Preserve and Protect Page 20

  Well: he can’t worry about that now. More pressing things are on his mind, for he has already had to make the first of those compromises in his new role that all men make, whatever philosophy they cling to.

  He had been alarmed by the President’s desire to include in his speech a call for a much tighter anti-disturbance bill.

  “I don’t like this,” he had said bluntly to Orrin when the President had gone off to the diplomatic reception.

  The Secretary had studied him thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded.

  “I don’t either. It does go too far. But he has to reply to violence and he has to make it strong. If I know the Hill, the bill will go through a considerable watering-down before it sees the light of day.”

  “It will bring him an awful lot of criticism from people like me who are in favor of the objective but alarmed at the method.”

  “I think he feels that a firm response to violence is more important at the moment than criticism from his friends,” Orrin said. “It’s one of those balancing acts you get involved in here. It’s an executive decision.” He shrugged. “He’s made it. We write it.”

  “I still don’t like it,” Bob Leffingwell said stubbornly.

  “Just remember that I don’t either,” Orrin said crisply. “Record that in my favor, if you will. But I see the necessity.” He paused and then said, much as the President had earlier, “You don’t have to stay, Bob. You can go.”

  Bob Leffingwell stared at him for a long moment.

  “No,” he said finally, “I’m not going. Why don’t you try writing it out and I’ll see what I can do to help.”

  The moment had been a further step along the way. He did not like it, but he had endorsed it—not only endorsed it but actively participated, for those few sledge-hammer sentences contained a phrase or two of his. The press does not know this now, but it will before long. Somehow, somewhere, through somebody, the story will leak out. (Not from himself, or Orrin, or the President or the stenographer, probably: but the stenographer’s husband, her girl-friend, her son, her maid, her hairdresser—who knows where Washington leaks really come from? But they always do.) And when it finally becomes known, the howl against him will be louder than ever from those who oppose the Administration.

  But the whole episode has been, as Orrin said, “an executive decision,” and for none of them more than for him. All the assumptions of a liberal life had been challenged by the violence at the convention, challenged by the failure of the professional liberals to see the road to lawlessness down which they were taking America, challenged by events of recent years which have finally convinced him that his country must stand and defend on an old-fashioned, inconvenient, awkward, vulnerable but nonetheless valid set of principles, if she is ever to do so. He can see now that he has been circling for a long time around the decision to change his public position on many things. After his evening at the White House, he knows there can be no more hesitations. He is virtually a member of the Administration now, and there can be no turning back.

  Nor does he want to, for the shrewd old President has solved something else for him: he has put him to work with Orrin Knox, and out of their forced collaboration has come a sense of relaxation and easiness with one another that comes from shared responsibility and a job effectively done. After the speech was roughed into shape for the President’s editing, they had a few minutes together to talk. Later the mere physical fact of eating dinner together had also made its contribution. Subconsciously, he supposed, he and Orrin must always have admired each other’s abilities, even in the most bitter moments of their contest in the Senate. In their brief talk in Spring Valley, and even more tonight in the White House, he has discovered to his surprise that apparently they really want to like each other. And they have.

  Tonight he has seen another side of Orrin Knox than the prickly, dominant, impulsive, strong-willed politician. The ironic, whimsical, self-deprecating Orrin has also been present: he has found him quite charming. A lively sense of the irony of their collaboration infused many of the Secretary’s comments.

  “Lord, if Walter and Tommy Davis could see us now!” he had said at one point and had literally stopped to sit back and laugh at the thought. “Who knows,” he had added, more thoughtfully. “It may be the start of a beautiful friendship.”

  Bob Leffingwell had replied with a smile and a cautious, “It may.”

  Orrin had laughed again.

  “Don’t commit yourself to anything,” he advised. “It’s a pretty dangerous thought, I’ll grant you.”

  “I’ve probably had worse,” Bob said.

  “There are no worse,” Orrin said solemnly. “Absolutely none.”

