Preserve and Protect Page 27

  He realized with a self-deprecating little laugh in the serene coolness of the Oval Room that he was thinking of Ted Jason almost as though he were Lucifer incarnate, the contest between him and Orrin as though it were some medieval battle between absolute good and absolute evil. But Ted was only a man, and so was Orrin: so even were the wreckers and the vicious and the violent. They were all human—or were they? He was no longer so sure.

  Nor were they at “Vagaries,” that lovely white house in Rock Creek Park where Dolly Munson had presided over so many brilliant social events, some of which had played a not insignificant part in deciding the course of nations and the destinies of men. Today her guests were few, and perhaps not quite as earthshaking as on some other occasions: or were they? It had been three years since she had come to Washington as a wealthy divorcée who had made up her mind to be a famous hostess and had wound up being not only a famous hostess but the wife of the Senate Majority Leader. She had discovered that you never knew what might happen at Washington parties. Sometimes the guests who seemed least likely to generate sensations did so. The potential was always there.

  Not that her guests today were so unimportant, of course. She was honoring Lucille Hudson, after all, and in addition to the wife of the Secretary of State she had also invited the wives of the British and French Ambassadors. And, with that knack for the bizarre and unexpected which in less skillful hands could ruin a party but in hers always produced some unique and ineffable effect, she had also invited the unique and ineffable character who was just now alighting, with a grimly determined air, from her Rolls-Royce under the porte-cochère.

  “Patsy, dear,” Dolly said cordially, stepping forward through the stately doors and holding out her hand, “it is so nice of you to come.”

  “This HEAT!” Patsy exclaimed, giving her hostess’s hand the slightest formal pressure as she brushed on past into the gracious coolness of the house. “The price Washington makes us pay for living here!”

  “But we wouldn’t leave, would we, dear?” Dolly inquired gently. “My goodness,” she added thoughtfully, surveying the enormous orange and red concoction swaying forward ahead of her, “that is certainly some hat, Patsy. Where on earth did you get it?”

  “At ‘Yes-Sirree Bob’s’ in Georgetown,” Patsy said proudly. “He’s just opened, you know, with the sweetest little friend, and they have the most SUPERB things. Isn’t it an utterly ridiculous name? But it makes you remember him.”

  “Which is the name of the game, in Washington,” Dolly agreed. “Do come along into the drawing room. I expect Lucille will be over in a moment.”

  “Does she know I’m going to be here?” Patsy inquired, and for once Dolly thought she detected a slight trace of nervousness in that usually monumentally assured voice.

  “Oh, yes,” she said cheerfully. “I told her.”

  “And she didn’t mind?”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Neither did she,” Dolly said. “She said she thought it was time to find out what you’re up to.”

  “It seems clear enough,” Patsy said, settling into one of the velvet-covered armchairs with an air of satisfaction. “I’m helping to nominate a President.”

  “Yes, we know.”

  “Well?”

  “I think Lucille is interested on a somewhat deeper level than that,” Dolly said. “But there’s the bell again … Patsy’s already here,” she confided with some amusement to Beth Knox as she stepped from a State Department Cadillac at the door. “Be prepared.”

  Beth chuckled.

  “I’m always prepared for Patsy. I wonder if that girl knows how obvious she is.”

  “Only a complete unawareness of self could possibly carry it off,” Dolly remarked. “Here comes Embassy Row,” she added as two more Rolls-Royces, the first carrying a small Union Jack on the fender, the second a tricolor, entered the gates on Woodley Road and began the curving climb up the dogwood-covered hill. “You go on in and brave the lioness in her den while I greet them.”

  “With pleasure,” Beth said … “Patsy,” she suggested, forestalling a courtesy Patsy showed no signs of conferring, “don’t get up. You look so comfortable sitting there.”

  “I must say,” Patsy remarked without bothering to say hello, “I DO wonder about Dolly’s taste in this room, I always do. It’s so GAUCHE, somehow.”

  “Sad,” Beth agreed, looking at the hat. “Gaucherie is exactly what one strives so hard to avoid. How is the campaign coming?”

