“Because we need his help and support, that’s why!”

“But he doesn’t know—”

“Good God, Mark Coffin! Do you think there’s anybody in Washington who isn’t going to know? Anybody in the whole wide world? Are you really that naive? Now, get off the line.”

“All right,” he said dully. “All right.”

But Daddy wasn’t there. His housekeeper said he had gone to dinner with Senator Hardesty. And Senator Hardesty’s answering service said she was not expected home until at least ten o’clock.

Linda left word with both to have them call her at once. Then she prepared a hasty meal. They were not able to eat very much.

They turned on television and sat staring at it, barely comprehending its busy mouthings, as the minutes slowly passed and their vigil became steadily more grim.

An hour later:

“Hi, I’m at the Watergate. She did it.”

“Oh no!” Linda wailed as Mark made some incoherent sound.

“It’s okay, though,” Chuck said hastily. “She’s all right. They pumped her out and took her to Doctors’ Hospital. She’ll live. In fact,” he added a mixture of scorn and anger, “I don’t think she ever had the slightest doubt she’d live. The police doctor told me confidentially that she’d taken just enough to knock her out but not enough to kill her even if she hadn’t been found for hours. I expect she researched the whole thing before she took pill one. However, it’s going to look very dramatic in the Post tomorrow morning.”

“Was the Post there?” he asked, barely able, it seemed to him, to articulate.

“Hell, she called everybody. The Post, the Times, the networks, the newsmags—you name it. I even think I saw the correspondent for the Greengrocers’ Journal. Our gal didn’t miss a trick. And that’s all it was,” he concluded bitterly. “A God damned worthless, empty, vindictive, no-good, bastardly trick. I wish to hell she had to suffer for it as much as you’re going to suffer, Mark. She ought to boil in oil.”

“I suppose,” he said, a great weariness seeming to weigh down his whole being and every word, “there was something implicating me?”

“Are you kidding? There wouldn’t have been any point in it otherwise, would there? It wouldn’t have been any fun. Sure you’re implicated, Mark. Right up to your eyeballs.”

“Better tell us,” Linda said, her voice sounding tired but quite composed now that she knew what she was facing. “I suppose there was a letter. These things aren’t complete without a letter.”

“‘Dear Mark’, I saw it about two seconds before the police did—actually had it in my hand, in fact. I was going to keep it to myself but then they saw me and made me hand it over. Then they released it to all the press. But I tried, old buddy. I tried.”

“Better read it to us,” Linda said. “We might as well know the worst of it.”

“I’m sorry, Lin—”

“Read it!” Mark ordered harshly.

“Yes, sir! It’s not very original. The only original note is that she has a copier and the letter was left on top of it, in her study. This made it very convenient for everybody. Unfortunately the police and I are the only ones who saw where it was—it makes a nice footnote.”

“Read it!”

“I’m sorry. I think I’m slightly hysterical myself. okay…‘Dear Mark: By the time you read this I may not be living’—ha!—‘but I want you to know that whatever happens, you will always have my deepest love and undying respect.’ From beyond the grave, I suppose. ‘Our meeting—that swift, bright candle that flamed so wonderfully Inauguration Night when we were alone together, and then went out in your unwilling but dutiful’—a nice choice of adjectives—‘rejection next day, will always bum in my heart. Too much so, I’m afraid, though I can’t blame you for it: I went into it with my eyes open, knowing you have a wife and family, knowing that you have before you one of the brightest futures any young senator ever had.

“‘It is because of that future—and many other things, I suppose you were just the catalyst, but that, believe me, is the overriding and inescapable one—that I have decided it would be best for both of us if I removed myself forever from any further possibility of messing up your life. I think we could have been very happy together—we were very happy together—I know you were, because you told me so at that marvelous moment when people find it difficult to lie.’ Hal again. At what moment do people lie more? ‘But it can’t be. Your future, and the good you can do for this troubled, beloved land of ours, are too important. They must be controlling for both of us. To them, and to you, dearest Mark, I bow. All my love always. Your Lisette.’…To which I can only add, how corny can you get?”

“Just corny enough,” Linda said in a remote and thoughtful voice, “to destroy my husband.”

“She can’t,” Chuck said stoutly.

“Are you sure?” Linda asked. “You say everybody got a copy of this.”

“Nobody believes it.”

“Nobody who knows her believes it. Two hundred and fifty million other people will. Particularly when she survives. The romantic lovelorn maiden, risking all for love. Ahhh! What a bitch!”

“I suppose they’ll all print it,” Mark said, sounding ragged with worry and despair.

“No choice,” Chuck said. “If I’d been able to secure it—but I wasn’t.”

“And if you had,” Linda said, in the tone of those who have seen many, many things in Washington, “and if Harvey Hanson had found out you and the police got there before the others, which he would, and if he really cross-examined you about it, which he would—you probably would have printed it, too.”

“Maybe,” Chuck admitted. “Maybe, I don’t know. But that’s not the point now, is it, Linda? The point is I’m being a friend, so don’t hit me in the face with might-have-beens. Don’t take out your feelings about her and the rest of the media on me, if you don’t mind. The point now is to get Mark out of this.”

“I know,” she said with a sudden half-sob that surprised them all. “Now I’m being bitchy, and I am sorry. But he can’t be ‘gotten out’ of this. He can only see it through…I’ve left word for Daddy and Jan, who are out to dinner someplace, and as soon as I reach them I’m going to ask them to come over for a council of war. I think you’d better come, too.”

“Thanks,” he said, mollified. “I’ll be there. I don’t imagine your dad will be very easy to deal with on this, do you?”

But, surprisingly, he turned out to be far more so than they expected, when he and Jan finally arrived shortly before eleven. He was carrying a copy of the bulldog edition of the Post, which simplified things.

