A Shade of Difference (29 page)

“No, dear. Now, do try to be nice to this funny young man who’s coming—”

“I’m on record in ten dozen places,” the President pointed out reasonably, “as saying I won’t run. And I’ll be nice to this funny young man.”

“Oh, I know what you say,” she agreed, handing him a pin and an enormous lavender orchid corsage, “but that doesn’t make any difference. Who else could it be?”

“I can think of two, out of two hundred and fifty million,” he said, obediently pinning the corsage for her. She gave a deprecating little smile and dismissed the idea.

“Neither Ted nor Orrin,” she said placidly, “could possibly do it half as well as you do. And the country likes you so. Why should it want anyone else? And how could anyone else get it unless you withdrew? And you aren’t going to withdraw.”

“But I
have
withdrawn,” he said with a helpless laugh.

“Yes, dear, but of course nobody believes you for one minute.”

“Now, look,” he said, “you and I have been married for forty-one years. Do I lie, or do I tell the truth?”

She looked quite shocked.

“Oh, you tell the truth. At least, you think it’s the truth at the time.”

“It
is
the truth!”

“Yes, dear. Now tell me how I look?”

“I am not going to run for President of the United States!”

“Fifteen months from now, on January twentieth, Harley M. Hudson of Michigan will be sworn in for his first elected term as President. I don’t know why you make such a fuss about it.” She dimpled suddenly and, stretching on tiptoes, kissed the end of his nose. “After all, I wouldn’t feel safe with anyone else. That’s why I married you.”

He chuckled and relaxed.

“It was mutual. But you must learn to have more faith in the public statements of your elected officials.”

“You’ll see. How do I look?”

“Oh, no, I won’t.
You’ll
see. You look just like the girl I married. How do I look? I have to impress that young whippersnapper with the majesty of the office.”

“Don’t try,” she advised. “You’re always so much more impressive when you don’t try. He’ll be impressed enough.”

“I don’t know,” he said grimy. “I think after Charleston the only thing he’s impressed with is Terence Ajkaje.”

“Do you think Ted Jason put him up to it?”

“Either Ted or Felix Labaiya. Ted was very smooth on the subject, of course. He gave me that statesman’s glance with the silver hair gleaming and told me in several thousand well-rounded evasive words how much he regretted the episode but also, of course, how much he regretted that we were vulnerable to such a thing. And how much he regretted, too, that I had given Terry the original snub that might have made him feel so vindictive. He wasn’t
saying
it had, he gave me to understand; it just
might
have.”

“Don’t you think he would have done it anyway?” she asked with a shrewdness the society reporters would not have given her credit for. “Don’t you think he planned to do it when he went down there?”

“I don’t doubt it for a minute. But of course you couldn’t convince the world of that now. I’d like to know for sure who put him up to it, though. It would illuminate some things.”

“It was really very brave of him, all things considered.”

“Oh, it was,” he agreed.
“I
don’t deny that for a minute. Bravery springs from many causes, though—not always as noble as the world likes to think.”

“Will it die down, do you think?”

“Oh, yes. All this fuss over him here ought to smooth his ruffled feathers. And Tommy Davis’ injunction concerning the school itself will stand until the full Court can get to it, so that situation will move along. With more un-happiness on both sides, no doubt; but at least it will move, which is the important thing.”

“Then it’s up to us to give him a very pleasant evening and send him back to the UN happy.”

“That’s right. Maybe it will show the Africans and Asians we aren’t so bad, after all.”

“It’s going to take a lot more than that,” she said. He sighed, and nodded.

“I’m afraid so.”

There was a knock on the door and the naval aide put his head inside.

“His Royal Highness is here, Mr. President.”

“Very well,” the President said. “Take him to the Blue Room and we’ll be right down.”

