Come Nineveh, Come Tyre: The Presidency of Edward M. Jason

by Allen Drury

  His rejoinder was not kind.

  “Listen to me, you sniveling little fool,” he said and there was a savagery in his tone so profound and beyond the bounds of civilized dealing that Congressman Bronson could only gasp and blink in rather laughable dismay. “Listen and get it straight, because I’m not going to waste my time repeating it to you every ten minutes:

  “This Administration has a job to do and it is going to do it regardless of reactionary fools like Bill Abbott or so-called liberal fools like you. What in the Christ kind of game did you think you were getting into, anyway? Drop the handkerchief? We’ve got a country to run, and thanks to you and your silly pals in both houses we’ve got the law to do it with. And we’re going to enforce it to the limit and don’t you forget it, Bronnie-baby: to—the—limit. And that means you, if you don’t watch out. There’s plenty of room in St. E’s for bright young men who don’t want to help their great President and support their country. Want me to put you on the list?”

  And he gave Bronson Bernard a contemptuous and frighteningly inquisitive look that made the Congressman turn pale and actually move back a little in his chair. But Bronnie was brave as well as idealistic and the one reinforced the other. He leaned forward again and returned Fred look for look.

  “Don’t you threaten me,” he said angrily. “Don’t you threaten me, you monster. I’m not afraid of you and your phony psychiatric gimmicks. I want you to stop trying to set up a dictatorship over this country, or—or—”

  “Or what, Bronnie-boy?” Fred Van Ackerman inquired softly, with a dreamy and chilling detachment. “Just—what? What are you and your little pals going to do about it? What can you do about it? We’ve got the guns, you know. We’ve got St. E’s and all the places like St. E’s all over the country. We’re the government. What are you going to do, little crying liberal who suddenly finds the kid games are all over and it’s grown-up time, now? Shoot us dead, bang, bang? More likely we’re going to shoot you dead, Bronnie-boy, so don’t wet your pants. Keep calm and just follow along behind our great President Ted Jason and you’ll be quite all right. Okay?”

  “I can’t believe he’s condoning this,” Bronnie Bernard said in a desolate, far-off voice. “I just can’t believe it.”

  The president pro tempore gave a sarcastic snort.

  “He doesn’t know what he’s doing or what anybody else is doing,” he said with a dry contempt. “Don’t you understand that, Bronnie-boy? He’s all gone, that man. He just isn’t there anymore.”

  “I’ll get to him,” Bronnie shouted with a sudden desperate rage. “I’ll get to him! I’ll tell him what you’re doing! I’ll take it to the floor this afternoon and I’ll—I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” Fred interrupted savagely. “Look around you when you get there, friend. You’ll see everybody’s scared to death. It’s too late, don’t you see that? It’s just too late. It’s been done and there’s no way out. You and your friends should have thought of that while there was time. There isn’t time now.”

  “But,” Bronson Bernard said, and his voice was despairing and his eyes were haunted, and now he looked fully as young, idealistic and desolate as he was, confronted by the awful consequences of a misguided but terribly well-meaning idealism, “we just wanted to help him save the country … we just wanted to help strengthen him so he could fight for liberal causes we all believed in … we just wanted—peace.”

  “Yes,” Fred Van Ackerman said, and there was almost a kindness in his voice. “Well. You just run along now, Bronson. Don’t worry your head about the way things are going anymore, because there’s no point in it. It would just weaken you, and you’re needed. He needs you right here on the Hill, he has a place for you, you’re going to be one of his bright young leaders, just as you always wanted to be … because if you aren’t—” his voice became dreamy again. “Well, if you aren’t, there’s always St. E’s, where you’d have a lot of company from the Hill, because we have some names on our lists who are going to be surprised in their beds some night soon. And up there in Manhattan, you know, there are two nice little old people, Mommy and Daddy, quite defenseless, you know, quite defenseless. And Sonny-boy is way down here … so you’d better get along back to the House, Bronnie. We need you there.”

  “Monster!” Congressman Bernard said, white with rage, fear and horror. “Monster.”