  But the idea, finally defined between them, grew of itself. By the time he left the White House, going out the East Gate just as the speech began, so that all the press would be occupied and none would note his passage, he knew they were beginning already to think in terms of a more important collaboration in the days ahead. And he knows now, as he lounges in the warmly rustling night and stares at the city of power still alight across the river, that he is probably already committed.

  As he arrives at this conclusion, which perhaps has been implicit in everything he has done since he decided to nominate Harley, the phone rings insistently. After a moment he goes reluctantly to the house to answer. Who can be calling at this midnight hour?

  He might have known.

  “Sweetie,” Patsy says, “I HOPE I didn’t wake you up!”

  “You didn’t,” he says cheerfully.

  “Oh,” she says, and he can tell she is a little taken aback at a cordiality she did not expect after her final bitter denunciation of him in Ted’s room at the Mark Hopkins. (He can picture that shrewd Jason brain thinking. Now why does he sound so friendly? I thought he didn’t like us. What does that mean?)

  “Is there something I should know about?” he asks with an innocent interest, pursuing his advantage. “Some crisis, or—?”

  She laughs heartily.

  “Heavens, NO! Sweetie,” she goes on with an intimate urgency, and he gives her credit for sailing right into it, “how would you like to be chairman of Ted’s campaign again? You know I’m giving a big reception tomorrow night for the National Committee—”

  “I’ve heard. But isn’t it rather soon after—”

  “Things move fast nowadays,” she says archly. “It will be so wonderful if we can announce that you’ve decided to return to our side again. You can say that your support of President Hudson was just a personal matter, largely based on gratitude for what he did for you. You can say that you deplored the violence at the convention, just as you know Ted did. You can say that you are satisfied that the violence occurred without Ted’s knowledge, and that you are satisfied with his assurances that it will not be permitted to enter his campaign again. You can say—”

  “Patsy,” he interrupts finally, a trifle dazed by this onrushing outline, “are you reading?”

  “No, sweetie,” she says quickly. “Us Jasons don’t need notes. We think fast, you know.”

  “I know,” he agrees. “But it still sounds—anyway, you have consulted with Ted?”

  “Ted and I want Ted to be President,” she says blandly. “Is it necessary to consult?”

  “No, I suppose not. Tell me about the party. Who, what, where—”

  “Everybody,” she says triumphantly. “EVERYBODY. Six-to-whenever tomorrow night at the Washington Hilton. The entire Committee has accepted, and so have a lot of other people. I want the Committee to meet Washington, and Washington to meet the Committee. I think it should be done in style, don’t you?”

  “Do you really think you can do a snow job on a bunch of hard-bitten old political characters like that? Surely you don’t think this will get you any votes.”

  “Don’t underestimate Washington’s glamor, sweetie,” she says serenely. “It still has plenty. They’ll be impressed. You wait and see. It will help. I think,” she adds, her tone mo
re pragmatic, “that you’d better join us while the joining’s good.”

  He laughs.

  “You sound very confident, Patsy.”

  “I am,” she says airily. “This will be a real contest on the issues, this time. We’ve already received lots of pledges. Orrin had better be prepared for a shock. But, sweetie! We’re getting off the track. Won’t you join us? We need you, and frankly, if you were to come with us again, I’m sure Ted wouldn’t forget it when he takes office.”

  He is silent for a moment and then decides with an ironic smile to give her a shock of her own.

  “I would settle for nothing less than a written promise that I would be Secretary of State,” he remarks calmly, and he will say for Patsy that she hesitates not a moment.

  “SWEETIE!” she cries. “WHAT could be more perfect? It’s exactly what Ted is planning, I’m sure.”

  “But you don’t know,” he says, and then decides to stop playing a game. “Patsy,” he tells her in the same calm tone, “I have no intention whatsoever of assisting your brother to become President of the United States. I have left him finally and irrevocably. But I shall of course be interested to attend your party. I expect to have a good deal to do with the National Committee in the next few days.”

  There is a silence from Dumbarton Oaks. Finally she utters a smooth little laugh which is quite a tribute to Jason will power and self-control.