  “Reasonably well,” Patsy said airily. “Reasonably well. But here,” she said, hoisting her gangling, long-limbed figure out of the clutching depths of the armchair, “come Kitty Maudulayne and Celestine Barre. So we don’t have to struggle any more to make conversation, do we?”

  Beth laughed with a quite genuine amusement.

  “Speak for yourself, dear. I never struggle. I just listen, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, waiting to find out what I will hear next.”

  “Hmph!” said Patsy, giving her a sudden sharp glance before she turned away to greet Lady Maudulayne and the wife of the French Ambassador.

  “Darlings,” Kitty Maudulayne said with a calm cordiality, “how nice to see you both. Claude and I were saying only last night that it had been too long.”

  “We, too,” Celestine remarked, and gave the sudden, grave little smile which made her conversation, so much of which was conducted in silences, the pleasantly intriguing and faintly mysterious thing it was.

  “We hope,” Patsy said, “that things will develop so that you will be able to feel welcome, TRULY welcome, in Washington. We hope there will presently be policies which will make you feel really AT HOME.”

  Lady Maudulayne looked surprised.

  “Oh, I feel quite at home in Washington. I’ve felt at home here for five years, I don’t see how I could possibly feel more at home, do you, Celestine?”

  “No,” Celestine said, and smiled.

  “But you will feel more at home,” Patsy said, “when things are brought back to a basis of sense, when we have a really sane policy in the government again and stop all these—these—”

  “Don’t work at it, dear,” Dolly suggested calmly. “We all get your point. I think I hear Lucille coming—yes, here she is.” And she stepped forward gracefully to take the hand of the former First Lady, who had just entered through the conservatory, looking somewhat tired but otherwise quite calm and self-possessed.

  “I’m sorry to be slow about it,” Lucille Hudson said, “but I was just talking on the phone to one of the National Committeewomen and she proved to be rather long-winded.”

  “Oh?” Patsy said.

  “Yes,” Lucille said. “I talk to quite a few of them nowadays. And some of the Committeemen too. I find them a very interesting group.”

  “Everybody,” Kitty Maudulayne said cheerfully, “seems to be talking to the National Committee. Simply everybody. I believe even Claude has spoken to a few—at their request, of course,” she added hastily. “I wouldn’t want you to think we were volunteering. And Vasily Tashikov, too. And no doubt Raoul—?” she suggested to Celestine. But Celestine only smiled.

  “I’m afraid we’re all going to turn the poor old Committee’s collective head,” Dolly said, “giving it so much attention—”

  “Nothing on earth is more important than that they DO THE RIGHT THING!” Patsy snapped.

  “You’re so right,” Dolly agreed calmly. “I think perhaps we can have a cocktail now, if we’d like.” And when they had ordered, Lucille and Beth asking for Dubonnet on the rocks, Kitty and Celestine taking dry sherry, Dolly an old-fashioned and Patsy a martini straight up, Dolly turned to the guest of honor and said gently,

  “Lucille, dear, we are so glad you felt like being with us.”

  “And we are so glad you feel able to talk to the National Committee, too,” Beth said. “I’m sure they want your advice and I’m sure you are being very helpful to them.”

  “Very helpful to
SOMEONE,” Patsy observed with a savage gulp of her martini.

  “I want to do what I can,” Lucille said gently. “It is so difficult for them right now. They are under such pressure, from the whole world, really. I believe many of them don’t know what is the right thing to do.”

  “Is there any question?” Beth asked. Patsy responded on cue.

  “WELL! If you of all people don’t know—”

  “It seems to me,” Beth said innocently, “that everything’s going along very well. Particularly with this news from Af—Oh, dear!” she exclaimed with a show of dismay. “I wasn’t supposed to say that.”

  “What news?” Patsy demanded. “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing,” Beth said. “Forget it. Forgive me. My mistake. All thumbs. And it hasn’t even been formally—”

  “What ARE you talking about, Beth Knox?” Patsy insisted. “You certainly aren’t being very fair.”

