by Allen Drury
“These are the things Washington asks tonight. It is the first time in memory that the capital has ever known the Senator to be less than positive, forthright, and unequivocal. Those who favor Mr. Leffingwell are delighted; for the event could augur much for them. Those who oppose Mr. Leffingwell are disturbed, though their ranks have not yet broken. More fundamentally than all of these, perhaps, those who have long believed in Orrin Knox are asking in puzzled dismay whether their hero has at long last shown himself to be as wavering, as uncertain, and as subject to ambition as other men.”
Senator Munson snorted and snapped off the radio.
“You see you can’t win, Orrin,” he said dryly. “If you oppose him you’re a son of a bitch, if you’re against him, well, we’re glad to have you aboard, but we just want the country to know what a son of a bitch you are for abandoning the people who believe in you. It’s a tough life.”
“It’s tough on us, too,” Lafe said frankly. “He’s right in one sense, you’ve got us all baffled. We hope you’re going to e-lu-ci-date,” he added with a grin at Seab, who permitted himself a sleepy wink in reply.
“Well,” Orrin said, and he pushed back from the table with its litter of finished meal and looked from face to face as they watched him intently, “I guess there’s no point in beating around the bush. He made me an offer, all right. You think of the most fantastic offer you can think of, and that’s it.”
Senator Munson smiled ironically.
“I wouldn’t believe him if you didn’t get it in writing,” he said. Senator Knox reached in his pocket for a piece of paper and passed it over without comment.
There followed a period of thoughtful silence while it went from hand to hand. Finally Seab, the last recipient, passed it back.
“Well, sir,” he said softly, “well, now, sir, I think that’s a right historic document. I really do. I think that’s something I wouldn’t believe if I didn’t see it.”
“I knew you wouldn’t,” Orrin said. “That’s why I showed it to you. Do you think it’s negotiable?”
“In gold,” Stanley Danta said, and they all nodded.
“That’s what he told me,” Orrin said. “I just wanted to know if you concurred.”
“A great opportunity for a red-blooded American boy,” Senator Danta said. “All you have to do is give up your principles and back Bob Leffingwell.”
“Shall I?” Orrin asked simply, and there was silence again.
“Can you?” Warren Strickland inquired quietly, and the senior Senator from Illinois, for the first time any of them could remember in all their years of public life together, looked puzzled and driven and unhappy.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “That’s what scares me. I don’t know.” And again he glanced around the circle.
“Should I?” he said.
“Well, sir,” Seab said finally, “Lafe and Warren and I, now, of course our judgment is colored by our feelings about Mr. Leffingwell. And Bob and Stanley, they feel the other way and that affects their judgment, too. But leaving aside all of that and speaking just for myself, Orrin, it has been my observation that when a man deserts something he basically and fundamentally believes in, he loses something inside. Yes, sir, he loses something inside. Not,” he added ironically, “that I haven’t seen it happen many a time in this old Senate. No, sir, not that I haven’t seen it happen. But a man pays for it. Yes, sir, he pays. And sometimes,” he said softly, “sometimes what he gets for it doesn’t quite make up for what he pays for it. Sometimes it truly doesn’t.”
“Maybe I should ask you this,” Senator Knox said. “Have I got any right to want to be President? Isn’t it terribly presumptuous of me to even think about it at all? Have I got any right to bargain on that basis to begin with? Maybe you should tell me that first.”
Senator Cooley smiled a little in his heavy-lidded way.
“Now you are seeking the easy way out, Orrin,” he said. “That’s what you are doing, you are seeking the easy way out. I don’t think,” he said, and he too looked slowly from face to face, “that there is any man here, or any man out there on the floor—including your dear friend from Arkansas—who doesn’t think that you’re fully qualified to be President of the United States, or wouldn’t feel perfectly comfortable to have the government in your hands. Am I correct in that, Senators?”
“You’re correct in that, Seab,” the Majority Leader said. “You have to match yourself against what’s available now and what’s been available in the past. After all, Presidents are only men. Some of them weren’t much when they were trying to get it and some of them weren’t much after they got it. Surveying the lot, I wouldn’t say you had anything to worry about on that score.”
“In other words,” Orrin said with a sudden smile, “I’m no worse than the worst of them.”
“Let’s say you’re as good as the best of them,” Bob Munson said with an answering smile. “I agree with Seab, false modesty doesn’t enter into the problem right now.”
“I think it comes back,” Senator Danta said thoughtfully, “to the kind of man Orrin Knox has been and the kind of man you want him to be from now on.”
“Spoken like the father of my daughter-in-law,” Senator Knox said, again with a smile.
“And to be solved, I have no doubt, like the father of my son-in-law,” Stanley said. “I’m not worried about that. I don’t think, really, that it has any bearing on Bob Leffingwell, or that Bob Leffingwell, actually, really has much to do with it. He’s the issue on which it turns, but the fundamental decision is something involving your own being, and it goes far deeper than this nomination.”
