Capable of Honor (33 page)

The honor he regarded as dubious and the responsibility a matter so tricky and full of pitfalls that he would gladly have seen it go elsewhere. Ambitious as he was, and determined to be President, he still did not relish the difficulties inherent in being the leader of forces of discontent against his own Chief Executive. He was first and foremost a shrewd and practical politician, and shrewd and practical politicians do not openly challenge the man at the top if they can possibly avoid it. Sometimes subtler methods are adopted in an attempt to achieve the same end, but the political graveyard is strewn with the hopes of ambitious men who let it be known too openly that they disagreed with their leader’s policies.

Now he was being thrust forward by a relentless and implacable pressure whose manipulators, he was convinced, did not really give two hoots about him. Walter Dobius and all his like-thinkers didn’t really give a damn about Ted Jason personally, or about what he really stood for. They were out to get the two men who had defied their pet beliefs, and in pursuit of them they were simply seeking the best instrument.

Governor Jason prided himself upon some good principles and policies, and a good record of achievement in Sacramento. He felt a strong annoyance with Walter and his world, whose support was given him for what he regarded as essentially a small, contemptible reason of their own to which his merits bore no relation. Their support was an insult, even as it was a most powerful boost in the direction in which he wanted to go.

He was further annoyed by their egregious bullyragging in telephone call, telegram, and personal letter, to say nothing of their increasingly demanding insistence in programs, editorials, and news displays. (“We’re going to put you on next week’s cover,” the editor of the lesser picture-magazine had informed him brightly only an hour ago in a tone of triumph. “We’ll caption it, ‘Governor Jason: His Presidential Prospects Boom in the Midst of Crisis.’ How will that be?” “Great,” Ted Jason had said dryly. “Just great.”) He might be ambitious, but he was not a wrecker and he did have an abiding love for the country. So, he supposed, in their own twisted ways, did the interests that were seeking to use him now. But for him, who might conceivably be called upon to exercise the responsibilities of the office they wanted for him, it was not so simple. A term as Governor had given him an acute appreciation of the fact that men quite often were used by power rather more than they used it. He resented the relentless attempts of Walter’s world to force him into a position where he would no longer be an independent agent but would be swept headlong before the tide of emotion flowing across the world from Gorotoland.

He had been seriously tempted at several points in the past two days to tell Walter that he would not come out today. What had begun as a pre-convention talk between a powerful columnist and a man he wished to see become President had been transformed by events into another gambit in Walter’s battle with the Administration. The Governor did not relish it, though he knew exactly what he would do if pressed: he would remain adamant on his promise to speak by Friday, and he would not be pushed an inch further. He had worked out a careful and ticklish strategy for himself after his talk with Ceil, and in it Walter played a significant part, if in a somewhat different fashion than Walter himself contemplated.

Ted thought with a wry appreciation of his principal opponent. Now, as always, he admired Orrin’s guts, and at the moment he also admired the simplicity of his position. The Secretary had no problems, his commitment was complete. He had advocated a certain policy for years and now he had been instrumental in bringing it about, and that was all there was to it. No equivocations for Orrin, no necessity to duck and dodge and beat about in an attempt to avoid the pressures of friends who might as well be enemies. Like Orrin, Ted was quite sure that very soon, now, the reaction against the position of Walter and his world would begin to set in. He was not at all convinced that the Administration was in anywhere near the trouble that they were maintaining in their indignant headlines, caustic editorials, hostile programs, and vituperative columns. They were trying hard to convince the country that it was horrified by a policy of strength, but the Governor was at heart a skeptic and a shrewd, intuitive judge of public opinion. He was as certain as Orrin that there would soon be a swing back; possibly not as complete a swing as Orrin thought, but substantial enough so that he who would go surfing on that sea would need a steady eye and a sure foot. Ted Jason was no irrational gambler with his own career, and he was determined, despite the growing pressures upon him, that he would not permit Walter and his world to force him to be one.

He was brought abruptly out of his reverie by Patsy’s exclamation as they turned off the winding lane beyond Leesburg, into the oak-lined carriageway that ran up a gentle incline to the pleasant eminence where the white-pillared red brick house had stood since 1765.

