Capable of Honor

by Allen Drury

  So it was that several separate conversations came together to make a whole; that the Speaker and the Majority Leader, just happening to step aside for five minutes privately with the First Lady, discovered that she did indeed bear words of recommendation and even compromise from her husband; that Secretary Knox and Governor Jason, posing together with a dutiful show of good-fellowship upon their almost simultaneous entries, found themselves approached separately later, Orrin by Senator Munson, Ted by the Speaker, with Lucille’s suggestions; that Cullee Hamilton, dancing with Sarah Johnson, still later found the Speaker murmuring in his ear, while Lafe Smith, happily getting reacquainted with Mabel Anderson in an evening that was turning out to be quite enchanted for them both, received the same message from Bob Munson; and that Joe Smitters and Bob Smutters and Roger P. Croy and even Mary Buttner Baffleburg, Lizzie Hanson McWharter, Anna Hooper Bigelow, and Esmé Harbellow Stryke were permitted to receive intimations, before the evening was over, that something was in the wind; and that Walter Dobius and his colleagues, moving diligently through the crush buttonholing, questioning, hunch-gathering, came rapidly to the alarming conclusion that bad people might be cooking up something that could conceivably hurt their hero, and rushed accordingly to their typewriters and microphones to sound the tocsin and call upon all Right Thinkers to come to the aid of the righteous before a carefully planned steamroller went off the tracks.

  HINT PRESIDENT OFFERS COMPROMISE ON JASON-KNOX COMMITTEE FEUDS, the first-edition morning-paper headlines said when the jovial throng, considerably better-fed and better-lubricated than it had been five hours before, began to straggle from the Palace of Fine Arts around 1 A.M.…JASON FORCES SEE ATTEMPT TO UNDERCUT GOVERNOR … KNOX DELEGATE STEAL (no longer in quotation marks) MAY GET HUDSON SUPPORT … KNOX WAR PLANK (similarly unfavored with quotes) MAY BE FORCED INTO PLATFORM … CONVENTION TAKES PRO-WAR TURN AS KNOX STRENGTH GROWS.

  “SAN FRANCISCO—What is happening here in this lovely city (Walter Dobius typed swiftly at 3 A.M. in the press room at the Hilton, where a wandering Life photographer conveniently came upon, and recorded, genius at work for next week’s convention roundup) is so old and obvious a replay of the shabbiest closet dramas of American politics as to leave one almost as stale and jaded as the thing itself.

  “The old pros are moving in on the young idealists, and the young idealists may soon find themselves fighting back-to-wall to rescue their young, idealistic candidate from one of those murderous deals that sicken democracy and move it some appreciable distance further on the road to its ultimate self-destruction.

  “Secretly and surreptitiously, with an almost Renaissance cleverness that goes surprisingly with his rather monotonous middle-class mentality, the President of the United States has apparently sent his wife on ahead of him as a sort of advance guard to prepare the way for his own direct interference in a convention he stoutly proclaimed he would not control. The First Lady has not heretofore been considered to belong to that history-shaping sorority that includes the first Elizabeth, Catherine the Great, and Madame Pompadour. Yet unlikely as it seems, this is the role her husband apparently has assigned her. She has performed it, and from it events of dire potential to the hopes and fortunes of Edward M. Jason have immediately begun to flow.

  “Now it appears that an attempt by supporters of the Secretary of State to assume control of the delegations of Ohio and Mississippi may succeed—because of a compromise proposed by Harley M. Hudson.

  “Now it appears that a foreign policy plank that betrays international morality, defies collective security, and gives endorsement to two of the most inexcusable and foredoomed interventions in American history may be riveted into the platform of this convention—at the insistence of Orrin Knox and Harley M. Hudson.

  “Now it appears possible—only, at this moment, just possible, but nonetheless possible—that Edward M. Jason may be defeated for the vice presidential nomination, and the candidacy of one of the most devious Secretaries of State ever to grace the Cabinet may thereby win an endorsement that could permit him to succeed at some later moment, without hindrance or challenge, to the Presidency.