TV STAR DEATH TRY FOLLOWS TRYST WITH SENATOR COFFIN, the front-page headline said. GRAYSON SAFE AFTER LEAVING LOVE NOTE. PUTS LOVER’S CAREER AHEAD OF SELF.

“She really put your career ahead of herself, all right,” Chuck snorted. “Yes, sir, she really did. Nice of them to call you ‘lover,’ too. That’s for the hicks who might not get it.”

“Young feller from the Post waylaid us outside the Jockey Club,” Senator Elrod remarked. “Said they thought I should see the news. Very thoughtful of them. He wanted some sort of comment, which I didn’t give him. They been after you, Mark?”

“The phone’s unlisted,” Linda said, “and we haven’t been here long enough for them to ferret it out. It’s the only thing that’s saved us.”

“And won’t for long, I suspect,” Jan said as they took off their coats. “What a tangle.”

“I’m sorry,” he said at last, not looking at them, speaking very low. “I am so sorry.”

“Reckon that doesn’t do too much good now,” Jim Elrod said, “though it’s fittin’ and proper you should feel that way and I’m sure we all appreciate it. What matters now is where do we go from here?”

“Where do I go, Jim?” he asked, not being flippant, genuinely lost, genuinely asking. “Back to California?”

“What?” they exclaimed in unison, and he realized then, if he had harbored any lingering doubts—and by now they were virtually nonexistent—that there was no way out but straight ahead. The concept of running away from battle was so foreign to these politically oriented people that they were honestly shocked by his question. And so, he found with a sudden great thankfulness, was he. It would be the toughest thing he had ever had to face, but if he came through it—if he came through it—nothing again would ever be formidable enough to intimidate or deflect Mark Coffin.

“No!” he said with a sudden rising emphasis. “No, I won’t do that! I will fight it out and the hell with them! Only”—he looked them in the eyes now—“you’ve got to help me because”—he attempted a smile, looking more little-boy-beseeching-assistance than he knew—“I’m new here.”

“We’re here to help you, Mark,” Jan Hardesty said, “but”—and she gave him a level appraising look that held his eyes and would not let them drop—“no more of this stupid, infantile, unworthy nonsense ever again, all right?”

“I give you my word,” he said, his eyes meeting each of theirs, Linda’s last, as he repeated it solemnly four times: “I give you my word.”

“That’s good,” Jim Elrod said pleasantly into the little silence that followed, “because this is my daughter you are married to, young man, and if you ever again do such a thing to her, I give you my word I will absolutely and completely destroy you, and California will be no refuge. No refuge at all.”

“Yes, sir,” he said humbly. “I deserve that.”

“Good!” Jim Elrod said briskly. “Now let’s see how we’re goin’ to handle this little problem. First of all, I take it we can rely on the integrity, honor and discretion of our young friend from the press, here?”

“Oh, I’m committed, Senator,” Chuck said with a rueful irony. “I’m going against all my training, all my devotion to the news, all my Washington instinct for the jugular. If Harvey Hanson knew I was doing this he’d fire me in a second. But foolishly I like your son-in-law and I’m in so deep already that more isn’t going to matter. Not one word of this will ever come from me, I pledge you that.”

“Good,” Jim Elrod said. “It so happens we all suffer from the same foolishness, which I hope he appreciates—”

“Oh, I do,” Mark assured him, feeling absurdly as though he might cry if they kept on like this. “I do.”

“—so now we’ll do some plannin’. Now, there will be some—and you might as well face it, Mark, you’re goin’ to run into ’em tomorrow mornin’ at ten o’clock when you face that Judiciary committee—there will be some who are goin’ to use this against you in every way they can to achieve their own political aims. I’m not like that myself—our argument over my bill S.1 goes on its merits, and it would even if you weren’t my son-in-law, because that’s the kind of man I am—right, young man?”

“That’s right, sir,” Chuck agreed, and meant it. “That’s the kind of man you are, and thank God the country has you.”

“Thank you very much,” Senator Elrod said with a little bow and smile. “I wasn’t askin’ for a Fourth of July endorsement, but it’s nice to know you feel that way. So, then, Mark, they’ll be gunin’ for you—Charles Macklin for sure, and Jim Madison, that pompous old fool, and I expect maybe right on up to the White House itself. I imagine he’ll have some things to say in his press conference tomorrow mornin’—yes, I understand he’s havin’ one—and it’ll all be mighty tough. But you know how you handle that?”

“By looking them straight in the eye and not yielding an inch,” he said. “Linda and Chuck have already told me that.”

“And excellent advice, too,” Jim Elrod said. “Mebbe I don’t need to re-emphasize it, but that’s exactly what you do. And you do it as though you mean it. If you have to stay up all night in front of a mirror makin’ pretty faces and practicin’ pretty smiles, you do it. And when old Charlie starts gettin’ nasty and stupid and old Jim Madison starts gettin’ cute, and the man in the White House cuts you up into bits and offers you to the media on a silver platter, you still keep on smilin’. And you don’t let any of ’em get you hurried or worried or flustered or off balance. You just keep thinkin’ to yourself, Hang on. Keep calm. Look ’em in the eye. Don’t give an inch. And if they get under your skin—and they will, because some of ’em are experts at it—try not to let ’em rattle you. Just keep hangin’ in there. And you’ll find, I think, that pretty soon you won’t be alone. Because right off the bat you’ve got Jan, here, on the committee—”

“And Kal and Clem,” Jan said, “and probably some of the others.”

“—and I’m thinkin’ that mebbe I’ll drop by and ask Jim—hell, I’ll tell him—that I’m goin’ to sit with the committee myself. I’ll see what I can do, too. That’ll lend a certain somethin’.”

“And I’ll be doing what I can at the press tables,” Chuck volunteered. “She isn’t all that popular, really, particularly as the phony aspects of it begin to come out. I know we can count on Bill Adams and a few others to start a little backfire.”

“Daddy,” Linda suggested, coming to sit beside Mark, taking his hand, “why don’t the three of us arrive together at the hearing?”

