Promise of Joy Page 7

  “Mr. President,” Roger P. Croy said into the hush that followed, “I wish to offer a suggested resolution of sorrow on behalf of myself and other friends of the late nominee for Vice President—”

  “On behalf of all of us, I should think,” the President interrupted in a tone he tried to keep impersonal. “I trust the committeeman does not wish the world to think his grief and that of his friends is exclusive.”

  “Mr. President,” Roger Croy said smoothly, “there may be some on this committee less saddened, perhaps, by events, than”—he paused delicately—“some others. For that reason—”

  “For that reason, nothing!” the President snapped. “This resolution will be adopted unanimously by this committee. I assume you have also included in it an expression of the Committee’s condolences to the nominee for President for the loss of his wife.”

  “We had thought, Mr. President,” Roger P. Croy said earnestly, “that perhaps some proponent of the nominee might wish to offer such a—”

  “Shame on you!” the President said angrily. “For shame, Governor! For shame, to try to introduce crude partisanship at such a cruel moment! There will be one resolution expressing the unanimous sense of this committee concerning both Governor Jason and Mrs. Knox, so if you don’t have one ready, sit down and let someone else propose it!”

  “Mr. President—” Roger P. Croy began indignantly, even as Blair Hannah rose on the other side of the room to seek recognition.

  “I have the resolution, Mr. President,” he said in a voice filled with contempt for his mellifluous colleague from Oregon; and read it quickly, a dignified, brief and moving valedictory for Edward Montoya Jason and Elizabeth Henry Knox.

  “Is there objection?” the President asked, staring about the room with an expression that indicated, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch murmured to the Boston Globe, that there damned well better not be. “Then without objection, the resolution of condolence is adopted unanimously by the Committee.”

  He paused for a moment as the room suddenly became very still. Outside, the mob, following closely on television, also fell silent.

  “The business of the Committee,” he said slowly, “is to find a new nominee for Vice President. It is not only the tradition, but it is the courtesy we owe him, that the nominee for President should be allowed to make his recommendation to the Committee before we act. Therefore I shall appoint a committee to wait upon the nominee for President and escort him to this chamber at such time as may be mutually convenient—”

  “Mr. President,” Ewan MacDonald MacDonald inquired in his gentle but not-to-be-trifled-with burr, “can you advise the Committee as to when—or whether—the nominee for President will be able to attend? There are reports and rumors that his health may not permit it. In that case, perhaps we should proceed at once to—”

  “Mr. President!” Mary Buttner Baffleburg said, her roly-poly little body seeming to quiver all over with indignation. “Don’t you try anything like that, now, Ewan! Just don’t you try it! We’re not here to allow any railroading today, I can tell you that! Not one bit of it!”

  “Mr. President,” Ewan MacDonald said patiently, “I admire the zeal with which Mrs. Baffleburg protects her candidate’s interests, I always have, but—”

  “I don’t have a candidate!” Mary Baffleburg said sharply. “I’m waiting for Orrin Knox to tell us who he wants, just as I should!”

  “As I say,” Ewan MacDonald repeated with a little smile, “I admire your independence, Mary. But some of us feel even more independent. We think we ought to go ahead and name a candidate for Vice President and we ought to do it today, not next week sometime.”

  “Nobody is proposing ‘next week sometime’!” Mary Baffleburg snapped.

  “Well, when the candidate can get here,” Ewan MacDonald said. “When will that be?”

  “I don’t know,” Mary Baffleburg replied. “But I can tell you this, Ewan MacDonald, if there’s any attempt to railroad this or prevent him from speaking, or any attempt to put over somebody he doesn’t like on him, then you’re in for a fight, I can tell you that!”

  And she sat down, pugnacious little face red and puffing, while the cameras lingered upon it with an amused attention.