“Yes,” Senator Knox said, “and that’s what I’m not yet sure of. You all know,” he went on quietly, looking down at the paper lying open before him on the table, “that I have wanted for a long time to be President. I’ve failed twice. I want to try again. With this piece of paper and the support it represents and guarantees, there is very little doubt in my mind that I can have the nomination and, in all probability, the election. This piece of paper represents the Presidency of the United States...” He sighed and looked up with a strangely beseeching smile. “It isn’t easy,” he said.
“Of course it isn’t,” Lafe said sympathetically. “And,” he added, “it isn’t really something that we can help you on, either, is it? It’s something that only one man can decide, really, and that’s you. I don’t know about the rest of the fellows, but I wouldn’t presume to try to advise you.” He smiled. “I wouldn’t want the responsibility, frankly.”
Again there was a little silence, and finally the Senator from Illinois looked up and spoke in a way that moved them all.
“Well,” he said quietly, “my friends—my dear friends, of so many years’ standing and so many battles together....Of course Lafe is entirely right. He doesn’t want the responsibility, and neither do any of you, and I haven’t the right to ask you to help me shoulder it. So I won’t, any more. It’s something I’ve got to solve, and solve alone, I guess....Although,” he added in a more hopeful voice, “maybe Hank can help me.”
“I’m sure she will do all she can,” Senator Cooley said softly, “but I’ll wager even she won’t be able to finally do it for you, Orrin. Something like this, only one person in all the world can do for you. You know that, Orrin.”
“Probably,” Senator Knox said in a desolate voice. “Probably...”
“Well,” Bob Munson said with a sudden briskness, “I think I’d better get back to the floor and see what’s going on.”
“I’m with you,” Lafe said with a grin. “I feel like saying a few things to make a few people mad.”
“So do I,” Stanley said, and Warren Strickland laughed as they left the table.
“I might join in, too,” he said. “I think this debate needs a little livening up.” “Thank you all,” Orrin said in a voice that wasn’t quite steady. “Thank you all so much.”
“What are friends for?” Lafe asked simply. “Come on,
Bob, last one out is something I might say if it weren’t for the N.A.A.C.P.”
And thus they emerged laughing together from the Majority Leader’s office and, still laughing, brushed aside the queries of the eager band of reporters who had inevitably found their place of meeting. No cautionary word of secrecy had been uttered by any of them, nor was it necessary, for the thought of revealing anything of so intimate a conversation did not even cross the minds of these old friends.
A few minutes after they reached the floor, however, the junior Senator from Iowa just happened to have occasion to wander into the cloakroom just behind the senior Senator from South Carolina.
“I don’t know about you,” he murmured, “but I’m going to keep right on rounding up votes as though there weren’t any doubt at all.”
Senator Cooley nodded.
“I don’t think there is,” he said. “No, sir, I don’t think he quite knows it yet, but I don’t think there is, at all.”
Despite this calm assurance on the part of his friends, however, it was still with the inner turmoil that couldn’t quite keep from showing that he sat through another hour of debate as the floor and the galleries which had emptied for dinner, began to fill up again as they always do for a night session. The press sent in three different times to try to get him to come out for an interview, and each time he refused; some of them even tried, humorously, to mouth questions silently to him from the gallery, but he only smiled firmly and shook his head. Let them guess and keep guessing; he wasn’t going to complicate his own difficulties by getting himself in a false position answering questions. There still faced him the promise he had given Powell Hanson of a statement before the Senate recessed for the night, but he was not even sure now that he would do that. It might be better to sleep on it. He would have to talk to Hank and see what she thought. Then it might be clearer.
“We just tried to corner Orrin,” the AP and UPI reported breathlessly to their colleagues a little later, “but he outran us.”
“Where’s he going?” the Times asked, and his colleagues shook their heads.
“I don’t know,” AP said, “but he’s sure hell-bent for something.”
“We paced him through the Rotunda,” UPI said, “but he gained on us going down the British Stairway. By the time we reached the bottom he had doubled back toward the Senate and gone to ground in one of the back elevators. The door slammed in our faces just as we got there. It went up.”
“I haven’t had such a problem in pursuit since I was at O.C.S. during the war,” AP said. “You never saw such a neat piece of evasive action in your life.”
Behind him as he waited in the archway under the great stone steps of the deserted House side he heard the revolving door go around, and then a friendly hand gave his elbow a firm squeeze.
“Orrin,” the Speaker said, “this is a nice surprise for us lowly characters of the House. To what do we owe the honor?”
“It isn’t an honor, Bill,” he said with a smile. “I’m just hiding out.”
The Speaker smiled in his fatherly fashion.
“Good place,” he said. “We’ve got lots of room over here. A man can get lost faster in the House, I say, than he can anywhere else.” He chuckled suddenly. “That’s what I tell my freshmen when they come here. Yes, sir, I say: “You know, a man who doesn’t co-operate can get lost faster in this House than he can anyplace else on earth.’” The chuckle grew to a laugh. “Scares hell out of ’em,” he said.
Senator Knox laughed, too.
“You’re an old reprobate, Bill,” he said. “I’m glad I’m not under your thumb.”
“You’re not under anybody’s thumb, Orrin,” the Speaker said. “Except I hear this afternoon maybe you’re under his thumb. Is that true?”
