Capable of Honor (45 page)

In a sense this had been easier to do because of the kindness with which the President had disclosed his intentions. When he had called to invite the Secretary over, Orrin had known instinctively at once what the subject would be; and some other element, the necessary escape clause that most experienced politicians carry always in some defensive recess of the mind—“Things probably won’t work out the way I want them to, so Td better not get my hopes up too high”—prepared him for the likely decision. Yet Harley could not have been nicer.

“Sit down, Orrin,” he said cordially, and the Secretary could sense at once that he was not entirely at ease. A moment later he admitted it, with a self-deprecating smile that aroused Orrin’s sympathies at once.

“This isn’t too easy a conversation for me,” he confessed. “I hope you’ll help me with it.”

“You know I will, Mr. President,” Orrin said gravely. “What does it concern?”

“I expect you know,” the President said.

The Secretary stared out at the bursting gardens, the beautiful lawn, the sweet felicity of the weather, committed at last to Washington’s lovely spring. He sighed.

“Yes, I expect I do.”

“I don’t feel too good about it,” the President said with a wry little smile. “I don’t like to go back on my word, or abandon a position and a conviction that have been entirely sincere—though you may not think so now.”

“Oh, yes,” Orrin said. He too smiled with some wryness. “Of all the people concerned with your decision, I expect I can probably grant your sincerity almost more than anyone else does … even though I probably have more to lose from it than anyone else.”

“Don’t be too sure,” the President said, and Orrin looked puzzled. “I do want you to understand why I do this,” he went on before Orrin could speak. “It really is because I am under such vicious attack that I feel I must defend my own policies and not ask anyone else to do it. I wouldn’t consider it for a moment, otherwise.”

“I realize that plays a major part in it,” Orrin agreed. He smiled with a genuine amusement. “At least I think that’s how most Presidents rationalize it—they have to defend the record, isn’t that it?”

The President laughed in a completely relaxed fashion, and from that moment their talk went forward without strain.

“You may be right. But certainly the immediate practical reason is exactly what I say: I have got to defend myself. The division in the country is sharp enough so that I really—at least as I see it—do not have a choice. I must meet the situation head-on because basically it’s my responsibility.”

“And you want to.”

The President smiled.

“I’d kind of like to see it through. I’m making a great experiment here: whether a policy of complete candor about what needs to be done to save America and with it the free world from another Dark Ages of the mind can work in this century of ours. I’m not sure it can. But,” he said with a somber emphasis unexpected in one usually so calm, “I intend to accomplish it if I can.”

“I admire you for that,” Orrin said. The President’s next remark came with a gentleness that took him by surprise and almost destroyed the tight grip he was maintaining on his swirling emotions.

“I regret very much the destruction of your hopes to run for this office.”

For a moment, absurdly, Orrin found himself unable to answer. By a great effort of will—another moment, he told himself with a hasty scorn, and he would probably be blubbering like a schoolboy, if he didn’t watch it—he forced himself to concentrate his gaze upon the rose garden and think of something else, while the President, too, stared tactfully out the window.

“It is of course a disappointment to me,” he said finally, managing to keep his voice steady, but just. “You know how long I have been—interested.” He smiled, at considerable cost. “Nobody knows better than you do, Harley—and how much, foolishly, I suppose, I have been depending upon the word you gave the country a year ago. But we talked about this a month ago right here, didn’t we? And I went home and told Beth you were going to run.” He smiled again, a little better this time. “But it’s still a disappointment. You can’t keep yourself from disbelieving the things you don’t want to believe. I do understand—I do accept your reasons—I do see how you consider them valid.” He smiled again, though it still cost him something to do it, but it was getting easier every second. “It’s a long way across this desk from this chair to that one, but if I’d ever made it, I think I would do exactly the same thing.”

The President gave him a long look, obviously touched himself.

“Thank you,” he said at last. “And Orrin: don’t sound so elegiac about it. Don’t say ‘if you’d ever made it.’ You still may.”

The Secretary shot him a glance that was, the President was relieved to see, good old skeptical Orrin Knox again, in person.

