A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School

95Brinker and three cohorts came with much commotion into our room at 10:05 P.M. thatnight. "We're taking you out," he said flatly."It's after hours," I said; "Where?" said Finny with interest at the same time."You'll see. Get them." His friends half-lifted us half-roughly, and we were hustled down thestairs. I thought it must be some kind of culminating prank, the senior class leaving Devon witha flourish. Were we going to steal the clapper of the school bell, or would we tether a cow inchapel?They steered us toward the First Building—burned down and rebuilt several times but stillknown as the First Building of the Devon School. It contained only classrooms and so at thishour was perfectly empty, which made us stealthier than ever. Brinker's many keys, survivingfrom his class-officer period, jingled softly as we reached the main door. Above us in Latinflowed the inscription, Here Boys Come to Be Made Men.The lock turned; we went in, entering the doubtful reality of a hallway familiar only indaylight and bustle. Our footsteps fell guiltily on the marble floor. We continued across thefoyer to a dreamlike bank of windows, turned left up a pale flight of marble steps, left again,through two doorways, and into the Assembly Room. From the high ceiling one of thecelebrated Devon chandeliers, all glittering tears, scattered thin illumination. Row after row ofblack Early American benches spread emptily back through the shadows to long, vaguewindows. At the front of the room there was a raised platform with a balustrade in front of it.About ten members of the senior class sat on the platform; all of them were wearing their blackgraduation robes. This is going to be some kind of schoolboy masquerade, I thought, somemasquerade with masks and candles."You see how Phineas limps," said Blinker loudly as we walked in. It was too coarse andtoo loud; I wanted to hit him for shocking me like that. Phineas looked perplexed. "Sit down,"he went on, "take a load off your feet." We sat in the front row of the benches where eight orten others were sitting, smirking uneasily at the students on the platform.Whatever Brinker had in his mind to do, I thought he had chosen a terrible place for it.There was nothing funny about the Assembly Room. I could remember staring torpidly throughthese windows a hundred times out at the elms of the Center Common. The windows now hadthe closed blankness of night, a deadened look about them, a look of being blind or deaf. Thegreat expanses of wall space were opaque with canvas, portraits in oil of deceasedheadmasters, a founder or two, forgotten leaders of the faculty, a beloved athletic coach none ofus had ever heard of, a lady we could not identify—her fortune had largely rebuilt the school; anameless poet who was thought when under the school's protection to be destined primarily forfuture generations; a young hero now anonymous who looked theatrical in the First World Waruniform in which he had died.I thought any prank was bound to fall flat here.The Assembly Hall was used for large lectures, debates, plays, and concerts; it had the worst