“Stand on one leg or the other,” he said encouragingly. “You look as if your pants were wet. Of course, don’t let me keep you if they are.”
At first overwhelmed by this condescension, Barnes presently essayed a kind of grin. Mixed with its servility, traces of gratitude, humor, and even intelligence appeared. He looked almost human, Laurie thought.
“Here you are. And don’t lose it.”
“No, Odell.”
“Hi, stop, you’ve not got the chit yet, you fool.”
“Sorry, Odell.”
“Have the baths shut?”
“Yes, please, I think so, Odell.”
“Curse. I meant to get over. What was that extraordinary roaring going on?”
“I don’t know, Odell. Mr. Peters was coaching.”
“Oh, ah. I didn’t know he used a megaphone now.”
A flickering smile, in dread of presuming, appeared on Barnes’s face like an anxious rabbit ready to bolt back down the hole.
“The thing with Peters, once you’re on the board, is just to carry on as if he wasn’t there. He likes that really, you’ll find. It soothes his nerves.”
Laurie, a steady but unsensational performer at other games, was the House’s white hope at swimming and was expected to get his School colors next year. Barnes said, “Yes, Odell,” with an expression of almost inert stupidity. The awe of this heavenly message had stunned him. Laurie observed it with approval; it was no good if encouragement made them fresh.
“Here’s the chit. And you can take this bottle back.” The bottle was a gratuity. There was a penny refund on it.
“Oh, thanks very much, Odell.”
Barnes sprinted off, with a new animation. Laurie, looking after him, felt a warmth at the heart which he hastened to shed. A little drip like that. Perhaps he reminded one of dogs, or something. Dismissing Barnes from his mind, he was about to get back to the essay again, when Carter appeared outside. Luckily Laurie had the last paragraph in his head.
Carter climbed in, leaving two more scratches and some fresh dirt on the sill. He suffered from the disability of being already almost six feet tall, and not having caught up with it. Even his voice hadn’t finished breaking. Laurie’s had settled quite firmly, but he ran to compactness and was still at the five-foot-seven mark. You could see by his build that five-foot-nine would probably be about his limit. He had to look up to Carter to talk to him; to the onlooker, this had a somewhat incongruous effect.
Carter uncoiled himself from the window. He had to use the arts of a contortionist to get through it; but he would have shunned the eccentricity of using the door. “Now, now,” he said, jerking his head toward the receding Barnes. “You want to sublimate, you know. Collect antique doorknobs, or something.”
“It’s too strong for me,” said Laurie movingly. “I can’t get him out of my head. Those long eyelashes. Would he look at me, do you think?”
Carter followed this up, but rather half-heartedly. He was not the only one to find Laurie’s conversation disconcertingly uninhibited. The innuendo, more generally approved, was apt when it reached him to be smacked into the open with the directness of a fives ball. Lacking in some social instinct, he seemed never to know the difference.
“He’s the worst drip we’ve had in years,” Carter pursued. “And anyway, it’s hardly quite the moment, when you come to think.”
“Think what of?” Laurie put his feet on the table and rocked the back legs of his chair.
“You don’t mean you’ve not heard?” Carter had so far been only at the receiving end of a sensational 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 feeling, though he hadn’t had it for years: exalted, single-minded rage. Laurie was all for moderation, as people can be who have learned early some of their more painful capacities. It had become an accepted fact that nothing ever ruffled Spuddy. He had enjoyed this reputation, so inwardly reassuring, and made the most of it. This was different. He felt, suddenly, the enormous release of energy which comes when repressed instincts are sanctioned by a cause. Down Hamlet, up Antony. Over thy wounds now do I prophesy.