Capable of Honor

by Allen Drury

  For just as surely as Washington’s seductive glamor corrupts some politicians, so too does it corrupt the world of Walter Wonderful. The process is hardly conscious, seldom sinister. It is just that it is so much more pleasant to be popular with your friends than it is to write the harsh, objective truth. It is so much easier and more comfortable to adopt the automatic, well-polished attitudes of the group than it is to take the hard and lonely road of thinking for yourself. It is so much nicer—and so much more profitable—to be In than Out.

  Not, of course—as Walter sometimes realizes, a little uneasily—that this applies to all who are in, or about, or involved with, his world. There are many who came to Washington determined to tell the straight, unslanted truth and have remained true to that high ideal during many long and faithful years of service in the press. There are columnists and reporters who were capable of honor when they came to the capital, and live by honor still. Helen-Anne Carrew, in her raucous, self-opinionated way, is one. There are a good many others, liberal or conservative as it suits them, but alike in their devotion to the truth and their determination to tell it regardless of whether it helps or hurts their favorites, frustrates or assists their enemies.

  But their ranks are dwindling and their influence declines alongside the national and international power of Walter’s world.

  The advantages held by those who believe in the Right Position are too great for the skeptically honest to overcome. Being popular with each other has become the surest road to fame and fortune, and year after year shrewd young applicants, trained in a new school, thinking Right Thoughts, come to Washington, seek their places with an eager ambition, and are fitted smoothly into the mold.

  Once—just once—a certain satiric self-knowledge about all this was allowed to creep into a Gridiron Club show. Some irreverent soul managed to have accepted for performance (nobody knew how, when an indignant postmortem was held) a jovially acrid skit in which a row of members dressed as defeated presidential candidates tripped to the footlights. Wistfully they sang:

  “Oh—

  you—

  can—

  “Slant the news,

  Twist our views,

  Warp the facts.

  Give us the ax—

  “But—

  if—

  you—

  “Stand tall in Georgetown,

  Stand tall in Georgetown,

  Stand tall in Georgetown,

  “You’re—

  all—

  RIGHT!”

  This had produced such a raucous cheer from the Gridiron’s roster of distinguished political and diplomatic guests that its like had never been permitted again. But from that time forward, “Stand tall in Georgetown!” became, as it remains, a favorite joke in the world of Walter Wonderful.

  “Got to stand tall in Georgetown!” somebody will grin, skillfully boosting Bobby, vilifying Dick, sanctifying Adlai, blackguarding Barry. “Better watch out or you won’t stand tall in Georgetown!” someone else will chuckle to a friend who has inadvertently been fair to the other side.

  Stand tall in Georgetown!

  It is the surest way to fame and preferment in Walter’s world, and the goal inspires them all.

  Or almost all, he thinks with an impatient annoyance as the phone rings loudly in the quiet room and he pauses, methodically turns off the electric typewriter, and lifts the receiver to hear an all-too-familiar voice. There are people in Washington who never will think Right Thoughts, adhere to the Right Position, give him the respect which is his due. Fortunately they aren’t very numerous. Most people, he thinks with a tiny smile of satisfaction about his lips as he recalls Patsy Labaiya’s greeting, think he’s God.

  Not so, he remembers as the smile fades and a grim little line furrows his forehead, his ex-wife.

  “I suppose I’m interrupting genius again, but, God, Walter, life is so exciting when you’re involved that I just couldn’t hold back.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said dryly. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I want to know if you’re going to fall for Patsy’s line and get suckered in on Ted Jason’s campaign. It seems a legitimate inquiry, between us two old friends.”

  “Are you going to warn me against it?” he inquired politely. “How very thoughtful of you, dear.”

  “I think it would be stupid. And I don’t conceive of you as stupid, Walter. Misled by ego sometimes, but not stupid.”

  “Oh, I am, am I?” he demanded, his voice losing its customary careful gravity and flaring into the sudden anger only she knew how to provoke. Damnable woman, anyway. It was the reason their marriage had been impossible from the start: she was so disrespectful and she—she made him mad. A snort was her only response to his tone now: it was absolutely typical. “I am not!” he said angrily. “Ego doesn’t have anything to do with it!”

  “Oh, of course it does,” she said impatiently. “You’d just love to be the gray eminence of the White House, dear heart. You didn’t make it with Lyndon but maybe you might with Ted. Plus the fact that you still get a thrill out of dragging the press and TV after you. You just love being Walter Wonderful, the swayer of mankind. Come on, now. ’Fess up.”

  “I have always thought,” he said, breathing hard, “that you were particularly obnoxious when you tried to be kittenish. ’Fess up! It’s like an elephant with a teacup.”

  “Come, come,” she said briskly, “stop trying to be nasty, Walter. You don’t really know how to do it in personal relationships. Dr. Dobius only insults through his column. Personally, I’ve never thought you really had the heart—not the willingness, but the honest-to-God heart inside you—to be honestly blind-mad at somebody. There always has to be a cold-blooded motivation you can express in some devious, involuted way. Anyway, we’re getting afield—the same old field. I repeat, I hope you’re not going to be a sucker for the Jasons. Ted isn’t worth it.”