  Fred Van Ackerman grinned.

  “Somebody,” he said cheerfully, “should have thought of that, a long time ago.… ”

  And so much, he thought with a savage satisfaction as he returned to his desk after showing his shaking visitor out with an elaborately ironic courtesy, for pipsqueak little baby-faced dreamers who thought they could pretend their way through today’s real world. It wasn’t their hoped-for earthly paradise any more, never had been, never would be: it was a jungle. In the jungle Fred Van Ackerman, predator, stalked with the best.

  The clock on the wall gave a sudden loud click, the buzzer sounded twelve noon. The Senate was in session. He thought with a sudden amusement that he would go over and frighten the Vice President out of the Chair. If he made his tone sufficiently menacing, Roger P. Croy would hand him the gavel in a flustered, pompous, frightened hurry.

  So he went on over, a pleasant little smile on his face, sidled up to Roger earnestly after the chaplain finished his worried prayer, and whispered, “I’ll preside for a while.”

  “But,” Roger P. Croy protested. “But—”

  “I said,” Fred Van Ackerman repeated, making his tone suddenly ominous, “I’ll preside for a while. Or do you want me to make a great big public scene, right here?”

  “Why—why, no,” Roger P. Croy said hastily. “Why—why, no.”

  “Then git,” Senator Van Ackerman said happily. “Just—git.”

  “Why, er—yes,” Roger P. Croy agreed, in a flustered, pompous, frightened hurry. “Why—yes.”

  4

  The wind whipped across the haunted hillside, haven of Kennedys and many others gone, in one way or another, in the service of their country; and to the small but valiant band of mourners who moved slowly between two new graves it seemed to bite with an extra savagery on this desolate morning.

  Elizabeth Henry Knox and Thomas Buckmaster Davis were being laid to rest, not far from one another; and at the request of the Knox family and the little Justice’s sole surviving brother, the services at National Cathedral and the interment at Arlington National Cemetery were being held together.

  Now finally, to Hal and Crystal, to the Justice’s brother, and to the handful of intimate friends who had braved the weather to attend the twin ceremonies, the fact of irrevocable termination was at last coming home, though two such vigorous spirits did not leave easily, and in a sense, of course, never would. Whatever might have to be faced by those who were left, something of Beth Knox and Tommy Davis would remain, indomitable and unchanging, to strengthen them for it; if, indeed, such strengthening were any longer possible, or could help.

  The services at the Cathedral had been muted, short, almost furtive, in contrast to so many other high farewells of state that had been conducted there. The dean of the Cathedral, whose assumptions of a lifetime were in ruins like those of so many others, had gotten through the ritual low-voiced, subdued, bereft of his usual glamour- and glittering words: he felt this as he had felt few other such occasions, and he knew as well as anyone what its implications were. Indeed, he only needed to glance at his morning newspapers to have his most somber misgivings confirmed: neither Times nor Post had carried so much as a word. To have done so, he suspected with a desperately worried bitterness, would have been to run counter to that domestic peace and tranquility so necessary to the success of the policies of the President.

  He himself, in fact, was probably counter to that success; and like so many others in the past forty-eight hours, he too was now expecting the knock on the door, the terror in the night. How long would he be permitted to remain before a more sympathetic presence in that
fashionably influential post became necessary to the new order of things being imposed upon America? Not much longer, he imagined. The foreboding showed in the intonation of every word and the sad, more than usually elegiac, farewells he uttered for two old friends.

  Noticeable also was the size of the funeral party that gathered, silent and barely nodding to one another, to pay their respects and then follow the two hearses across the Potomac to Arlington. Very few represented the hundreds who would have been there in steadier days. Perhaps a hundred only, the bedrock of those who used to honor the names of Knox and Davis: the ex-President, Hal and Crystal, Bob and Dolly Munson, Stanley Danta, Warren Strickland, Justice Cappola and Madam Justice Watson, Lafe Smith and Mabel Anderson, Cullee Hamilton and Sarah Johnson, a few other members of Senate and House, the Knoxes’ maid and gardener, some clerks, some secretaries, a scattering of anonymous citizens, some sincere, some curious. Surprisingly, and also, perhaps, at serious risk to themselves in these new times, five were present from the diplomatic corps: the British Ambassador and his lady, the French Ambassador and his, and the Indian Ambassador. There was no formal representation from the White House. Only the Secretary of State, in a gesture that would have been expected a week ago but now seemed suddenly very brave, was present from the President’s official family.

