Preserve and Protect Read online

  “Oh, that’s the problem,” Ted said dryly. “Helen-Anne has been talking to you too.”

  “I haven’t seen Helen-Anne since I left the Hilton.”

  “But she called you.”

  “She did,” Bob Leffingwell said. “It was a damn-fool, stupid, asinine, fantastically dangerous thing for you to do. Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?” he demanded with a sudden, furious disgust. “And what the hell do you think you’re trying to do to this country?”

  “I am trying to provide it with a leadership that will take it out of this dreadful impasse the Administration has led it into,” Ted said quietly. “In that task I need the help of as many good men as I can get. I need yours. That’s why I’m here”—and he realized this was true, it was what had really prompted his almost instinctive urge to talk at once to Bob Leffingwell. “May I have it?”

  “Well,” Bob began, and it was obvious that he was literally at a loss for words in the face of an audacity so great. “Well, I—” And in the dim half-light from the city across the river the Governor could see him shaking his head in a helpless fashion as his voice trailed away.

  “The task is difficult,” Ted went on in the same quiet tone, “the challenge enormous; but the reward, I think, great. Suppose we can lead America back to sanity, you and I,” he said, and his voice became touched with an almost evangelistic fervor. “Suppose we can sweep away all the sickness and insanity, the evil policies that have taken us into wars and divided our country and set us one against the other in senseless, self-destroying bitterness. Suppose we can create policies men can believe in, bring back decency, banish the violence that springs from the conviction that protest is helpless in the face of arrogant power. Help me do that, Bob! Come back to the side you really belong on! Your old friends,” he concluded, his voice sinking to a grave conclusion, “await you. Democracy and decency need you. Help me do what must be done to save this beloved land.”

  For several moments after he finished Bob Leffingwell did not move, uttered no sound. A little wind stirred the dogwood and the tulip trees, an owl murmured petulantly. The traffic over the bridges and along both sides of the river was thinning, the lights on the Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial were out. Full night was settling finally on the District of Columbia.

  At last Bob shifted position and spoke.

  “You are an extraordinary man, Ted,” he said quietly. “But I suppose anyone big enough to want to run that town is extraordinary.

  “What makes you think there is the slightest chance that I would want to rejoin you?”

  “For the reasons I state,” Governor Jason said. “Because obviously you belong with me and not with them. Because you’re a political realist and you know mine is the better chance. Because it becomes Bob Leffingwell to be liberal and it goes against his nature to defeat liberalism’s cause.”

  “‘Liberalism’s cause’? Liberalism. My God, what an easy word to throw around! To me you’re one of the great reactionaries, Ted, ruthless to your opponents, bitterly intolerant of dissent—yes,” he said angrily as the Governor moved protestingly in his chair, “intolerant of dissent, honest dissent, liberal dissent, any dissent that doesn’t dovetail with your own ambitions. You say I belong with you: well, that depends. There is a certain type of self-designated American ‘liberal’ that I have finally come to have an absolute horror of, because there is no one more vicious, more intolerant, more destructive, more reactionary. And all of that type you seem to have gathered around you: the smug, the superior, the self-righteous, the mindless, the violent, the cruel. That’s the way I used to be, and I know. And you know their excesses and you don’t repudiate them. God help you, I think you’ve even begun to condone them in these recent weeks. And now you meet with them in secret to further your own ambitions, and God knows what will come of that. God help you, and us.”

  It was the Governor’s turn to remain silent. When he finally spoke it was in a steady tone that dismissed Bob’s comments as though they had never been.

  “I understand from Patsy that you would still like to be Secretary of State. Join me and the job is yours.”

  Bob Leffingwell uttered some strange sound, possibly a laugh, muffled as quickly as it began. His voice came savage and sarcastic.

  “In writing, I told her. In writing.”

  “Get the paper,” Ted Jason said indifferently. “I have a pen.”

