The Charioteer Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’ll give my word if—if it isn’t true about you leaving.”
    “ What did you say, Odell?” Lanyon stared at him, level-eyed. This time, though he felt as if the back of his neck would crack, Laurie met it without looking away. “Have you gone completely crazy? Who the hell do you think you are, standing here when a prefect sends for you and asking me questions about what I’m going to do? You need to see a doctor, I should think.”
    “I’m sorry, Lanyon.” Laurie felt he must sound like a cracked gramophone record. “I know it’s cheek. I’m sorry. Only I can’t promise if I don’t know.”
    Lanyon put the pencil away and stood up. He had the whippy, dangerous spring of a bent rapier let go.
    “For your information, I shall probably be leaving sometime tomorrow. Is that enough for you? And if I don’t have your word within one minute, I’m going to lay you out cold, here and now, and you’ll spend the time between now and then in the sicker, and that will settle that. Well?”
    He could do it, Laurie thought, with one hand tied behind him. It would probably be too quick to hurt very much. The odd thing was that whereas he had entered the study almost paralyzed with fright, now he was hardly frightened at all. His admiration for Lanyon had soared to the point of worship. This is the happy warrior, this is he whom every man in arms would wish to be.
    “Have you taken that in?” Lanyon asked. “Because I mean it.”
    That’s all right” Laurie’s voice was suddenly clear and free. “You’ve got to, I see that. But you can’t actually kill me, so it won’t stop me for long.”
    Lanyon took a step up to him, as if he were measuring his distance. Laurie very nearly threw up his fists by instinct. No, he thought, Lanyon couldn’t be found fighting in his room after all this, besides he very likely wouldn’t hit so hard in cold blood. He was just about right now for a straight one to the point of the jaw. Laurie hoped there was room enough behind for him to fall without hitting the door or something. One couldn’t turn to look. There was time for all this because it took so long for anything to happen. Lanyon must be hoping he’d crack up yet and save having to do it. He felt, standing like this, eyes front, that he had never really seen Lanyon before. His face was a clear light even brown, toning with his dusty-fair hair. There was a little triangular scar, old and colorless, on his forehead above the left eyebrow. His mouth was tight and straight, a horizontal line between two verticals. His eyes fixed Laurie, stilly.
    He stepped back.
    With a spent force in which sounded the flaw of a desperate weariness, he said, “You bloody fool.”
    Laurie had reached a pitch of tension where no inhibitions touched him. The frame of convention, with its threats and its supports alike, was broken. He was left, a single-handed individual, to take things as they came.
    “I can’t help it,” he said. “If you’re leaving, somebody’s got to cope. I know I’m not a prefect, and if Treviss and the others were doing anything, that would be all right. Only they won’t, I know what this House is when it comes to something like that, they’ve been got down like everyone else.” Lanyon was looking at him, quiet, almost relaxed, incalculable, but now for some reason unterrifying. Laurie went on with a rush, “It makes me sick, the way people will let anything by, even something like this, sooner than come into the open about—anything you’re supposed not to.”
    “I see,” said Lanyon. “And tell me, what makes you so cheerful about coming out into the open yourself?”
    “I don’t know. Well, somebody’s got to. It stands to reason Jeepers can’t be let get away with this.”
    “Mr. Jepson to you,” said Lanyon mechanically.
    “Mr. Jepson. Sorry. It isn’t only even that it’s not fair to you. It’s not fair to the House either. Till this year, it’s been going down ever since Mr. Stuart