And now they were all caught up in the stylized formality of a state dinner at the White House, as the long line of arriving limousines began to turn off Pennsylvania Avenue in steady procession, rolling at regular intervals of a minute or two under the portico to discharge their passengers. The Hamiltons were among the first arrivals; Bob and Dolly Munson followed soon after with the Secretary of State and Mrs. Knox; other Cabinet members and their wives came after; the French Ambassador and Celestine Barre and other members of the diplomatic corps, with a heavy emphasis on Africa and Asia: Krishna Khaleel, the Pakistani Ambassador and his wife, the Ambassadors and Ambassadresses of Guinea, Ghana, Sudan, Libya, Congo Brazzaville, Congo Leopoldville, the United Arab Republic, Morocco, Tanganyika, Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Uganda, Liberia, Ethiopia, many in their colorful native costumes. Justice Davis of the Supreme Court arrived with the editorial director of the
Washington Post
; Senator Cooley, looking grumpy and as though it were much against his better judgment, in the company of his South Carolina colleague, Chairman J. B. Swarthman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; other members of the Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs committees. The Chief Justice and three other members of the Supreme Court, and their wives, came next; the editor of the
Washington
Daily News;
several owners of the Washington
Evening Star;
assorted society editors; columnists and correspondents; several of television’s most noted commentators. A State Department protocol officer, standing unobtrusively just inside the door, was pleased to find that he could place a check mark after every name on the list of expected guests. He was not surprised. The President’s sudden decision to entertain the M’Bulu had blasted twenty-three scheduled dinner parties, including Dolly Munson’s, which it replaced, but nobody minded. When the White House beckoned, one came if one were alive, inside the country, and outside an institution.

Thus it was that there had arrived by special messenger at noon the day before, at exactly 52 homes housing 38 couples and 14 single persons, the chaste white card, 4½ by 5½
inches, bearing top center the chaste, small Presidential seal in gold and beneath it in flowing script the information that the President and Mrs. Hudson requested the pleasure of the company of Mr. and Mrs. Mumble (or Mr. Murmur, as the case might be), at dinner on Saturday at eight o’clock. Attached to each card was a smaller white card, bearing in the same calligraphy the advisory, “White tie”; a name-pass to be surrendered at the West Gate; and a slip of paper, this also in script but obviously mimeographed, reading, “On the occasion of the visit of His Royal Highness the M’Bulu of Mbuele.”

Armed with these bona fides, the guests arrived; were greeted by uniformed aides who waited in the entrance hall where the red-coated Marine Band, nestled in a sea of potted palms, played welcoming light-opera airs; and were escorted to a small table down the hall, where each received an envelope with the name of his or her dinner partner. Then they were shown a large, detailed outline of the M-shaped table, with appropriate indications of the seats they would occupy, and were then led to the massive gold, white, and blue expanse of the East Room; deposited in a chatting, steadily-growing line; and told politely but firmly to stay put until further notice.

At eight twenty-nine, all guests having arrived, the Air Force Band, stationed in a corner of the East Room, struck up “Hail to the Chief” and the President, the First Lady, and their guest of honor, having passed the time in the Blue Room in innocuous chatter which touched on nothing any of them was thinking about, appeared at the door. “Hail to the Chief’ concluded, there was a long roll on the drums, and with a flourish the band plunged into something else that brought a start of recognition and then much humor down the line. For a moment the M’Bulu looked puzzled; but the tune sounded familiar, and with a sudden start the former graduate student of Harvard realized what it was. He glanced quickly at his host and was startled to find that for just a second the President gave him the slightest of winks. With a sudden broad grin, he returned it; and so, to the strains of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” played with solid relish by the band, the glittering assemblage passed through the receiving line (“Miss Mumble, Mr. President—sorry,
Mrs.
Mumble—Mr. Murmur, Your Royal Highness”) through the Green Room, the Blue Room, the Red Room, and so to the State Dining Room, where the hungry throng fell at last upon the lavish repast.