  For one insane moment Bob hesitated and almost—almost—let himself begin to think. But he knew instinctively that he must not, that to do so might be to fall back forever from advances sorely won. In some great inner convulsion of heart and mind and emotion that shook his being but came and went so fast he could not analyze it, he knew he must make the break final, and make it now. He stood up so abruptly that he knocked over the little wooden bench beside his chair. The half-empty glass of ice water crashed on the apron of the pool with an explosive tinkle.

  “I think you’d better go, Ted. I meant what I said at the convention. I mean what I say now. I can’t go with you down the road you’re going.”

  He paused and then with a sigh that made it even more devastating, concluded with the one thing he knew would terminate the interview and the association forever:

  “I pity you, Ted. I wish I could help you—I wish it were still possible to help you. But it isn’t. And I can’t.”

  “Hi,” he said, and again he tried carefully to keep his voice from showing too much emotion, though God knew he had felt enough in these past six hours. “Are you in bed?”

  “No,” she said, sounding, he thought, a little more remote than even three thousand miles would warrant. “Just sitting out here on the terrace enjoying the night.”

  “Is it a nice one?” he asked with a politeness almost nervous, almost humble.

  “Beautiful,” she said, also politely. “Quite warm still. A few traces of color left over the sea, out toward Hawaii.”

  “We’ll have to go there again sometime soon,” he said, very conscious of the silence of Patsy’s house, hoping she wasn’t listening, promising dire things if she were, so awkward and like a pleading schoolboy did he sound.

  “Sometime.”

  “Ceil,” he asked after a moment, “what are you thinking?”

  He could hear her sigh. Presently she said, “Nothing, really. I’m just sitting out here, as I told you. Manuela and Tomás have gone to bed. I’m all alone. It’s very peaceful.”

  “You must be thinking something,” he persisted, hating himself for it. She gave a tired little laugh.

  “Must I? About you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Me.”

  “Well,” she said with a dry little humor. “I’ll admit the subject has crossed my mind.”

  “What have you decided about it?” he asked, adding in his mind. Please don’t you lecture me, too: I’ve had enough for one night. And adding immediately, Then why call? You know she will.

  Again she sighed; and, finally, “Does it matter?”

  “Would I ask if it didn’t?”

  “You might. You like to go through the proper motions.”

  “My God,” he said, stung into genuine protest. “What kind of man do you think I am?”

  “Too intelligent,” she said, a little of her irreverent humor bubbling into her voice, “to ask a question as trite as that.”

  “Well,” he said, unamused, “I am asking.”

  “I think that’s something only you can decide,” she replied, her voice again polite. “How have you done with the problem tonight?”

  “Did you hear my speech?”

  “Yes,” she said, voice noncommittal. “I heard it.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Why do you ask? If I liked it, you’re confirmed in your own concept of it. If I didn’t, then you know I’m mistaken. So what difference does it make? No, I didn’t like it. I haven’t liked any of your speeches in the last few days.”

  “Things are moving fast,” he
said with a defensive thoughtfulness. “I have to move with them.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes,” he said crisply. “I’m sorry it upsets you.”

  “I’m not upset, exactly,” she said slowly. “Just—I don’t really know. Puzzled, I guess.”

  “By what?” he demanded. “What’s so puzzling about what I’m doing? I’m engaged in a terrific fight for the world’s most powerful office. Am I supposed to act as though I’m playing tennis?”

  She was silent for a moment, and it seemed to him that he could almost hear the waves on “Vistazo’s” shore, though he knew they were three hundred yards below. At last she sighed again.

  “I really don’t know what good it does to talk about it any longer. You know what I think. You know what I’d prefer to have you do. So why discuss it? You want me to tell you that I think what you’re doing is right. I can’t. So what’s the point?”

  “You might at least wish me well,” he said sharply, and then his voice changed abruptly. “Ceil,” he said humbly, “I need you. I need you here. And don’t tell me that’s trite, because it’s true.…I talked to the President and to Bob Leffingwell tonight and they both think—they both think I’m out to destroy the country. Do you?”

