A Shade of Difference (88 page)

For the first three hours, however, everything proceeded according to pattern, and eventually all those who were concerned about what might happen, all those who feared it, all those who were eager for it, all those who didn’t particularly care one way or the other, began to relax and think of other things they might better be doing—principally, bed. It was now nearing midnight, the day had been a long one. In the galleries and on the floor there was a noticeable thinning-out while the President Pro Tempore droned along, as he had in many filibusters before, carefully husbanding his energies and stretching out his store of thoughts to consume the greatest possible time with the least possible effort. In this he seemed to be succeeding as the two big clocks, one above the Chair and the other above the main door of the Senate, ticked slowly on.

Among his listeners, the reaction was about what might have been expected. In the Family Gallery the First Lady, temporarily worn out by the exhausting if customary social whirl imposed by the just-concluded visit of the President of Peru and the about-to-happen visit of the President of Brazil, said her good nights shortly after 11 p.m. With a little wave to the Majority Leader and to Senator Cooley, who paused and bowed low, she withdrew amid a flurry of whispered comment from the galleries. It had been a busy three days, the sort of thing she and the President had to undergo roughly every six weeks as one top-ranking dignitary or another came to Washington, and she hadn’t been ashamed to tell Dolly and the others that she felt it. She wasn’t as young as she used to be, said Lucille Hudson, and she had to take her sleep when she could find it, particularly with Brazil coming so fast on the heels of Peru.

She did hope, she made a point of telling Patsy Labaiya, that Seab would do a good job of his presentation, even though of course she didn’t want him to succeed in killing the Hamilton Resolution. In her voice was the implication, sweetly and cordially transmitted, that she hoped he would light into both Patsy’s husband and her brother and give them merry what-for before he was done. Patsy could only grit her teeth and make the best of it, with a smile just this side of vinegar that delighted the other ladies. Shortly after Lucille left, Kitty Maudulayne and Celestine Barre confessed that, they too must run along, fascinating though it was to watch a filibuster. The group dwindled to three. After an awkward little moment of rearrangement that caused some amusement among the handful of Senators, then on the floor, Dolly found herself sitting between Beth and Patsy, a location that caused her some amusement, too. But neither of her companions was quite in a mood to share her feeling. Beth’s sense of humor, though excellent, wasn’t quite broad enough to encompass the more satiric aspects of her husband’s rivalry with Governor Jason. Patsy’s sense of humor, on this as on all other subjects, was nonexistent. So they sat, listening with a determinedly diligent attention, while Dolly, a sort of no woman’s land, sat between them, comfortable and amused.

Elsewhere in the chamber, others most directly involved in the matter of the Hamilton Resolution, the M’Bulu’s visit, and all the various ramifications also whiled away the time in their various ways as the Senator from South Carolina went methodically on. While he traced the travail of his native state in Reconstruction days, the Secretary of State moved casually around the floor from friend to friend, sitting for a while to chat with this one, leaning over a desk to whisper in the ear of that one, returning eventually to resume his seat beside the Congressman from California on their sofa by the wall. There were still a few votes in doubt, and he was doing what he could to nail them down, even though his activities finally drew the sarcastic comment from Seab that “our dear old friend just can’t seem to help meddlin’, Mr. President, even though he has now moved far beyond us in his new and mighty position. No, sir, Mr. President, here he is meddlin’ again!” Orrin had given Seab a cheerful look, and the Senator from South Carolina had permitted himself a slight, if somewhat grim, twinkle of amusement back. “Of course, now, Mr. President,” he added, “our friend no longer has the privilege of speaking here, which must be fearfully frustrating to him. He was always such a talker nobody could get a word in edgewise when he was here. Guess he must just be homesick for all that talking now, Mr. President, that’s why he’s here.” Orrin’s amusement had broadened, and after a moment, with a shrug that conceded that he perhaps was out of order, he had returned to his seat beside Cullee and come forth to lobby no more.

His companion, outwardly amused by this byplay, was actually far away in his thoughts, off somewhere with his wife and his friend and all the aching problems of his present position and future plans. He had almost expected to see both Sue-Dan and LeGage at the session tonight, and once he had satisfied himself with furtively careful glances around the galleries that they were not, he had of course fallen to worrying about where they were. With the worry there had returned to his mind the bitter wrangle at his house that afternoon, and with that had come a sudden and increasingly disturbing memory of LeGage’s final statement.