  “Well, well. Sweetie, you DO sound so determined. Of course you can come to the party. We’ll be looking forward to seeing you. Bring Orrin, if you like. Ted will be there, and it should be interesting for all of us.”

  “I just might,” he says, and again she laughs.

  “You do that, sweetie. I mean it. And—don’t issue any statements until you see Ted, all right? I’m sure he wants to talk to you before accepting your decision as final.”

  “It is.”

  “I’m sure,” she says, “but talk to Ted, okay? You will do at least that much?”

  “Very well,” he says after a moment. “I will do at least that much.”

  But when he is once again at poolside, thoughtfully sipping a beer which he has taken rather absent-mindedly from the refrigerator on his way out, he wonders why he should have made that gesture of decent gentility toward a family whose members dismiss the people they have no more use for with a boorishness as ruthless as any he knows. Ted wouldn’t do him the courtesy, were the positions reversed. Why did he bother, particularly when it will come to nothing?

  He sits for a long time staring at the city over the river. It is almost one a.m. when he goes in. He does not get to sleep easily, and he turns and tosses often through the night in his empty house.

  2

  “Shall we go?” Beth asked, at the house in Spring Valley.

  Orrin smiled.

  “You know very well you want to go. As for me, you couldn’t keep me away.”

  “Good,” she said; and added with a mock approval. “That’s how Jasons fight.”

  “What’s good enough for Teddy,” he said, “is good enough for me.” He broke into an off-key singsong, accompanying it with a rickety buck and wing. “Oh—what’s good enough for Teddy—and his uncle and his aunts—What’s good enough for Patsy—is good enough for me!”

  “All right, George M. Cohan,” she said as he finished with a final enthusiastic kick that threatened to overturn a cocktail table, “that’s enough of that. Jasons aren’t funny.”

  “It’s the only way to take them,” he said, puffing cheerfully. “Others worship: I sing.”

  “Too many worship, for my peace of mind.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, collapsing into his favorite armchair. “Reports of dissension are leaking from the Committee. The press is getting concerned. I have a few friends.”

  “Bully for you. Can you keep them after tonight?”

  “One party? Don’t be ridiculous. It isn’t going to change anything.”

  “Better act as though it is,” she advised. He nodded.

  “They’ll know I’ve been there.”

  And so they did, though at this particular moment, when members of the National Committee were busily dressing for their big introduction to Washington, and when all over the capital and its environs the really important and the self-designated important were preparing to descend in a whirl of glitter on Patsy’s party, nobody could have foreseen quite how the evening would develop. Next day Helen-Anne would vaguely recall that at one point she had shouted, “It’s a shambles!” to Bob Leffingwell across the room, and in retrospect that was what it appeared to be. But it took awhile to reach that point, and much had to happen in between.

  First there were the arrivals, in themselves always a major event at any Washington political affair. The trio of National Committeewomen whom the press at the convention had dubbed “The Three Disgraces”—Mrs. Mary Buttner Baffleburg of Pennsylvania, Miss Lizzie Hanson McWharter of Kansas, Mrs. Anna Hooper Bigelow of New Hampshire—arrived, as expected, together: Mary Baffleburg plump and belligerent, Lizzie McWharter stringy and nervous, Anna Bigelow solid and acerbic. Mrs. Esmé Harbellow Stryke of California, her dark, pinched little face suspicious and uneasy (looking, as the New York Times murmured to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, like a constipated ferret), followed with her co-worker in the Jason cause, the white-haired, dignified, piously shrewd old former Governor Roger P. Croy of Oregon. Bob and Dolly Munson, bearing the Knox banner, as CBS remarked to NBC, as clearly as though it had been painted across their chests, came next. They were followed by Senator Warren Strickland of Idaho, Senate Minority Leader and probable about-to-be Presidential candidate of the other party, obviously enjoying the disgruntlement of his friends in the majority.