  After the words had been said, the hymns played, the tears shed, the gathering dwindled even further. Six cars only formed the cortège that moved swiftly, almost apologetically, along the broad avenues and over the frozen water to the beautiful hill. There the interment services, also delivered by the dean, were extremely brief, again almost apologetic, almost furtive. The flags draping both caskets were removed, dirt fell, the earth began to close over Beth beside Orrin, Tommy a few yards away. Slowly, by twos and threes and fours, the mourners straggled back down the hill toward their cars. Some would disperse into the tense city, some fly home across the uneasy land. A handful would move on to “Vagaries” in Rock Creek Park, where Dolly Munson had suggested they stop by for a bite to eat and a visit together. She had done her best to make it sound as though it were not the last one but the thought lay behind all their careful words. Only Celestine Barre was typically direct and pragmatic.

  “Events have been moving so swiftly on center stage,” Dolly had said yesterday when she called her, “that we haven’t been able to get together off on the side and discuss them as we used to do.”

  “And may not be able to again,” Celestine had said in what was, for her, a rare volubility.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t like to think that!” Dolly had exclaimed, obviously thinking it.

  “Nor I,” Celestine had replied. “But it is there, dear Dolly. It is there.”

  And so it was, as the cars drew up under the portico of “Vagaries” and their passengers got out. How many times had cars drawn up before those lovely columns, how many times had these same people, and many more besides, stepped forward to enter the all-embracing warmth of the Munson’s beautiful home! And when would “Vagaries” see the likes of those happy days again? It was a thought they did not care to contemplate but were unable to ignore.

  Nonetheless, for a little while their host and hostess tried to put the best face on it; and aided by the fact that the first few minutes of such conversations are always grave and filled with emotion and thoughts of the dead, they were able to keep away from it. But presently the necessary things had been said, the necessary release had been achieved; even Hal and Crystal, though wan and somber, appeared to be a little more relaxed. And as was inevitable in a gathering of political people in that political house in that political city, someone said the first word, and they were off.

  “I notice,” Krishna Khaleel said in his brightly chirpy way, “that our distinguished journals did not mention the services today. I wonder why.”

  “You know why, K.K.,” William Abbott said calmly. “These were the non-services of non-persons. As such they were non-reported in non-newspapers, which is what we now have in America.”

  “Oh, Bill!” K.K. said cheerily. “Always so gloomy, always so pessimistic! It is only temporary. Nothing has changed. Nothing could change. This is America, Bill! America!”

  “We are leaving on Monday,” Raoul Barre said with a certain bleak, matter-of-fact calm. “We have been recalled.”

  The Indian Ambassador looked at him in surprised dismay.

  “Yes?” he said. “Yes?”

  “Yes,” Lord Maudulayne said with an equally fatalistic bluntness. “We too.”

  “But why?” Krishna Khaleel demanded in an aggrieved tone. “Why, dear Claude, dear Raoul? Surely, you are not afraid that—”

  “I am afraid,” Lord Maudulayne said with a land of savage calm. “I am afraid. Also, I believe, my government now considers that Britain must have in Washington an ambassador who is a little more—tolerant, shall we say—of what is going on here. It is felt in Whitehall, in other words, that it is time for us to begin to adapt to the new United States which is suddenly—appallingly—unbelievably—but actually—beginning to emerge. It is believed,” he added bleakly, “that we must make our peace with the new situation, or, in due course, die. Therefore a new man is needed here. I am considered to have been much too close to the ancien régime. I am considered to be too sincere a believer in democracy and too open in my sympathies toward it. The New Day requires new men. Ergo—we bid you farewell, Tuesday week.”

