A Shade of Difference (8 page)

Kitty Maudulayne, who, like Beth, never doubted from the moment she first saw Claude come riding over the green meadows and stone fences of Crale that this was what life had planned for her, is also concerned to some extent with domestic matters and the possibility of a brief vacation. But being Kitty, loving politics, and very thoroughly aware of the problems implicit in representing a steadily withdrawing power in a world of aggressively advancing forces, she is also vitally concerned with matters at the UN. They come sharply into focus as she watches the handsome young Congressman from California nod briefly to Senator Cooley and leave the chamber. “My dear,” Patsy Labaiya whispers loudly behind her hand, “some of them look like BLACK GREEK GODS!” Kitty responds with a brightly absent-minded smile and, as she does so, catches the thoughtful eye of Celestine Barre. She knows at once that the wife of the French Ambassador is also reminded of color, and so of Africa, and so of Gorotoland, and of Terry, and of the UN, where events may soon take a turning that could conceivably bring to an end an association possessed of a warmth notably pleasant and notably close in the annals of the Washington diplomatic corps.

This, Kitty thinks with a real regret, will be too bad if it happens; but if it must, she knows there is nothing for it but to smile and say the usual cordially empty things and make the best of it. These necessary estrangements occur in international politics as in domestic—indeed, it has been quite unusual that the Ambassadors of the two major West European powers and their wives should have been good friends at all, so many are the points of friction between their countries—but Kitty is one of the world’s nicest people and quite capable of not liking what her husband’s profession requires them to do. She knows that he doesn’t like it, either, for he told her before going up to New York a couple of days ago that “things may get a little sticky with Raoul and Celestine, but let’s keep on with it as long as we can.” So they are both hoping that what is known at the United Nations as “The Problem of Gorotoland” may be settled without too intense a strain upon either their personal or national relationships with the Barres. But they are aware that the chances of so pleasant a solution are slim, especially since the Russians, with their grim determination to inflame every friction and destroy every hope for peace, will be busily working on an Anglo-French split along with all their other little projects.

She looks again at Celestine with a smile that holds both worry and affection, and Celestine smiles back in much the same way. Patsy Labaiya, sitting between them, suddenly asks, “Why doesn’t that OLD FUDDY-DUDDY sit down?” in a whisper so loud that Tom August actually looks up at the gallery with a startled and annoyed expression. The Problem of Gorotoland is temporarily forgotten as all the ladies again exchange amused smiles.

Actually on this occasion, as on so many others, the wife of the Ambassador of Panama is proceeding, with methods that have often proved effective before, in pursuit of purposes that most people usually do not suspect. All of her present companions are aware that there is a lot more to Patsy Jason Labaiya than appears on the ostensibly rattlebrained surface, but this knowledge is not shared by the general public or even by many people in Washington.

“Patsy Labaiya is a very clever woman,” Beth Knox remarked to her husband when they came home from the diplomatic reception where they had met her for the first time, but Orrin only snorted. “She is? She conceals it well.” “Beautifully,” Beth agreed, and suggested that he file the fact away somewhere in his mind for future use.

But Orrin had apparently dismissed it, even though he made no attempt to hide from his wife the fact that he considered Patsy’s brother to be someone worthy of the greatest respect and wariness in the political arena. Nobody had ever called Edward Jason, Governor of California, a stupid man, and Beth could not understand why it was so difficult for Orrin to imagine that some of the family brains might have been conferred upon his sister. Possibly it was because the Governor could conceivably pose some threat to Orrin’s ultimate ambitions that Orrin was willing to concede his abilities and not do the same for Patsy; or possibly it was just that men in politics, even more than men in other lines of endeavor, tend to be unwilling to accord full equality of intelligence to women. Nonetheless, of the five ladies sitting so cordially together in the Family Gallery, not one is under any illusions about the wife of Felix Labaiya-Sofra.