  “It is a somber hour here in this delightful metropolis, perhaps the most gracious and charming, sharing only with Washington the title of most beautiful, of all American cities.

  “In Gorotoland and Panama the wars drag on, increasingly wasteful, increasingly deadly, as the President—and Orrin Knox—step up the American commitment to fifty thousand troops in Gorotoland, seventy-five thousand in Panama—and no end in sight.

  “In the United Nations, United States prestige sinks ever lower, as the President—and Orrin Knox—reject attempt after attempt by its desperately worried member-states to bring about negotiations that could end the bloodshed.

  “Every day the nation is taken further into a darkness from which only the most enlightened and liberal leadership can extract it.

  “Now the only possible means of securing that leadership is threatened. The one man who could bring some restoration of sanity into Administration councils—the one man who, should events take at some time some tragic turn that placed upon him unsuspected burdens, could return America to the high point of influence, honor, and prestige that America possessed before little men betrayed her—may be defeated here in San Francisco.

  “It is a time for all Americans to search their hearts and decide what they would like this convention to do—what their own futures and those of their children, and their children’s children, make it imperative that the convention do.

  “It is a time to send the word crashing across this great land, over forests and rivers and plains and peaks, until it rolls at last all the way from the Atlantic to the Golden Gate like the thunderclap of ages.

  “It is a time to abandon concepts of ‘fairness’ and ‘honor’ which have up to now hampered and hindered the Governor of California and his supporters. It is a time to be as ruthless and tough as Orrin Knox and his master in the White House.

  “It is a time to act.”

  ***

  Chapter 3

  “Did you see this God-damned thing of Walter’s?” Helen-Anne Carrew demanded six hours later when, a little bleary-eyed—as who wasn’t? After all, it was the second day of the convention and from now on each succeeding morning was going to be considerably more bleary-eyed than the last, for everybody—she happened upon Bob Leffingwell, eating breakfast alone in the coffee shop of the Fairmont. “I swear I think he’s going crazy again. Of all the open invitations to—kill Harley—or start a revolution—or something. What is the matter with the man?”

  “I don’t know,” Bob Leffingwell said, coming out of a brown study with an obvious effort. “Here, sit down and let me buy you breakfast. What do you hear?”

  “I hear things are going to get very ugly,” she said, taking the chair he offered, staring around the room already filling with delegates and newsmen. He could see her nodding to a few, ignoring others, making quick mental notes of who was eating with whom, calculating, as all Washington correspondents do, the significance of various combinations. “I suppose you know—of course you do—that COMFORT, DEFY, and KEEP have consolidated their headquarters at the Hilton this morning. They’re already out in the streets in full force in front of all the hotels and from Union Square on up the hill here, and they aren’t being very pleasant—I suppose with your connivance.”

  “That’s not exactly a friendly word,” he said with a fairly good attempt at a smile as the waitress came up. “What’ll you have?”

  “Just orange juice, toast, and coffee, thanks. I have to keep my girlish figure.…Say,” she added, pausing to really study him for the first time. “You’re not feeling very happy today. What’s the matter?”

  “Oh,” he said, and shrugged. “Mary Baffleburg, I suppose. My past—still my present, and apparently destined to be my future as well.”

  “That was rough,” she agreed. “But,” she added with an impartial judicious thoughtfulness th
at robbed it of much of its sting, “you deserved it—and surely you expected it, at some time or other. The only thing to do is ride it out. Your friends know you regret it, and they include a surprising number of people—even Orrin Knox, I think, and obviously the Speaker. So to hell with the rest of them.…But that isn’t all that’s bothering you, is it? Something else.…What’s the matter, is Ted really losing ground? Is Walter really right? Have we all got to rise up from the Atlantic to the Gate to stop big, bad Orrin? Must we shoot Harley?”

