by Allen Drury
“Well,” CBS said, “I guess that tells us.”
“Tells us nothing,” UPI said in an annoyed tone.
“Arly gave me the high sign,” AP said. “Let’s walk him down the hall.”
And as Senator Winthrop, Senator DeWilton, and Senator August walked together down the hall in one direction, the reporters who sought without success to question them peeled away one by one like planes in formation and hurried down the other way after Senator Richardson, who was walking along slowly flanked by AP, UPI, and the Times.
Observing this progress as they stood together by the door while the cameramen packed their gear and the crowd dispersed, Orrin muttered, “Damned troublemaker,” and the Majority Leader grinned.
“It never fails,” he said. “He’s no more sold on Leffingwell than the man in the moon, but this is a chance to embarrass you and me and Brig and a few other people, so he’s not going to let it slip.”
“Hmph,” Orrin said in a disgusted tone. “Well, come on in, Bob, I want to really talk this over with you for a minute. I’m worried.”
“So am I,” Senator Munson confessed as they returned to the inner office and his host plopped down in his big leather chair and put his feet on the desk. “I don’t like the way it’s shaping up, frankly.”
“That damned sneak at the White House,” Senator Knox said tartly. “Imagine calling all of us separately without letting you know, and then trying to put Tom up to a crazy-fool stunt like that. What’s wrong there, anyway? Is his poor health knocking him off base mentally?”
“What poor health is that?” Senator Munson asked, suddenly finding himself defending another of the Administration’s many flanks.
“You know what I mean,” Orrin said. “It’s all over town. God help us if we have to have Harley.”
“I don’t follow you,” Bob Munson said. “If he’s so bad, what’s wrong with Harley?”
“Oh, hell, nobody wants a President to die,” Orrin said, “it causes too much of an upset in everything. Particularly at a time like this. I don’t think Harley would be so bad, actually.”
“He’s terrified at the thought,” Senator Munson said.
“Yes, I know,” Senator Knox said. “But a lot of people are terrified of things they get over being terrified about when they actually have to do them. We could help him.”
“We’d have to,” the Majority Leader said. “However, I don’t think all this activity down there indicates a dying man, would you say? He’s just a little tired.”
“Doesn’t indicate a tired one, either,” Orrin said with a grin. “But tell me, Bob, what’s gotten into our young friend and what’s going to come of it?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” Senator Munson said.
“I don’t want him to get into a real row with the President,” Senator Knox said.
“Neither do I,” Bob Munson said, “but we can’t head it off without his co-operation.”
“Apparently it’s kicked up hell at home, too,” Orrin said thoughtfully. “Beth called a little while ago, and it seems Mabel had just called her, all upset. It isn’t the first time in recent weeks.”
“Mabel,” Senator Munson said in a tired tone, “is a sweet girl, but she isn’t the first whoever married a complex man and then spent the rest of her life wondering what he was all about. Brig is taking on the whole kit and caboodle of us, here. It seems to me she could be much more of a help to him by just standing by and supporting him and acting the way a wife ought to act instead of adding to his burdens by inflicting her own worries on him. But I suppose that’s none of my business. Except as Brig is everybody’s business, right now.”
“Well, I suppose it isn’t all one-sided,” Senator Knox said. “You know how these things are. I think Beth told her more or less the same thing; although, as I say, it isn’t the first time and I think Beth’s beginning to lose patience a little herself. There’s such a thing as carrying independence too far. Mabel keeps saying she can’t figure him out.”
“She never will,” Senator Munson said flatly. “The only thing to do is accept and try to understand and stop fretting and try to be a wife in the classic sense, it seems to me.”
“Women lead a hard life,” Orrin observed, not without a touch of smugness. “Thank God we were born men, Robert. Well, what are we going to do about this?”
“What I would like,” Senator Munson said, “is to get him to the White House this afternoon and see if we can’t get it settled before the White House Correspondents’ dinner. Otherwise the President like as not is going to take off after him in his little speech at the end of the evening. And that will just make it all the harder to work out when they finally get together.”
“How do you propose to do that?” Senator Knox asked.
“There are two courses,” Bob Munson said. “You and Lafe are both very close to him. Either you can talk to him or Lafe can.”
“I would say Lafe,” Senator Knox said promptly. “Not that he’s any closer than I am, but I think age might be a factor in a situation as delicate as this one—they have the same general approach to things in that generation, you know, they see things more or less the same way. If they really started to argue Lafe could always talk about women, or something.”
“And there isn’t anything Lafe doesn’t know about women,” Bob Munson said with a grin. “Or something, either, I imagine. That was exactly my own view of it, but I wanted to clear it with you before I did anything. In fact, if you’re agreeable, I think it might be better for you to call Lafe and put it up to him yourself. Tell him we’re worried, as I’m sure he is too, and that we’d like Brig to see the President this afternoon. Maybe Lafe can take him some place to lunch where they won’t be seen, and they can talk it over.”