  There was a silence and then she started to say something about, “You’re so—so—” in a voice that sounded as though she might be half-crying. And then she stopped and the silence returned, and distantly again he thought he heard the surf, though it must have been only the painful pounding of his heart.

  “What am I to say?” she asked at last. “I know those two men don’t mean that you are deliberately trying to destroy the country—you know they don’t mean that. But they’re worried about what you’re doing, and the people you seem to be depending on for support, and—and that’s what frightens them.…It frightens me.”

  “I’m depending upon the National Committee,” he said, “and I think a majority is for me. What more do I have to depend upon?”

  “And don’t be disingenuous,” she said with a sudden desperate harshness. “You know who I mean, you know who I mean. Now, stop it!”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” he said, and abruptly his voice seemed to be growing calmer as hers became more agitated. “If you mean the legitimate protest groups—”

  “‘Legitimate’! Oh, Ted!”

  “They are legitimate.”

  “But it isn’t legitimate, what they’re doing. It isn’t legitimate for you to go sneaking off with them and connive at—at—”

  “At what?” he demanded, and there was no more supplication or apology in his voice at all. “Exactly what claptrap has Helen-Anne been giving you, anyway?”

  “It isn’t claptrap,” she said. “She told me she saw you go into that room with those men, and just now I heard on the radio that they’ve formed this National Antiwar Congress to meet when the National Committee does. You told them to do that. And who knows what sort of horrible things will happen when they have their rally? How can you control them? What makes you think they won’t control you? Oh, Ted,” she said, more quietly, “I am so worried for you.”

  “I’m all right,” he said with a sudden anger in his voice. “I am all right. And I’m sorry Helen-Anne is turning into a screaming gossip about all this. She doesn’t know who was in that room, or anything about it. She won’t find a shred of evidence to support this cock-and-bull story of hers—”

  “I suppose you’ve bought it all up,” she said bitterly. “Jason money can do anything.”

  “What would be the point in ‘buying it all up?’” he inquired calmly. “What’s so shameful about all this, even if it were true? Can’t a candidate confer with his supporters? Has that become illegal now?”

  “But such supporters,” she said with a sudden sad quietness. “Oh, my dear, such supporters!… Well, there’s no point in continuing this. You’ll do what you want to do, I’m sure. But I fear for you, my dearest—I fear for you. Do be careful. Don’t let them hurt you—or the country.”

  “Now you’re dramatizing,” he said, attempting to put into his voice a lightness that didn’t quite come off. “Now you’re being much too, much too serious. Nobody is going to hurt me, or the country either. I can control it. It’s just a move in the game that’s got to be played out here while the National Committee makes up its mind, that’s all. It really isn’t anything for you to worry about.”

  “I hope so,” she said in a desolate voice. “Oh, my dear, I hope so.”

  “Come to me, Ceil,” he said softly. “I need you beside me now.”

  “Good night,” she said. “Good night.”

  “Ceil—” he began with a sudden desperation, but the line went dead at “Vistazo.” Slowly he put down the phone in Patsy’s silent house. Abruptly the insistent unfounded terrors of the night returned.

  In half a dozen hours he had been accused of the deadliest betrayal of his country by his country’s President; by a man who now opposed him, but whose opinion, in some curious way, he still respected; and by his wife. From each in turn he had hoped to receive the support that would have enabled him to repudiate and turn away from the vortex they told him he was being drawn into, yet from each he had received only warnings, worries, condemnation. He had not received help.

  It did not occur to him, in this dreadful lonely dead of night in Dumbarton Oaks, that the reason they did not give him help might be because he had not made it clear that he was asking help. And perhaps it was just as well that he did not realize this, for if he had, he might also have realized that he had gone so far down his desperate road that it was impossible for him either to ask or accept.

  They thought “help” was to persuade him to give up his ambition and retire from the race for President. That was something he would not—could not—do. “Help” in his mind was how to get there without being thrown back completely for support upon the forces of violence active in the country. These in truth seemed to him at the moment to be the most effective and decisive elements in achieving what he wanted, and while he had suffered some misgivings about them in recent days, he no longer felt so uneasy.

