A Shade of Difference (70 page)

“I’ll call for you tomorrow morning and see,” Lafe Smith said, speaking very carefully for fear he might sob or make some undignified sound or otherwise betray his emotions. “I think perhaps the sooner the better.”

“Yes,” said Hal Fry, staring unseeing at the fading autumn colors as they sped along, “I think perhaps so.”

Moving briskly about the gleaming yellow kitchen at “Vagaries,” supervising the final touches on the brunch, Dolly Munson thought with a worried little frown about her husband. For all that she had been in love with Bob for quite some time, it was not until their marriage that she had begun to realize the insistent, incessant demands of the Majority Leadership and the inevitable wearing effects it has upon those who hold it. There was a sort of subtle, steady attrition that began in January, when Congress convened and there came a brief burst of furious activity as Presidential requests reached the Hill and bills were introduced. There was then a temporary respite in February and March while committees met and members made speeches around the country as party organizations held banquets in honor of their respective political saints. Then, after the Easter recess, the pressure began to pile up and the grind was on. From then until final adjournment, Congress worked, and worked hard. And no one worked harder than the man in the Senate who must set the pace, help to pilot legislation through, thread his way amid the conflicting claims of a hundred imperious egos, and bring his colleagues safely to shore when the final gavel fell.

No one worked harder, although, she would admit, the Speaker probably worked as hard. But she wasn’t married to the Speaker and he wasn’t her responsibility. Bob was, and now as she gave the cook a final compliment, took off her apron, and prepared to go out on the terrace to greet her guests, she decided firmly that they really would travel after adjournment, maybe as far as Europe, as they had originally planned, maybe on around the world. The Majority Leader had earned the rest, in this lengthy session that had seen so many things occur in the United States and elsewhere, and she was determined he should have it. Particularly when it now appeared that the session would conclude in one fine fandango over the Hamilton resolution, the visit of Terrible Terry, and the ramifications thereof.

Without this situation, of course, there might well be a Sunday brunch today at “Vagaries,” for it was a form of entertaining she particularly enjoyed, but it would not be one so directly concerned with the imperatives of politics, both domestic and international, and the difficulties of dealing with worldwide human emotions and opinion. The guest list on another occasion might include some, but not all, of the friends about to arrive at any moment now: Orrin and Beth, Claude and Kitty, Raoul and Celestine, the Speaker, the President and Lucille, Seab, and—an impulsive afterthought and one she hadn’t quite had the nerve to tell Bob about—Patsy Labaiya. Only an episode like the present could bring them all to “Vagaries” on so intimate a basis at the same moment; and there was no telling what their informal proximity at this particular stage of it might produce. “We’ll be thirteen, you realize,” she had said gaily to Lucille, “and who can say what our luck may be?” The First Lady had given the gentle little laugh that so often preceded her most perceptive and unexpected thrusts. “If anyone can make it good, dear Dolly, you can,” she had said, “but maybe even you will have difficulty, in times like these.”

“The President brings his own luck. I’m counting on that to pull us through.”

Surprisingly, Lucille had sighed, openly and with a frankness that surprised her hostess.

“Maybe so,” she had said slowly. “If he doesn’t get too discouraged.”

“It’s your job not to let him,” Dolly said lightly, but the First Lady’s mood was not so easily broken.

“I do my best, but a man can only stand so much of this world’s accumulation of persistent ills.”

“Surely there isn’t any doubt that he can, is there?” Dolly had asked with some concern, and this had finally brought Lucille back to her normal softly tenacious optimism.

“Oh, no,” she had said, much more cheerfully. “Don’t take me seriously, and don’t quote me. I married a good man. He won’t fail us.”

“Of course not,” Dolly said in a tone of affectionate scolding. “Or his wife either.”

But she had found it a disturbing little exchange, both then and in retrospect, and it was with considerable concern that she heard now the sounds of Presidential arrival in the driveway and came forward through the drawing room to meet her guests of honor. She was a little surprised to note that Harley looked as comfortably calm as ever and wondered fleetingly if Lucille hadn’t been imagining things. The First Lady gave her a warning wink, and she linked her arm through the President’s with a cheerful smile and led him to the terrace.

“Autumn is doing her best for you, Mr. President,” she said, and he nodded in pleased agreement as his eyes swept over the terrace: the long table sparkling with white linen, silver, and glass; the beautifully tended lawn; the maples and elms, russet and gold in the gentle sunshine; the dreamy peace that lay upon the world.