“It is!” she cried. “It’s Orrin and Beth and Helen-Anne! I knew it! I just KNEW it.”

“Shall we turn around and go home?” Bob Leffingwell inquired.

Ted laughed, though he could not escape a sudden tension at the sight of his opponent and the thought of the confrontation to come.

“Not on your life,” he said easily. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

“I always knew Walter had a sense of humor,” Ceil said gently, "But I see I underestimated it. The kid’s a riot.”

In the other car, whose occupants were just getting out when they heard Patsy’s machine behind them, the reaction was about the same: a combination of surprise, disturbance, and the ironic, saving humor that enables so many in public life to pass through the tests that circumstance imposes upon them.

“Well, well,” Orrin said as Roosevelt stepped forward to take his keys and park the car, “that’s the thing I love about the hunt country of Virginia: you never know what you’re going to find running around loose out here.”

“It’s typical,” Helen-Anne declared. “Absolutely typical. He thinks he’s pulling some really profound stunt here. Walter Wonderful, Master of Men, my God!”

“At least,” Beth suggested, “it won’t be dull.”

Nor was it, as they gathered in a rather awkward group at the door while their host delayed his appearance, peeking through the drapes in the downstairs study and watching with a tolerant amusement their attempts to ease the situation. It was the sort of embarrassment that pleased him: he was so much above it all.

Actually it went rather well. Ceil stepped forward at once and held out her hand to Beth.

“Mrs. Knox, I have so long wanted to meet you and compare notes on campaigning. You seem to enjoy it so, while I”—she shrugged perfectly clad shoulders and tossed back her stunning blond hair—“I’m afraid for my part,” she admitted with a down-to-earth laugh, “I get tired awfully easily of sweaty palms and fervent breathing.”

Beth responded with a quite genuine amusement.

“I, too. But tied to these two”—and she gestured to her husband, standing beside her with a reasonably relaxed smile, and to Ted, waiting patiently beside Ceil with a wary but cordial expression, “what can we do?”

“Ted,” Orrin said, stepping forward and shaking hands, “it’s good to see you looking so well.”

“It is?” Governor Jason asked, but with a laugh that was friendly. “Well, you, too, Orrin.” His expression changed. “Seriously, I wish you well with your burdens.”

“Thank you,” the Secretary said. He turned to Bob Leffingwell and extended his hand.

“Bob, it’s been a long time.”

I’m tempted to say too long,” Bob Leffingwell said, with a certain irony but a reasonable amount of friendliness, “except that you might not believe me. How goes it?”

“Busy,” Orrin said, and though it was not a particularly funny remark they all found the tension considerably relieved after they had laughed at it.

“Well, I do think this is EXCITING,” Patsy said as they turned toward the door. “Except where’s our host?”

“He’s hiding out,” Helen-Anne said. “He’s about to appear dramatically in the doorway, hoping we will all have fallen on each other with knives and clubs. God, he is so
tiresome!
Walter!” she shouted, to her companions’ startled amusement. “Walter, come out this minute and stop acting like a two-bit melodrama!”

“Drastic methods,” Ceil murmured to Beth as the stately door swung open to reveal America’s leading statesman-philosopher with his customary lord-of-the-manor smile, outwardly oblivious to Helen-Anne’s raucous hail. “But apparently effective.”

“I wish I were brave enough to speak to Orrin that way,” Beth replied with a chuckle. “It would simplify so many things.”

“I, too,” Ceil said. “I suppose you have to be an ex, and then all things are possible.”

“Welcome to ‘Salubria,’” Walter Dobius said with a gravely cordial hospitality, every inch the country squire. “My house is honored.”

