The Scarlet Letters by Louis Auchincloss

take long walks alone on weekend afternoons; he couldn't seem to live with this new image of a self afflicted with sensual yens. The boys who had played the trick on him began to be alarmed at what they had wrought: might this new Rod be so irresponsible as to expose them to the faculty? Even if their little trick was not to be found on Mount Sinai's list of don'ts, they knew only too well what a storm would be involved. But when they delegated Hammersly to intercede with Rod, he was given contemptuous assurance that no such exposure need be feared.
    One spring vacation Rod was tempted to confide in his father. But Rodney Senior had suffered another heart attack and was resting at home, barred for some weeks from attending his office, and Rod's mother was very firm about his not being worried with anything. Yet the big, broadly smiling patient seemed to sense some of the boy's chagrin; he clapped a hand under his son's chin and made him look up into those serene gray eyes and hear the gentle paternal tone: "Rod, dear boy, if there's something on your mind, you should be able to tell your poor old dad. I don't care if it's something you find a bit unattractive. We all have stinky thoughts and nasty urges. Maybe one day I'll tell you about mine. Oh, you'd be surprised! Maybe even shocked. We're monsters, my boy. We're all monsters. But monsters can be a little bit less monstrous if they love each other, don't you think? The way you and I and Mummy feel about each other. Isn't that so? Well, think it over, and if I can be the tiniest help to you, let me know. What else am I here for, for goodness' sake, if it isn't to help out a fine son like you?"
    Rod's heart ached with love for this benevolent easygoing sire, so inexplicably stricken with a malady that Rod knew from his mother's agonized anxiety was darkly menacing. He felt that his father was a kind of god of boundless mercy stretching out open arms to enfold him in everlasting bliss if he could only allow himself to rush into that embrace. But he could not bring himself to believe that his father—for all his talk of monsters—could really tolerate the idea that any boy who hoped to become a man could possibly have derived any pleasure from the revolting thing that had been done to him. Could he even imagine his father in such a position? Hell and damnation!
    He returned to school without having availed himself of the paternal offer to tell all. Yet even that Rodney Senior had seemed to understand. He had been as merry as usual in seeing his son off on the train. But a week later Rod was called into the headmaster's study and gravely informed that another attack had ended his father's life.
    Eleanor Jessup was largely responsible for her son's surviving this crisis without major mental damage. She was a tall bony plain, exceedingly intelligent and intellectual woman, with messy reddish hair, a high brow and large nose, who regarded as the miracle of her life that she should have attracted such a man as her husband and never doubted that all hope for her future happiness had died with him. But she was a Roman in her sense of duty. She saw life too clearly to imagine for a moment that her son could make up to her for what his father had been or that she could make up to him for what he had lost. But together they could carry on; together they could be worthy of her husband's faith in them. With an admirable minimum of words she put steel in Rod's heart.
    And they did carry on. Rod at school recovered his balance and his popularity. His goal in life was now a simple and all-encompassing one. He would strive to replace his father in the world, an ideal rather than a possibility. Whatever cesspools lurked in the cavities of his mind, his heart could be pure.
    For the rest of their time at Saint Jude's Harry Hammersly cultivated Rod's friendship with what he at least regarded as considerable success. Rod was now among the leaders of the school—he had become a prefect