  “Mr. President,” Roger P. Croy said quietly, “perhaps you can advise us when we may expect the nominee for President to appear. The distinguished committeeman from Wyoming does have a point, it seems to me, despite the rather violent response of the distinguished committeewoman from Pennsylvania. We can’t wait around forever, you know. We have to have a candidate for Vice President. Possibly, if the candidate for President does not show signs of sufficiently speedy recovery, we may even have to have—”

  “Now, Mr. President, just a minute!” Blair Hannah cried, jumping to his feet, while outside a sudden excited roar welled up from the thousands in the parks. “Just a minute, now! Just what does the committeeman from Oregon think he’s trying to do here, anyway?”

  “It’s obvious what he’s trying to do,” Asa B. Attwood of California shot out. “He’s trying to dump Orrin Knox, that’s what he’s trying to do, and I tell you, Mr. President, if there is any move to do that more than half this committee is going to walk out and you won’t have any committee to nominate a Vice President. So I’d suggest the great former Governor of Oregon had better not get too smart here!”

  “Dump Orrin Knox!” a sudden chant came on the wind. “Dump Orrin Knox!”

  “Yes, ‘dump Orrin Knox!’” Asa Attwood echoed angrily. “You just try it, you people. You just try it!”

  “Well, now, Mr. President,” Roger P. Croy said calmly, “I think the committeeman from California is making a great leap somewhere, I don’t know exactly where—certainly not in any sensible direction discernible to me. No one said anything about trying to ‘dump’ the nominee for President. I just said that unless his health recovers sufficiently and soon, we will be forced by the sheer logic of events to ask him to withdraw so we can nominate someone else. That’s simple fact. I don’t see how it warrants such hysteria.”

  “It isn’t hysteria,” Asa Attwood said, “it’s just a statement of fact: you try to dump him and more than half this committee will leave and you’ll be high and dry without a quorum.”

  “It depends on which states leave,” Ewan MacDonald MacDonald suggested calmly. “You can take bodies with you, Asa, but you can’t take delegate votes. And since we vote according to the number of votes allotted each state in the convention, I think you might find us able to nominate a candidate for Vice President and for President, without you and your friends. Maybe you’d better stick around.”

  “There will be no attempt to dump Orrin Knox!” Asa Attwood said flatly, and far in the distance echo came: “Dump Orrin Knox! Dump Orrin Knox!”

  “Mr. President,” Helen Rupert of Alabama said with a sudden impatient emphasis that brought quick attention, “can we stop this silly squabble and get on with it? I voted for Edward M. Jason for President in this committee four days ago, but I have no desire or intention to get rid of the man who is our nominee. We have a very distinguished nominee and I intend to support him wholeheartedly now the decision has been made—even more so, in view of recent tragic events. But we do need a candidate for Vice President, and we do need to hear from Secretary Knox. Do you, or does anyone, have any idea when he will come here, or whether he can come here?”

  “I was about to appoint a committee to escort him here,” the President remarked with some asperity, “but distinguished committeemen seemed to prefer arguing about it.”

  “But you said ‘at such time as may be mutually convenient,’” Roger P. Croy pointed out, unabashed, “and that immediately created speculation.”

  “Only by those who wished to create it,” the President said. “As a matter of fact, I understand the Secretary is ready to come here this afternoon. In fact, I have good reason to believe he may be on his way right now. In any event, I am going to appoint a committee to escort him here
, and I would suggest that the committee meet him at Checkpoint Alpha rather than try to venture further from the Center. This will avoid,” he remarked, as distant amused hooting greeted the words, “possible uneasy moments for all concerned.”

  “Will the nominee be sufficiently protected?” Blair Hannah inquired.

  The President nodded, his face suddenly grim. “He will be, by troops who have orders to shoot to kill.”

  “Mr. President,” Roger P. Croy said in a sad, unhappy tone, not facing him but staring somberly straight into the cameras, “can’t we have an end to all this talk of shooting and killing? Is there to be no end to it, even now, after all these horrors?”

  “Talk to your friends,” the President said coldly. “It is up to them.”

  “Mr. President!” Roger Croy said sharply, as along the press tables at the side of the room there ran a little current of whispered annoyance, and from the mob beyond there rose an abrupt shout of angry protest. “That is no way to talk to a member of this committee! Whoever has done these dreadful things in recent days, they are not friends of mine, nor friends of anyone on this committee, nor do any of us have any kind of allegiance or obligation to them. You owe me and all of us an apology, Mr. President. I demand it.”