“Certainly,” Senator Elrod said. “I was countin’ on that. That’s automatic.”

“I have an idea, too,” Jan offered. “I think I’ll call Claretta Chisholm and Mele Tokumatsu first thing in the morning. I have a little bee I’d like to plant in Clem’s and Kal’s bonnets, and I think the best way to do it is through their wives.”

“Good,” Jim Elrod said. “That’s my gal.”

“Anything to oblige,” Jan said cheerfully, blushing a little.

“You all heard that,” Senator Elrod said getting up and preparing to leave. “You’re my witnesses. So we’ve got it all settled, then. Anythin’ you want to add, suggest, amend or modify, Mark?”

“No, sir,” he said gratefully, heart and spirits lifting for the first time in what seemed to him a very long time. “I feel as though my life is being very well managed for me.”

“Well, after all, dear boy,” Jan Hardesty said, giving him a mocking but motherly kiss on the cheek, “you haven’t really managed it very well yourself in the past few days, have you?”

“No, ma’am,” he said, returning the kiss with warmth. “I deserve that, Senator. I deserve it.”

But after they left, the weight of it all suddenly came back upon him a hundredfold. It was easy to talk, easy to plan, easy to be brave and cheerful in the midst of friends. But tomorrow came the enemy and what would in all probability be the toughest day of his life. He was brought further to earth when he sought to return to his own bed.

“I’m sorry,” Linda said, “but you’ll have to give me a little more time, Mark. A lot of things have to be worked out. It isn’t all that easy, for either of us.”

He lay awake for a long time on the sofa in the living room, wondering if for Mark Coffin, no matter how bravely he fought or how many dues he paid, anything would ever be really easy again.

***

Chapter 4

“Here they come!” somebody cried, and at the door of Judiciary Committee the lights and cameras suddenly swung their way, enveloping them in a merciless glare. Linda’s arm tightened and trembled in his, on his other arm Jim Elrod’s hand, firm and steady, increased its pressure. Apparently entirely at ease and untroubled, the senior senator from North Carolina smiled and tossed a little bow into the cameras.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said cheerfully, “how y’all this mornin’?”

“We’re great, Senator,” somebody called from behind the lights. “How you all?”

“Fine, too,” Jim Elrod said comfortably. “Nice of you to have this most impressive and overwhelmin’ greetin’ ready for us. To what do we owe the honor?”

“What do you think, Senator?” another voice asked, its owner also hidden behind the screen of lights.

“Linda’s beauty, Mark’s brains, and my general sagacity,” Senator Elrod said promptly. “Do y’all mind if we get on in to the committee? I think they’re waitin’ for us in there.”

“Oh, they’re waiting, Senator,” a third voice assured him, and there was general laughter from behind the lights and also from the several hundred people lined up behind ropes along the wall, hoping they might squeeze into the hearing.

“Good,” Jim Elrod said. “I’m rather waitin’ for them, too.”

“How about you, Senator Coffin? Are you waiting, too?”

He hesitated for a second; his father-in-law’s hand tightened imperceptibly but firmly.

“I’m looking forward to the opportunity to testify concerning Mr. Macklin’s nomination,” he said evenly.

“Is that all you’ll testify about, Senator?”

“I don’t know,” he said; and suddenly anger prompted him, though he hoped he kept it out of his voice. “What else is there? I’m not under examination here, you know. Mr. Macklin is.”

“Mr. Macklin may not think so, Senator,” somebody said.

“Really?” he said. “Why not?”

“Senator”—and the voice had an Okay, you asked for it edge—”do you have any comment to make on Lisette Grayson’s suicide attempt and the note she left you?”

“I—” he began; and again the supportive pressure. But anger pushed him on. “I have no comment whatsoever to make on an unfortunate girl who has apparently been working too hard and has let her imagination run away with her to the point where she engaged in a cheap phony publicity stunt at my expense.”

“Wow!” somebody said. And somebody else said, with the same edge,

“You deny her stated reason, then? You deny that you had an affair with her?”

“I have no further comment to make,” he said, face pale but unyielding.

“And you discount her attempted suicide as ‘a cheap phony publicity stunt’?”

“I have no further comment to make.”

“You don’t feel any responsibility at all for the mental and emotional turmoil which, according to her letter, prompted her action?”

“No comment.”

“Mrs. Coffin, what is your reaction to—”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Senator Elrod said flatly, “that’s enough. The Senator has told you he has no comment. He has no comment, period. Now if you will stand aside and let us pass, please, I believe the committee expects us in there.”

“What do you think of your son-in-law, Senator? Do you still have full confidence in—”

“Stand aside, please,” Jim Elrod said, beginning to advance into the blinding lights, “unless you want us to knock over your cameras because we can’t see them. Come along, Linda—Mark.”

And he ambled forward, smile fixed but pleasant, manner obviously brooking no further interference. There was grumbling, and a few savage muffled remarks, but they got out of the way.

Inside, the room was so jammed with people, in the chairs, in the aisles, along the walls, lapping up to the very edges of the dais and the press tables, that they could barely squeeze their way through. Jim Madison was waiting for them, bright and bland. So was Charles Macklin, seated in the first row of chairs. He rose and turned to watch their entry. Under his arm was a copy of the Post, folded so the headline was prominently displayed for the cameras, which dutifully recorded it. Above along the semicircle Jan, Kal and Clem, all three looking worried for him, were already in their seats with seven other committee members. Mark took a deep breath as Senator Madison stepped forward effusively, hand outstretched. But the first greeting was not for him.

“Jim!” Senator Madison exclaimed, shaking hands heartily with Senator Elrod. “How nice to have you in our audience today!”

“I’m expectin’ to be right up there on that dais with y’all, Jim,” Senator Elrod said with equal cordiality. “I expect you won’t deny me that courtesy, will you?”