For a time, as they chatted of innocuous matters with a reasonably relaxed air over Roosevelt’s cocktails, and then consumed one of Arbella’s famous luncheons, the tensions underlying their little group did not break through, though there were moments when the Secretary of State found it difficult to maintain society’s pretenses. His feelings at being thrown unexpectedly with Ted Jason and Bob Leffingwell were nothing to what he felt as he forced himself to be civil to Walter.
“Yesterday, one could say, ‘God help the United States’ Today, one doubts that He would dare.”
An enormous contempt and distaste for the man who could write such a thing, no matter what his emotional involvement, filled Orrin’s mind and heart. It was matched, and he realized it, by Walter’s equal contempt and distaste for him. But still the meal progressed with relative ease, as so many meals in Washington do progress, under the stem discipline of a political society whose stability often requires of its participants that they curb their deepest feelings, suppress their truest emotions, hide their honest convictions and smile, smile, smile.

Occasionally in such gatherings, however, there does come a moment when reality insists upon breaking through, when truth, too long denied, will rise again in spite of everything to shatter all about it and lay waste the chummiest confabulations of old, dear friends. It arrived for Walter’s famous luncheon—as it very rapidly became, for by week’s end at least five different authentic versions had appeared in print—when the meal was done and the guests had retired for coffee and brandy to the comfortable book-lined study. There, before the enormous window (Walter’s one concession to modernity in his restoration of the house) which gave upon gentle meadows, Dogwood Creek, and the rolling Blue Ridge beyond, it was Bob Leffingwell, surprisingly enough, who broke through the smile barrier.

“Walter,” he said casually, when they were all settled and beginning to look at one another with a wary expectancy, “what’s this all about? Just a chance to satisfy your ego that you can get people like Ted and Orrin to drop everything and come to lunch, or does it have some other purpose?”

For a moment Walter looked quite taken aback and later Beth was to claim that she had actually seen him blush. But no one ever believed it possible.

“I have asked you all here,” he said stiffly, “rather inadvertently, I must confess. I had first intended to invite just Ted and Ceil and Patsy. I have not had a good visit with Ted for some time. Then it occurred to me that it would also be advisable to talk to Orrin as well—”

“Why?” the Secretary asked, his distaste escaping his control and getting into his voice. “To embarrass me? And Ted?”

“I thought I would like to see what you had to say for yourself,” Walter said calmly.

For a second Orrin stared at him, as did they all, in blank disbelief.

“What
I
have to say for
myself?”
Orrin said finally, with an ominous softness. “Oh, I see.”

“Walter,” Helen-Anne said, “I think you’re out of your cotton-picking mind. I literally think so.”

“I’m not interested in what you think,” he said with a deliberate heavy rudeness. “I have a perfect right to ask Orrin about his views.”

“That wasn’t exactly the way you put it,” Bob Leffingwell pointed out, and the Secretary gave him a surprised and grateful glance. “It was more in the form of an inquisition, it seemed to me.”

“And why should it not be?” Walter demanded, a sudden anger coming into his voice. “Here he sits”—and he looked at his guest with what in one of less national and international stature might have been termed a glare—“having put this country into a hopeless war on a continent eight thousand miles away, having virtually destroyed the United Nations, having betrayed everything that America has stood for since World War II—and he acts as though it were nothing at all. He and his President just don’t care! They’re ruining us and they’re ruining the world and
he just doesn’t care.
He thinks he knows it all. American boys are dying at this very moment we sit here but nobody can tell him anything, he’s so self-righteous, he’s so certain he’s doing the right thing in destroying us all!”

“Well, well,” Ceil said finally into the stunned silence. “What a pleasant luncheon party you’re giving, Walter, and how glad I am that we came here early all the way from California so that we could attend.”

“Somebody has to speak the truth,” Walter Dobius said, breathing hard but managing to speak more quietly. “Someone has to make people realize what this Administration is doing. And don’t tell me you don’t see it,” he added, turning suddenly upon Ted Jason, who sat beside him on the big leather sofa. The Governor gave him stare for stare, unyielding.

“I understand that emotions are involved and tempers are high,” he agreed presently in an unhurried voice, “but I would not want to charge that the Secretary of State is unaware of what he is doing, or unfeeling about it. Or the President either.”

“As a matter of fact, Walter,” Bob Leffingwell said, and again Orrin gave him a glance of surprise at support from this entirely unexpected quarter, “some of us have been a little startled by your own vehemence. I think more can be accomplished by maintaining perspective and balance than by indiscriminate attacks on the leaders of the country.”