“Lovely, lovely,” he said. “Heartbreakingly lovely, in fact. In some ways I think autumn is Washington’s loveliest season.” His eyes darkened a little, more revealingly than he knew. “So perfect—and so transitory … But,” he added, more briskly, “that sounds almost gloomy, and that isn’t the way I ought to sound. Or have any reason to sound. Lovely season, and you loveliest of all, Dolly, as always. Where’s my Majority Leader?”

“Greeting Orrin and Beth about now, I expect. Yes, here they come.”

“Good,” the President said. “It sounds like a fine little gathering.”

And so, as it formed and proceeded along its way through the grapefruit, the consommé, the salad, and headed into the sole, the lamb roast, julienne potatoes and cinnamoned peas, it seemed to be. It was not until they came to the cherries jubilee and coffee that a more serious note was injected, and that by the Speaker, who finally leaned back in his chair and said in his calm and unhurried drawl, “Well, sir, looks like we’re going to have an interesting day in the House tomorrow. Shaping up into a mighty interesting day.” He chuckled. “Better come over and watch us, Seab. We might wind up doing something you won’t like.”

The senior Senator from South Carolina, peering down the table from where he sat between Celestine Barre and Beth Knox, wagged his head and smiled in a gently reproving way.

“Now, Bill, you know you hadn’t ought to taunt me, Bill. You know it’s not good for my health, at my age. How do you know I won’t like what you do, Bill? How do you know that, now?”

“Because I expect we’re going to pass Cullee’s resolution,” the Speaker said crisply, “And I don’t expect you’re going to like that, are you?”

“Passing the House,” Senator Cooley said in the same tone of gentle reproof, “isn’t passing the Senate. Now, Bob can tell you that, Bill. Passing the House isn’t passing the Senate. Don’t expect the Senate to be quite as easy to push around as your House, Bill. The Senate’s a different matter. Bob can tell you that.”

“Yes,” the Majority Leader said, “Bob can tell you that, all right. It may not be so easy where Seab and I live.”

“Isn’t going to be easy where I live,” the Speaker retorted, “but I’m telling you it’s going to be done.”

“Why, Bill?” Senator Cooley wanted to know. “Why, now? Did anybody ever stop to answer that, before we got ourselves all rushed into this tangle by a couple of colored boys? Not, mind you, that I dislike them—at least, I don’t dislike ours, that Cullee, who’s a fine boy. It’s that foreign Yankee-Poo I don’t like.”

“Nanki-Poo, Seab,” Orrin Knox corrected automatically. “Anyway, the allusion isn’t pertinent. If you want to blame anybody for getting us into this, blame me. I’ll take it.”

“Who can logically blame any one individual for what happens in government?” the President suggested. “Or life, either, for that matter; so many factors go into a thing. Isn’t that right, Seab?”

“Some people,” the Senator from South Carolina said with an ominous emphasis, “are more responsible than others. Why!” he exclaimed, making Celestine jump, “if it hadn’t been for you, Orrin, all this would have been brushed over and forgotten in two days’ time. Now we’ve got the whole wide world pawing over our business. It’s a crime and a crying shame, Orrin. And a fine position for a sovereign power to be in.”

“Well,” the Secretary of State said, his voice becoming tart in spite of his inward efforts to keep it calm, “if you think anything like this can be brushed over in two days without the world noticing it nowadays, Seab, I think you’re a little behind the times. Isn’t that right, Claude?”

“Don’t bring
my
poor husband into it,” Kitty Maudulayne said lightly. “He’s got enough troubles as it is.”

“I don’t think Senator Cooley understands what we’re up against up there in the United Nations,” Lord Maudulayne said. “Or the M’Bulu’s talent for dramatics, for that matter. He happens to be a very shrewd young man.”

“And with plenty of shrewd young men elsewhere, including this country, to capitalize on it,” the Secretary said. “LeGage Shelby, for instance. To say nothing of all the white crowd who go fawning around after him.”

“And where does that leave your Cullee Hamilton?” Raoul Barre inquired in a dry tone. “Rather exposed, does it not?”

“Cullee’s all right,” the Speaker said. “Cullee knows what he’s doing.”