  “Governor Jason,” he said coldly, “is a most attractive candidate and one worthy of any trust the country may desire to place upon him.”

  “Are you quoting? Is that the speech? Oh, it will be one of your smasheroos, Walter, I can see that. But I think you’d be a fool to do it.”

  “Now, see here,” he said, striving hard to put the conversation back on the rational plane from which she always tried to shift it, “surely you aren’t suggesting that I should support Orrin Knox? After all he’s done?”

  “What has he done?” she inquired with a deliberate blankness. “Except be an honest man acting on his honest convictions? I know that’s considered rather square in your crowd, Walter, but I’ve got news for you. A lot of your countrymen still go for it in spite of all the educational efforts you and your pals have expended on them in the past few decades.”

  “Have you talked to Bob Leffingwell about it?” he demanded abruptly.

  “I don’t see what bearing that has, but I have. At the Nigerian Embassy last night. At some length. Have you?”

  “Not for about a month,” he said, relieved that she seemed to be diverted from her personal attacks.

  “You should. You might be surprised. He isn’t so hot for Ted as all that.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said flatly.

  This time she got mad.

  “Walter Dobius, one thing I don’t do is lie, and you know it. Now, stop that. Get out of your dream world and get with it, for a change. You’ve lived in that ivory tower too long.”

  “Nobody else on earth,” he said in a grating voice, “has the colossal nerve to talk to me like that. Now, you stop it.”

  “Now, you stop it,” she mimicked. “You stop shaking poor old Walter’s faith in himself. He hasn’t got too much, you know.”

  “Helen-Anne,” he said in the same harsh tone, “I’m going to hang up on you.”

  “No you’re not,” she said calmly, “because I’m a smart woman and you know it and you’re always ready to pick my brains and so you won’t do any hanging up until I’ve had my say. Now, I�
�ve been around this town just about as long as you have, dearie, and I’ve been talking to some people myself. I think you’ll be making the mistake of a lifetime if you line up with Ted.”

  “What do you care?” he asked bitterly. “All you’ve ever wanted was to see me brought down. You’ve always been jealous because I was more famous than you, you’ve always resented it that my column has 436 papers and yours only has 321—”

  “Walter,” she said, “stop talking like a petulant child, and listen to me. There’s something phony about that candidacy and there always has been. I haven’t found out what it is, yet, but I will. Or maybe we all will, all at once. At which time Walter Wonderful, if he’s out front leading the parade, may suddenly find himself in a rather awkward position. Awkward positions, Walter, are something we must avoid, you know, at all costs. Isn’t that Rule One?”

  “Are you through insulting me?” he asked in a weary tone. She snorted.

  “Oh, my, the Dying Swan. I’m not insulting you, love. I’m just trying to get you to be very cautious on this one.”

  “Anyway,” he said, changing to a patient tone such as one would use with a child, which was really all she was under the hardboiled-newspaperwoman exterior, “what is so phony about the Governor of California aspiring to the Presidency of the United States? Harley’s predecessor was Governor of California. It’s a big state. It’s been done before.”

  “Sure, and people buying their way into the White House has been done before, too. But that isn’t the answer to everything. No, I think you’d better think it over. Something tells me this may get quite sticky before we’re through.”

  “You always have been a conservative,” he said in a tone popular in his world, the tone that indicates that being conservative is the worst possible sin a body could commit. “You always have liked Orrin Knox.”

  “I hate his guts,” she said. “And stop using your cant words on me, Walter. They’re ridiculous and they don’t scare me. You can terrify a lot of our friends in press and television by calling them conservative, but not me. I don’t give a damn. I’m interested in what a man is, not in the label you and your pals manage to hang on him. Now: I’m just telling you, and”—her tone became noticeably dry—“in my own small way, Walter, boy, I’m just as infallible as you are—that you’ll be making a mistake if you go too far out on a limb for Edward Jason. It’s a screwball family, in more ways than one, and having several hundred millions just means that it’s several hundred million times more screwball. I’d go slow, if I were you. That’s all.”

  “I am so touched by your concern,” he said with an equal dryness.

  “You should be. I don’t show it to everyone.”

  “Yes, you do,” he said honestly. “To a lot of people. You do have a kind heart underneath it all. But why to me?”

  “You’ll never know, Walter, darling. Maybe because I still love you passionately, in the secret silence of my lonely room.”

  It was his turn to sound skeptical.

  “No doubt.”

  “Believe it. It’s good for the ego.”

  “Of which you tell me I already have too much. Thank you for calling,” he said formally, his voice regaining its customary solemn authority, preparing to bid her farewell. “I appreciate your interest.”

  “O.K. Back to the drawing board, now! Give ’em hell in that speech. We’ll all be there to listen. Just remember what I said.”

  “I couldn’t care less what you say,” he told her with a last flare of annoyance. But she only gave her ribald laugh.

  “Oh, yes, Walter, dear. Oh, yes. That’s the trouble. That was always the trouble.”

  “Aaaaarrrkh!” he exclaimed, a sound inconsistent with his dignity but expressive of his feelings, and replaced the receiver with rather more vehemence than his vast public would have associated with the figure of gravely impersonal philosopher-statesman Walter Dobius.