  “I said ‘nothing,’” Beth repeated blandly. “I just meant that everything is going so well everywhere, the world is in such a settled state, the country has never been calmer, everybody is so happy—” She paused and in spite of her attempts to keep a straight face, a little humorous line came around the corners of her eyes. “Kitty Maudulayne,” she said, “what are you smiling about?”

  For a moment the British Ambassadress gave her a direct, candid look.

  “But of course there’s still Panama, isn’t there?” she said.

  “There are still a million things, aren’t there?” Dolly said firmly. “I think we can go in to the table, now, Lucille, dear—” And she was on her feet assisting the former First Lady, and her guests perforce were following, even Patsy silenced for the moment. But when they were seated in the gracious gray-green dining room amid the beautiful Minton, the glistening Steuben, the softly gleaming warmth of the vermeil, she rounded sharply on Lucille and said in a challenging voice, “ALL right, then, Lucille, what HAVE you found out in the Committee? Are they going to nominate my brother?”

  The former First Lady looked at her with a rather wondering, pensive air. Then she said quietly,

  “I’m sure I don’t know. They seem very uncertain about it. I should hope, however”—and she paused and stared down the charming room as though seeing many things—“I should hope that they would not. Nothing, it seems to me, would be more detrimental to the United States.”

  For several minutes no one spoke, though Dolly had the hostess’s impulse to fill the gap. Then she thought, Oh, the hell with it. She deserves it. Let her take it. With a polite interest they all stared vaguely past one another’s ears while the maids provided a welcome interruption with the soup. When they had vanished as silently as they had appeared, Patsy, who had been sitting transfixed, put both hands against the table edge, looked straight ahead at Celestine who looked politely back, and said flatly, “I have never been so insulted in my life.”

  “Try losing a husband,” Lucille suggested in a voice that almost broke, but didn’t. “That can be rather insulting, too.”

  “Lucille Hudson,” Patsy said, literally gasping with indignation, “are you insinuating that my brother had anything at all—had anything—had anything to do with—with—are you insinuating THAT?”

  “I’m not insinuating anything,” Lucille said, her eyes beginning to fill with tears but her voice steady. “I’m saying your brother is responsible for encouraging the atmosphere in which it could be done. I’m saying you Jasons go through the world knocking people out of your way and encouraging forces you don’t know anything about. I’m saying your brother bears a major share of the blame for my husb—for the President’s death—whether he realizes it or not. I think he is a bad man, and I think he should be defeated.”

  “How dare you say that to me!” Patsy said in a violent whisper. “How DARE you! Who else created this atmosphere!” she demanded, her voice rising. “Isn’t anybody else responsible for it? How about precious Orrin Knox, there”—and she flung out a hand that knocked over one of the stately goblets, snapping its stem with a tiny clean sound—“how about precious Orrin Knox and that old FOOL who sits in the White House? What have THEY done to create the atmosphere in which people get hurt? Why aren’t THEY responsible? Why don’t you sit here and say terrible things about THEM? I’m going,” she said, getting somewhat unsteadily to her feet, “I’m sorry I broke your glass, Dolly. I’m sorry you all had to stand my awful presence. I’m sorry I agreed to be with you. But I hope my brother wins this nomination and I hope he becomes President because then this country will be run the way it ought to be. Goodbye!”

  And without pausing for Dolly’s hasty, “Wait a minute, Patsy, I’ll see you to the—” she was up and out, stalking blindly through the gorgeous rooms to the great doors, the porte-cochère and her startled chauffeur, who took her rapidly away in her gleaming Rolls-Royce.

  Into the silence that fell, Celestine Barre presently remarked in a politely analytical tone,

  “You know, I believe she was actually crying. I never thought I should see it.”

  “It was rage,” Dolly said shortly. “Nothing with them ever goes deeper than that.”

  “Perhaps it was more than that,” Beth said. “I’m afraid I did tease her unmercifully.”

