CHAPTER V
THE RIPENING OF FRIENDSHIP
It is not the object of this story to describe in detail the progress or system of public school life. That story has often been told. One public school does not differ greatly from another in character, or sentiment, or interest; and the life that is lived in one is essentially the life of them all. I am concerned only with the strengthening or development of friendship between the two boys who are the heroes of this narrative.
What is it in this life that is the secret of friendship? Is it voluntary or involuntary? Is it formed by likeness or by opposition? Does it spring up of itself? Does it need cultivation and tendance? Is it not true that there are persons whom we feel we ought to like more than we do—very estimable persons, very dutiful, but not quite those of whom we make friends? and other persons who are not free from reproach or criticism and yet for whom we cannot help in our own despite cherishing an affection? Does friendship depend upon character or upon circumstances? The one thing certain seems to be that it is not a matter of the reason. We cannot make friends at will. We may say to ourselves perhaps that we will unmake a friendship, that we will not hold intercourse with a person any more (though that too is difficult), but nobody ever yet resolved that he would be the friend of a person, whether he liked him or not, and became his friend and remained so for life. Like all the most sacred things in human experience, friendship is a boon, in some sense independent of human volition. It cannot be acquired by perseverance or resolution. God reserves it like personal beauty, like the appreciation of beautiful sounds and colours, in His own hands. It is His gift; He bestows it where He wills; we can but accept it with grateful and reverent hearts when it is given.
Probably there were no two boys at St. Anselm’s whose lives might be deemed to be parted by a wider gulf than Harry Venniker and Gerald Eversley. They came from opposite poles of society. Except in the universal human functions, such as eating and drinking, and the universal experiences of life, they had no common ground. Conversation between them, apart from topics of school interest, was limited by the lack of sympathetic understanding. If the one had spoken of dances or shooting parties, or the other of Bible readings and parochial visits, he would have seemed to his companion to be living in a different world from his, and to be using a language of which he had no comprehension.
And the gulf threatened to grow wider as time went on. Harry Venniker plunged more and more eagerly into the brimming waters of school life; Gerald Eversley stood trembling more and more fearfully on the bank. It was only within the walls of the room which they occupied together, that they could be said to have a common existence.
Harry Venniker advanced every week in popularity. His frank manner, his good humour, his manly disposition, won the hearts of his schoolfellows. It was a common saying that he had never been known to lose his temper. He was eminently unselfish, always ready to do a good turn and never anxious to spoil it by claiming credit for what he had done. His sense of fun was keen, and he took a leading part in the ‘larks’ of his house, though he never went the length of giving pain to boys or getting into serious trouble with his masters. He enjoyed too the conspicuous advantage of excellence in games. He had plenty of pluck, the virtue which in the schoolboy code of honour is supreme. Even in his first term his ‘runs’ and ‘charges’ on the football field excited the admiration of veteran players. But when the summer term came, and it began to be rumoured in the school that so good a left-handed bowler as he was might actually have a chance of getting into Mr. Brandiston’s house Eleven—for had not the great Stanley himself been heard to remark that ‘that young Venniker kept a good length,’ and ‘he could make the ball break both ways’?—then Harry Venniker tasted for the first time the delicious joy of fame, so dear to all finely tempered minds, but to none dearer than to minds that are young and ardent. Several boys high in the school or prominent in athletics began to take notice of him, one or two of them invited him to breakfast, and there was a general feeling in Mr. Brandiston’s house that he was ‘the coming man.’ Nor was he less a favourite with the masters than with his schoolfellows. It is true that he was not intellectually distinguished; but he was not idle, he was always pleasant and cheerful, he kept a very fair place in his form, generally somewhere about the middle, he was seldom in punishment, and his athletic distinction appealed to the sympathetic feelings of masters as well as of boys. Mr. Brandiston was obliged to own that he was a boy who would do his house honour in one of the two lines recognised by Mr. Brandiston himself. At the end of his first term at St. Anselm’s, Mr. Brandiston had written to Lord Venniker, congratulating him upon ‘the excellent start that his son had made,’ and bearing testimony that ‘his lordship had every reason to be proud of his son.’ ‘He is,’ he added, ‘a boy who works well and plays well, and I have the highest opinion of him.’ It is only fair to add that Harry retained his simplicity, and was in no sense injured by the praises showered upon him.