“Huh!” he said with a snort. “How?”

“I’ll tell you,” the President said. When he finished the Secretary studied him for several moments with a shrewd, appraising gaze.

“Do you want me on the ticket?” he demanded.

“Do you want to be there?”

Orrin laughed.

“I asked first.”

The President chuckled.

“That, I am afraid you will have to determine yourself,” he said lightly. Then he dropped it and became serious. “Given a choice between Ted Jason, who hems and haws and doesn’t really agree with me, and you, my right arm who has participated in all these decisions and helped to make all these policies, who do you think I want on the ticket with me? Of course I want you on the ticket. But suppose you had gone that long distance across this desk from that chair to this—would you think you were in a position to make the outright choice? You’re a practical politician, so I’ve been told—”

“You know I’m not at all,” the Secretary interrupted with a rueful grin. “I’m sentimental and impulsive and emotional, and I let my feelings run away with me sometimes when I wish I hadn’t. But go on.”

The President smiled.

“I’m just saying what I’ve been told—and you know there are many reasons why I’ve got to do it this way. Not the least important is that there really is a serious split in the country, and it really should have a chance to work itself out in the convention. That contest for Vice President is going to be a safety valve. There’s got to be one, and that’s where it’s got to come.” He paused and shot the Secretary a quick, shrewd look. “Doesn’t that make sense?”

Orrin’s glance was equally shrewd.

“It also takes you off the hook.”

“I know that,” the President said impatiently, “I’m admitting that. But you do concede there are other elements, just as valid.”

“Oh, yes, of course there are. It’s a very astute idea all around, and, I grant you, probably a necessary one.…The one thing I’ve got to do, it seems to me, is announce at once so there won’t be the slightest doubt that I, at least, am supporting you.” He gave an ironic smile. “How do you know there’ll be a contest? Have you talked to California?”

“I have,” the President said with an equal irony, “and there may not be. In which case, you’ll be even better off, won’t you? And so will I. I really will keep hands off, but don’t forget: I don’t
want
to do it this way. I think it’s best. Things might be a lot different if I had my druthers.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” Orrin said, “I think I’d better get back to the Department and call in the press.”

“Why don’t you just issue a statement after my press conference? I wouldn’t lay myself open to questions at this point, if I were you. You don’t have to.”

“That’s true,” Orrin said. The President rose and came around the desk, holding out his hand.

“Orrin, my friend: thank you and good luck.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” Orrin said, and found he must turn hastily away, for it was not so easy to say farewell so fast to so many long-held hopes. “I’ll be in touch,” he tossed over his shoulder in a muffled voice.

Promptly at 5 P.M. his statement was issued through the State Department press office:

“I shall be a candidate for the nomination for Vice President of the United States.

“I make this announcement, happy to know that if I should be nominated, I will be on the ticket with a President whose policies I believe to be the only safe and effective policies for America to follow in these troubled times.

“Those policies I endorse 100 percent.

“That President I support 100 percent.

“Let no one anywhere have any doubts where I stand.

“I ask all who have been my friends in the past to rally to me now. The task is hard, the road difficult, but with the help of all who uphold the courage and honor and above all the survival of the United States of America, we shall win.”

And now—having begged off from a dinner at the French Embassy, which he regretted but felt was best under the circumstances—he had eaten a quiet dinner with Beth, watched the President’s speech, and was just beginning to realize what had happened. It was only now when Beth snapped off the set to leave a sudden terrifying silence in the room that the event and its full implications came rushing upon him in such a fierce attack that he thought for a moment his being might not be able to stand it. Everything up to that moment had gone so well and so fast that he had really not had time to think about it very deeply. Now nothing stood between him and that abyss from which men’s hopes, once toppled, rarely re-emerge.

He tried to hide the reaction, in a mobile and candid face, but he was in the presence of a close student of thirty years’ standing.

“Now, just take it easy,” she said quietly, coming to sit beside him on the sofa. “It isn’t the end of the world.”

“My world,” he said with a wry shrug.

