GERALD EVERSLEY’S FRIENDSHIP _A STUDY IN REAL LIFE_ BY THE REV. J. E. C. WELLDON HEAD MASTER OF HARROW SCHOOL LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1895 [_All rights reserved_] TO D. M. A. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE NEW BOYS 1 II. TWO HOMES 26 III. FATHER AND SON 49 IV. FIRST EXPERIENCES 73 V. THE RIPENING OF FRIENDSHIP 103 VI. THE HOLIDAYS 133 VII. ‘DE PROFUNDIS’ 160 VIII. DRIFTING APART 199 IX. LAST DAYS AT ST. ANSELM’S 227 X. THE CRISIS OF FAITH 248 XI. THE LIGHT THAT ARISETH IN DARKNESS 275 XII. ST. MARTIN’S SUMMER 317 XIII. THE VALLEY OF THE DARK SHADOW 333 EPILOGUE 353 GERALD EVERSLEY’S FRIENDSHIP CHAPTER I THE NEW BOYS It was a day in September 186-. It was between five and six o’clock in the afternoon. The railway station of St. Anselm’s seemed to be asleep save for the movement of four people, or, more strictly, of two pairs of people, who were pacing up and down at opposite ends of the platform, apparently awaiting the arrival of the same train to take them to London. Each pair consisted of a gentleman and a boy. It was evident that the two pairs were not acquainted one with the other. Once, but only once, in their patient promenade they approached and passed each other; and in so doing each of the two boys eyed the other with the curiously distant inquisitiveness of English schoolboys who have not met before, but who are dimly conscious that, as members of the same great institution, they have entered, or are about to enter, into a mysterious relation; and, as soon as they had got out of earshot, each of them, turning at the same moment almost half round, whispered to his father, ‘I’m sure that fellow is a new boy; I wonder whose house he’s in.’ It was one of the many questions that are asked in life more for the sake of putting them than in the hope that they will be answered. But there would have been no disposition to answer it, if answer had been possible; for just then a train drew up at the opposite platform, and out of it poured a number of boys, of all sorts and ages, clamouring for porters, clamouring for luggage, greeting one another, chaffing one another, rushing out of the station to secure cabs or other conveyances, rushing back to recover articles which they had left in the racks or under the seats of the carriages, turning the quiet of the little station into such a Babel or Bedlam as can be caused by no human beings but English public school boys in the last half-hour of freedom before the ringing of the bell which marks the