Very different was the case of Gerald Eversley. It was not that he was ever involved in a serious trouble. He was not a boy who incurred or deserved punishment. But there was nothing in him that attracted popular favour. It was reported in the school that he was ‘awfully clever.’ It was beyond dispute that he was ‘a dreadful sap.’ Some of the more discerning boys or masters may have ventured upon the prediction which can hardly be considered as unduly hazardous that ‘he would do something some day.’ But that ‘something,’ if it were destined to be done, would be apparently as far away from the sympathy as from the ambition of other boys. His tastes were not theirs. He lived in a different world from them. They were glad sometimes to avail themselves of his assistance, and I am afraid they availed themselves of it rather freely, in the preparation of their lessons; for his knowledge was multifarious, and it was believed that he had once or twice proved capable of answering questions which had puzzled Mr. Brandiston himself; but an oracle is not consulted except for a special purpose, and, when it is not required, it is treated with indifference. So it was with Gerald Eversley. Perhaps there is no isolation like that of a sensitive spirit surrounded by others which never come into contact or sympathy with it at all. It is what Byron has described in some memorable lines.
Gerald Eversley was not unhappy in his isolation, of which others were more conscious than himself. He had always led a lonely life (except for the society of his father), and it was no surprise to him or disappointment that his life should be lonely now. Besides he had his consolations, as the lonely often have. There is a pleasure in solitude itself. The old Roman was not wrong in his assertion ‘that he was never less lonely than when he was alone.’ There is a pleasure even in being misunderstood, though it is a pleasure that belongs to age, when the heart is soured a little and has become cynical, rather than to youth. But Gerald was old beyond his years. When his schoolfellows were at cricket or football he went for a walk, if he took any exercise at all, his eyesight disqualifying him for games. He was clever, and always high in his form; but he derived less pleasure from his high place than others who had striven for it more anxiously. The beautiful library of St. Anselm’s is known to all visitors, and there in a corner of the great oriel window he sat for hours, never looking at the view of the wide champaign that stretches beneath it, but scanning books of all kinds—novels, travels, biographies (of which he was especially fond), poetry, books of science (particularly archæology) and art, even sermons and books of controversial divinity. Whatever he read he assimilated. I do not mean that it was all remembered, but it soaked down into his mind and became a reservoir of knowledge upon which he would draw in hours of need. He realised what so few who are young, nay, indeed so few who are old, can be said to realise—the love of learning in and for itself, without the thought of prize or praise. Learning, alas! will some day be smothered by its own children, examination, competition, the calculation and publication of results.
In every school there are some boys to whom a library is more valuable than any classroom. For it is not what the young are compelled to do, but what they do of themselves and for themselves, that is the lasting educational result. Education rightly considered does not follow narrow hard lines—that perhaps was Mr. Brandiston’s mistake—it expatiates in a wide and ample domain, and its country walks are sometimes worth more than its dusty high road. Gerald Eversley had other tastes than literature, though none perhaps so dear, so delightful. He loved music, he heard in it, as so many have heard, the voice of heaven. When he had been some time at St. Anselm’s, he obtained the privilege of going now and then on weekdays into the chapel. Seated there at the organ in the little gallery, with the shadows of the evening gathering around him, alone and happy, he would fill and thrill the sacred building with the voluminous strains of some passages taken from a noble and dearly loved oratorio, the ‘Creation’ perhaps, or the ‘Elijah,’ or the ‘Messiah,’ and listening to their strains, so mighty, so unearthly, so much vaster and grander than the hand which called them forth, as the echoes of them faded and died away in the distance amidst the memorials of the dead who were dear to St. Anselm’s, he felt as if the angels of God were ascending and descending upon him in that holy place.
For the chapel had other hallowed associations. To most boys perhaps religious services at school are apt to appear mechanical if not irksome duties. It was not so with Gerald Eversley. To him the great act of communion with God was a vivid reality. It seemed as if his very alienation from the practices and thought of ordinary boys drew him nearer to the Divine Presence. Sunday was not, nor had it ever been, a dull day to him. He had always reckoned his life from Sunday to Sunday. But the parts of the Sundays which he liked best at St. Anselm’s were the evening services when Dr. Pearson preached. Dr. Pearson’s sermons seemed different from other people’s, not only because he was the head master, but because he was Dr. Pearson. Others spoke of the temptations, trials, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, of boyhood, as though they stood outside them. But he spoke of them as one who had lately passed through them, and had not forgotten the art of expressing them. Other preachers in addressing the boys generally said you; Dr. Pearson said we. That was perhaps why the boys liked to hear him. Gerald wrote one Sunday evening to his father that he did not see how a boy could go on sinning willingly who listened every week to such sermons as these.