“Why, no, Jim,” Senator Madison said hurriedly. “Why—no. If that’s what you wish.”

“I surely do, Jim,” Senator Elrod said calmly. “And I expect to engage in some questionin’, too, if that’s all right.”

“Why, certainly, Jim—certainly. If—if you wish.”

“I’ll just find myself a seat and make myself at home,” Senator Elrod said comfortably, proceeding to do so while Senator Madison looked after him with a dismay he struggled manfully to conceal. Charlie Macklin, Mark noted with a certain grim satisfaction, did not look so happy, either.

“And Mark!” Jim Madison said, turning back to them with a great show of welcome. “And Linda! How nice to have all of you with us this morning! It’s always nice to see a united family! It does one’s heart good in these times when so many families are—well, it just does one’s heart good. Are you all ready to testify, Mark?”

“Whenever you like, Jim,” he said, and added dryly, “Thank you for the considerate greeting.”

“Well, I—” Jim Madison said. “Well, I—It is nice! Linda, dear, do you want to take a seat in the first row beside Mr. Macklin—?”

“No, thank you, Senator,” she said calmly, head high. “I think I’d like to have a seat next to my husband, if that’s all right. He’s asked me to hold some documents for him which he may need in his testimony. Isn’t that right, Mark.” A statement, not a question.

“That’s right,” he agreed, surprised but fortunately matter-of-fact.

“Well, I—” Jim Madison flustered. “Are you sure—? Do you really—?”

“I’m sure and I really,” she said with a cordial smile. “All right, Senator?”

“Yes, surely,” he said hastily. “Surely, surely! Here—you! A chair for Mrs. Coffin!”

And when one had been secured and placed next to Mark’s, the cameras closed in again and the picture that reached many a front page later in the day was of Linda, composed and smiling, seated intimately close to her husband as they studied documents together at the witness stand. I don’t deserve it, he told himself in gratitude and wonderment. I really don’t deserve it.

So it was that his appearance before Judiciary Committee in the matter of Charles Macklin turned out to be, not only a test of Charles Macklin, but a test of Mark Coffin and those who believed in him and wished him well. He had no sooner begun his testimony than he was interrupted. The interruption led to a heated exchange that soon involved everyone in the room and created one of the biggest sensations of the day’s press and the evening’s television. From it he emerged much advanced in his campaign against Charles Macklin, though battered and bruised raw by the venom of it. The growing-up of Mark Coffin was also much advanced, but it was not easy, this day.

“Mr. Chairman,” he began, “I wish to thank you and the committee for permitting me to testify on the nomination of Charles Macklin of California to be Attorney General of the United States. I wish that I could support this nomination, because I am sure Mr. Macklin considers himself a worthy public servant, and no doubt many people agree with him. Unfortunately I do not, and I think I speak for many others who do not. To us, while he may be qualified, he does not seem worthy of the trust he seeks. There is a fundamental difference in my mind, and it is to this that I wish to call the attention of the committee, I submit to you, Mr. Chairman, that Mr. Macklin is not the sort of man—”

He was conscious of a stirring behind him in the audience, startled looks on the faces of his committee friends as he glanced up at them, a rising excitement in the room.

“Mr. Chairman!” Charlie Macklin said in a stern, commanding voice, and turning around, he could see that the nominee was on his feet, brandishing the Post and its tattletale headline like a battle flag. “Mr. Chairman!”

“For what purpose does the distinguished nominee seek recognition?” Jim Madison asked nervously, falling back on senatorial rhetoric, the inevitable and automatic response to crisis.

“I seek recognition,” Charles Macklin said with a certain happy relish, “because before the senator from California gets too deeply into his attack upon my worthiness to serve in public office, I think we should consider his for a moment or two. I don’t mind being the kettle in this but I’m damned if the pot is going to call me black and get away with it.”

“MR. CHAIRMAN!” Senator Elrod thundered amid a rising babble of sound. “Mr. Chairman, I totally reject this egregious interruption by a man who had a full day yesterday in which to state his case. It is outrageous, Mr. Chairman! It is inexcusable, Mr. Chairman! It would never be permitted in my committee, I can tell you that, Mr. Chairman, and if the chairman permits it in his I can only say, Shame on him, Mr. Chairman! Shame on him!”

The room exploded into uproar, and at Mark’s side Linda clutched his arm in such excitement that it seemed her fingers might rip his coat. There was a happy smile on her face and a great glowing pride in Daddy. The Elrods were in this together, and no mistake.

“Now—!” Jim Madison sputtered. “Now—! Senator—Mr. Macklin—Goodness, gentlemen! Goodness! This is all most irregular! Most irreg—”

“Mr. Chairman!” Charlie Macklin cried, eyes agleam with the zest of battle, the Post raised high above his head, pages rattling as he swept it back and forth in great arcs. “Look at this newspaper! LOOK AT THIS NEWSPAPER! Have you all read this sordid story on the front page? Have you all read what a pious fraud we have here, lecturing me on my lack of worthiness for public office while at this very moment his paramour—yes, his paramour,” he repeated, giving the old-fashioned word an intonation at once both amusing and sinister—“this poor innocent little girl, one of the brightest stars in the Washington journalistic firmament, is even now lying at death’s door? Are you aware of this, Mr. Chairman? Have you heard about this? Do you realize what a two-faced hypocritical individual it is who dares lecture me here today? Do you realize, Mr. Chairman? Do you realize?”

“Silence!” Jim Madison shouted, banging the gavel futilely while the uproar increased and from the press tables reporters scurried away to file their bulletins as the television cameras zoomed in on Charlie’s carefully indignant face, Jim Elrod’s equally well-staged fury, Linda’s excited gaze, Mark’s combination of chagrin, excitement, annoyance and apprehension.

“Silence!” Jim Madison shouted again, banging the gavel so hard it literally broke, with a sharp, distinct crack! that could be heard through the din. “Silence, silence, silence! Oh, damn it, I say, SILENCE, SILENCE, SILENCE, SILENCE, God damn it!”

