by Allen Drury
For a long moment, staring at her with those handsome gray eyes that always contributed so much to the picture of the very parfit gentil knight of government that his admirers liked to think he was, he said nothing. Then he stood up, smiled, and held out his hand.
“Helen-Anne—” he said. “Old friend—old buddy—aide and adviser through thick and thin—”
“Oh, go to hell,” she said, batting aside his hand but beginning to smile in spite of herself.
“—I think you have a point. I really do. I shall treasure it. I shall sit for a while and think—no more drinking, though, that might defeat the whole purpose—and then I shall go humbly to the telephone and humbly on my rounds, and we shall see what happens.…And you,” he added, again offering his hand, which she took this time with a firm pressure, “don’t write one single solitary thing about what I may or may not do, okay?”
“Damn!” she said. “The stories I’ve killed for my country.”
“I know it,” he said, quite seriously. “As one American, I appreciate it.”
“Now you’re getting maudlin.” But she looked pleased. “I can’t avoid speculating some, sweetie, everybody is. Tell me what the facts are when you can, okay?”
“I will,” he said, taking her arm and walking her around the house to her car. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to give you more today.”
“You’ve given me quite a bit. I hope it’s been mutual.”
“Oh, it has,” he said, lightly but with a serious note underneath. “It has. I hope you find something for that column.”
“It doesn’t have to be done until tomorrow, but I want to get it out of the way today because there’s a lot of funeral coverage I’m going to have to help with, starting tomorrow morning.”
“I know,” he said, suddenly somber.
“Maybe—” she said, deliberately breaking the mood before it could depress them too much, “Maybe I’ll call Patsy. She’s always good for a horselaugh when I haven’t anything else to write about.”
But a few minutes later, when she was back over the river and out southeast in the deserted city room of the Star, she found Patsy singularly uncooperative. “I think you’re working on something, girl,” she told her. Patsy only laughed in a deliberately annoying way and refused to be drawn out, beyond saying in a dreamy voice, “Oh, I might just think of something to even things up a bit.” But Helen-Anne was not an old hand at the game for nothing.
Like any experienced Washington correspondent, she could make bricks without straw when she had to.
“In a Washington hushed and saddened by the tragic death of Harley M. Hudson,” she typed swiftly, “politics, as always, takes no holiday. Even as the President’s body was being prepared for formal lying-in-state at the White House Tuesday, and at the Capitol Wednesday morning, speculation was already rife today that Robert A. Leffingwell, key figure in the convention just concluded, may be even more of a key figure in the Presidential nominating yet to come.
“Governor Edward M. Jason of California was believed to be trying desperately to reach this glamorous figure, who only three days ago—”
But when Bob Leffingwell, after another dip in the pool and a few more minutes of somber contemplation of the great white city sprawled along the Potomac, went finally to answer the insistent telephone, it was not the Jason he expected who was on the line.
“This is Ceil,” she said quietly from California. “I want to give you some advice.”
“Lots of people do,” he said, carefully refraining from surprise. “I value yours more than most. Fire away.”
“This is Walter,” he said bluntly from “Salubria.” “I want to give you some advice.”
“I’m not in the market,” Governor Jason said coldly from his office in Sacramento. “Why don’t you call me after the funeral?”
“Now, see here,” Walter Dobius said with a sudden surge of anger. “This is important.”
“Everything you say is important, Walter. It’s the one thing we’re all agreed on.”
“I think you should call Bob Leffingwell,” Walter said, trying to control his irritation and managing with some difficulty. “I think he may be able to help you.”
“It never would have occurred to me,” Ted said in a startled voice. “How’s the third party coming, Walter?”
There was a silence in Leesburg. Finally “America’s greatest philosopher-statesman of the press” (as the New York Times had called him on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his column a couple of months ago) spoke in a tightly controlled, level voice.
“I would not want you to think,” he said carefully, “that my support or that of any of my colleagues is automatic, Ted. It can always be changed.”
The Governor snorted.
“To Orrin Knox? Now tell me another.”
“Ted—” Walter Dobius began with a rising inflection, but the Governor cut him short and it was quite apparent that they now had to deal with a Jason who had recovered and never intended to lose control again.
“You have nowhere else to go, Walter, and all of you from Manhattan to the Golden Gate are perfectly aware of it. You aren’t going to support Orrin. You are going to support me. And on my terms. That’s the fact of it. Right, Walter?”
Again there was silence, broken, the Governor noted with a grim satisfaction, by a little heavy breathing from “Salubria.” At last Walter Dobius spoke in tones even heavier and more pompous than he usually used.
“You are insufferable. Absolutely insufferable.”
“But the great hope of America and world peace, Walter,” Ted Jason said with a savage irony. “Never forget that.”
And hung up, which, in the rarified world he inhabited, of columns that told his country what to do, public speeches that influenced large segments of press and public, and sagely given private advice to kings and potentates who looked to him as perhaps America’s major editorial voice, did not often happen to the man whom Lyndon Johnson had long ago nicknamed “Walter Wonderful.”
