venniker and
yourself, how much I should like to keep Harry’s birthday with you and
your family party. For ever since I went to St. Anselm’s--from the
very first day--he has been my best friend; he has been more to me
than any brother could have been, and I cannot now think what my life
would have been if I had not made his acquaintance at the beginning of
my school life.
But there is a reason which makes me doubtful whether I ought to come
to Helmsbury any more. You have no idea what it is, you will never
guess it, and I hardly dare tell it you. I know you will feel for me;
for when my secret is told, it will, I am afraid, shut the doors of
Helmsbury against me--perhaps it ought to shut them--and the happy
beautiful days that I have known for so many years I shall know no
more. Yet better--far better--that I should lose the joy of my life
(if I must lose it) than that I should repay you for all that you have
been to me by deceiving you. I would have told you before, only I did
not know for certain what my feeling was, and when I found it out I
thought I could conquer it and get over it, but it is too strong for
me, and now it fills my whole life. Can you now guess what it is?
Dear Lady Venniker, you cannot have suspected that I should venture to
look upon Miss Venniker in any other light than as your daughter and
Harry’s sister. A year ago I could not myself have entertained such a
suspicion. But now I cannot be near her, and indeed I cannot be away
from her, without feeling that she has become more to me and dearer
than any living soul has ever been or can ever be. In a word, I love
her with a love so true and passionate that I hardly dare trust myself
to think what it is.
Many, many times have I been on the point of telling you, but I could
not. I was so afraid of giving you pain. I was afraid, too, of losing
the delights of Helmsbury. But it would not, I think, be honourable
for me to see more of Miss Venniker without informing Lord Venniker
and yourself of my feeling, and I cannot now trust myself to meet her
again and not let her know what I feel.
Forgive me, dear Lady Venniker--you have been my best friend on
earth--for my presumption, if it is wrong. I can only say I have
fought against it, and I cannot help it. It has saved me from the loss
of all that makes life sacred. Perhaps it will cost me now the loss
of all that makes life dear. I do not forget the difference between
her and myself. I have nothing to offer her--nothing that is worthy of
her acceptance. If you were not so good you would be angry with me.
Perhaps now you will not be angry, you will pity me. If you blame me
for my presumption, yet believe that I blame myself more. Even if you
should permit me to seek Miss Venniker’s hand, can I think she would
grant it?
I fear--I am almost sure--that you will say _No_. If it be so, do not
take the trouble of writing the answer. I shall know what silence
means. I shall pray for her (if my faith survives) every day of my
life. Do not let her know what would make her think ill of me. I
shall never see her again. But oh! if the answer could be _Yes_, if it
were permitted me to hope for a joy so great, so blessed, then indeed
would my life, that has once been dark and desolate, be irradiated
with a glow of heavenly light.
I have told you my secret. I cannot say more. You cannot think what it
has cost me to tell you. Whatever happens, may God bless you for your
goodness to me! Let me sign myself once more, if it be for the last
time, dear Lady Venniker,
Affectionately yours,
GERALD S. EVERSLEY.
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:
Helmsbury Hall.
MY DEAR GERALD,--I will not say that your letter was not a surprise
to Lord Venniker and myself. It was more a surprise perhaps to him
than to me. We have talked it over together. It was, we feel, very
honourable of you to write it. We could not have wished you to act
otherwise than as you have acted.
You will, I know, understand, dear Gerald, that Lord Venniker has
needed two or three days to think about what you have said. Ethel
is our only daughter, she is very dear to us, and though we have
never formed any plans for her marriage--it would not be right or
wise to form them--yet it was in our minds that she should see
something more of the world before thinking of entering upon the
solemn responsibilities of married life. Perhaps Lord Venniker feels
this point more strongly than I do. She is very young, and we should
not like her to choose a husband who might not be all that her
inexperience pictures him as being.
But while this is so, we have a special feeling for you, dear Gerald.
We cannot forget that you have been Harry’s great friend, and if he
has been of some use to you (as I believe he has been), we know that
you have also done much for him. Can I ever forget those dreadful days
when his life was in the balance, and you were so good and wrote to
me every day about him? No mother, I think, could forget that. Ever
since then I have felt you to be more like a son than a friend. We do
not wish then to place a bar in the way of your telling dear Ethel of
your love for her. I do not think Lord Venniker had any suspicion of
it until I read your letter to him. But a mother’s eyes are sharper
in such matters, and you will not mind my saying that I think perhaps
I guessed your secret almost as soon as you guessed it yourself. And
loving Ethel as I do, how can I be angry or surprised at your falling
in love with her?
There is one thing more, Gerald, that I have guessed; shall I tell you
what it is? It is only a guess, but I think I cannot be wrong. Ethel
has never told me her feeling, but words are not always necessary,
and a little bird whispered in my ear one day that she would not be
indifferent to the love you feel for her. At all events you must come
and ask her; it will be Harry’s birthday on Thursday, and it will be
only natural that you should be here.
Lord Venniker wishes me to say that he leaves Ethel quite free to
act as her own heart prompts. He will not seek to influence her at
all either way. But he feels that, if she accepts the offer that you
wish to make her, there should be no thought of marriage, nor indeed
should the engagement be publicly announced, until you have got your
fellowship at college, and are beginning to be settled in life. You
are both very young, and can afford to wait. Perhaps it will be good
for you both to get a little more knowledge of one another by waiting
a little. You must not ask us to give up Ethel too soon.
I seem to have written rather coldly and formally. But, dear Gerald,
let me say in my own name that I love you as if you were my own son,
and that I cannot give a stronger sign of my affection than by being
willing to entrust the future of my dearest daughter, if it be God’s
will, to your keeping. May God the All-Holy and All-Wise bless you
both!
We shall look for you on Tuesday. The carriage will meet the usual
train.
Yours affectionately,
HELEN ETHELDREDA VENNIKER.
September the 8th.
P.S.--Ethel, of course, has not been told anything of all this at
present. She is away now, but is coming home on Wednesday.
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 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 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 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 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?’
‘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.
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
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 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.
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.