“Cullee’s my dupe,” Orrin Knox remarked. “At least so I hear from the President Pro Tem of the Senate and all his friends in the liberal press.”

“Now, Orrin, you wouldn’t deny me my little fun, now, would you, Orrin?” Senator Cooley said. “Anyway,” he added pugnaciously, “I expect it’s probably true.”

“You know very well it isn’t,” the Secretary said. “But it’s finally put you in bed with the
Washington Post
, anyway. A lifetime ambition has been realized by both of you.”

“Orrin,” Senator Cooley said with a puckish little twinkle, “you sound quite annoyed. Quite—annn—oyed. I’m surprised at you, Orrin, letting us liberals mortify you like that. Pshaw, Orrin!”

“I assume,” Raoul Barre said politely, “that the Congress will pursue its plans to pass Mr. Hamilton’s resolution? He will not appear in the House tomorrow and say it was all a foolish mistake? This might prove somewhat embarrassing to his country and to some of us who have devoted some time and effort to finding a formula with which his country might escape embarrassment. Of course,” he added with a mild sarcasm, “if his country thinks that the UN is sufficiently important to worry about in these matters.”

“We do,” the President said. “We know we differ with you on that, Raoul, but we do. So there we are, difficult and illusory and tenuous and full of headaches as the organization may be. We feel its potential is such that we have to support it.”

“To say nothing of its ability to cause trouble in world opinion,” the Secretary of State remarked. “It’s the great Hyde Park Corner of all the world, and all the world’s loudmouths use it to sound off.”

“What is world opinion?” the French Ambassador inquired thoughtfully. “We will help you appease it, since you are a friend of ours, and that is what you seem to want to do. But what effect would it have if you did not appease it, and what good will it produce for you if you do? More fundamentally,
can
you? That is the question that occurs to us.”

“That occurs to me, too,” Senator Cooley said dourly, accepting another cup of coffee from the maid who moved among them around the long white table in the kindly sun. “Can we, now, Orrin? And why should we try?”

“It doesn’t seem to me that those questions are subject to debate any longer,” the Majority Leader said, “if you will forgive me, Seab. Yes, I know you
will
debate them, and no doubt at length, but either you accept the necessary place of the UN in the scheme of things or you don’t. We have, as the President says. So there we are.”

“Oh, now, Bob,” Senator Cooley said, “don’t try to con me into anything right here at breakfast, Bob. You know the Senate will have to consider that boy Cullee’s resolution most carefully, Bob. There are many aspects to it, many—aspects—to it. It will have to be most—carefully—considered.”

“I suppose you’ll delay it ALL you can,” Patsy Labaiya said abruptly from down the table, and they all turned in some surprise at her tone, which was harsh and accusatory. “It will be JUST like you, Senator.”

“Well, Patsy, dear,” Beth Knox said comfortably, “what else would you expect him to do? He has a right to, if he feels like it.”

“I suppose,” Patsy said. “I suppose everyone will say, ‘There’s Senator Cooley saving the Old South again.’ Well, not I. I hope you get beaten, Senator.”

“I might wish the same for your husband at the United Nations, ma’am,” the Senator from South Carolina said politely, “except that to do so might seem a little crude and unsociable. But I consider him no friend to the United States, ma’am, I will tell you that frankly.”

“Well,” Patsy said, flushing, “I don’t have to comment on that, and I won’t. It’s his business. My family isn’t involved.”

“But how extraordinary, dear,” Beth said pleasantly. “You’re involved. I mean, he
is
your husband. Doesn’t that involve your family?”

“Ted isn’t involved!” Patsy snapped. “So don’t try to make out that he is, Beth.”

Beth nodded.

“No, I know we mustn’t embarrass Ted. It’s very important that Ted not be involved. Even so, one can’t help feeling that he might perhaps repudiate what Felix is doing. It might help.”

“Why don’t YOU repudiate him, Orrin?” Patsy demanded. “Why don’t YOU declare him
persona non grata
and send him home to Panama, if you’re so worried about what he’s doing? I don’t see YOU taking any action.”

“I don’t want him to, yet,” the President said mildly. “However,” he added in a slightly sharper tone, “if I should decide so, Patsy, you can be sure it will be done without any regard to you or your family or anything but the best interests of the United States.”

“Oh,” Patsy said, studying him closely for a moment, obviously taken aback by his tone. “Well, of course, that’s your privilege.”