As for Patsy herself, she too at this moment is thinking with the deep concentration of which she is capable about the M’Bulu of Mbuele and the place where he fits in with the family plans to win the White House for her brother. The Jasons are no different from the Adames, the Harrisons, the Roosevelts, the Tafts, the Kennedys. No more numerous than the first, no less ambitious than the last, they too see no reason why one or more of their number should not occupy the fearful seat of power at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Her brother is willing, her cousins are eager to help, her aunts and uncles are prepared to spend as many millions as may be required to win the primaries and add the White House to the other family possessions, and in Patsy’s clever mind the whole thing boils down to the question, “What are we waiting for?” That the principal thing they are waiting for is Orrin Knox lends an extra little ironic fillip to this chance meeting with the Secretary’s wife; and the game is lent an extra zip by the fact that Patsy assumes that Beth must be as aware of its ironies as she. Beth is, but it says much about the two of them that Beth can sometimes relax and stop thinking about the next election, whereas Patsy Labaiya, like the rest of her family, never does.

Into this situation the visit of the M’Bulu of Mbuele to the United Nations has come as an unexpected bonus, a fortuitous circumstance that must, like everything else, be examined for its value to the cause of Ted Jason and used for whatever it may be worth therein. The luncheon in Charleston tomorrow was originally the half-amused, not quite serious idea of Bob Leffingwell, passed along to her at the last garden party at “Vagaries”; but the idea of bringing it under the aegis of the Jason Foundation and making of the guest list as powerful a cross section of influential opinion-makers as the nation affords, was Patsy’s own. California, despite its fantastic growth, has had relatively few racial explosions of late, and the Governor has consequently had few opportunities to associate himself with the politically suitable side of this politically useful question. Felix had called her from the UN a month ago to suggest that the M’Bulu could be very useful to the family plans if handled right, and her brother, apprised of this, had promised to make himself available for whatever she could arrange. The gain among the Negro vote, they hope, may be very substantial.

Therefore the luncheon has its values, both immediate and long-range; and it is lent an extra piquancy and excitement by the inspiration, also hers, of holding it in Seab Cooley’s Charleston. Thank God, Patsy Labaiya tells herself with a scornful glance down at the white-haired figure of the President Pro Tempore, slumped in the Vice President’s chair on the dais, her brother isn’t an insincere racist demagogue like THAT.

As for Bob Leffingwell, it may well be that a direct approach should be made to him about joining the Jason forces. In six months’ time, aided by the President’s generosity in salvaging his career by appointing him director of the Commission on Administrative Reform, he has managed to recoup a good deal of the ground he lost when the Senate defeated his nomination for Secretary of State. There is a disposition in the country to be fair to a man who has, after all, been defeated and humiliated by a Senate rejection and who has now, in the wake of that defeat, gone to work diligently and faithfully for the President who rescued him from what could have been a disastrous end to his public usefulness. The attitude of most of his fellow citizens has been: if the President is willing to give him another chance, the country should, too. In general, the country has.

The only thing that might interfere with Patsy’s plans to bring him into her brother’s camp, in fact, is the possibility that he might feel so much gratitude and loyalty to Harley Hudson that he would not wish to take a position that could bring him into conflict with Harley’s plans for next year. But this would only be true, she suspects, were the President to reverse his announced decision and decide to run again. If he were, as all indications now suggest, to step aside in favor of Orrin Knox, then Bob Leffingwell might feel perfectly free to join those who wish to defeat Orrin. Particularly since everyone knows how he feels about the Secretary of State, even though he has been careful to keep his rare public references suitably decorous.

In some ways, Patsy concludes with some annoyance, it is really that old character in the White House who is her brother’s principal obstacle even more than Orrin Knox. Like so many, she never thought much of him as Vice President and she doesn’t think much of him now, in spite of all his Geneva triumphs and recent executive energetics.