“What nonsense!” she said comfortably. “Your world! Poor old Orrin Knox, all he is is Secretary of State, a likely Vice President, and maybe President someday.” She chuckled and took his hand with an elaborately pitying squeeze. “Poor old fellow, I feel for you!”

“Well,” he said with the trace of a smile, “it is, in a way. ‘Maybe President someday.’ My somedays are running out, Hank. I’m getting past the first fine, fresh bloom of presidential likelihood. This is the third time around the track, and now it’s only Vice President if I do get it.”

“But—”

“I know all the arguments. If they didn’t require the death of a man I have always been fond of and in the past year have come to really admire, I’d be sold on them too. But not wishing Harley any bad luck, and having to think of him as being, obviously, in very good health, I have to contemplate eight years as Vice President, after which I shall be well into my sixties and too old to seek the Presidency. I’ll have been around too long, Hank.” He grinned ruefully. “Plenty of people think I have been already, but they’ll be sure of it, then.”

“You just never know,” she said. “You literally don’t. What’s the alternative? Let Ted take it by default and maybe have him become President someday, with all his wishy-washy ideas?”

“He isn’t so wishy-washy,” Orrin said thoughtfully. “He’s just cautious. More so than I am, that’s for sure.”

“The millions of people who believe in Orrin Knox—and millions do, my boy, don’t forget that—believe in him exactly because he isn’t cautious every time, he doesn’t always hesitate and trim. Once in a while he has the guts to state some principles, dream some dreams, and go for broke.”

“Lady,” he said with some return of his normal humor, staring into the fire, lit for coziness though they were now safely into spring, “would you like a job writing campaign copy? I have just the spot for a nice young copywriter like you.”

“Well, it’s true,” she said, flushed and indignant, “so don’t make fun of it. That will continue right along, you’ll carry it into the Vice Presidency with you just as you have at every step of the way since Illinois. Don’t knock it. It can’t be said of everybody in this town.”

“True enough,” he said, “true enough. And of course if I do get it, it will strengthen Harley’s hand considerably in his policies, there’s no doubt of that.…Even though, of course, having Ted get it would strengthen him even more in the immediate contest in November.”

“Will it be much of a contest? Who do they have in the other party? Surely you don’t think Warren Strickland can beat Harley?”

“No,” he said, considering for a moment the able, amiable, and not overly aggressive Senate Minority Leader from Idaho, who appeared to be the likeliest choice of the minority party to be its sacrifice candidate this year. “In the first place, his heart isn’t in it, in the second place there’s no real opposition stand he can take that wouldn’t be entirely too extreme for his own temperament to accept, and in the third place the registration’s against him. Plus the fact that he likes Harley and has supported him right along in foreign policy. No, they’re just going to be going through the motions this time. The real battle’s with us, as it usually is. But, Hank,” he said soberly, “can I win that convention? Do I really have a chance? Hasn’t the outcry of people like Walter Dobius created such a mood in the country that a candidate upholding the Administration’s policy will be beaten? Isn’t Ted really riding the popular wave?”

She studied him thoughtfully before replying.

“You don’t think so for one minute,” she said finally. “Neither do I, or lots of people. Helen-Anne called, for instance, right after your statement was released, to say she’s ready to work for you for Vice President, if you still want her. She thinks you’ve got a terrific chance. So do I. And so, old dear, underneath all the heroics about Orrin Knox on his way to pasture, do you. So suppose you buckle down, Wynsocki, and get to work. O.K.?”

He smiled.

“Oh, yes. I will, of course, you know that. But, Hank”—and his expression changed suddenly to a strangely young and vulnerable wistfulness that took her back to Illinois and other dreams and the long road that now appeared, in truth, to be ending short of the goal he had set himself when they were first married, so long ago, “it would have been nice—to be President.”

“Oh, my dear,” she said softly, taking his hand again in hers and turning her head to the fire so that he would not see the tears in her eyes, “one can’t tell on these things. If it’s meant to be, it still will be. If it doesn’t happen, then we’ll just have to conclude that we were the only ones who meant it to be—not someone else.…”