Yet one more point of his life must not be omitted. In front of the old church at St. Anselm’s is a terrace commanding a wide, impressive view of the wold. To this he would resort in the evening when the sunset tinged the horizon and the hills and woods beneath with an exquisite wealth of colouring. Under its elms he would stand, thinking and thinking. Somehow, whether from association with the graves or from the setting of the sun, the view, beautiful as it was, impressed him with a feeling of sadness; or perhaps it was that few views so extensive are so free from the traces of human habitation. Anyhow it harmonised with his own solitary temper. Thus it was by a strange coincidence, that, as at home, so at school, a churchyard became an element of his life. He was fond of it because he was naturally serious, and it made him more serious still. But nobody knew how often he went thither.
So divergent in all outward appearance were the lives of the two boys, living together at the same time, in the same school; yet between them a strong mutual attachment was springing up. They were still occupants of the same room. They might have changed; sometimes they thought, or at least Harry did, of changing; but they remained together, though they might have had rooms to themselves.
The motives of this singular intimacy were not the same.
On Harry Venniker’s side it was in the main a generous sense of protective obligation. Since the night when, in an impulse of sympathetic emotion, he had promised to be Gerald’s friend for ever, he had somehow felt that it would be a dereliction of duty to leave this strange unsophisticated boy to shift for himself. Harry believed that he could help him, and that nobody else could or would, and that, if he were left alone, he would be sure to be bullied. Helplessness is itself a title to the service of generous souls. The mean, cruel soul may impose upon it, but the noble soul reverences it, and nobility of thought and action was native to Harry Venniker. It ought to be said, too, that he was in some sense an admirer of Gerald’s intellectual ability. Being no student himself, he could not help respecting a life devoted to study. And, in proportion as learning assumed for him the general aspect of a difficult and irksome duty, he looked with a reverential surprise upon one who loved it as a mistress.
Gerald Eversley’s feeling for his friend was of a different kind. Although standing to some extent outside the common interests and quarrels of school life, he was not unappreciative of those who shone in them. No one can live in a busy and intent society without thinking somewhat of the subjects of which it thinks much. And there had arisen in Gerald’s mind a passionate admiration, a sentiment akin to hero-worship, for the boy, his inferior in intellect, but so brilliant, so prominent in the common ways of school life. It was a sentiment of which he could give, or did give, no account to himself. But he felt, as others felt, the charm of Harry’s presence. To be near him was a delight. To be parted from him was a bereavement. If the exquisite Aristotelian test of love be true, that it is not so much the sense of pleasure in the presence of the beloved one as the sense of pain at his absence, it was satisfied by Gerald Eversley. In his admiration for Harry Venniker there was no tinge or trace of jealousy. He looked up to him as to a being of higher order. That his own intellectual distinction could be weighed in the balance against Harry’s popularity and athletic powers, was an idea that never entered his mind. Who will say that it had been better if he had formed a more just estimate of human worth? What would not the world lose in happiness, nay in sublimity, if there were no souls exalted by strong, unspoken reverence for those whom they mistakenly deem higher and nobler than themselves?
Harry Venniker was totally unaware of the devotion which he had stirred in the deep places of his friend’s heart. He knew that Gerald was kind to him, and even submissive, but he was not unaccustomed to kindness and submissiveness; they were the attributes of his position and character, and he regarded them as matters of course. Could he have known how his lightest word was cherished by the boy who was so near him, and yet so far away, he would have been filled with a sentiment of awe.
He who has many friends knows not, and cannot know, the value of one. To Gerald Eversley Harry Venniker was all in all.
When boys become friends they begin to talk about their homes. No sign of friendship is surer than this. It is true that Gerald was generally the listener; for what could he tell about Kestercham Vicarage that was worth telling? Besides, he knew something of Harry Venniker’s father, who had paid his son a good many visits at St. Anselm’s; he had spoken to him, and had once been invited by him to luncheon at the hotel. Harry, of course, talked chiefly about his father. But he often spoke of his mother, of her grace and gentleness and goodness, of her long illness and her never-failing patience.