There, seated at the table covered with gleaming damask and decorated with masses of chrysanthemums and autumn leaves, dining off the White House gold service in a setting of fabulous beauty, it was not too easy for the guests to exchange the thoughts that many of them had concerning the intriguing series of events that had brought the kindly if sometimes awkward President to this implicit and gorgeous apology to the dashing young giant who sat beside him like a piece of midnight swathed in gold and green. Yet there was evident in the glances of the Africans and Asians a subtle but deep-seated satisfaction, a lively sense of the humiliation of their host and his country which thrilled them all, no matter what their other differences and antagonisms might be. On this they were all agreed, and it gave them a certain powerful unity of attitude, made even stronger because it was not matched in the remainder of the company. Senator Cooley might feel angry and resentful (he had carefully been placed between Celestine Barre and Dolly Munson, who did their best to soothe him), and some others might also have no doubts of where they stood, but in the more complex and conscientious minds of many at that pleasant board, not including LeGage Shelby but certainly including Cullee Hamilton, there were doubts and worries, shame for what had happened in Charleston, shame for what it symbolized, angry and conflicting emotions about it, and also, in the hearts and minds of many, a desperate attempt to try to find some fair ground on which all disputing claims and all opposing prejudices could be composed and led to work together toward constructive solution. None of this, however—the smug, superior, supercilious hatred or the troubled, uncertain attempt to be fair—broke through the surface of that distinguished assemblage, whose members talked merrily of this and that as they ate their way steadily through Sea Food Marguery, Broiled
Filet Mignon,
and assorted side dishes, in an atmosphere inwardly electric with racial tensions and outwardly bland with the necessary suppression of true emotion that so often characterizes the formal occasions of Washington officialdom.

Down upon them from the marble mantel over the fireplace looked the graven words of the second President, John Adams, to his wife Abigail:

“I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on This House and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but wise and honest men ever rule under this roof.”

In a world John Adams never knew and perhaps could not have understood, the man who ruled there now, doing his best to be wise and honest, chatted pleasantly with his difficult guest; but the blessings upon This House that night were troubled and unclear, and there was no certainty anywhere in such savage times that wisdom and honesty would be enough to protect John Adams’ successor and the hopeful people who looked to him to lead them safely through the wilderness of envy and deceit in which they found themselves confused and wandering.

In an hour’s time, after the last wine had been downed, the last Baked Alaska gulped away, the President rose and toasted his guest in a brief and formalized statement, graciously noncommittal. His guest responded in the same terms and the company lifted glasses to them both. Then the guests separated, the ladies to the Blue Room for coffee, liqueur, and gossip, the men to the Red Room for gossip, liqueur, and coffee. Half an hour passed in this customary ritual, and then the gathering regrouped to return to the East Room, there to sit in gold-leafed chairs and listen to forty-five minutes of piano-playing by one of the nation’s mop-haired virtuosos, flown down from New York especially for the occasion.

During the somewhat informal procession to the East Room, the Secretary of State was observed to murmur hastily to the Congressman from California, who shook his head and seemed embarrassed; the junior Senator from California, Raymond Robert Smith, was observed to hover nervously around Governor Jason’s sister, Patsy Labaiya, and the Ambassador of Panama; LeGage Shelby could be observed in happily animated conversation with the Ambassador of Guinea; Mr. Justice Davis and the senior Senator from South Carolina were observed to be pointedly not speaking to one another; and the French Ambassador was observed to stroll arm-in-arm toward the concert with the Ambassador of Ghana while his wife offered a wide-eyed and respectful audience to the evidently profound comments of the Ambassador of Cameroun.

And so presently, after the virtuoso had performed, and with a winsome smile and a toss of his rambling locks had vouchsafed one brief encore, the President once more arose and with a smile indicated to his guests that their evening at 1600 Pennsylvania was over. He murmured something to his guest of honor, who smiled and apparently agreed, and nodded to the Secretary of State, who shortly thereafter sent his wife home with the Munsons and lingered behind casually. Fifteen minutes later, so skilled and practiced were the White House staff and the military aides at this routine, the last guest had been coated, carred, and carried away. The bands departed, the cleaning crews went busily to work dismantling the table in the state dining room and waxing the East Room, the First Lady said good night and disappeared to the family quarters on the third floor, and in his study on the second the President faced his two remaining guests with a relaxed and comfortable air.