  After that for a while, of course, his concentration was shot and there was little point in trying to go on with his speech. Helen-Anne always had this effect upon him; it was one of the main reasons their marriage had broken up. He just couldn’t concentrate with her around the house being disrespectful and unimpressed and building up her syndication on the basis of her hunches about things which nine times out of ten, infuriatingly, turned out to be right. And now she had done it again, with her mysterious nagging about Ted Jason. Who on earth did she want in the White House anyway, Orrin Knox? He was beginning to think so, and if anything was calculated to drive him farther toward Ted, it was the thought that his ex-wife might be for Orrin.

  Except, of course, that as Helen-Anne said, he wasn’t stupid, and he did value her judgment in spite of everything. What on earth had her worried about the Jasons? They had their foibles, but what Presidential or potentially Presidential family didn’t? In Washington the warts of the great were considerably more visible than they were out in the country, but everyone had them and there didn’t seem to him anything noticeably unusual about the Jasons’. Particularly when Governor Jason represented a political philosophy—“moderate” was the label Walter and his world had begun to apply to him with increasing frequency in these past several weeks—that offered a position infinitely more desirable than that of the Secretary of State, with his annoying tendency to act on the basis of principle instead of on the automatic catch-phrases that Walter and his friends had evolved to rationalize the catastrophic changes of a churning world.

  Still, Helen-Anne had been quite positive. He made again his half-coherent sound of protest and got up impatiently from his desk. The darkness outside was complete, now, and over the sleepy snapping of the fire only an occasional slap of snow, carried on the vicious wind against the old home’s leaded windows, brought reminder of the bitter weather raging. Downstairs Arbella would be readying dinner, and by the downstairs fireplace Roosevelt would soon be mixing the customary Manhattan and placing it on the antique table by the big leather armchair. One cocktail and one glass of wine with dinner: the rule was virtually inviolate. But tonight, he thought with a sudden viciousness as savage as the wind, he might just have two cocktails and three or four glasses of wine, since Helen-Anne wanted his concentration ruined. He’d really ruin it!

  But this, of course, was just a passing thought for Walter Dobius, who had never done anything impulsive or uncareful in his life. In an instant it was gone. Methodically he placed his papers in a neat pile, checked the fire screen to make sure it was snug against the hearth, pressed his forehead for a moment against the icy pane and attempted without success to see out into the dark woods, and then turned and started to snap off the desk light, so that no electricity would be wasted between now and the time after dinner when he would return to resume working on his speech.

  As he did so, the phone rang again. He hesitated for a second, then took up the receiver with an impatient hand. The little tinkling tremolos of long distance came to his ear. His expression changed to one of interest and then, as his caller introduced himself, to one of pleased attention. Slowly he sat back down again.

  “Walter,” the confident voice of Governor Jason said across three thousand miles, “Patsy tells me you’re having a hell of a snowstorm back there. I’ve been on the beach all day at La Jolla. Pity me!”

  Walter Dobius chuckled.

  “You pioneers really have to rough it, out there in the Far West. Am I seeing you for lunch on Thursday?”

  “You are. I couldn’t be happier about it. I hope I can resolve then any doubts that you may have.”

  “I haven’t many,” Walter said complacently (for at least the Governor of California knew who he was talking to, and showed the proper respect). “I’m sure what there are won’t be insurmountable.”

  “I hope not,” Ted said frankly. “Your influence is so great that it would be an enormous help to me if I had your approval—and an enormous detriment if I didn’t.” He gave a flattering little laugh and added with a flattering candor, “Nothing is more imp
ortant to me than satisfying Walter Dobius, I can tell you that.”

  “Yes,” Walter said gravely. “I think I probably am in a position to have a decisive effect on your candidacy at this particular moment.”

  “None more so,” Governor Jason said with an equal gravity. “I join Patsy in her delight that you have accepted our invitation to be the recipient of the Good and Faithful Servant Award this year. We look forward with lively anticipation to your speech.” He gave an engaging chuckle. “For obvious reasons. What are you seeing of my distinguished opponent these days?”

  “Orrin?” The Governor could not see Walter’s sour little smile, but could sense it in his tone, amply enough. “Orrin and I haven’t had occasion to chat much, lately. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “I intend to talk to him prior to Friday night. I think in fairness I should,”

  “Is it an elimination contest?” Governor Jason asked with a certain asperity he did not attempt to soften. “I didn’t understand your principles were up for bids, Walter.”

  There was a stunned silence. Finally Walter said coldly:

  “Only a man possessed of supreme confidence in himself would venture such a remark to me.”

  Ted laughed.

  “Possessed of supreme confidence in you, Walter. If I had the slightest doubt about your principles, I can assure you, you would not be selected for GAFSA if it cost me the White House to refuse you. The Jasons have some pride too, you know.”

  “Too much, I sometimes think,” Walter could not resist. “As for Orrin, I think both you and Patsy take too much for granted about my feelings toward him. He is not an incompetent man, you know, or a poor public servant. In a great many ways there is much to admire in Orrin Knox.”

  “Very true. He just has one handicap.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You don’t like him.”