The conversation only demonstrated, he told himself after his anger had subsided somewhat and he could sit back reflectively once more at the desk from which so many significant words had gone forth to influence the world, what could be expected from a man of the Governor’s devious and unreliable character. Ted had always been too independent. Walter had known in his heart that it was a chancy game to rely upon him, but there had been no alternative to the insanely dangerous war policies of the President and Orrin Knox.
At least Governor Jason represented a policy of negotiation and peace; at least he genuinely did believe in a “new spirit toward the Soviets,” a “détente between East and West,” a “thaw in relations between the Communist and capitalist worlds,” and all those other phrases, comforting to the timid, however unfounded in fact, which were so beloved of Walter’s world from New York to San Francisco.
He was also Governor of the largest state in the Union, which was a rather important factor, too.
It was important enough, in fact, so that even Walter and his friends could not very well do anything about it. Like Ted Jason or despise him—and some, including Walter, now inclined strongly to the latter—there he was. A political reality of the highest magnitude, once more in command of himself and the situation which confronted him.
To that situation, Walter reflected after a few more moments of calming down, he, Walter, must now apply himself with all the skill and influence he possessed. That this was great and far-reaching, he knew. That it really “controlled” the press, only his more naïve countrymen claimed.
There were those who, reading some criticism of Walter in some un-fashionable publication or book, would say, “I just don’t believe that one man could have that much control over the press.” But no intelligent critic, of course, ever claimed that Walter did. Walter was influential because he was a member in high standing of that small group of columnists, commentators, newspapers, magazines and television programs that largely influence
and affect the general thinking of the American nation. He did not “control” his peers any more than they controlled him. What he did do, and with great effectiveness, was sometimes to originate, and sometimes to clarify and synthesize, the major ideas and emotions they held in common.
Thus a few weeks ago he had called together The Greatest Publication That Ever Was, the Times, the Post, Newsweek, Look, CBS, NBC and a few others, for one of those exchanges of ideas that quite often precede the selection of the Presidential candidate they will all support. In some previous elections this consensus had been reached, not at any formal gathering, but rather in a series of informal dinners, cocktail party meetings, transcontinental telephone calls, even casual meetings at golf courses, clubs, public events, at which the general desire had gradually been formed and articulated. Walter’s little meeting had probably not been necessary, so deeply committed had they already become to Governor Jason. But he had a sense of neatness that required it; and, as the general director of the Post remarked dryly afterward to his crony, Associate Supreme Court Justice Thomas Buckmaster Davis, “Walter’s ego needed it, too.”
But, as always, he had not “controlled” them. He had simply stated, in the clearest, most powerful and most widely syndicated form, the thoughts and purposes toward which the policy makers were moving within those citadels of journalistic power from which so many decrees and decisions affecting America’s ultimate destiny were handed down to a public apathetic because it was simply so overwhelmed by the furious onward rush of national and world events.
“It’s too much for me,” people said. “I just can’t understand it any more. I just try not to think about it.”
So the public, for the most part, accepted what Walter and his world had to tell them, without question and without the native skepticism that in earlier days had been one of the saving strengths of America. Now it was no longer, “Show me!” and, “Says who?” Now, Walter sometimes told himself with a superior contempt, it was a blank look, a dull shake of the head, and a Mortimer Snerd-like, “Ddhhhuuuhhh? Izzatt so?” which greeted the pronouncements of himself and his friends. It was not surprising if they often had a field day.
But this, he knew as he stared out thoughtfully upon the suffocating afternoon, rested upon a flimsy basis. You could never, even at this late stage in many decades of conditioning, quite count upon the American majority to be supine and placid. There still were unruly skepticisms that popped up now and then, there could still be a sudden disconcerting tendency to demand real answers, there still could be an almost atavistic, instinctive throwback to the days of, “Says who?” And when that happened, Walter and his world were in trouble. Voters didn’t vote the way they were supposed to, the country didn’t respond as dutifully as it should to carefully calculated words, photographs, headlines, broadcasts.
An old independence could come abruptly and disconcertingly back.
So you had to be clever and shrewd and persistent and never, ever, lose sight of the main objective, which was to persuade the country to think and behave the way you, as superior and intelligent beings, knew that it should and must if America was to be saved from her follies and peace was to be secured for the world.
How to do this through the medium of Ted Jason was now, once more, the problem. The convention, dominated by Harley Hudson and Orrin Knox, had perhaps been hopeless from the start (Walter could never admit to himself, though certain of his disgusted colleagues were admitting it to themselves, that he and they had perhaps been responsible for the growing tension that had finally brought revulsion and cost Ted the nomination). But now the crash of Air Force One had given them all a new chance.
There must be no slip-ups this time. For all his repulsive independence and disrespect, Ted should and must be the candidate. It must be handled with the greatest astuteness and skill.