  “Apologies will come when apologies are due,” the President said with a deliberate indifference. Outside the room the angry protest rose again; inside, many looked annoyed. But he remained indifferent, having decided upon a course of action and not intending to be deflected from it. “To escort the nominee I appoint the distinguished committeeman from Illinois, Mr. Hannah; the distinguished committeewoman from Pennsylvania, Mrs. Baffleburg; the distinguished committeeman from Vermont, Mr. Boissevain; the distinguished committeewoman from Alabama, Mrs. Rupert; the distinguished committeewoman from South Dakota, Mrs. Jennings; and”—he exchanged looks with Roger P. Croy that brought some flicker of amusement to the audience—“the committeeman from Oregon, Governor Croy. I believe if you will now proceed to Checkpoint Alpha, you will find that the nominee is on his way.”

  And such indeed appeared to be the case, for distant on the angry wind came a rising wave of shouts and screams and animal sounds that portended the arrival of someone mightily displeasing to the mob. In this fashion the nominee for President of the United States arrived at Kennedy Center, on a wave of imprecations, vilifications and obscenities from his fellow Americans; not exactly, as he remarked to his son and daughter-in-law, riding in the heavily guarded limousine with him, a triumphal progress, but the only kind that could be expected, given the situation in which they found themselves.

  Nonetheless, for all that he managed to treat it with an outward lightness that got him and his children safely through it despite the jeering, hate-filled faces and the occasional egg or rock or brick that bounced off the car, such a response from his countrymen could not help but make him even more heartsick and depressed than he was already. Thus when they finally reached Checkpoint Alpha and were safely inside the military cordon, it was apparent to the searching eyes of the cameras and the press that Orrin Knox was a somber and unhappy man. It was also apparent, from the way in which he leaned heavily on Hal and Crystal, and the awkward way in which he walked, very slowly, very hesitantly, very painfully, that he was still a very sick man. But he was here; and after all the detrimental things had been duly noted by the media, and by the members of the welcoming committee who watched his halting approach with worried and in most cases genuinely upset expressions, a grudging note of admiration began to sound in the comments that went forth on the air, and to appear on the faces of those who watched.

  The scene also had its effect in the Playhouse, where two television screens, one on each side of the podium, kept members of the Committee in touch with the outside world. By the time the slow little cavalcade had paused, so that the Knoxes could greet the welcoming committee—even Roger P. Croy, looking somewhat embarrassed, managing a reasonably friendly handshake—a mood of quite genuine warmth had begun to develop; and as they proceeded slowly to the elevators and ascended to the Playhouse, it continued to grow. By the time those in the room heard a stir in the hall, the crack of rifle stocks as the guards came to attention and muffled voices in deferential greetings, the mood was far more welcoming and receptive than anyone would have believed possible a scant fifteen minutes before. Outside, the ominous rumble of the mob continued to surge, a hostile and unrepentant sea. But inside the room where history was to be made Orrin Knox was in far better shape politically than he or his supporters had dared to hope.

  When William Abbott said gravely, “Ladies and gentlemen, the next President of the United States!” and the doors swung open to reveal him standing, pale but erect, between his son and daughter-in-law, they found themselves instinctively on their feet, applauding, smiling, shouting their welcome.

  Only a few remained aloof—some of the media, either personally unfriendly or professionally unimpressed; Patsy Labaiya, looking grim and unforgiving; Vasily Tashikov, on his feet but ostentatiously unapplauding. But these were hardly noticed in the wave of sentimental warmth that accompanied the family as they proceeded slowly down the aisle, slowly up the steps, to shake hands gravely with the President, giving him the quick, quiet smiles of old friendship, and then take their seats in the three chairs prepared for them at his left.