‘I don’t think,’ he said once with unwonted gravity, ‘I don’t think I could ever go far wrong, for fear of breaking her heart.’ He spoke of his sister too, the beautiful girl, so like her mother, whose portrait hung above the mantelshelf; she was only a year younger than himself, and they had never been separated until he went to school, and he wrote to her every week; she was so thoughtful, that he always consulted her about everything in his life, and found her opinion better than anybody’s—except his father’s. Once he held out the hope of inviting Gerald to stay for a few days at Helmsbury in the holidays, but the idea was forgotten, or some difficulty came in the way of it, and the invitation did not arrive. Gerald was partly disappointed, but partly relieved, as he did not know exactly how he should adapt himself to the ways of aristocratic society.
One reason, no doubt, why Gerald clung so passionately to Harry Venniker was that he was himself not understood by masters or boys. Mr. Brandiston in particular misunderstood him. He liked, as has been said, a boy who worked upon the regular recognised lines of school life. He preferred a boy who was first in his form to one who was second; and a boy who was second, to one who was third. It was his opinion that Gerald, as being an elected scholar, ought to be first. With the studies which occupied so much of Gerald’s time and thought in the library he did not sympathise. Happening one day to come upon him when he was reading Lyell’s ‘Elements of Geology,’ he told him he had better not waste his time. That Gerald’s ability was remarkable he did not doubt. But he thought it might be better employed. He wrote to Mr. Eversley that he wished his son (with whom he had, as he admitted, no positive fault to find) would ‘concentrate himself more,’ and would not be ‘always taking up some new subject that did not bring in any marks.’ The association of Harry and Gerald, in one sense, did not appear to him to have been entirely successful. It had left Harry a healthy, bright, athletic boy; that was well enough. But it had left Gerald what he was at the first—awkward, shy, erratic, studious, recluse. Mr. Brandiston was not wrong in his view of his two pupils; but was he right? Summum jus, says the proverb, summa injuria. The teacher’s profession demands a fine combination of qualities. It needs justice, and justice Mr. Brandiston possessed; the suspicion of favouritism, that one unpardonable offence among boys, never attached itself to his name, and justice, standing by itself, satisfies the needs of ordinary boys—and ordinary boys or men are always (fortunately for the world) the large majority—but there are the few who need not justice only, but the tender, sympathetic insight which is, if any human grace is, the gift of God, and this was not Mr. Brandiston’s. Between him, then, and his strange pupil the gulf widened, slowly, almost imperceptibly, but it widened. Yet Gerald Eversley was not left to fight his way in the school without any appreciation from the masters. The sympathy for which he longed he did not find in his house master. But he found it, by a strange event, in a young master with whom he had never been brought into official connection—Mr. Selby. No story of St. Anselm’s in the years of Mr. Selby’s mastership would be complete without some reference to him. He was not a man whose name was known outside St. Anselm’s. He did not wish to be known. He evaded society. He lived in lodgings in the village, having only three rooms. It was believed that he was poor, that he made himself poor; some said by supporting a large family of nephews and nieces, whose father had gone bankrupt; others said by giving large sums to charitable institutions. It was believed, too, that at some time of his life he had gone through a great sorrow; nobody knew what the sorrow was or when it happened, nor did Mr. Selby ever allude to it; but it was noticed that he always wore a black hatband, and that sometimes, when the conversation was gay at dinner parties or on other festive occasions (if he ever attended them), he would become suddenly silent, and a look of pain would pass over his face; then he would collect himself by a forcible effort, and plunge into conversation again. The boys all felt a deep respect for him as for one who had passed through the shadows of the dark valley which they knew not. They often went to him—he encouraged them to go—when they were in trouble. They were sure that he was their friend. He stood nearer to them than other masters. They felt that, if he could do them any service at the cost of a great personal sacrifice, he would not shrink from doing it. They knew, or at least it was the common belief, that he prayed for them. I think the knowledge of a master’s intercession has a wonderful effect even upon rough and coarse boy-natures. They could not help noticing that in chapel, when the sermon was over and the boys and masters rose from their knees almost immediately, Mr. Selby would remain kneeling often until the chapel was nearly emptied, his face (when it was not hidden in his hands) illumined with a spiritual radiance, and his manner showing the absorption of one whose soul was prostrated by the realisation of the Awful Divine Presence. Mr. Selby was a bachelor and a clergyman.