And after a few more seconds of gradually diminishing hubbub, during which a lot of people in the audience and at the press tables began to laugh, a laughter at first nervously releasing tension, then genuinely amused as the full absurdity of the scene struck them, silence was finally, painfully, uncertainly achieved. Charlie Macklin was still standing triumphantly at his chair, Post raised high and quivering; Jim Elrod was still glaring at him from the dais; Jim Madison appeared ready to drop dead of a heart attack; Jan, Kal, Clem and the other committee members were gradually composing themselves, trying not to look too amused, striving with varying degrees of success for senatorial dignity.

It was a moment, for Mark, amusing yet still desperate: for Charlie Macklin did still stand triumphantly at his chair, Post raised high and quivering—Lisette had been brought squarely into it—and things could still go either way.

Into the gradually subsiding hurricane Kal Tokumatsu leaned forward and said with a quiet emphasis that brooked no denial,

“Mr. Chairman.”

“Well!” Jim Madison said, sounding so relieved that another burst of laughter swept the room. “My good friend the Senator from Hawaii!”

“Mr. Chairman,” Kal said quietly, “as long as the nominee has decided to bring into this discussion the name of an unfortunate young lady whom some of us know, I think it might be pertinent for me to make a comment. The junior Senator from California said when he entered this room a few minutes ago, and I quote, from the note handed me by a member of the press, ‘I have no comment whatsoever to make on an unfortunate girl who has apparently been working too hard and has let her imagination run away with her to the point where she engaged in a cheap publicity stunt at my expense.’

“Without commenting on that except to say that of course I believe and accept whatever my distinguished friend and colleague from California cares to say on the subject—”

(“There’s the Old Club, for you,” someone murmured from the press tables; but the remark passed without noticeable support. Lisette was not, as Chuck had said, all that popular among her colleagues.)

“—I do wish to say that I, too, have had some experience with the young lady in question. Not as dramatic as the senator from California, but one which indicated to me that there was a certain scalp-collecting aspect involved …I do not say this to absolve the junior Senator from California of naivety, inexperience, poor judgment and possibly even a certain immaturity, Mr. Chairman; but I do think it explains much about the episode which seems so to concern Mr. Macklin. There has been a certain pattern of behavior in the last couple of years, a fact which neither the junior Senator from California nor Mr. Macklin, both being newcomers to Washington, could be aware of. I would suggest to Mr. Macklin that he might be a little more cautious in his charges in this matter. It is not all one-sided. A prudent man would be well advised to take this into account before hurling accusations too freely around this Senate, particularly”—-and Kal gave him a blandly quizzical stare—“if he wishes us to confirm him.”

“Mr. Chairman!” Charlie Macklin cried, bounding to his feet again from the chair into which he had slowly settled during Kal’s comments; but Clem Chisholm also said, “Mr. Chairman!” and Jim Madison, with an air of thankfulness that again amused the audience, recognized him eagerly.

“Mr. Chairman,” Clem said, “I wish to associate myself with the remarks of my good friend from Hawaii. He is not alone in having some knowledge of the perhaps overenthusiastic fashion in which the young lady in question has sought to expand her contacts on Capitol Hill.”

(“That’s a damned delicate, unprejudicial way of putting it,” the press-table commentator offered; but again, there were no takers.)

“I, too,” Clem said slowly, “have had occasion to observe the rather insistent way in which this unfortunate young lady has attempted to place professional relationships on a more personal basis. I, too, would suggest to Mr. Macklin that he is very dramatic in his remarks but also, just possibly, more than a trifle ignorant of what he is talking about. If this type of shooting from the hip is what we can expect of him as Attorney General, then I am inclined to believe that the distinguished Senator from California has a point, and I am inclined to think that I may agree with him, and I may vote against Mr. Macklin.”

There was a ripple of applause—not great but, as Mark sensed with a stirring of excitement, a beginning.

“Mr. Chairman,” Jan Hardesty said, before Charlie Macklin, looking startled, taken aback, and suddenly not quite so triumphantly self-confident, had a chance to respond, “I wish to associate myself with the remarks of my good friends from Hawaii and Illinois. I, too, have had occasion to watch Miss Grayson in action—specifically with the junior Senator from California, upon whom, in my observation, her speculative eye fell full force the moment he arrived on Capitol Hill.

“I do not defend whatever inadvertent episode may or may not have occurred between them—like Senator Tokumatsu, I accept whatever the Senator wishes to say on the matter—but I can certainly attest, of my own knowledge, that he did not have much to say about it once Miss Grayson had made up her mind. As a woman who senses these things perhaps a little more quickly than my male colleagues, it was quite apparent to me the first time I saw them together that the senator was a well-meaning, earnest young gentleman who had not yet had time to get his feet under him in Washington, engaged in conversation with one versed—very well versed—in the ways—all the ways—of Washington. Without passing any judgments or attempting any detective work on what actually happened or did not happen, I might say, to put it in the vernacular, Mr. Chairman, that Senator Coffin never had a chance. So, at any rate, it appeared to me …

“I also,” she said, and her tone became deliberately severe, “would like to associate myself especially with the conclusion just uttered by Senator Chisholm. If this is an example of Mr. Macklin’s good judgment and method of operation, I can only say to him that while this may have gone over marvelously in Southern California, it does not sit well in Washington, D.C. He has been nominated for, and he aspires to achieve, a position of the utmost seriousness, responsibility and importance to the legal system of the country. The kind of flamboyant, country-courtroom tactics he has displayed so far this morning have totally obliterated, in my mind at least, any impression of stability and sound judgment he may have created in his testimony yesterday. As a member of the bar, I will say to him that I am not at all sure I would rest easy with him in charge of the law enforcement powers of this government. He will have to go some to convince me now.”

