The Scarlet Letters by Louis Auchincloss Page A

and stroked the varsity crew—and though Harry was renowned and even a bit feared as a wit and had achieved the merely secondary distinction in a sports-worshiping academy of being editor of the school magazine, he enjoyed nothing like the popularity of the boy to whose friendship he aspired. He had, at least at school, far more to gain from Rod than Rod from him.
    Rod's attitude towards Harry was more complicated. He could never, of course, forget the episode of the locker room; its fixed spot in his mind was even the core of his relationship with his new intimate. He never referred to it, but he developed the notion that by locating it essentially in Harry and assuring himself by their companionship that it was
there
and not in Rod Jessup, that he somehow had it under a kind of control. Harry, in a way, was thus everything that Rod was
not
, and his very presence seemed to make it possible for Rod to keep it that way.
    Which did not in the least mean that he could not become fond of Harry. The latter's cultivation of him was flattering, and Harry cut a considerable figure among the more sophisticated minority of their class, even venturing to flaunt an occasional defiance against the solid wall of the athletic lobby. At Yale, of course, the balance tipped more in Harry's favor; there were even those in their undergraduate circle who found the abrasively ironic Harry a more amusing companion than the more staid and literal Rod, but at law school Rod was again in the lead, his compulsive industry raising him to an editorship of the Law Journal, while Harry's preoccupation with society and women limited him to the good but not top grades that his lightning grasp of the material brought him even in the few hours he accorded it.
    Eleanor Jessup did not like Harry and had no scruples about making her opinion known to her son. She and Rod shared a small apartment off Riverside Drive, and she spent long days teaching history at a private girls' school, but there were some important New Yorkers who remembered with affection and admiration her brilliant and early cut-off mate, and she dined out from time to time in fashionable circles where her dry humor and terse wit were appreciated.
    "I must admit, Rod dear," she confessed to him one morning at breakfast after one of these social evenings, "that seeing your friend Harry's parents, as I did last night, fawning over Mrs. Neely Vanderbilt, may provide some excuse for his worldly streak. They say Harry's father is completely bust and doesn't even pay his bridge debts. But there they are, he and his wife, the two old dowdies, dressed to the gills with probably unpaid raiment, desperately cadging invitations to Palm Beach or the Caribbean. Ugh! It's sickening to watch them at it."
    "Poor old Harry! But he knows they have nothing more to give him. He's on his own now. And, you must admit, he does pretty well."
    "I hope you never lend him money, Rod."
    "He always seems to have more than I have!"
    "And I wonder where he gets it."
    "You've never been fair to Harry, Ma."
    But Rod was never entirely sure of Harry himself. And when Harry followed his lead successfully in applying for a job in Vollard Kaye, he began to see him as a potential rival. Fortunately they were assigned to different departments, Harry having elected trusts and estates where his charm and cozy manners with individual clients, particularly rich elderly ladies, were strong assets and where the hours were not as long as in other sections. Rod, of course, reveled in the corporate work which constituted the firm's main business. And when the year came for both to be made partners, and both were, Rod was reassured to know that there would be no further question as to which was the more qualified candidate for the future leadership of the firm. It would have to be a corporate man.
    Relaxed on the subject of competition, Rod was now able to take an unmitigated pleasure in Harry's usually pleasant company. It was gratifying