  He, too, deplored their excesses, but had they not assured him tonight that these were isolated examples? Hadn’t Freddie Van Ackerman, much more respectful and obliging than he had been in the convention’s closing hours, told him, “Hell, Ted, you have to allow for a little human nature, but we’ve got it under control now, and it won’t happen again”? Hadn’t LeGage Shelby, abandoning his stagey, show-off vulgarities about the white man, actually sounded like the brilliant college graduate he was when he had agreed solemnly, “From now on this is going to be dignified protest—dignified?” Hadn’t even lumpish Rufus Kleinfert nodded ponderously and echoed, “Ve vant to make our pointss like Americans?” And when he had suggested—or had someone else? He could not be entirely sure, such had been the vigor of their discussion, but he knew he was the one who synthesized and gave it form—the creation of a joint command for all the antiwar, black-racist and neo-isolationist groups in the country, had it not been agreed at once that it would proceed in an orderly and law-abiding manner toward the achievement of its objective, the election of Edward M. Jason as President and, through him, an end to the wars?

  The creation of the National Antiwar Activities Congress—“NAWAC”—was, in his estimation, a real triumph on his part, and in fact a very practical answer to just those doubts raised by Ceil, Bob and the President. They had all been so basically hostile to him that he had not been able to explain it—there was, after all, pride, and more than that, Jason pride—but in NAWAC he had produced the formula by which protest could be channeled, legitimatized, made respectable, put back in the mainstream of American society. This had been a major accomplishment, and while he was not yet ready to reveal his participation—which was why he was so deeply annoyed with Helen-Anne for apparently scurrying about trying to get everyone alarmed, without knowing the facts—he was well satisfied. It represented a construc
tive, sensible and patriotic act, definitely minimizing, if not altogether removing, the influence of the Communists, kooks and crackpots whose violent outbursts had in recent days so seriously upset the country and his own campaign.

  Granted, not everyone could put the genie back in the bottle. But he was about to prove that he could. And would.

  Nothing now could shake his confidence in himself. He was doing exactly what Ceil and the others wanted him to do: control the violence. And they wanted him to abandon the cause just when he was about to re-establish his command!

  Why were they so fearful, so unimaginative, so obtuse?

  And why, in Patsy’s silent house, was he suddenly shivering himself?

  And who, in the haunted two cities in the ominous night, was walking on whose grave?

  4

  A NATIONAL COMMITTEE MEMBERS ON SOCIAL, SIGHTSEEING BINGE AS THEY AWAIT BIG DAY, the Star headlined Helen-Anne’s column on their activities three days later; STAND-BY PERIOD MEANS “RED-CARPET WHIRL” FOR FATEFUL HUNDRED AND SIX.

  “Washington,” she wrote, “has rarely thrown the like of the round-the-clock party it is giving this week for the most important hundred and six people in the world—the members of the National Committee who are awaiting the start of the fateful meeting at which they will select a Presidential candidate to succeed the late President Harley M. Hudson.

  “From Alabama’s Helen M. Rupert and Henry C. Godwin to Wyoming’s Alice Lathrop Smith and Ewan MacDonald MacDonald, the national Committeemen and women are having a red-carpeted whale of a time.

  “So far they have enjoyed:

  “1. The sensational reception given by Patsy Jason Labaiya at which the two top contenders, her brother, Governor Edward M. Jason of California, and Secretary of State Orrin Knox, plus new President William Abbott, laid down the battle lines for the contest to come.

  “2. A dinner party at ‘Sots Hollow,’ fabulous Revolutionary-days estate of Mrs. Hattie Hamill Johnstone, ageless duenna of Washington society, at which Committee members first dined on diamond-studded gold plates, then whooped it up at an old-fashioned square dance amid seventeen cows, twenty-three horses and fifty-eight tons of hay flown in especially for the occasion.