This time the applause was stronger and louder. Jim Elrod looked pleased, Jim Madison upset and concerned as he rapped for order.

“Senator,” he said to Mark, “if you would care to proceed—”

But Charlie Macklin was on his feet again crying, “Mr. Chairman!” and this time there was a growing and quite palpable impatience in Senator Madison’s voice as he replied sharply, “Yes?”

“Mr. Chairman,” Charlie Macklin said, “would you mind if I came up to the witness stand again? I have been vilified and slandered here this morning—and not only I, Mr. Chairman, but an innocent young girl who lies at death’s door—never let us forget that—and who is completely unable to defend herself. For her as well as myself, I ask you in all fairness to permit me an equal rebuttal here. Otherwise, the pious remarks of the Senator from Michigan and her great devotion to the legal system and fairness and all the rest of it are so much chaff, Mr. Chairman. Just so much chaff and poppycock. And if that costs me the Senator’s vote, then I say, good riddance!”

“He’s hanging himself!” Linda whispered with a fierce triumph in Mark’s ear. “He’s hanging himself! Good for you, you four-flushing bastard Macklin!”

But Mark knew instinctively that it was not going to be that easy for him yet.

“This is quite irregular,” Jim Madison said, and now he sounded openly annoyed. “You have had your chance on the stand, Mr. Macklin—”

Again the applause, firm and solid now.

“—it is Senator Coffin’s turn, and—”

“But, Mr. Chairman,” Charles Macklin protested, sounding, whether honestly or not, genuinely aggrieved, “it is not Senator Coffin who is under attack here. I am. And so is an innocent young girl who lies at this very moment on the edge of death because of this noble young friend of the senator from Michigan. She has been slandered right, left and center, Mr. Chairman. I have been told I am a country lawyer without judgment, stability or good sense. And I am not to be given a chance to defend myself—and to defend her? Come, now, Senator! Maybe my way of operating does ‘go over marvelously in Southern California,’ but at least in Southern California we understand simple fairness!”

“The damned pious hypocrite!” Linda hissed. But this time there was applause that seemed to be in Charlie’s Macklin’s favor. The voice of the people, Mark thought with a wild irony: it’s always so damned consistent, such a great help to us happy folks in Washington who have to decide what the hell to do.

As if he felt this too, Jim Madison looked about in some dismay and then decided to adopt one of the favorite rules of Capitol Hill: when in doubt, poll the committee.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the committee,” he said, “what is your pleasure?”

“Let him talk,” Jan Hardesty said with a deliberate indifference. “Give him all the rope he wants.”

“I agree,” Kal said.

“I, too,” said Clem.

There were other concurring murmurs around the semicircle. Jim Madison hesitated. Jim Elrod decided it for him.

“I’m just a guest here this mornin,’ Mr. Chairman,” he said dryly, “but I agree with Senator Hardesty. Give the man his rope. Let’s have the hangin’ and get it over with, if that’s what he wants.”

“That’s exactly what it is, Senator!” Charlie Macklin cried. “That’s exactly what it is! A public hanging! A public hanging of me and this poor little girl who lies at death’s door—”

“Oh, for goodness sake, Mr. Macklin!” Jim Madison said with a sudden unexpected asperity. “You are straining the patience of those who are disposed to be your friends to the uttermost. Miss Grayson is not at death’s door. I am advised she is out of danger and doing perfectly well. I warn you now; you are alienating not only Senators Hardesty, Tokumatsu and Chisholm but others as well. Come to the stand. Senator and Mrs. Coffin, do you wish to remain, or had you rather retire?”

“We’ll remain,” Linda said crisply before Mark had a chance to reply, and he joined in the general laughter that followed, a rare moment of relaxation. It only lasted a second. He felt, as Charlie Macklin came belligerently to the stand and they moved over without exchanging greetings, so that the three of them sat in a wary and awkward line at the microphones, that he was caged with a rattlesnake. Good Old Charlie might be losing ground, but bright young Mark was a long way from being home safe.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” Charlie said, glancing past Linda at Mark with a contemptuous look. “I appreciate your courtesy … Mr. Chairman, let’s don’t get diverted here from the main thing that should be the concern of every fair-minded American who will hear my voice or see these proceedings on television—and that’s a good many millions, Mr. Chairman. Let’s don’t be diverted from the moral qualifications and the moral right of the man who has set himself up to judge me here. Let’s keep Senator Mark Coffin the focus of things, because he is, at the moment: not Charlie Macklin, whom nobody, so far as I know, has yet accused of causing a suicide attempt by an innocent young lady who is still, Mr. Chairman, in a very grave condition even if you do not wish to concede that she is at death’s door. She is nearer than I would wish to be or than any member of this audience would wish to be! Right?”

And he swung around belligerently and was rewarded with another round of applause, loud, prolonged and encouraging.

“Mr. Macklin,” Jim Madison said, puffing indignantly, “you make it very hard for your friends on this committee—and you do, or did, have a reasonable number of them—to defend you. Now, will you please abandon the sad and unfortunate figure of Miss Grayson and confine yourself to whatever you deem necessary to defend yourself against the criticisms of Senator Coffin? We would appreciate it!”

“Mr. Chairman,” Charlie Macklin said with a sudden gravity, “if I have offended you and this honorable committee, I most sincerely apologize. If I have let myself be carried away by the heat of battle—and by my sympathy for an innocent and unhappy young lady who has been driven to attempt suicide by one who sets himself up to be a moral judge of all humanity—”

“Mr. Chairman!” Janet Hardesty exclaimed.