Cullee had not realized, in the heat of their argument, that this had been an actual bona fide threat, but now as he thought back over it while Seab droned along off in some other world, the realization began to come home to him with a genuine and alarming force. He had been too upset at the time to really take it in, and, further, it was beyond his own character, even under the impetus of such emotion, to desire real harm to anyone so close to him for so many years. He might threaten physical violence, and perhaps if provoked sufficiently would indeed knock ’Gage down, as he had done a couple of times in the fury of arguments long ago at Howard. But the mood always passed as soon as it came, he was always contrite and held no grudges, and, anyway, as he had remarked sheepishly on both occasions, “I didn’t hit you very hard.” “God, no,” ’Gage had said with a forgiving grin. “I wouldn’t be here now if you had.” But all of this, Cullee knew now with a chilling certainty in his heart as he sat there in the Senate near midnight of Seab Cooley’s filibuster, had no connection at all with the sick, strangled menace that had come to him in LeGage’s choked and agonized voice that afternoon.

That boy he told himself with a frightened wonder—not frightened physically, for such fear wasn’t in him, but frightened of what life did to people, which could be terrifying indeed—that boy is playing for keeps. And with some instinct that he couldn’t have analyzed, but which brought him abruptly to his feet, startling the Secretary, he had hurried into the cloakroom and telephoned home.

“Are you all right, Maudie?” he had demanded when she came on the line, sleepy and disgruntled. “Is the house all right?”

“‘Course I’m all right,” she had remarked with considerable asperity. “Sound asleep until you started pestering me. What’s the matter? Are
you
all right?”

“You’re sure everything’s all right around the house?” he persisted, and she retorted, “I said it was. What’s the matter with you, I s—”

“You go look. I’ll wait. You go check, will you, please?”

Grumping and complaining, she had left the phone and returned in five minutes.

“Everything’s fine out here. You in the Senate?”

“Yes.”

“Guess that’s your trouble.”

“Listen,” he said. “Call me in the Majority cloakroom of the Senate if you need me for anything. Got that? Majority Cloakroom of the Senate.”

“I got you. All I need is sleep, thank you.”

“All right, Maudie. I’ll be home after a while.”

But despite her obvious impatience and the fact that everything was apparently in good shape at home, he had still returned uneasy to the chamber.

“Anything wrong?” Orrin had asked as he sat down, and the Congressman shook his head.

“Just remembered somebody I had to call. Not important.”

“Good,” the Secretary said, but Cullee had the feeling he hadn’t fooled him much. He expected Orrin knew he had some new, deep worry to plague him; and so he had, an ominous and disturbing conviction that LeGage might be going ’way off base this time to do something of some unknown nature to him or his property. In spite of his attempts to appear unconcerned, the thought drew a frowning crease between his eyebrows, which was quite obvious to Terrible Terry as he surveyed the scene from his seat in the front row of the Diplomatic Gallery above.

Twice already, as the hour neared midnight, the M’Bulu had been given the honor of mention from the floor as he sat, leaning slightly forward, looking amid his drabber seatmates in the galleries very much like what Cullee had called him that afternoon: a big pretty bug. Not one of the heavier, rounder bugs, but one of the long, thin, razor-beaked beetles of his native country, hard of shell and swift of foot, almost impossible to catch and requiring the application of direct force to eliminate. His primordially handsome face wore an expression of deep interest; he frowned thoughtfully or nodded smilingly or shook his head angrily as the Senator from South Carolina moved on from Reconstruction into the threadbare eighties and nineties and began to round the turn of the century with “the colored race in its proper place in society, the white race, Mr. President, watching over and guarding the colored with friendly care,” and all things steady in the world of the South.

Midway in this recitation the President Pro Tem had suddenly interrupted his discourse to acknowledge the towering figure whose entry around 10 p.m. he had ostentatiously ignored.