  He shook his head.

  “I think we’re holding very well”—he smiled and gestured to the headlines in the papers she carried, he carried, everyone carried—“in spite of the helpful scare-campaign launched for us by Walter and his friends. Ted and Orrin this morning are holding at about the same level they were last night, I think.…No,” he said, suddenly serious again, “I’m as worried about the mood as you are, Helen-Anne. I think it’s going to be very disturbing, before we’re through. Mary Baffleburg attacked me, but that was just an expression of something much deeper underlying this convention. That was an advance warning, whether she knows it or not in her fat little pudding-head. There’s something very nasty waiting to break out, I think. Contrary to my man’s confidence about it, I’m not so sure it can be controlled once it gets loose.”

  “My man won’t start it, sweetie.”

  “Nor will mine, at least consciously. But there are people who feel bitter enough so that it may not take much.”

  “What can we do to stop it?”

  He frowned.

  “I don’t know. That’s what disturbs me. Maybe”—he said somberly—“maybe the best thing to do is just get as far away from it as possible.”

  She snorted.

  “Hell’s fire, that’s no solution. I’m amazed at you. Bob Leffingwell, with all your history as a fighter in this government! You know perfectly well that’s no solution at all. You’re the last man I ever thought would break and run.”

  He smiled a twisted little smile.

  “Maybe Mary won her point.” Then he sighed and straightened up. “No, of course I don’t mean that. But I am disturbed, Helen-Anne, genuinely so, as you are. And I don’t know what to do about it. Ted thinks he can control COMFORT and DEFY and KEEP, but they represent powerful forces and now they’ve worked out an alliance that’s going to be terribly difficult to keep in hand. And violence begets violence, even though Orrin, too, of course, will do his best to prevent it. It isn’t going to be that easy. I can feel it in the air.”

  “Maybe,” she said thoughtfully, nodding an absent greeting to Esmé Harbellow Stryke, who had come in with the Smetters and Roger P. Croy to take a table across the room, “maybe you should reconsider—where you do want to stand. Possibly you don’t want to get completely away … but just to the other side.”

  “Orrin?” he said, and for a second she thought she had misjudged him and gone too far. Then he went on, and she knew with a good deal of relief that she had not. “No, I don’t think so.” He stared at her with a thoughtful frown. “I don’t see how I could.…I really don’t see how I could.” He smiled with a sudden genuine humor. “He’s as bad as Mary Baffleburg.…Of course,” he said presently, and she held her breath and concentrated carefully on her coffee, trying not to give the slightest hint of her growing excitement, “he has much to recommend him. He was only doing what was right about my nomination—what I invited. I don’t feel as bitter toward him as I did.…And of course the President—” Then he broke off and it was all she could do not to blurt out, “The President what?” But somehow she managed to keep still (Good girl, Helen-Anne! she told herself. Oh, God-damned good girl, we didn’t know you could keep your God-damned mouth shut). But he only said, “Well—” briskly, and she knew the moment was over.

  But it was enough, she crowed to herself, it was enough, and did she have a scoop she couldn’t use!

  “I must not,” he went on thoughtfully after a moment, “as the Governor of California puts it, use the convention as a stage on which to admire myself playing Hamlet. What I’ve got to do now is figure out how to control our new-found allies, because it’s going to be tough. I think we’ve all got to help on that one.”

  “I repeat, it isn’t my man who will start it.”

  “Well, tell him to warn against it,” he said, “and I’ll try to get Ted to do likewise. Maybe that will help. Are you working for him now?”

  “Not yet,” she said, gathering up her newspapers, her bulging purse, her scribble-filled pad and worn-down pencils. “Not until he wins the nomination, sweetie. Then I will.”

  “He isn’t going to win,” he said, waving to the waitress for the check as she stood up and he stood with her to say goodbye.

  “Sure he is,” she said, and took a chance: “And you’re going to help him.”