“—then I am most sincerely sorry,” Charlie Macklin went on smoothly. “However, I do not really see, I will say to the distinguished senator from Michigan, my enemy”—and he gave her a courtly little bow, as she stared down at him, quizzically shaking her head as though she found it hard to believe he actually existed—“how I can defend myself against Senator Coffin unless I also defend Miss Grayson against Senator Coffin. She is the key to this entire matter, in my judgment. It is his actions regarding Miss Grayson which make him unfit to judge me. It is his actions toward Miss Grayson which make him unfit to judge anyone. How a young senator—the youngest senator—who came here with the universal acclaim of an admiring world could so quickly and fatally mire himself in so unhappy a situation, Mr. Chairman, I cannot see. But certainly I can see, as I am sure the whole country can see, that it casts such a glaring light on his own moral character, such a miserable light on his own personal judgment, and raises such profound questions concerning his own stability and fitness for office that I am almost persuaded, Mr. Chairman, that your honorable committee is hunting the wrong fox. I do not think it is the nomination of Charles Macklin which should be the issue here. It is the possible impeachment of Mark Coffin!”

Once more the room exploded into applause, boos, voices raised in hot contention around the committee dais. Again reporters dashed out to file their bulletins, again cameras sought out the major faces of controversy. Again Jim Madison pounded furiously with the splintered head of his gavel, shouting, “SILENCE, SILENCE, SILENCE!” until, eventually, silence, uneasily, returned.

Into it Clem Chisholm spoke with a cold and measured impatience.

“Mr. Chairman, I don’t know how other members of this committee feel, but I have had enough. I want Mr. Macklin to step down now. I want Senator Coffin to have his chance to defend himself without interruption. I want Mr. Macklin to keep quiet and I mean keep quiet. And then after Senator Coffin has finished I want Mr. Macklin recalled to stand to face the questions of myself and other members of this committee who I know have been completely turned off by his ridiculous and inexcusable performance here this morning.”

“Mr. Chairman—” Charlie Macklin began, red-faced with a genuine anger.

“BE QUIET!” Clem roared, and again the room blew apart.

Five minutes later, some sort of order again restored, Jim Madison said in a voice rather weak in sound but firm in intention, “Mr. Macklin, I think I speak for the committee when I say we agree with Senator Chisholm. We want you to retire to your seat immediately and permit Senator Coffin to proceed. You will be recalled in due course, but you have made very grave and serious charges against the Senator—far more serious than any he has made against you so far—and he has a right to reply to them without further interruption or delay. If you interrupt the orderly pace of these proceedings once more, I shall ask for a vote on whether or not to cite you for contempt. If you still have hopes of being confirmed for the office you seek, I would suggest you be guided accordingly.”

Again there was a stir as more reporters hurried out to file more bulletins. Charles Macklin, after looking belligerently about, sniffed and sat down.

“Now, Senator Coffin, if you will proceed—”

And abruptly the room became very still, and he was face to face with all that Young Mark Coffin was, had been, and hoped to be.

For several seconds he said nothing, mind racing. Senior and knowing heads had counseled him unanimously last night to deny everything and brazen it through. He was in a position now to do exactly that. Charles Macklin, apparently, had lost considerable ground with the senators who would pass upon his nomination. A quiet, dignified, injured presentation, admitting nothing, ignoring Lisette, concentrating solely on the nominee and his fitness for office, would be one way to go. It would be the politically expedient way—the effective way—the way to escape with the least personal damage. “Never defend,” the old rule said—“never admit and never defend.” Sit tight and count on the vagrant shifting winds of public attention to blow in due course in some other direction. They would veer very soon: they always did. He would survive—damaged, but alive.

Alive, however, in what condition? A liar and equivocator, a dishonest man, one who had done damage, however inadvertently, to a fellow being. One who could not admire himself anymore; one who could no longer really respect himself; one who would carry always in heart and mind the seed of a basic and permanent dissatisfaction and unease with himself. One who would always, in some secret place, be little in his own eyes.

“Senator Coffin—?” Jim Madison said politely.

“Just a moment, Mr. Chairman,” he said, coming out of his reverie with a start as Linda’s hand touched his arm.

He glanced at her for a quick second—asked himself again, Is this really what Mark Coffin wants to be?—took a deep breath—a great gamble—and sailed forth onto uncharted seas with only his concept of himself, what he had been, was, and hoped to be, to keep him company.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said quietly, and behind him he could feel the tension suddenly rising, “before I comment on Mr. Macklin’s qualifications for office I should like to comment, as he suggests, on the question he has raised concerning Miss Grayson and myself.”

“Oh no!” he could hear Linda’s stricken whisper beside him as an excited murmur swept the room, and “Oh yes,” he whispered back, not knowing whether he could ever speak to her again, “I must.”

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, voice uneven with emotion, but determined, “it is true that my acquaintance with Miss Grayson, which began entirely innocently on my part, and for all I know may have been equally so on hers, culminated on Inauguration Night in an unplanned, inadvertent and unfortunate conclusion. For that I make public apology now”—his voice began to tremble but he forced it steady again—“to all who believed in me in California and here in Washington and in the Senate. I hope some may find it in their hearts to forgive me: it will be some time, if ever, before I forgive myself. I am not proud of myself, Mr. Chairman, or of my behavior; I can only make the excuse that I was under considerable mental and emotional strain for various reasons—that I was overly intoxicated, and uncaring as a result—that I am human. I can only hope that these admissions, trite as they are but nonetheless true, may be sufficient to bring me some charity from those who will judge me—particularly when coupled with my apology for it and my assurance that it is over and done with, once and for all. If I have any sense at all”—he managed a wry little smile—“and I think I still have a little, doubtful though that may seem at the moment—it will never happen again. Of that you may be sure …

“As for Miss Grayson”—he paused and suddenly he realized that Linda’s hand was in his and that she was sitting very erect and very still beside him—“I make no attempt to hold her responsible for what happened. The sole responsibility was mine. I do not know her motives, nor do I think they matter in what I have to face … which is myself. The sole responsibility was mine. I accept it. I apologize for it. And I will carry it with me, probably, until the day I die.”