“Is there any place in Washington where you won’t be seen?” Orrin asked dryly. ‘I’ve never found one. Not,” he added quickly with a grin, “that I’ve ever really needed one, you understand, for any purpose. All right, then, I’ll call Lafe. In the meantime, what are you going to do to head off the lunatic fringe, Freddy Van Ackerman and Arly and so on?”
“Oh, Arly’s no problem,” Senator Munson said. “After he’s spilled his guts to the press he’ll settle down and be all right for the long haul. Fred is something else again.”
“Why don’t you cut the session short today?” Orrin suggested. “I don’t know of any particular business that needs to be done, do you?”
“I’ve been thinking I would,” the Majority Leader said. “It would head off a lot of speeches. I’ll talk to Warren and Harley.”
“Warren will go along,” Senator Knox said. “He understands the problem. Fine, I’ll get in touch with Lafe right away, then.”
“Good,” Senator Munson said. “I’ll talk to the others. We’ll get our stubborn little boy to the White House before he knows it.”
“Do you really think so?” Senator Knox asked skeptically.
“No,” Senator Munson admitted with a rather rueful smile, “but we’ll try.”
Beside the fish pond with his daughter, he felt that there must be, somewhere in the golden day, some magic open sesame, some satisfactory answer to everything that would permit his heart to rest and Mabel’s to understand it and enable them to preserve a reasonable harmony and peace together; but he was beginning to wonder if it were not slipping away. He had understood her mood but in the sheerest self-defense he had not been able to respond in kind. To do so would have been to become engulfed in what seemed to him a drowning emotionalism, and so to lose all control of a situation that was deteriorating fast enough without added stimulus. One of them had to keep calm, even if this meant that the other had to be hurt; and so it had been with a very honest pain but an inflexible determination not to abandon himself to an equal desperation that he had remained polite and self-possessed in the face of her un-happiness. He had meant only to be kind, in the truest sense, and thought he had been. It did not occur to him that it might have driven them further apart,
for he was under such pressures both as a result of their difficulties and as a result of the nomination that he did not dare concede an inch to emotionalism for fear it might sweep him over the dam and away altogether.
Yet he understood fully the potentials for his marriage that there were in all the onrushing events of this deceptively bright and hopeful morning. He might not realize entirely just how much he himself was contributing to it, for it seemed to him that he was doing what was fair and best for them both, but he knew the abyss was waiting at their feet if they allowed events to push them but a little further toward it. And the thought appalled him, though she might not believe it, every bit as much as it did his wife.
He could not, now, imagine life unmarried, any more than he could conceive of divorce as a practical solution for two people who, when all was said and done, were used to one another, had a fair amount of love, were reasonable and intelligent and needed only time and patience to restore contentment. It would mean great unhappiness for them both, a tragic and perhaps permanent blow to their daughter, a loss of security and protective habit he could not possibly welcome now; and this was leaving aside political consequences, which were immense. Few states would stand for it, their own church state least of all. It would mean the end of all his career and all his hopes, all chance for service, all opportunity to do good, all possibility of justifying and fulfilling himself in public service. There were all the reasons in the world why he should work to preserve his marriage, none at all why he should not. Thus though he might have seemed temporarily unfeeling and hurtful, he was convinced that this was the best way to handle the growing tension between them. Certainly the alternative offered no lasting solutions, for sex was never an answer to anything for very long. Three days ago he had tried to handle it with a deliberate sexuality, as elemental and overwhelming as he knew how to make it, and he knew very well. The surcease had lasted only until the first new hint of outside pressure and then they were right back where they had been, and if anything a little worse. So this time he had tried a different approach, hoping it would prove more suited and more lasting. A little later if all went well, with the hysteria over and the moment’s anguish passed, they could talk it over quietly and find their way back. He was certain this was the better way; or so, at least, he told himself.
Underlying the outward calm with which he had refused his wife’s appeal and the apparent certainty with which he was holding to his course on the nomination, however, he was not entirely sure; some inner questioning, some insistent wondering, not the endless argument of alternatives that besets the weak but the really fundamental, scarifying self-doubt that only the strongest can endure, was eating at his heart in the wake of the Majority Leader’s call and its emotional aftermath. Was he really doing the right and honorable thing on the nomination? Was he really being fair and decent to his wife? And would the Lord give him some sign, in the dancing sunlight and the perfect day, that he was still all right, that he was still a worth-while human being who had something of value to contribute to his country, his family and his people?
“You’re thinking pretty hard, aren’t you?” Pidge inquired thoughtfully from somewhere down around his feet, and forced by this to abandon a mood that he knew was only leading to a frustrating dead end that would do nobody any good, he laughed thankfully and bent to ruffle her hair.
“I was,” he said, “but I’m not now. You’ve stopped me.”
“Good,” she said, and he chuckled.
“Yes, it is,” he told her. “How did you know?”
“Daddy,” she said politely, “what are you talking about?”
“I thought you knew,” he said in mock reproach. “Don’t you know everything?”
“I think one of these fishes is sick,” she said matter-of-factly, changing a subject she had obviously decided she was getting nowhere with. “Why don’t you take him out?”
