The Brothers Boswell by Philip Baruth Read Free Book Online Page B

“Come, Johnny.”
    And without another word, we walked down the hall to my father’s consultation room, and James opened the door and walked me over to my father’s desk. On the desk lay the folio.
    James drew it closer to us, fingered the unmarked leather cover without opening it. He toyed with the raised edges.
    “Did you know the man with Lord Kames?” he whispered.
    I said I didn’t, but that I’d guessed he was an architect.
    James looked at me with surprise, and a complimentary nod of his head. “He is Mr. James Craig,” James went on, “and he is in fact an architect. Can you guess what plans he brought to show father?”
    “The new house at Auchinleck,” I whispered. My father had been talking about a new house on the family estate for years, but recently his talk had been edged with decision.
    James tapped the cover with his finger, and his smile blossomed into genuine self-satisfaction. His fifteen-year-old face was all but illuminated with the sense of
knowing.
    “He has another architect for the new house. This plan,” he lifted the cover, “is for Edinburgh, another Edinburgh. A new companion city, to the north. To be built from scratch.”
    It was an architect’s early outline, but sharp enough in detail. At the bottom of the parchment was the North Loch, the present boundary of the city. Clearly the Loch was to be drained, dredged, and regularized and landscaped. And beyond that vast, hypothetical feat of engineering lay a perfect theoretical grid of streets, these linking and enclosing two large imaginary public squares. The streets were already labeled, grand names like Queen’s and Castle. Tiny but discernible rows of trees lined the pavements. It was mathematically precise and yet fantastic, otherworldly.
    James watched my face as I puzzled over the details. “There is to be a proposal floated next year for the building of a bridge here,”he touched the paper carefully, experimentally, “coupled with some general discussion of extending the city’s Royalty to here,” he stroked an area far to the north, an area of farms and meadows and swampland. “In a few years, when public discussion allows, there will be a contest announced for designs for the New Town. And this design, with some alterations, will be selected. Mr. Craig, the man you saw tonight, will be given a gold medal and the freedom of the city.”
    James turned full to me, again with the air of a schoolmaster. It was the air I could ever least forgive him. “And why, would you suppose, does father show me this? Introduce me to the men who will build it? Let me in on the secret of the rigged competition, a secret that even most of his friends don’t know he has broken?”
    I remember wondering if he were goading me, forcing me to say it so that he could revel in the obvious.
    “Why would you suppose?” he urged.
    I brought it out then, the pebble of resentment in the dress shoe of our relationship: “Because you are eldest.”
    Now his look of self-satisfaction ripened into delight. “Yes, I am eldest. And Father would like me to join with Lord Kames and the rest of the eldest sons of the oldest families in Scotland in a longstanding war they have running. It is a war against the second-and third- and fourth-eldest sons of the oldest families in Scotland. It is a club, and he admits me tonight. He shows me that he trusts me never to reveal these plans, plans that will undoubtedly make the Lords and the magistrates rich. Filthy rich. Far, far filthier richer than any of them are today.”
    “And you break his trust.”
    James nodded, his well-fed cheeks dimpling. He seemed about to giggle. “Exactly. Without even half an hour intervening, I break his trust.”
    “Why, though? For what reason?”
    “You do me the credit of assuming I have a reason. It is much appreciated.”
    “Seriously, now. Why are you so throng about telling what you’ve promised not to tell?”
    “Mind your English. Say ‘why are you so very