  For a moment, while the cameras dutifully sought out the Munsons, the Maudulaynes, the Barres, Krishna Khaleel, Robert A. Leffingwell, Mr. Justice Davis and many another prominent face, the nominee stared out over the room as though he hardly sensed their presence at all. Gradually they grew silent as the more sensitive among them realized who he must be thinking about; but before the moment could become painful Hal touched his arm, he started, recognition returned, he smiled, more easily now, and acknowledged their greeting. The applause welled up again and drowned out the distant roar, still unabated in its hostility. Finally the applause died down and with it the discontented noises of NAWAC, as everyone began to concentrate, with an almost frightening intensity, on the man who sat, propping himself slightly forward to accommodate his obvious pain, at the left hand of the President.

  “Members of the Committee,” William Abbott repeated gravely, “it is my privilege and pleasure to introduce to you the Honorable Orrin Knox of Illinois, next President of the United States.”

  This time the applause, on the part of many, was more dutiful: but it came. Outside there was an automatic booing in response. Again it all died away and a profound, expectant silence settled gradually on the room, the city, the nation, wherever men and women listened—and there were many, many millions who did—to the nominee for President.

  As always with Orrin, there was that first long, appraising moment during which he looked quietly at his audience, judged his approach, formulated it, prepared to deliver it; except that, this time, it took him a little longer because, this time, it was far more important. Emotionally, also, it was perhaps the hardest moment of all his long public career. The moment lengthened, tension rose. Finally he began, in a voice still somewhat shaky and weak but growing stronger as he went along.

  “Mr. President,” he said, while beside him Hal and Crystal watched with an almost fiercely protective attention, “members of the Committee”—he paused, and with his next words, by the strange sentimental yet tough-minded alchemy of politics, they knew it was true beyond challenge, they knew there could really be no question whatsoever of removing him from the ticket—“my partners in this campaign: on behalf of my family and myself”—his voice almost broke, then grew steadier—“and on behalf, I know, of Mrs. Jason—we wish to thank you all from our hearts for your expression of sympathy in this most trying hour for us. It means a great deal to have your sympathy and support. We are very grateful.…”

  He stopped; obviously mastered powerful emotions; went on.

  “And so now we meet again, to come to grips with the problem created, by party or parties unknown, for reasons not yet clear but cert
ainly inimical to all that is good and hopeful in this democracy, for you and me.

  “History will have its say about Edward M. Jason. I will say only that we had reached an accommodation—sincerely, I believe—that would have permitted us to campaign together and, had we won together, to govern this country effectively together.

  “Now the central figure of that hard-fought, bitterly won compromise has been violently taken from us. And together you and I must find his successor. Without too much bitterness, I hope, and without too much political strife. Because we face a very hard battle to win, and to make our ideas prevail.”

  There was a noticeable stirring in the room, and at the press tables the Los Angeles Times whispered to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Whose ideas prevail?” “That’s the gist of it,” the Plain Dealer agreed moodily. “Whose ideas?”

  The same thought had obviously occurred to the Committee, for it was clear, from Mary Baffleburg’s pugnacious face to Roger P. Croy’s openly moody visage, that the candidate had come more quickly and more directly than they had expected to the nub of it. He came even closer, startling them all, in his next words.

  “I did not,” he said, and something of the tartness of the old Orrin crept back into his voice, “in my zeal to make my own ideas prevail, plot, plan, organize, or connive in, the murder of Edward M. Jason.”

  There was an audible gasp from somewhere in the room, and from the mob outside a startled, annoyed and restless sound.

  “And that,” he added quietly, and for just a moment his eyes came to rest on those of Walter Dobius, staring coldly at him from the press tables, “is the first, last and only comment I shall ever make upon that vile suggestion.… Members of the Committee,” he said, his tone suddenly conversational and candid, yet filled momentarily with an abrupt and unexpected tiredness, so that Hal rose quickly and stepped to his side, “you will forgive me if I favor my health a little, for the time being. I am on the mend and expect to be campaigning vigorously soon, but right now”—he smiled and shook his head, throwing himself upon their indulgence and understanding—“I must give in, a little. I think if you don’t mind, I shall sit down to deliver the rest of this.”