Gerald’s introduction to Mr. Selby happened in this way. He was sitting one day alone in the library, when Mr. Selby came in. Gerald had a book in his hands as usual, but he was not reading it; he had let it fall on to his knees. He was looking straight before him, meditating upon something that had lately occurred in the house. Mr. Selby, while taking a book from its shelf, caught sight of his face. He went up to him—his power of sympathy had given him an almost intuitive understanding of boys’ thoughts, especially when they were troubled—and said,
‘Is not your name Eversley?’
Gerald, who was surprised at his name being known, answered, ‘Yes, sir.’
‘My dear boy,’ said Mr. Selby, ‘I am sure you are in some trouble. Do tell me what it is; perhaps I can help you.’
And he sat down by Gerald’s side and laid his hand upon his arm.
If Gerald had been like other boys, he would perhaps have tried to parry the question. Or if there had been other boys in the library, it would have been difficult for him to open his heart to a master; nay, it is possible that Mr. Selby would have sought another opportunity of speaking to him. But they were alone. There was something in Mr. Selby’s voice and manner that made deception difficult.
Gerald hung his head down and said nothing.
‘What is it, my dear Eversley?’ Mr. Selby repeated.
Then Gerald told him the following story—not all at once, for Mr. Selby helped him by a good many kindly suggestive questions, and the story was drawn out of him only slowly, but he told it in the simple confidence of truth.
‘Please, sir,’ he said, ‘they think I have sneaked of them.’
‘Who are they?’ said Mr. Selby.
‘Please, sir, the fellows in the house,’ was the answer.
‘What makes them think so?’ asked Mr. Selby.
‘Because Mr. Brandiston caught them boxing on Sunday, and they say I told him,’ answered Gerald.
It appeared (although Gerald was careful not to mention any names) that some boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house who were proficients in the noble art of self-defence, Tracy being one of the ringleaders among them, and a boy named Vansittart another, had arranged for a grand display of pugilistic skill at five o’clock one Sunday afternoon. They chose that day and that time, not as having any special desire to violate the law, divine or human, of the Sabbath, but because it was then that Mr. Brandiston, as was well known, devoted himself to his family and friends and perhaps a few boys who were invited to join his domestic circle at tea. Nobody had ever heard of Mr. Brandiston appearing among the boys of his house on Sunday afternoon. The pugilists had, therefore, assumed that it would be safe to begin operations at that time. The boxing would be doubly offensive to Mr. Brandiston as being calculated to bring discredit upon his house, partly because it was itself an exhibition which was wholly opposed to his feelings, but still more because it took place on a Sunday, a day which ought, in his opinion, on grounds of social etiquette even more than of religious obligation, to be kept sacred. But if he had dreamed of the possibility of his house becoming the scene of Sabbatarian pugilism, he would have entertained the further objection that pugilism in a boarding house is at the best only a disguised form of bullying; for it is sure to mean, not that the boys who box are experts or volunteers, but that pressure is put upon young and delicate boys to enter the lists against boys a great deal stronger than themselves. And this was actually the case; for the combatants consisted not only of fifth form boys who were allowed to arrange sparring-matches among themselves, but of lower boys who were expected to box against anybody who might be chosen as their opponent by lot, or more probably at the discretion of Tracy and his friends. These considerations, however, Mr. Selby mentally supplied; they were not part of the story as told to him. What he learnt from Gerald was that the company had assembled on Sunday afternoon in one of the largest rooms of the house; the tables had been pushed back, a ring had been formed, an immense assortment of boxing-gloves of various sizes and colours had been produced; Tracy and Vansittart, acting at once as seconds and umpires, had seated themselves, with towels and sponges in their hands, on chairs at opposite extremities of the ring; two lower boys who had been told off to begin the boxing had divested themselves of their coats and waistcoats, donned the gloves, and sparred a couple of rounds amidst as much applause as was deemed compatible with the secrecy of the proceedings, when the door was suddenly and quietly opened, and in walked—Mr. Brandiston.
A meteorite falling from the sky would not have created deeper consternation than the appearance of the house master at that time among the boys of his own house.
Mr. Brandiston surveyed the scene with an air of terrible but repressed indignation.
‘And this,’ he said at last, ‘on a Sunday afternoon in my house!’
It was but the work of a moment for him to take the names of the boys who were present.
‘Go to your rooms, all of you,’ he said, ‘and remain there (except during chapel) for the rest of the day. I will see you all at nine o’clock to-morrow morning.’ Then, turning to the seconds and umpires, he added, ‘You, Tracy and Vansittart, are, I suppose, the ringleaders in this disgraceful affair; pick up these gloves and carry them at once to my study.’