  A diplomatic contingent entered next, the Maudulaynes, the Barres, Vasily Tashikov and his dumpy little wife, Krishna Khaleel resplendent in white silk coat, trousers and turban with enormous ruby (“Not real, my dear friends,” he hastened to tell the Maudulaynes. “Gracious, not real!”). Mr. Justice Thomas Buckmaster Davis and the Chief Justice came in together, the C.J. looking a trifle amused at the company he was keeping. Bob Leffingwell followed soon after with Lafe Smith and Cullee Hamilton (he had just happened to run into them in the lobby, but their entry together was taken as something of great significance by Administration-watchers). Walter Dobius entered with the general director of the Post, carefully staying six paces behind Helen-Anne Carrew who came in just ahead of them and looked the other way. Jawbone Swarthman, looking, as always, half-buttoned, though everything seemed to be in order, arrived with Miss Bitty-Bug, jes’ the cutest lil’ ol’ debutante you could ever imagine—at least she had been forty years ago, and still dressed like it to this very day.

  With them came Senator Tom August of Minnesota, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, peering about with his usual shyly hesitant yet stubbornly determined air of a surprised groundhog; and after and before and amongst and along with him and all these other distinguished guests there came further members of Senate and House; more members of the diplomatic corps; the other members of the National Committee (only Tobin Janson of Alaska and Jane Smith of Iowa are absent); many members of the press; and several prominent hostesses, all of whom cooed and kissed and cussed Patsy, who once again had obviously pulled off the coup of the season.

  Then, finally came the Knoxes, whose entry produced the first real sensation of the evening, for it was heralded by wild applause and shouts from many of the crowd and quite a few members of the National Committee. It was also heralded by Patsy with a widely noted and quoted, “DARLINGS! HOW GRAND THAT YOU COULD COME!”

  And then came the Jasons, her brother walking in alone, his uncle Herbert and his aunts, Valuela Jason Randall and Selena Jason Castleberry, following quickly in a group a few feet behind; and again the wild applause and shouts, about equal in volume, the press thought, to those accorded the Knoxes.

  Toward each of these arrivals, and toward many others who for one reason or
another were considered to be indices to political opinion, reporters, photographers and cameramen surged as they entered. Microphones were waved beneath their noses, pencils raced with their frequently vapid comments, their pictures were taken in varying degrees of amiable inanity. The press found members of the National Committee extremely close-mouthed, but enough others were obliging to furnish the basis for a couple of side-bar stories in the Post and the Washington Evening Star. POLL OF GUESTS SHOWS JASON CARRIES HILTON, the Post said, tongue-in-cheek but making a point for the home team. JASON-KNOX STAND-OFF ON COCKTAIL CIRCUIT, said the Star.

  But it was not in such minor fun and games that the meat of the evening was to be found, of course; and before long it became apparent that the tug of war for the hearts of the National Committee was under way in deadly earnest. The first overt move was what Tommy Davis referred to as “that marvelous talk by Ted,” and Bob Munson described in an aside to Warren Strickland as, “the speech from the throne.”

  It came at a shrewdly timed point when everyone was feeling happily relaxed under the weight of Jason drink and Jason food; when the big room was filled with the raucous hum of fifteen hundred voices, each seemingly trying to outdo all the others in the frantically hopeless competition for attention. The party had reached that stage, which comes so quickly and easily in Washington, at which no one can hear anyone else so everyone gives up listening and simply shouts in the general direction of the nearest competitor, a brightly fixed expression on the face, a glazed look in the eye, and an ever more rapidly disappearing sequence of glasses in the hand. Into the midst of this, on the dais that had been decorated with two enormous bronze eagles, two American flags and a papier-mâché arch bearing the words E Pluribus Unum (“Not exactly the Presidential Seal,” Lafe managed to shout to Cullee through the rising applause, “but a typically quiet Jason substitute”), Patsy stepped forth shortly before eight p.m. She was clad in one of her brightly-colored, garishly exaggerated gowns, a determined look, and a cold sobriety that automatically gave her a position of command over most of her guests.