“There he sits, Mr. President!” he had cried suddenly, startling the handful of Senators on the floor and the dwindling audience in the galleries. “There he sits, the foreign adventurer who came into my state and stuck his nose in where he didn’t belong! There sits the Emboohoo making fun of this Senate now as we struggle with this inexcusable situation he has created, Mr. President! He should be booted out of this chamber and booted back to Africa, Mr. President. Courtesy is too good for him. He should be booted out!”

The Emboohoo had frozen into a look of the sternest disapproval for a moment and then, as he realized that the little hissing that broke out here and there in the galleries was not directed at him but at his ancient opponent, a pleased expression had come upon his face and he had bowed with a sardonic courtesy to Senator Cooley there below. The old man had turned his back upon him with a cold deliberation, and it was not until almost midnight that he had referred to him again.

“Mr. President,” he had said somberly, and this time the Emboohoo’s anticipatory smile faded fast as Senator Cooley went on, “certain distinguished visitors to this country may sit in the gallery and sneer at the Senate, but they would be better advised to look at what is happening in their own back yard, Mr. President. We read about riots, Mr. President. We read about troubles in the Emboohoo’s country. Maybe instead of telling us what to do in America he ought to be back home telling his own people, Mr. President. Maybe they won’t still be listening by the time he gets around to returning there. By which, Mr. President,” he added dryly, “many of us here would no doubt be dreadfully saddened. Yes, sir, Mr. President. We would weep. Of that you may be sure.”

And there, of course, though Terry congratulated himself that he had recovered with aplomb and turned to the galleries only a serene and self-confident countenance, the Senator from South Carolina with his instinct for the jugular had gone straight to the M’Bulu’s. Terry was far more worried than he wished the world to know, and he had indicated as much to the Majority Leader at the Press Club earlier, with a sudden impulse of candor that he still couldn’t understand himself, except that it must have welled up out of some fear far deeper than he realized. The reports from Molobangwe were confused and fragmentary at best, and as far as he had been able to ascertain through all the channels open to him, his mother was safe, his cousin was still loyal, the Council of Ministers still ruled the land in cooperation with them, and all was well. But there persisted the immediate interpretation of the riot that had come to him in many broadcasts and commentaries—that there might be behind it certain elements, more closely identified with his cousin than himself, anxious to give to the situation a more sinister aspect than the usual futile protests for freedom that occasionally agitated his dutiful subjects. He felt a gnawing uneasiness. He knew he must get back; he felt he should leave at once. His mother was old; he did not trust his cousin, for all that he had received all sorts of blood-pledges of fealty from him; the Council of Ministers was composed of weak and venal elders who bowed to each wind. He knew with an absolute certainty where he should be at this very moment—on a jet winging home, just as fast as he could go. No fear held him back, for the M’Bulu, like Cullee, had virtually no physical fear where he felt his duty to be involved; but there was the matter of the UN, the causes there going forward, most importantly freedom for Gorotoland but almost as important discredit for the United States, and he felt that he was also needed right where he was. It was a fearful tugging and hauling, and the decision was not made easier by the basic, almost animal concern for his rights in Gorotoland from which had sprung his inadvertent candor with Senator Munson.

He could, possibly, wait another week before returning, but he knew that was absolutely all. He was reasonably sure that things were under control—the British had been moderately comforting when he had called Lord Maudulayne just before coming up to the Senate from the Statler, where he and LeGage had a room—and that was some comfort. It was only temporary, however.

“Everything in good shape so far as we know,” the Ambassador had told him. “Although, of course,” he had added cheerfully, “it really is hardly worth our time any more to care whether it is or not, is it? It may not be, of course, but to the best of our knowledge—” He had interrupted himself. “That is, we
think
it is. But, then—really, who knows? Why don’t you nip off and find out, if you’re really worried?”

And, having succeeded in increasing the worry, which was what he had intended to do, he had rung off with a cordial farewell. His equivocation did not fool the M’Bulu, who knew perfectly well that if there had been a real crisis in Gorotoland the British would have been there at once, independence movement or no. At least, he thought they would. He would have felt offended, dismayed, insulted, and personally betrayed if he had thought the British would not come to his rescue. One counted on them to be there when one needed them, that was all. If one couldn’t count on that in this world, what could one count on?