The Charioteer Read Online Free

stop press. He dashed into it headlong. “Jeepers is happy at last. He’s really found something. This is the stink to end all stinks for all time. There’s going to be hell let loose in this House by tomorrow.”
    Laurie brought his feet down with a clump, and shoved back his chair. “Look here,” he said. “No, this is getting not to be funny. He’ll turn this place into a loony-bin, before he’s done. He ought to be analyzed. Doesn’t he ever think about anything else?”
    “Shut up and let—”
    “How for heaven’s sake did he ever get given a House? Know what Jones II told me? Jeepers went down to the bogs yesterday and threw a school blazer over one of the doors, and sat locked in there all the time the changing was going on, to see if the conversation was pure. It’s too bad he’s got such big feet.”
    “Well, that’s nothing to—”
    “Nothing is it?” said Laurie, whom something had rendered perverse. In this mood he was apt to become Irish. His brogue, however, was of literary origin, consisting of stock phrases carefully acquired. The Celtic period had set in about eighteen months ago; he had even gone through a phase, till stopped, of spelling his name O’Dell, and had opted out of the O.T.C., which was theoretically allowed but almost never done except by boys with rheumatic hearts. At about this time, his mother had been receiving attentions from a retired colonel; but, in the end, nothing had come of it.
    “Sure, then,” he continued, “it’s more than enough for me.” Forgetting about it, he dropped back into English. “If Lanyon weren’t the best Head the House has had in years, the place would just be a sewer. I can’t think how he sticks Jeepers without going nuts.”
    “Well,” said Carter, triumphantly getting it out at last, “he won’t have to much longer.”
    Laurie stared, abruptly sobered up. Presently he said, “Why not?”
    “Because he’s due for the sack, as soon as the Head comes back from London tomorrow.”
    “Lanyon?” Laurie sat with empty face and dropped jaw; turned; stared at Carter; saw that he meant it. “Whatever for?”
    Carter shrugged his shoulders, expressively.
    “Look,” said Laurie, “if this is a joke, I’ve laughed now, ha-ha. Is it?”
    “Far from it for Lanyon, I should think. They say he’s shut up in the isolation ward in the sicker, and they’re only letting him out to pack his room.”
    There was a short silence. Presently Laurie said slowly, “Jeepers ought to be in a strait waistcoat. Is he drunk, or loopy, or what?”
    “Personally,” said Carter, with some reluctance, “I think Lanyon’s cooked. It seems Hazell went to Jeepers about him.”
    “ Hazell? Hazell, did you say? Don’t make me laugh. Everyone knows Hazell. Hazell, I ask you. They never ought to have sent him to a proper school. He ought to be at one of these crank places where they run about naked and have their complexes gone over every day. Hazell, of all things. Good Lord, Lanyon only keeps an eye on him because he’s such a misfit and people were giving him hell. No one would be surprised if Hazell came down one morning saying he was Mussolini, or a poached egg.”
    “He may be a drip, but he isn’t absolutely ravers. You know that go of religion he had last term. When he had that rosary. You know. I should think now he’s had a go of this Buchman thing, where they confess everything in public. Anyway that’s what he did. Not in public, pity he didn’t, he could have been shut up. Then afterwards he got cold feet, and went bleating off to Somers, I don’t know why Somers, to confess he’d confessed. So everyone knows now.”
    “Hazell would confess to anything. It’s a thing people have. When there’s been a murder, dozens of loonies write up and confess to it. It’s well known. I bet he didn’t confess to Lanyon, anyway.”
    “He asked Somers whether he ought to, Green says.”
    Laurie got up abruptly from the table. He knew the