Eli's Children Part 17

PART ONE, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE NEW MASTER FOR LAWFORD.

Oh, that bell! A clanging, jangling, minor-sounding bell that always sounded so harsh and melancholy at six o'clock, if the particular morning happened to be dark, wet and wintry in chill December, and he who heard it was rudely awakened from pleasant dreams of home and country and those he loved, to the fact that if he got up then he would have some time to wait, and that if he dropped asleep again he might sleep too long.

The warm bed was very tempting as Luke Ross lay gazing at the spot where he knew the window must be, but where there was no light of coming day, and listened to the hissing, fluttering noise made by the gas-jets just turned on to enable the students to dress and, such of them as had beards, to shave, for it was in that happy, blissful time when the natural growth of hair upon a man's chin was spoken of as "filthy," and, if the beard was at all full, said to look "like some old Jew."

The warm bed, it is repeated, was very tempting; but after a few minutes' hesitation, and just as that fatal drowsiness was coming on, Luke Ross rose, tried to repress a s.h.i.+ver, failed, and began to dress hastily by such light as came over the open part.i.tion from the corridor, where the four gas-jets sang and sputtered and sent a blue glare into the twenty-four dormitories--very prisonlike, with their sham stone walls, narrow barred windows, and iron bedsteads--that this corridor contained.

For some minutes the hissing of the gas was the only sound heard, till the trickle of water into Luke Ross's basin, and sundry pantings, sighs, and splas.h.i.+ngs, seemed to arouse others to their fate, when there was a thud as of some one leaping out of bed, a loud yawn prolonged into a s.h.i.+vering shudder, and an exclamation of "Oh, that blessed bell!"

A more thorough scene of discomfort than Saint Chrysostom's on a dark winters morning--one of those mornings that might be midnight--it would be impossible to conceive, and the students seemed to feel it, and try to vent their feelings upon their fellows.

"Here, I say!" said a voice, "I know these beds are damp. I've got my hands covered with chilblains."

"Get out!" cried another--conversation being easy, from the fact that every dormitory opened for a s.p.a.ce of a couple of feet above its door on to the pa.s.sage. "Damp don't give chilblains. Oh, I say, how miserable it is to have to shave with cold water in the dark!"

"Serve you right for having a beard!" cried another.

"Which you'd give your ears to own. Oh, hang it! now I've cut myself.

Here, who's got a silk hat? Pull us out a sc.r.a.p of down, there's a good fellow."

"Wipe it dry, and stick a bit of writing-paper against it."

"Will that stop it?"

"Yes."

"Mind and get your hair parted right, lads. Examination day!"

"I'll give any fellow a penny to clean my boots."

"Why don't you let Tycho clean 'em?"

"Hot water, gentlemen! hot water! Any gentleman who wants his boots cleaned please to set them outside the door."

"There, get out. It won't do, Tommy Smithers. I'd swear to that squeak of yours from a thousand."

"If you come that trick again, Tommy, we'll make you clean every pair of boots in the corridor," shouted a fresh speaker, for by degrees the yawning, and creaking of iron beds and thuds of bare feet upon bare floors had grown frequent, with shuffling noises, and gurgling, and splas.h.i.+ng, the c.h.i.n.king of ewers against basins, the swis.h.i.+ng of tooth-brushes, and the stamping of chilblained feet being thrust into hard, stout boots, and all done in a hurried, bustling manner, as if those who dressed were striving by rapid movement to get some warmth into their chilly frames.

Luke Ross was one of the first dressed: a well-built, dark-eyed, keen-looking young man of five-and-twenty, with a good deal of decision about his well-shaped mouth.

The noise and bustle was on the increase. With numerous grumblings and unsatisfied longings floating about his ears, he stood gazing at the square patch of yellow light near his door, thinking of the trials of the day to come, till, apparently brought back to the present by the shudder of cold that ran through him, he turned and began to pace rapidly up and down his little room, from the dark window covered with soft pats of sooty snow to the dormitory door.

That brought no warmth, and, knowing from old experience that the fire in the theatre stove would only be represented by so much smoke, he began to beat his chest and sides in the familiar manner by flinging his arms across and across to and fro.

This set off others, and then there was the stamping of feet and the sound of blowing of hands to warm them, mingled with which was the scuffling noise made by late risers who had lain until the last minute, and were now hurrying to make up for lost time.

The clanging bell once more, giving five minutes' law for every student to be in his place by ten minutes to seven, at which time, to the moment, the little self-possessed princ.i.p.al would walk into the theatre, with his intellectual head rigidly kept in place by the stiffest of white cravats.

Upon this particular morning the vice-princ.i.p.al had the first lecture to deliver, and the very last man had scuffled into his place, ink-bottle and note-book in hand, and a buzz of conversation had been going on for nearly a quarter of an hour before the little well-known comedy of such mornings took place.