“My dear,” she had told the Speaker not a week ago at Senator Winthrop’s cocktail party at the Mayflower, “after all,
what did he do
at Geneva? He just said No. ANYBODY can say NO.” The Speaker had looked at her quizzically from his wise old eyes. “All depends on who you say No to, seems to me,” he had said. “Sometimes it’s not so easy.” ‘Poof!” she said. “I knew they wouldn’t do anything.” “Oh?” said the Speaker. “Well, maybe you knew that, Patsy, but, to tell you the truth I was scared as hell.” “Well,” she had gone on, “supposing it WAS a real threat? What else could he have done?” The Speaker had given her that same long, quizzical look. “Some men might have run, and thrown us all down the drain doing it. Harley didn’t. When guts were needed, Harley had ’em. Maybe you don’t value that. I do.” “Why, here’s Stanley Danta,” she had cried, turning away and bestowing a kiss on the Senator from Connecticut. “Stanley, the Speaker’s putting me in my place about the President, and do you know? I MAY DESERVE IT!”

But she didn’t think she did, and it is with a continuing impatience now that she considers the way most of the press and the country are continuing to fawn upon the President. Possibly he deserves some credit for doing what he had to do with a real show of courage, and she is willing to concede him that; but, really, this adulation is approaching the ridiculous. It is also making it quite difficult to challenge him politically, or to make any really solid plans about next year until he makes clear what he intends to do. Like everyone in Washington, Patsy never takes a denial of Presidential ambition to mean what it says, and neither she nor anyone else can believe that a man sitting in the White House will willingly vacate the premises until the Constitution says he absolutely must. Harley, having acceded to office with only twenty-one months of his predecessor’s term remaining, faces no bar whatsoever to two full terms for himself if he so desires and can persuade the voters to approve. Right now his stock is so high that there seems little doubt that the voters, if requested, will do just that.

Whether he will ask them, however, remains his secret; and now, as Patsy Labaiya decides she has been silent long enough and must make some whispered comment to try to persuade the other ladies, unsuccessfully, that she has not really been thinking like a little engine every minute, he is contemplating it quite seriously as he sits a mile away in the study on the second floor of the White House waiting for his lunch. It is a room that holds many memories of many Presidents, but the one he associates it with most often and most poignantly is the midnight conference last spring when his predecessor attempted to dissuade Brigham Anderson from his plans to reveal the truth about Bob Leffingwell. The President has thought many times of that talk, with all its implications and difficulties and terrible national imperatives, which, in the final rendering of judgment, required from his predecessor duplicity and from Brigham Anderson his life.

“Suppose you were sitting here—” his predecessor had said. Well, now he was, and he could see things now that he couldn’t see then, even though he would never, he honestly believes, have permitted events to carry him to the point of no return to which they had carried the late President.

To even contemplate for a second running again is, he tells himself, sheer insanity. It is a terrible job, one of the most terrible ever devised by human ingenuity to meet the need of men to have an organized society; why should anyone subject himself willingly to its fierce demands? Yet, he concedes, it exerts a powerful hold, conferring great rewards in return for the human toll it exacts upon those who occupy it.

So far he has conducted it with honor, he believes, and with a courage that cannot help pleasing him as he thinks back on the rather scornful and patronizing attitudes of Washington in his Vice Presidential days. Events have given him the opportunity to achieve the basic ambition of most men, which is to make the world accept them at their own evaluation. He thanks God every day that he possessed the character to do it when the time came. There are still moments, however, when he wonders with awe how it ever came about, in the mysterious movements of human destiny, and his emotion deepens as he recalls the searing moment of revelation he had as he approached the great bronze doors of the Assembly Hall in Geneva that first fateful afternoon.

Now, my boy, he had admonished himself with a deep breath, you’ve really got to act like the President. Quite suddenly, like a flash of light that almost stopped him where he stood, came the thought: I
don’t have to ‘act like’ the President. I am the President.

After that, he had proceeded as though under some other guidance than his own. He had preferred to consider it divine, for that had been his family upbringing, and while he knew Harley Hudson had character that few people suspected, he also knew it wasn’t quite as good as all that. Accordingly on his return from Geneva he had declared a day of national prayer and thanksgiving and had led it himself by attending a solemn convocation at the Washington Cathedral. He was gratified to note that it had been joined by all denominations and, so far as press estimates could tell, by well over a hundred million of his countrymen. From that moment, too, he noted with an inner irony, had begun the steady change in press estimation and public attitude, which had now resulted, six months later, in making him the most popular Chief Executive in recent years.