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The car drove away. He never looked up.
They all leave. Every one of them. Even the best of them.
The Chevy labored up the hill and through the familiar stone gate. The poplar trees that lined the road leading to the house cast a funereal shade, despite the June sunshine. The house quietly decayed behind its unkempt flower borders.
“The Fall of the House of Usher,” Brad said as he rounded the curve into the courtyard. Rudolph had been to the house so often that he no longer had an opinion of it. It was Teddy Boylan’s house, that was all. “Who lives here—Dracula?”
“A friend,” Rudolph said. He had never spoken about Boylan to Brad. Boylan belonged to another compartment of his life. “A friend of the family. He helped me through school.”
“Dough?” Brad asked, stopping the car and staring critically at the stone pile of the building.
“Some,” Rudolph said. “Enough.”
“Can’t he afford a gardener?”
“He’s not interested. Come on in and meet him. There’s some champagne waiting for us.” Rudolph got out of the car.
“Should I button my collar?” Brad asked.
“Yes,” Rudolph said. He waited while Brad struggled with his collar, and pulled up his tie. He had a thick, short, plebeian neck, Rudolph noticed for the first time.
They crossed the graveled courtyard to the heavy oak front doors. Rudolph rang the bell. He was glad he was not alone. He didn’t want to be alone with Teddy Boylan with the news that he had for him. The bell rang in the muffled distance, a question in a tomb, Are you alive?
The door opened. Perkins stood there. “Good afternoon, sir,” he said. There was the sound of the piano being played. Rudolph recognized a Schubert sonata. Teddy Boylan had taken him to concerts at Carnegie Hall and had played a great deal of music for him on his phonograph, pleased at Rudolph’s pleasure in learning about it and his quick ability to tell good playing from bad, mediocre from great. “I was about to give up music before you arrived on the scene,” Boylan had told him once. “I don’t like to listen to it alone and I hate listening to it with people who are faking an interest in it.”
Perkins led the two young men toward the living room. Even in taking five paces, Perkins suggested a procession. Brad straightened out of his usual slouch and walked more erectly, the great dark hall working on him.
Perkins opened the door to the living room. “Mr. Jordache and a friend, sir,” he said.
Boylan finished the passage he was playing and stopped. There was a bottle of champagne in a bucket and two fluted glasses beside it.
Boylan stood up and smiled. “Welcome,” he said, extending his hand to Rudy. “It’s good to see you again.” Boylan had been south for two months and he was very brown, his hair and straight eyebrows sun-bleached. There was some slight little difference in his face that Rudolph puzzled over momentarily, as he shook Boylan’s hand. “May I present a friend of mine,” Rudolph said. “Bradford Knight, Mr. Boylan. He’s a classmate of mine.”
“How do you do, Mr. Knight.” Boylan shook Brad’s hand.
“Happy to make your acquaintance, suh,” Brad said, sounding more Oklahoman than usual.
“You’re to be congratulated today, too, I take it,” Boylan said:
“I reckon so. At least, that’s the theory.” Brad gri
“We’ll need a third glass, Perkins.” Boylan moved toward the champagne bucket.
“Yes, sir.” Perkins, leading his lifelong imaginary procession, left the room.
“Was the Democrat edifying?” Boylan asked, twirling the bottle in the ice. “Did he mention malefactors of great wealth?”
“He talked about the bomb,” Rudolph said.
“That Democratic invention,” Boylan said. “Did he say whom we’re going to drop it on next?”
“He didn’t seem to want to drop it on anybody,” Rudolph said. For some reason, Rudolph felt he had to defend the cabinet member. “Actually, he made a great deal of sense.”
“Did he?” Boylan said, twirling the bottle again with the tips of his fingers. “Perhaps he’s a secret Republican.”
Suddenly Rudolph realized what was different about Boylan’s face. There were no more bags under his eyes. He must have got a lot of sleep on his holiday, Rudolph thought.
“You’ve got yourself quite a fine little old place here, Mr. Boylan,” Brad said. He had been staring around him frankly during the conversation.
“Conspicuous consumption,” Boylan said carelessly. “My family was devoted to it. You’re from the South, aren’t you, Mr. Knight?”
“Oklahoma.”
“I drove through it once,” Boylan said. “I found it depressing. Do you plan to go back there now?”
“Tomorrow,” Brad said. “I’ve been trying to get Rudy to go with me.”
“Ah, have you?” Boylan turned to Rudolph. “Are you going?”
Rudolph shook his head.
“No,” Boylan said. “I can’t quite see you in Oklahoma.”
Perkins came in with the third glass and set it down.
“Ah,” said Boylan. “Here we are.” He undid the wire around the cork, his hands working deftly as the wire came away. He twisted the cork gently and as it came out with a dry popping noise he poured the foam expertly into the glasses. Ordinarily, he allowed Perkins to open bottles. Rudolph realized that Boylan was making a special, symbolic effort today.
He handed a glass to Brad and one to Rudolph, then lifted his own. “To the future,” he said. “That dangerous tense.”
“This sure beats Coca-Cola,” Brad said. Rudolph frowned slightly. Brad was being purposely bumpkinish, reacting unfavorably to Boylan’s ma
“Yes, doesn’t it?” Boylan said evenly. He turned to Rudolph. “Why don’t we go out into the garden and drink the rest of the bottle in the sunlight? It always seems more festive—drinking wine in the open.”
“Well,” Rudolph said, “we don’t really have much time …”
“Oh?” Boylan raised his eyebrows. “I had thought we could have di
“Thank you, suh,” Brad said. “But it’s up to Rudy.”
“There’re some people expecting us in New York,” said Rudolph.
“I see,” Boylan said.
“A party, no doubt. Young people.”
“Something like that.”
“Only natural,” Boylan said. “On a day like this.” He poured more champagne for the three of them. “Will you see your sister?”
“It’s at her house.” Rudolph lied to no man.
“Give her my best,” said Boylan. “I must remember to send a gift for her child. What is it again?”
“A boy.”
Rudolph had told him the day the child was born that it was a boy.
“A small piece of silver,” Boylan said, “for it to eat its darling little porridge from. In my family,” Boylan explained to Brad, “the custom was to give a newly born boy a block of stock. But that was in the family, of course. It would be presumptuous of me to do anything like that for Rudolph’s nephew, although I’m very fond of Rudolph. For that matter, I’m quite attached to his sister, too, although we’ve allowed ourselves to drift apart in the last few years.”
“When I was born my father put an oil well in my name,” Brad said. “A dry hole.” He laughed heartily.
Boylan smiled politely. “It’s the thought that counts.”
“Not in Oklahoma,” Brad said.
“Rudolph,” Boylan said, “I had thought we could discuss various matters quietly over di
“If you want,” Brad said, “I’ll take a little walk.”
“You are sensitive, Mr. Knight,” Boylan said, a knife-flick of mockery in his voice, “but there’s nothing that has to be hidden between Rudolph and me. Is there, Rudolph?”
“I don’t know,” Rudolph said bluntly. He wasn’t going to play whatever game Boylan was setting up.
“I’ll tell you what I’ve done,” Boylan said, businesslike now. “I’ve bought you a round-trip ticket on the Queen Mary. The sailing is in two weeks, so you’ll have plenty of time to see your friends and get your passport and make whatever arrangements are necessary. I’ve drawn up a little itinerary of places I think you ought to see, London, Paris, Rome, the usual. Round off your education a bit. Education really begins after college. Don’t you agree, Mr. Knight?”