Then enter the vice-princ.i.p.al, looking very brisk and eager, but particularly strained and squeezy about the eyes, and he had nearly reached the table and was scanning the rows of desks and their occupants, rising blue cold, tier above tier, into the semi-gloom beneath the organ, when a broad face that was not blue, cold, nor red, but of a yellowish white, stared him full in the eyes from the whitewashed wall, and mutely reproached him for being late.

"Dear me!" he exclaimed, "that clock is not right!"

"Yes, sir, quite right," exclaimed half-a-dozen eager voices, and their owners consulted their watches.

"Oh, dear me, no!" exclaimed the vice-princ.i.p.al, sharply; "nearly a quarter of an hour fast."

No one dared to contradict now, and the lecture by gaslight, in the cold, dark morning, went on till nearly eight, when those who a.s.sisted at tables left to look after the urns and cut the bread-and-b.u.t.ter.

A dozen students hurried off for this task, glad of the chance of feeling the fire in the great dining-hall; and, intent as he was upon the business of the exciting day to come, Luke Ross was not above sharing with his fellow-students, in providing a more palatable meal for himself and the head of his table by was.h.i.+ng the coa.r.s.e salt b.u.t.ter free of some of its brine.

The bell once more, and the rush of students into the dining-hall in search of the warmth that a couple of cups of steaming hot coffee, fresh from the tall block-tin urns, would afford.

The students a.s.sembled at the two long boards, and looked strikingly like so many schoolboys of a larger growth; there was the sharp rapping of a knife-handle upon a little square table in one corner, the rustling noise of a hundred men rising to their feet, grace spoken by the vice-princ.i.p.al, in a rich mellifluous voice, followed by a choral "Amen"

from all present, and then the rattling of coffee cups and the buzz of conversation, as the great subject of the day--the examination--was discussed, more than one intimating in a subdued voice that it was a shame that there should have been any lecture on such a morning as this.

Breakfast at an end, there was the regular rush again, schoolboy like, out into the pa.s.sage, where a knot of students gathered round one of the masters, who was giving a word or two of advice.

"Ah, Ross," he said, smiling, "I have been saying now what I ought to have said before breakfast, that no man should eat much when he is going in for his examination. Brain grows sluggish when stomach is full."

"I'm afraid we have all been too anxious to eat much, sir," replied Ross.

"I'm sure you have, Ross; but don't overdo it. Slow and steady wins the race, you know. Ah, here comes some one who has made a good meal I'll be bound. Well, Smithers," he continued, as a remarkably fast-looking young man came up, "have you had a good breakfast?"

"Yes, sir, as good as I could get."

"Thought so," said the a.s.sistant master, smiling. "Well, what certificate do you mean to take, eh? First of the first?"

"Haven't been reading for honours, sir," said Smithers, grinning.

"No, indeed," said the a.s.sistant master, shaking his head. "Ah, Smithers, Smithers! why did you come here?"

"To be a Christian schoolmaster, sir," was the reply, given with mock humility by about as unlikely a personage for the duty as ever entered an inst.i.tution's walls.

The bell once more; and at last, feeling like one in a dream, and as if, in spite of a year's hard training and study, he was no wiser than when he first commenced, Luke Ross was in his place with a red sheet of blotting-paper before him, and the printed set of questions for the day.

The momentous time had come at last, a time which dealt so largely with his future; and yet, in spite of all his efforts, his brain seemed obstinately determined to dwell upon every subject but those printed upon that great oblong sheet of paper.

He had no cause to trouble himself. All he had to do was to acquit himself as well as he could as a finale to his training; but in the highly-strung nervous state to which constant study had brought him, it seemed that his whole future depended upon his gaining one or other of the educational prizes that would be adjudged, and that unless he were successful, Sage Portlock, his old playmate and friend--now some one very far dearer--and for whose sake he had striven so hard, would turn from him with contempt.

At another time the questions before him would have been comparatively easy, and almost, without exception, he could have written a sensible essay upon the theme; but now Sage, his old home at Lawford, the school, the troubles in the town and opposition to the Rector, and a dozen other things, seemed to waltz through his brain.

He had several letters in his pocket, from Sage and from his father, and they seemed to unfold themselves before him, so that he read again the words that he knew by heart: how indignant the people were at the death of poor old Sammy Warmoth and the appointment of Joe Biggins; the terrible quarrel that there had been between Mr Mallow and the Curate about the burial of Tom Morrison's child, and how the quarrel had been patched up again because Mr Mallow had not liked Mr Paulby to leave just when people were talking so about the little grave in Tom Morrison's garden. There was the question of the wretched attempt at choral singing too on Sunday--singing that he was to improve as soon as he was master; for Sage said it did not matter how well she taught the girls, Humphrey Bone made his boys sing badly out of spite, so as to put them out.