CHAPTER VIII
THE SCHOLARSHIP AWARDS
At Yardley you were supposed to get up at seven. Breakfast was at seven-thirty. You were allowed, however, a half-hour’s leeway. That is, you could gain admittance to commons as late as one minute to eight, but whether you found anything left to eat was quite another question. At half-past eight came chapel, and while you might with impunity miss breakfast occasionally, being absent from chapel constituted a dereliction resulting in a visit to the Office. Chapel was held in the assembly hall on the third floor of Oxford. There had been a time, when the founder and first Principal, Doctor Hewitt, had been alive, when chapel had occurred at half-past seven, but nowadays one fortified oneself with food before the morning services.
On this Saturday morning Toby, who was so accustomed to early rising that it was a veritable hardship to lie in bed after seven, finished breakfast before eight and was out of the hall before Arnold appeared. Usually he waited for the latter and they crossed to Oxford together; and sometimes Homer Wilkins, by Herculean effort, managed to go along. But this morning Arnold had not returned to his room when Toby clattered downstairs again. Nor was he anywhere in sight. So Toby set out for chapel alone. Probably Arnold would be waiting for him in the corridor in Oxford. It wasn’t a morning when one would linger around out of doors, for the mercury was hovering about zero and an icy wind was blowing across the Prospect, cracking the flag and bending the top of the tall mast. Toby dug his hands into his pockets and scurried. The bell began to ring as he reached the steps. Inside, a crowd of boys who had lingered till the last moment, surged toward the stairs, and Toby was caught up and borne along. As a consequence, he did not find Arnold, and when he was seated on one of the old knife-scarred benches he was hedged in between two fellows whom he only knew by sight. Doctor Collins, the Principal, stepped to the rostrum, silence descended over the room and the Doctor’s pleasant voice began the reading.
“‘Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.’”
Toby, as he listened, glanced furtively around for sight of Arnold. He had wanted particularly to see him this morning and ask him when and where the scholarship announcements would be made. Toby presumed that a list would be posted on the notice board downstairs, but a hurried examination of the board as he had been swept past had revealed nothing that looked as portentous. Probably the list would be posted later. Toby wondered if he would have the courage to read it! Meanwhile there was no sign of Arnold and Toby concluded that he had arrived late and slipped into a seat near the door.
“‘But I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee; which have said to thy soul, Bow down, that we may go over: and thou hast laid thy body as the ground, and as the street, to them that went over.’”
Dr. Collins ceased and closed the Bible. There was a moment’s pause and the subdued shuffling of feet and moving of bodies. Then came silence again and the invocation and, at the last, the Lord’s Prayer, the boys reciting together. Toby always liked to hear that. It sounded to him like the boom of the sea back home, and thrilled him. When heads were lifted once more, he became conscious of an undercurrent of excitement, of suspense. The hall was unusually still. The boy on his right, a thin, earnest-looking youth with a pair of eye-glasses set on the ridge of a long nose, sat up straighter and more tensely, and Toby thought he breathed faster than was natural. Toby didn’t recall the fellow’s name, but they had several recitations in common. In front of him two boys were whispering together, but so softly that he could hear no sound. On the platform Doctor Collins was turning the papers in his hands, and, presently, having sorted them to his liking, he began the announcements. Three students were summoned to the Office; notice was given of a lecture on Stevenson next Tuesday evening at eight; a course in Bible History open to First and Second Class students would begin Monday; those desiring to join would give their names to Mr. Thurman; until further notice, the library would be kept open until ten o’clock at night, in response to a number of requests. Doctor Collins laid these notices on the desk, cleared his throat and began again. Toby heard the boy on his right take a long breath.