“All right,” he said, “go get me a stick and we’ll throw him away.”
“Okay,” she said cheerfully, and trotted over to the edge of the lawn, returning in a moment with a twig which she handed him gravely.
“This isn’t a very big stick,” he pointed out, “but we’ll try it.”
“You can reach in and get him if it doesn’t work,” she said, and her father laughed.
“I see I have a practical daughter,” he said, flipping the fish out and then picking it up by the tail and hurling it off under the trees. “See, I did both.”
“What will he do now?” she asked.
“That’s a long story,” he said. “Why don’t I tell you some other time?”
“All right,” she said. “He won’t swim, though, will he?”
“No,” he said, “he won’t swim.”
“Are you and Mommy friends?” she asked, and her father chuckled.
“You’re a born politician, Pidge,” he told her. “You always approach everything on a tangent, don’t you?”
“Are you?” she insisted with a little frown, and he saw it was time to become serious.
“Yes,” he said gravely, “we are.”
“You were fussing,” she said accusingly.
“Big people do fuss sometimes,” he said. “It doesn’t mean much.”
“Even when you do it a lot?” she asked.
“Who says we do it a lot?” he demanded.
“You might,” she said.
“Yes,” he said firmly, “but we don’t. And we aren’t going to do it at all, anymore.”
“That’s good,” she said comfortably. “It’s better if you don’t.”
“Yes, it is,” he agreed. “I’m sorry we disturbed you.”
“Okay,” she said equably, and then added in a perfect echo of her parents in moments of disciplinary stress, “I don’t want to have to tell you again.”
“Ho, ho!” Brig said, scooping her up on his shoulder, “don’t you, now?”
“No,” she said firmly, emphasizing her words by pounding on his head. “I want you to be good.”
“Ouch!” he said. “Cut that out. All right, we’ll be good. Here comes Mommy now, and you just watch how good we’ll be. Pidge wants us to be good, Mommy.”
“I should hope so,” Mabel said with a rather tremulous smile, holding out her arms to Pidge. “I should hope so.”
But instead of surrendering their daughter, her husband stepped into her arms with Pidge still on his shoulder and leaned down to kiss her cheek. “So,” he said quietly, “we’ll be good. Right?”
“I’ll try,” she said, with another smile that didn’t look very sure of itself.
“Those are Ellen’s orders,” Brig said. “She thinks there’s been enough fussing, she says.”
“I’ll try,” Mabel repeated. “Will you?”
He kissed her again and holding Pidge carefully, let her slide slowly down the length of his body until she collapsed in a small heap on the ground at his feet.
“I will,” he said.
“Is that a promise?” she asked in a half humorous way, and the level dark eyes looked straight into hers with the glance she could never withstand, no matter how she steeled herself against it.
“It’s a promise,” he said.
“Daddy,” Pidge demanded from below, I’m sitting on your foot. Play horsey.”
“No, I won’t play horsey,” he said, setting her on her feet and giving her an affectionate swat. “You run along and get your ball and maybe I’ll play ball with you.”
“All right,” she said, and went trotting off along the garden looking for it.
“I heard the news on the radio a little while ago,” Mabel said, and he smiled.
“Am I still the villain of the piece?” he asked.
For a second worry returned to her eyes, and then she made a determined effort to banish it and look unconcerned.
“The subcommittee met,” she said, and he looked surprised and suddenly intent.
“Oh, did they?” he said. “Orrin called it?”
“Y
es,” she said.
“What did they do?” he asked.
“They issued a statement that apparently rather puzzled everybody,” she said, “but the main point seemed to be that they were standing by you.”
“Well, then,” he said in a relieved tone that surprised her, for it disclosed a depth of concern she had not known was there, “there’s nothing to worry about, is there? I told you it was going to be all right.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “You told me.”
“So you see,” he said comfortably, “all those worries weren’t necessary at all, were they?”
“I guess not,” she said. “Lafe called, too.”
“Oh?” he said. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“Well, he said he wanted to take you to lunch somewhere quiet and get you away from it all for an hour or so, and I told him I thought that would be a good idea, and to come get you.” She smiled again, a little uncertainly. “Was that all right?”
He grinned.
“That was fine,” he said. “I wonder what he’s got on his mind? Something Bob and Orrin put him up to, I’ll bet.”
“He didn’t say,” she said. “He said to tell you to be of good cheer, the troops are with you.” And in spite of her best intentions her eyes, reddened from their quarrel and her talk with Beth, filled with tears again.
“Goodness,” she said. “I’m certainly weepy today.”
“Well, you’ve been worried,” he said, “and I appreciate it. I really do.” And he reached out and with one finger gently traced the outline of her right cheek from ear to chin.
“As long as all the troops are with me,” he said softly, “I guess I can manage.”
“They are,” she said, blinking rapidly as she turned to watch their daughter advancing toward them over the lawn, holding her ball before her in both hands. “Especially us.”
So he felt much better suddenly, for the Lord had given him a sign after all, he had love and he had friends and the day seemed to mean what it said when it held out hope.