Slowly the two boys, their arms laden with boxing-gloves, made their way to the study, where they deposited the gloves on the floor in a rude pyramidal heap like the pile of cannon-balls at an arsenal. The other boys, none venturing to speak a word, dispersed to their rooms. When all had gone out, Mr. Brandiston shut the door. The echoes of his footsteps as he strode along the passage rang in the boys’ ears. It was remarked after chapel that evening that some of the boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house looked unusually pale.
The interview with Mr. Brandiston next morning, the reporting of the guilty boys to the head master—Mr. Brandiston reported them all, but recommended the lower boys, as being only reluctant accessories, to mercy—the stern rebuke and severe sentence of the head master, belong to the secret history of St. Anselm’s.
But in the house the question was, How had old Brandiston got to know about the boxing?
It was a question more easily asked than answered. The first theory was that he must have derived his information from the butler or one of the servants. But upon inquiry it came out that the butler had himself been in total ignorance of the boxing, and it was in the highest degree improbable that, if he had been ignorant of it, it could have been known to any other servants. The secret had been well kept—and yet had leaked out. But if the traitor was not a servant he must be a boy; for that some traitor there had been nobody doubted. The boys argued that ‘Old Brandiston would never have come into the house at that hour and gone straight to No. 3 if he had not been told what was going on there; besides, he looked as if he expected to come upon it.’ At last the suggestion was made—it was impossible to say by whom—that the only boy who could have ‘peached’ was Eversley. It was remembered that he would of course entertain a strong conscientious objection to Sunday boxing. It was remembered, too, that he had evinced a great dread of boxing when it was proposed before, and had begged to be excused it; but Tracy had insisted upon him sparring, and he had been a good deal ‘bruised’ by a bigger boy. And then a small boy, Thornton or some other, testified to having seen him come out of Mr. Brandiston’s study, or somewhere near the study as if he had just come out of it, that very morning.
This was the sort of evidence upon which the boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house, or at least the majority of them, including all the lower boys, decided that Gerald Eversley deserved to be branded as a ‘sneak.’ But boys are bad judges of evidence. It is possible that they are not above forming their opinion first and supporting it by evidence afterwards. But the evidence, such as it was, was not put before Gerald; he did not hear it, did not know of it; he had no opportunity of meeting and refuting it; it was bruited about, it passed from mouth to mouth, being exaggerated as it passed, and poor Gerald became conscious that a painful unpopularity was descending upon him like a cloud, without at first understanding how it had sprung up. Boys in the house turned away from him. In Hall there was a gap on his right hand and on his left. Harry Venniker did not out him, but Gerald thought he was cooler than usual.
‘But, my dear boy,’ said Mr. Selby, ‘what in the world made the boys fix upon you?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ was the reply; ‘but you see, sir, I’m not popular like Venniker.’
There was a gleam of fire in Mr. Selby’s eyes at the thought of the injustice which this innocent boy was suffering at his schoolfellows’ hands.
Is it only among public-school boys, Mr. Selby, that unjust suspicions arise and spread themselves and poison life? Does not human nature all the world over possess a strange faculty of seeing what it wishes to see, and not seeing what it wishes not to see? and what is harder than to overcome prejudice, all the more when it is blindly unreasonable?
Had Mr. Selby been a man of the world, it would have been no surprise to him that public opinion in the school should form so quickly and so cruelly against Gerald Eversley. As it was, he said only ‘Well, never mind about popularity; that is not the great thing.’ And he added solemnly, as if speaking to himself, ‘The blackest crime in history was the act of one who wanted to be popular;’ then aloud, ‘But was there any ground at all for the supposition that you would tell Mr. Brandiston about the boxing?’
‘No, sir,’ replied Gerald; ‘only once before when I was made to box, they saw I could not bear it. You know, sir, I’m no good at games, like Venniker; and some of them laughed when I was “punished,” as they call it, and then the other boy hit out at my face worse than ever. And this time it was on Sunday, and it’s wrong to box on Sunday, isn’t it, sir?’
‘Certainly it is wrong,’ said Mr. Selby; ‘but it is worse to make small boys box who don’t like it.’ Then he added, after a pause, ‘But you are sure Mr. Brandiston cannot have heard of the boxing, directly or indirectly, through you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ cried Gerald, talking up, ‘quite sure.’