  “Why should anyone be merciful?” Lucille Hudson asked in a cold and distant voice. Then her expression changed and became regretful. “I’m sorry. I suppose I shouldn’t have been so harsh. But they are bad people. They are encouraging awful things—awful things.” And suddenly she too began to cry, and with a hurried, “I’m sorry. Forgive me, forgive me!” rose abruptly from the table and disappeared.

  “Well,” Dolly said a few minutes later when, the awkward luncheon finally completed, they were standing at the door waiting for the cars to come up, “I can’t claim that this was one of my more successful ideas.”

  “It’s just the times,” Kitty Maudulayne said quietly. “Everything is out of joint.”

  “Isn’t it too bad,” Beth said wryly. “One can’t even have a nice, normally catty luncheon anymore.”

  Kitty nodded.

  “Even that is ruined now.”

  Beth looked at her thoughtfully.

  “Nothing new on Panama?” she asked.

  Lady Maudulayne gave her a direct, unblinking glance.

  “The times are out of joint, but not that out of joint. Don’t you agree, Celestine?”

  But Celestine, who had contributed her sentences for the day, only smiled.

  After they had departed in their respective limousines, Beth turned to her hostess.

  “I’m sorry for the shambles.”

  Dolly shrugged.

  “Don’t be. It is the times.”

  “Let me offer you a diversion,” Beth suggested. “Come to the airport with me and meet Hal and Crystal. They’re coming in at three to join us for the big push.”

  “Gladly,” Dolly said. “Let me just run up and get a hat.…Don’t call Helen-Anne about this,” she called over her shoulder. “I don’t want to read about it in the Star!”

  “I won’t,” Beth promised, “but you know Helen-Anne. She may get it anyway. That girl flies on sheer instinct and the seat of her pants.”

  But it was not on instinct or the seat of her pants—except as instinct told her she was going into danger—that she was flying now, as she stood in the great echoing rotunda of the Capitol and listened absentmindedly to the guides herding their throngs of wide-eyed, camera-hung, sloppily dressed, heat-weary, awe-struck Americans. In fact, she wasn’t flying: she had rarely felt so depressed.

  She had seen and covered many things in Washington, stretching back over such other savage issues as Vietnam and the First and Second Korean Wars, but never had there been quite the note of almost frivolous bestiality that characterized the present uproar over Gorotoland and Panama: as though certain of her countrymen had undergone some final, irrevocable leave-taking of their sanity, their decency, their heritage.

  Evil s
trode the land, so that virtually every hour on the hour there was some new flare-up somewhere of mindless violence or rabid outburst, an almost carefree viciousness that in its ultimate form was close to simple anarchy, destruction for destruction’s sake.

  Except that in the minds of some of her fellow-Americans, and in the minds of those others who organized and financed many of their outbursts, destruction had an object: America. Such was the aim of the destroyers. Such was the aim of the nasty character she was planning to see in the next few minutes.

  She sighed deeply, and pushed her hair nervously behind her ear in a characteristic gesture just as someone said, “Boo!” She literally jumped and then found to her surprise and annoyance that she was trembling. It was only when the Congressman from California put an enormous black hand on her shoulder and said gently, “Slow down, slow down!” that she did so.

  “Lord, you startled me!” she said.

  “You act as though you’re seeing ghosts right here in the old rotunda,” Cullee said with a smile. “Is it that bad?”

  “Almost,” she said. “And you know it.”

  He sighed and his face became somber.

  “Yes, I do know it. I’ve been getting it hot and heavy too, you know.”

  “I’ll bet you have,” she said with a sudden sympathy. “Are you safe, Cullee?”

  “Not very,” he said with a grim little smile. “But I’ve taken a few steps. I’ve closed up my house out Sixteenth Street and old Maudie and I, we’ve moved to River Towers, temporarily. But of course the house isn’t very safe empty, and as for me, I suppose I’m a sitting duck. But, hell!” he said with a sudden scowling anger that made two passing tourists give him a startled glance and caused him to lower his voice. “Can’t waste all my time running from the black trash. They beat me up six months ago when Terry was here, and I suppose they may try it again, one of these days. Hasn’t stopped me, much.”