  “Oh, no!” he said with a laugh. “Oh, no. Don’t go spreading anything like that.”

  “I won’t spread it, but I’ll be expecting it.”

  “Don’t wait up nights,” he advised. She laughed as she turned away.

  “About one more, I think. That ought to just about do it.”

  But he only laughed back at her and made a shooing motion with his hands. When she glanced back from the door he was paying the check, his face serious and withdrawn again. All right, buster, she thought: you wait and see what you do in the next twenty-four hours. Unless Helen-Anne misses her guess you’re going to be making quite a bit of news before this convention is over. And Helen-Anne doesn’t usually miss.

  “You two look very serious,” Cullee said with a smile in the Oak Room at the St. Francis. “Is that any way to act at a reunion breakfast?”

  “Our second reunion breakfast,” Mabel Anderson said with an answering smile. “We had one yesterday.”

  “And,” Lafe said gravely, “we will have one tomorrow—and tomorrow—and tomorrow—and—Mabel, I don’t think you’ve met Sarah Johnson?”

  “No, I haven’t,” she said, extending her hand. “Are you working on Cullee’s campaign?”

  “I’m working on Cullee,” Sarah said with a laugh as she sat down.

  “About got me, too,” the Congressman said, giving her a satisfied look as he took the fourth chair. “I think the title at the moment is secretary to the candidate in my campaign for the Senate, but as soon as I win and get rid of my other encumbrances, I’m going to take on Sarah.”

  “Congratulations,” Mabel said. “Are you going to win?”

  Cullee shrugged.

  “Who knows? I beat Ray Smith for the nomination, and that isn’t bad, beating an incumbent.” He chuckled. “Even if it was by only nineteen thousand votes out of five million cast.…” The chuckle faded. “It isn’t going to be easy, Mabel, I can tell you that. California’s very divided on the war issue right now. I may just lose, if the other side decides to become the peace party. I don’t think my opponent will, himself, but he may not be a free agent.”

  “And you are?”

  He smiled.

  “You’re quite the cross-examiner. Watch out, Lafe, she may give you a hard time.”

  “It’ll be good for me,” the Senator from Iowa said complacently. “It’s a good question, too. Are you?”

  Cullee got a stubborn look.

  “I’m acting as though I am. Some of ’em tell me I’ve got to cut and trim because of that nineteen thousand squeak-through, but I tell ’em, no, sir, I’ve got the nomination and I’m the candidate and if anybody doesn’t like it, he can lump it.”

  “That’s about what I’m telling them in Iowa,” Lafe said. “We may be taking quite a gamble, old buddy, but I’d rather do it that way than take a stand I couldn’t live with later.”

  “Aren’t they noble?” Sarah said innocently to Mabel.

  “They are noble,” Mabel agreed innocently with Sarah.

  Cullee laughed.

  “We operate on a simpler level. We’re just little Senators. I guess when you get up to the top you h
ave to make some concessions and acquire a few peculiar bedfellows, isn’t that right, Lafe?”

  “So I hear. What’s the news from your old pal LeGage?”

  “Him!” Cullee said, scowling at the thought of the chairman of DEFY, his onetime Howard University roommate and bitterest friend-enemy. “He was after me again last night—came to the room and we had a terrible row. He wants me to join this big movement for Ted he’s working up with Van Ackerman and Kleinfert.”

  “But you’re not for Ted,” Lafe suggested.

  “No, I’m not for Ted! I issued a statement right after I got the nomination”—he laughed suddenly—“that’s how noble I am, Sal, I waited until I got it—that I was leaving the door open as to what I’d do here. But it was pretty obvious which way I thought I’d walk when I went through that door.”

  “And ’Gage couldn’t change you?” Mabel asked.

  “He couldn’t change me if he had the last drink on earth and I was a dying man,” Cullee said flatly. “If I were Ted,” he said somberly, “I’d damned well watch out for what I was getting into.”