  “But surely—” the Indian Ambassador said with a genuine unhappiness, “surely, it is not so. Surely, there is some—surely, your government cannot think that—”

  “Oh, but our governments do,” Raoul Barre interrupted. “They do, K.K. They do not take quite the long view that is taken in Delhi. They must deal with the situation here and now, right across the Atlantic. A great change is now under way in the world, beginning with the inaugural of the distinguished new President and accelerating every day, as things do in international affairs when certain barriers are suddenly knocked down. We, too, like our colleagues across the Channel, must adapt or die. Not so you Indians, of course. You have always been so—flexible. You, no doubt, will stay right on here, K.K., smiling with your usual sunny good will upon all that passes, serene in the knowledge that India has always been so sympathetic and understanding that her preservation can be taken for granted. India will give no trouble—you, K.K., will give no trouble. But Claude and I—we are too old to change. We have believed the wrong things for too many years. We have to go.

  “And soon, of course, in Paris and in London, many others will have to go, too. Whole governments will have to be restructured to meet the new situation in Washington. The United States cannot change without the world changing. And so it will be done: all will come, in due course, neatly into line. We are but the first indications. There will soon be many, many more.… So you see, dear Dolly, this is indeed the last gathering of our happy group at dear, delightful ‘Vagaries’—which I believe comes from the Latin ‘to wander,’ and can be held to mean ‘a wild fancy; an extravagant notion.’ … What a wild fancy,” he concluded with a sudden heavy bitterness, “that men are, or of right should be, or are capable of being for any great length of time, free! What an extravagant notion!”

  And rising suddenly he went to one of the room’s great windows and stood staring out unseeing at the cold white day, hands, locked behind his back, twisting and turning as though possessed of some unhappy life of their own.

  There was silence in the room for a time, broken at last by Dolly who had long ago adopted the social rule: when in doubt, ring for the maid. Two presently came, with coffee, tea and an ample cold buffet which they spread upon the two marble-topped Louis Quinze tables that stood along the wall. When they withdrew Dolly said firmly,

  “Now, there is food, everyone, and I think we should all have something. And I don’t think we should have further gloomy talk.”

  “Why not?” Hal Knox inquired slowly. “It’s true, isn’t it? Not many of us will ever be here agai
n. This kind of life isn’t going to last, Dolly. It’s going to be the first to go. ‘Vagaries’ has had it. And so has all that ‘Vagaries’ represents.”

  “I won’t have you say that in my house!” Dolly said with a sudden harsh, startling anger. Then quite abruptly she began to cry, as Senator Munson stepped forward and placed his hand, which she grasped, alongside her cheek.

  “Maybe better not,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t do any good and only upsets everybody.”

  “It’s upsetting me!” Mabel Anderson said with a sudden explosive force, the abrupt release of a shy and indrawn soul assailed beyond endurance. “I can’t take this city any more. I never could. Not even when Brig was here. And then when he—left—I left, and I didn’t intend ever to come back. But I did, because I thought—” she stared at Lafe, who looked completely shattered and taken aback—“because I thought there might be some peace and stability here, after all. And maybe there could be if it were just—us. But it isn’t just us. It’s Ted Jason and Fred Van Ackerman and all the rest of them, and what they’re doing to things. It’s fear, everywhere. It’s what the future holds for all of us who don’t agree. It’s horrible things about to happen to our country. And I can’t take it,” she said, beginning to cry in a forlorn, woebegone, little-girl fashion. “I just can’t take it anymore. I’m taking Pidge back to Utah and I’m never coming back. Never, ever, ever!”

  “But you can’t hide there,” Lafe said in a gentle, pleading tone. “You and Pidge won’t be any safer there than you will be right here with me. Really, you won’t.”

  “Safe with you!” she said, a terrible bitterness breaking through the tears. “Who says you’re safe? There isn’t a member of Congress who’s disagreed with him—there isn’t anybody who’s disagreed with him—who’s safe. You’re all on the list. Nobody is going to escape these people, nobody!”