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 shiver, failed, and began to dress hastily by such light as came over the open partition 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 splashings, 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 shivering 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 space of a couple of feet above its door on to the passage. “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 scrap of down, there’s a good fellow.”
“Wipe it dry, and stick a bit of writing-paper against it.”