‘You didn’t speak to anybody about it?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then I will clear you, my dear Eversley,’ said Mr. Selby, emphatically, ‘I will clear you.’
And with one gentle pressure of his hand upon Gerald’s shoulder, he left the library.
Gerald’s heart felt lighter; he took up his book again, and read.
Mr. Selby’s action was simple, yet not free from difficulty. It was clear that, if Gerald Eversley’s tale was true, as Mr. Selby fully believed it to be, the one person who must know the truth of it, the one person who could set him right in the eyes of the house, was Mr. Brandiston.
To Mr. Brandiston, therefore, Mr. Selby resolved to go. The resolution demanded more courage than might be supposed. For Mr. Brandiston, priding himself, as has been said, upon the excellence of his house, was known to be extremely impatient of all interference with his administration of it. If it was true that he did not mind punishing his boys himself, it was not less true that he minded other masters punishing them. Any criticism of his house, any censure or dispraise of it, he resented. He liked to find out the faults of his house (supposing there were any) for himself; he did not like to be told of them. And the long years of his mastership at St. Anselm’s had rendered him a little vain of his experience. He was apt to quote it as an argument in the presence of younger masters. But experience is not an argument; it is not even a guarantee of prudent conduct; it is the most overrated of the virtues—nay, it is not a virtue, for it makes the wise better, but it may make the foolish worse.
It was therefore with no slight hesitation that Mr. Selby sought a favourable opportunity of referring to the subject of the Sunday boxing in Mr. Brandiston’s house. He approached it from the side of Gerald Eversley’s unhappiness. Mr. Brandiston had not noticed that he was unhappy; but he said that some boys would be unhappy anywhere. When he found that Mr. Selby was leading up to a subject which was naturally distasteful to him as a house-master, he interrupted him, saying, ‘I tell you what it is, Selby. When you have been a schoolmaster as long as I have, you will think twice before you begin trying to set other masters’ houses in order.’ Still he listened to Mr. Selby’s burning words. It was repugnant to his sense of justice that a boy in his house should be left to labour under wholly unmerited suspicion. He admitted at once that Gerald Eversley had not been the source of his information. As being a man of experience, he did not reveal what the source of his information had been. But he gave Mr. Selby to understand that, if he would leave the matter alone, it should be set right. Mr. Selby was more than content. So long as Gerald Eversley was delivered from unpopularity, he cared not who might enjoy the credit of the deliverance. That same night Mr. Brandiston summoned the head boy of his house into his study.
‘Powis,’ he said, when the door was shut, ‘I hear there is an impression in the house that it was Eversley who told me about the boxing on Sunday.’
‘Yes, sir,’ answered Powis. ‘I believe the boys do think so.’
‘Has anything been done to him by the Sixth Form?’ asked Mr. Brandiston.
‘No, sir,’ said Powis, ‘not by the Sixth Form, but I heard one or two fellows talking against him, and I am afraid he has had rather a bad time of it.’
‘Well, then,’ continued Mr. Brandiston, ‘I should like you to know and to let it be known in the house that he had nothing whatever to do with it.’
‘Certainly, sir,’ said Powis. ‘I am very glad. I don’t think the boys would have been so hard on him, only he is such a queer fellow, they can’t make him out.’
‘Nor can anybody else, I think, Powis,’ Mr. Brandiston replied. ‘But it would not be creditable to the house to victimise an innocent boy.’
‘No, sir,’ said Powis, and he went away.
News travels swiftly in a boarding house; and before the lights went out that night it was known to every one of Mr. Brandiston’s boys that Gerald Eversley was not the ‘sneak’ who had revealed the Sunday boxing to Mr. Brandiston.
One or two of the baser spirits, such as Tracy, muttered that his innocence had not been conclusively established, forgetting that the suspicion of his guilt had not been established at all. But for the house generally the acquittal pronounced by the Sixth Form to whom Powis had reported Mr. Brandiston’s words, was sufficient.
As Harry Venniker was undressing that night, he said, ‘Eversley.’
Gerald looked up.
‘I’m awfully glad,’ continued Harry, ‘that you’re cleared. The house was pretty well down upon you, I can tell you, and upon my word it looked bad; but I told them I didn’t believe you would “peach.”’
So ended Gerald’s first trial. Mr. Selby, meeting him soon afterwards in the street, stopped to ask if it was all right, and when he heard that it was, smiled and said only ‘God bless you, Eversley.’
The secret of Mr. Brandiston’s information was never disclosed.