He could almost have groaned with annoyance and dismay—an uncharacteristic “God damn it!” did surprisingly break the muffled silence of the cool, dark study—when he saw a car come up the curving drive and stop under the classic white portico. Out of it came the last people on earth he would expect to show astuteness and skill about anything. His first impulse was to call Roosevelt and Arbella on the intercom and tell them to say he wasn’t home. But then the longtime Washington reporter’s practicality returned. Whatever he thought of them, and however dangerous he thought them to be to the kind of political operation needed now, there was no doubt that in Senator Fred Van Ackerman of the Committee on Making Further Offers for a Russian Truce (COMFORT); LeGage Shelby, director of Defenders of Equality for You (DEFY); and Rufus Kleinfert, Knight Kommander of the Konference on Efforts to Encourage Patriotism (KEEP), there were represented the three main elements in the country whose strange political bedfellowship provided the principal foundation of the Jason campaign.
He sighed, braced himself and went slowly down the stairs with a stolid, unhurried dignity and a certain trepidation he would not have cared to admit, to answer Fred Van Ackerman’s imperious knocking.
Sometimes she read. Sometimes she dozed. But mostly, as the great house lay silent around her, the former First Lady of the United States thought.
Earlier, the White House physician and his soft-spoken young assistant had tried to give her sedatives, but she had refused them, aside from one tranquilizer which had seemed to stop her tendency to burst into tears when she didn’t expect it. She had thought she would be cried out by now, so bitterly had she wept most of last night, but all the way across the continent this morning it had welled up again every few minutes. Despite the worried sympathy of Bob and Dolly Munson, she had not been able to stop until just before they landed in Washington to face the barrage of cameras and newsmen. Then the inner iron that lay beneath the pink-cheeked, roly-poly fluffiness had come to her aid and she had managed to get down the steps and into the waiting limousine, with its little fender flags at half-mast, without breaking down again.
After that she had been engulfed in a curious, glacial mood that had continued, with one exception, all afternoon. For the most part she had remained in bed in the family quarters on the second floor. But once she had felt an irrational desire to find some old scrapbook, stored, she thought, in a closet on the far side of the mansion. She had slipped out, aided by Dolly, who had taken up vigil in the library, and had gone looking. But she had not remained long enough to find it. No sooner had they reached the east wing than they had heard a muffled hammering below.
“Oh, of course,” she had said in a distant voice. “We’re over the East Room. They must be setting up the catafalque.” Dolly had caught her just as she started to faint, and when she came to, she was back in bed. That time she had cried again for quite a long time. Finally she had stopped. Now, in a curious in-between world in which she realized but could not realize that her husband was dead, she looked out over the lawns and trees to the Ellipse, the Washington Monument, the slow, lazy river and the gentle rise of Virginia beyond.
How many times had she paused to enjoy that view in the year and three months—was it really only a year and three months?—of her husband’s Presidency. (She was not yet able to think of him by name. It was “my husband” or “the President” or “he.” To think or say, “Harley,” would have opened some final chasm of desolation and bereavement she was not yet strong enough to face.) She could remember their first meal in this house, shortly after seven o’clock on the evening after he had been sworn in, and how tense they were as the full awareness of his awesome new responsibilities had overwhelmed them. But after they had finished and were standing for the first time on the balcony looking out upon this same scene, he had put an arm around her shoulders and given her a sudden squeeze.
“Well, Mother,” he had said with a slow smile, “I guess we’re going to find out if a simple, homespun, all-American boy from Grand Rapids can do it, aren’t we?”
And abruptly the burden had lifted and she had said, “You know perfectly well he can. I’ve never doubted it
for a minute.”
“There are some who have,” he said, the smile broadening. “Including, I must confess, me.”
“Well, I haven’t,” she said firmly, and he squeezed her again.
“I know. That’s why I don’t feel half as scared right now as I probably ought to.”
“You won’t have time to feel scared at all,” she said. “You’ll be too busy.”
And so it had come about, for he had been whirled immediately into the Geneva conference with the Russians that his predecessor had agreed to just before his death. And after that crisis there had been a thousand others, major and minor, foreign and domestic, culminating in the crises in Panama and Gorotoland which he had met with unhesitating firmness despite all the voices of anguish, anger and alarm that had welled up against him.
Press attacks, television attacks, riots, demonstrations, flag-burnings, draft-dodgings, Congressional hearings, statements, speeches, petitions, full-page ads in the New York Times, and the savage, relentless tide of Washington gossip that always attempts to destroy any President who dares do anything counter to what the nation’s self-appointed guardians in their self-righteous wisdom deem best—all of these had descended in full measure upon her husband and his Secretary of State. He had worried about it a lot, she knew that; he had studied and pondered and even, on a good many occasions, prayed. But when his basic decisions were taken, he did not look back. By so much had he grown, in this tragic house that held so much of history; this unique, mysterious, unknowable domicile that took the men who came to it and transformed them irrevocably into beings far different from what they had been when they entered its doors for the first time as master.
