Rich Man, Poor Man

As though reading his mind, Boylan said, “I do believe you ought to empty the water out of those boots. That water must be cold.”

“It is.” Rudolph pulled off one boot, then another. Boylan didn’t seem to notice. He was looking around him at the overgrown woods that had been in his family’s possession since just after the Civil War. “You used to be able to see the house from here. There was no underbrush. Ten gardeners used to work this land, winter and summer. Now the only ones who come are the state fisheries people once a year. You can’t get anybody anymore. No sense to it, really, anyway.” He studied the massed foliage of the shrub oak and blossomless dogwood and alder. “Trash trees,” he said. “The forest primeval. Where only Man in vile. Who said that?”

“Longfellow,” Rudolph said. His socks were soaking wet, as he put his boots back on.

“You read a lot?” Boylan said.

“We had to learn it in school.” Rudolph refused to boast.

“I’m happy to see that our educational system does not neglect our native birds and their native wood-notes wild,” Boylan said.

Fancy talk again, Rudolph thought. Who’s he impressing? Rudolph didn’t much like Longfellow, himself, but who did Boylan think he was to be so superior? What poems have you written, brother?

“By the way, I believe there’s an old pair of hip-length waders up at the house. God knows when I bought them. If they fit you, you can have them. Why don’t you come up and try them on?”

Rudolph had pla

“Don’t call me sir,’” Boylan said. “I feel old enough as it is.”

They started toward the house, on the overgrown path. “Let me carry the creel,” Boylan said.

“It’s not heavy,” Rudolph said.

“Please,” said Boylan. “It will make me feel as though I’ve done something useful today.”

He’s sad, Rudolph thought with surprise. Why, he’s as sad as my mother. He handed the creel to Boylan, who slung it over his shoulder.

The house sat on the hill, huge, a useless fortress in Gothic stone, with ivy ru

“Ridiculous, isn’t it?” Boylan murmured.

“Yes,” Rudolph said.

“You have a nice turn of phrase, my boy.” Boylan laughed. “Come on in.” He opened the massive oak front doors.

My sister has passed through here, Rudolph thought. I should turn back.

But he didn’t.

They went into a large, dark, marble-floored hall, with a big staircase winding up from it. An old man in a gray alpaca jacket and bow tie appeared immediately, as though merely by entering the house Boylan set up waves of pressure that drove servants into his presence.

“Good evening, Perkins,” Boylan said. “This is Mr. Jordache, a young friend of the family.”

Perkins nodded, the ghost of a bow. He looked English. He had a for King and Country face. He took Rudolph’s battered hat and laid it on a table along the wall, a wreath on a royal tomb.

“I wonder if you could be kind enough, Perkins, to go into the Armory,” Boylan said, “and hunt around a bit for my old pair of waders. Mr. Jordache is a fisherman.” He opened the creel. “As you can see.”

Perkins regarded the fish. “Very good size, sir.” Caterer to the Crown.

“Aren’t they?” The two men played an elaborate game with each other, the rules of which were unknown to Rudolph. “Take them into Cook,” Boylan said to Perkins. “Ask her if she can’t do something with them for di

Rudolph hesitated. He’d miss his date with Julie. But he was fishing Boylan’s stream, and he was getting a pair of waders. “If I could make a telephone call,” he said.

“Of course,” Boylan said. Then to Perkins. “Tell Cook we’ll be two.” Axel Jordache would not eat trout for breakfast. “And while you’re at it,” Boylan said, “bring down a pair of nice, warm socks and a towel for Mr. Jordache. His feet are soaked. He doesn’t feel it now, being young, but as he creaks to the fireside forty years from now, he will feel the rheumatism in his joints, even as you and I, and will remember this afternoon.”

“Yes, sir,” Perkins said and went off to the kitchen or to the Armory, whatever that was.

“I think you’ll be more comfortable if you take your boots off here,” Boylan said. It was a polite way of hinting to Rudolph that he didn’t want him to leave a trail of wet footprints all over the house. Rudolph pulled off the boots. Silent reproach of darned socks.

“We’ll go in here,” Boylan pushed open two high carved wooden doors leading off the hallway. “I think Perkins has had the goodness to start a fire. This house is chilly on the best of days. At the very best it is always November in here. And on a day like this, when there’s rain in the air, one can ice-skate on one’s bones.”

One. One, Rudolph thought, as, bootless, he went through the door which Boylan held open for him. One can take a flying hump for oneself.

The room was the largest private room Rudolph had ever been in. It didn’t seem like November at all. Dark-red velvet curtains were drawn over the high windows, books were ranged on shelves on the walls, there were many paintings, portraits of highly colored ladies in nineteenth-century dresses and solid, oldish men with beards, and big cracked oils. Rudolph recognized the latter as views of the neighboring valley of the Hudson that must have been painted when it was all still farmland and forest. There was a grand piano with a lot of bound music albums strewn on it, and a table against a wall with bottles. There was a huge upholstered couch, some deep leather armchairs, and a library table heaped with magazines. An immense pale Persian carpet that looked hundreds of years old, was shabby and worn to Rudolph’s unknowing eye. Perkins had, indeed, started a fire in the wide fireplace. Three logs crackled on heavy andirons and six or seven lamps around the room gave forth a tempered evening light. Instantly, Rudolph decided that one day he would live in a room like this.

“It’s a wonderful room,” he said sincerely.

“Too big for a single man,” Boylan said. “One rattles around in it. I’m making us a whiskey.”

“Thank you,” Rudolph said. His sister ordering whiskey in the bar in the Port Philip House. She was in New York now, because of this man. Good or bad? She had a job, she had written. Acting. She would let him know when the play opened. She had a new address. She had moved from the Y.W.C.A. Don’t tell Ma or Pa. She was being paid sixty dollars a week.

“You wanted to phone,” Boylan said, pouring whiskey. “On the table near the window.”

Rudolph picked up the phone and waited for the operator. A beautiful blonde woman with an out-of-style hairdo smiled at him from a silver frame on the piano. “Number, please,” the operator said.

Rudolph gave her Julie’s number. He hoped that Julie wasn’t home, so that he could leave a message. Cowardice. Another mark against him in the Book of Himself.

But it was Julie’s voice that answered, after two rings.

“Julie …” he began.

“Rudy!” Her pleasure at hearing his voice was a rebuke. He wished Boylan were not in the room. “Julie,” he said, “about tonight. Something’s come up …”

“What’s come up?” Her voice was stony. It was amazing how a pretty young girl like that, who could sing like a lark, could also make her voice sound like a gate clanging, between one sentence and the next.

“I can’t explain at the moment, but …”

“Why can’t you explain at the moment?”

He looked across at Boylan’s back. “I just can’t,” he said. “Anyway, why can’t we make it for tomorrow night? The same picture’s playing and …”