And he looked at the Senator from shrewd old eyes that over the decades had seen thousands of ambitious men come and go, each seeking his particular place in the sun, some making it, some failing, almost all in one way or another dependent upon his favor or enmity for it. But the Senator from Illinois never had been, and he questioned him now not in the sense of wanting to interfere but with a respectful curiosity, because he liked Orrin Knox and wanted to know how things were with him.
“No,” Orrin said slowly, “it isn’t true, Bill.” He paused. “Just between us—” He began and then stopped to give the Speaker a quick glance. The Speaker nodded gravely.
“How else?” he asked simply.
“He’s offered to back me next year if I’ll go along on Leffingwell,” the Senator said. “What shall I do, Bill?”
The Speaker was silent for a while, and then he too rejected, kindly but firmly, the opportunity to give advice.
“Seems to me that’s your problem, Orrin,” he said. “I don’t honestly know what I’d say. Appears to me you’ll have a good chance next year. Whether you can do it without him—whether you can do it over his opposition—that’s another matter....On the other hand,” he said slowly, “whether you’d want to keep on living with Orrin Knox if you got it on a bargain of that kind, that, too, I don’t know....It’s been a bad business,” he said with a sigh. “Messing the party up like this. Killing people. I was awfully sad about Brig. Awfully sad. He was a fine boy.”
“That’s one reason,” Senator Knox said, “that I just don’t see how I can make a deal with him.”
“Mmm,” the Speaker said. “I reckon he was a little upset about that himself.”
“Oh, he was,” Orrin said shortly. “After the fact.” They fell silent again.
“Well,” the Speaker said, “it’s a hard problem, Orrin, but I guess I’m no different from everyone else you’ve asked, if you have asked anyone. I imagine everyone’s turned you down. Nobody wants to give advice on a thing like that.”
“That’s right,” Orrin said, rather forlornly, “nobody does.”
“Who are you waiting for?” the Speaker asked, and, being a shrewd and wise old man, guessed. “Bee?”
“Yes,” the Senator said.
“A fine woman,” the Speaker said. “A fine, fine woman. I hope she’ll be able to help you, Orrin....But in any event,” he said, “one thing, anyway: I think maybe you can count on me for next year. I don’t know what you’ll decide or what he’ll do, but I have a pretty good idea what I’m going to do. I’m going to be for you, if it’s any help.”
“Any help?” Senator Knox demanded. “Any help? My God, Bill, you know it’s all the help in the world. I appreciate it more than I can say. I’ll never forget it. Never.”
The Speaker smiled.
“Oh, you might,” he said. “Men have a way of forgetting things, in this town.”
“Well,” Orrin Knox said tartly, “I don’t.”
“I know you don’t, Orrin,” the Speaker said. “I expect that’s one of the reasons I’m for you. You’re not a forgetter. It’s all of a piece with the rest of you. I know where I stand with you. That’s more than I can say,” he added with a dry little smile, “about our mutual friend.”
There came a flash of headlights, a car swung into the archway.
“Here she comes,” the Speaker said, and then as he saw the long, black limousine, “Nope, it’s mine.” He held out his hand. “Orrin, my friend,” he said. “Good traveling, whatever your road.”
“Thank you, Bill,” the Senator said. “You’re a true friend.”
“You have more than you think,” the Speaker said as he got in. “Never think you don’t.”
He waved in a kindly fashion and his chauffeur took him off, a figure grown old and wise in the ways of men and politics, brought successfully by the years to a position where all his ambitions were achieved, all inner storms were over, he could look with a firm but friendly eye upon those of other men; and where his word, once given, could not be swayed by anyone.
“Well,” she said, turning the car down Independence Avenue, “what shall we do, go to Hains Point and neck?”
This general irreverence and insouciance, which had done so mu
ch over the years to help him keep his balance, provoked the chuckle it always did.
“I’m afraid not,” he said, making it sound regretful. “The boys in the house tell me you’re a hell of a hot number, but—”
“Orrin Knox!” she exclaimed. “Nobody ever told you I was a hot number!”
“I wish they had,” he said. “Then I would have been prepared for it.”
She laughed and, he noticed, blushed a little.
“Now, cut it out,” she said. “You win. I’m sorry I even mentioned it.”
“I’m not,” he said. “It evokes many pleasant memories. It holds out promise of many future—”
“So are you going to be President of the United States?” she interrupted firmly, and his mood sobered at once.
“I don’t know,” he said as they came to Agriculture and passed under the covered bridge between the North and South buildings. “Do you think I should?”
“I’ve always thought you should,” she said. “Whether you should in this context is another question. What do the others think?”
“They wouldn’t say,” he remarked glumly. “They said, and rightly, that it was too important a thing for them to take responsibility. They told me I was on my own. So did the Speaker.”
“Oh?” she said. “When did you see the Speaker?”
“Just now,” he said. “He was just going home. He said one thing that in a way makes it even more complicated. He said he’d be for me regardless of what the President does.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “He’s a good friend.”
“He’s great,” he said. “But he wouldn’t advise me either. And you know something? Nobody thinks you will, either.”
“Really?” she said as they came to a turnout along the Tidal Basin and she drew off and parked. “How did they guess?”