He paused, was conscious of a few throats nervously cleared, a cough here and there, but nothing else to break the tense attentive silence. He had been looking up at the committee but not really focusing. Now abruptly he saw his father-in-law’s face. Senator Elrod was staring at him almost without expression; but he knew with a sudden instinctive certainty that the gaze was not unkindly; that it was helpful and encouraging; that Jim Elrod was on his side. His hand tightened on Linda’s: there was an answering pressure. He felt a sudden giddiness, a happiness so great and overwhelming that for a second he literally could not see. Then the world settled again and he went on to do what must now be done.

“As for Miss Grayson’s alleged suicide attempt, however”—his voice grew stronger, businesslike, no longer apologetic—“that is another matter.

“Miss Grayson persuaded me to come to her apartment yesterday; she wished me to continue our—relationship. I said that I would not. She was not pleased by this but seemed to accept it. Later last evening she called a friend of mine and told him she had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. At first he did not believe her. Then he decided to call the police and went to her apartment. There he found that she had made good on her threat and had left a suicide note, which has been published in the press. He found that she had left this note on top of the copying machine in her apartment”—there was a murmur of amusement, friendly, not hostile—“and that she had called, apparently, every single member of the media she could think of. Naturally they were all there, and naturally they all used the letter copier. Miss Grayson was found in ample time, she was taken to the hospital, she was given necessary treatment, and she is now, as the chairman states, resting comfortably and in no danger whatsoever. My friend told me, in fact, that he was informed by competent medical authority that Miss Grayson had taken exactly enough medication to put her into a temporary coma, but in no event to actually endanger her life even if she had not been found for a number of hours—or at all, for that matter.

“I make no comment on this sequence of events, which was under”—he paused and allowed himself for the first time a touch of irony—“the sole management of Miss Grayson, and about which I know only what I have been”—he hesitated for the slightest second—“told through the media. I leave it to the public to judge these events. I cannot really believe my own charm is so devastating as to provoke such an extreme response—if it was a genuine response. But I do not know Miss Grayson as well as some of my colleagues do, and therefore I cannot comment further on that …

“For what I did myself,” he concluded, and once more his voice became solemn, “I emphasize again that I am not proud of it, but that I accept my own responsibility for it and will, I hope, be a better man for facing up to it and being honest about it. Whether I will be a better senator”—and again he gave a wry little smile—“that, I will have to leave others to judge.”

He paused and took a sip of water. This time there was loud, prolonged and genuinely hearty applause, during which he felt Linda’s hand squeeze his again, hard, and he returned it; saw Jim Elrod smiling openly and proudly at him; saw Jan and Clem and Kal nodding and smiling their congratulations; and felt as though the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. The feeling lasted a few nice seconds. Then a disturbance behind him in the audience told him that the nominee was coming back to battle again.

“As for Mr. Macklin—” He resumed strongly, attempting to head him off—but it was no use.

“Mr. Chairman!” Charlie Macklin interrupted, striding forward to the witness stand.

“Mr. Macklin,” Jim Madison snapped, “for heaven’s sake!”

“I know, Mr. Chairman, I know,” Charlie Macklin said soothingly, but not to be denied. “I just want to make two comments, which I think perhaps I have a right to make at this point—unless the chairman wishes to have me carried out bodily, of course.”

“We don’t have to do that, Mr. Macklin,” Janet Hardesty said before the chairman could reply. “We can just vote you out of here and then you can go back to California and never be heard from again. I think that is going to be much the better course.”

There was a surge of laughter, applause, but also some boos: Charlie was still not without friends—and of course his biggest friend, in the White House, had not been heard from. So he proceeded with undiminished confident vigor.

“Mr. Chairman, I think Senator Coffin deserves all the applause he can get for having the guts to admit his shameful part in this shabby episode which resulted in the tragic suicide attempt by an innocent young girl, one of the brightest luminaries of the journalistic world, who even now still lies in the hospital, her life in tatters, her world in disarray, her future very likely destroyed by the senator’s irresponsible and inexcusable cruelty and rejection. I think the senator deserves all the commendation he can secure, Mr. Chairman, because he has a long way to go to redeem himself in the eyes of decent people. He has made a tiny step in that direction, and I congratulate him for it.”

There was a hiss from somewhere in the audience and he turned dramatically in his best courtroom manner.

“Ah yes, you hiss! You hiss! Let me give you something to hiss about! Let us consider this noble fellow who, not content with apology, goes on to attack and demean this poor innocent young girl as she tried, in wild desperation and anguish, to sacrifice her life on the altar of her love for him!”

“Oh, Christ,” Kal Tokumatsu grated, making no attempt whatsoever to keep his voice down; and again there was a jumble of applause, laughter, boos, hisses. Charlie Macklin was equal to it.

“The senator appeals to One who must indeed look down in shame and sorrow upon such a sad spectacle!” he cried. “Very well, let Him be witness. Let Him be judge. Let Him decide the true nobility and morality of a man who, not content with blasting this poor girl’s life, in all likelihood forever, then attempts to destroy her good name and reputation by alleging—forgive me, Mrs. Coffin, dear brave, gallant lady,” he said with an elaborate bow as Linda turned and gave him an angry glare—“not by alleging, then, but by implying, which is just as bad, that Miss Grayson stage-managed her own suicide. That she deliberately left a copier available to guarantee the speedy transmission of her note to newsprint and television. That her suicide attempt was not genuine, but phony and contrived. That she took a carefully calculated amount of medication that would only appear to be fatal but in actuality was a deliberate, cold-blooded fraud. That she is a phony, a fraud, a cheat, a liar in her actions and her words. That is what Senator Coffin implies, Mr. Chairman!

“How does he know these things? Who can he bring forward to corroborate? Who will support his unsupported, desperate charges against Miss Grayson?

“Let him prove it, Mr. Chairman! Let him prove it, or let him apologize here and now to Miss Grayson, and to me, whom he presumes to judge and condemn from his shabby, ignoble, quote moral close quote position!”

And with his usual challenging lift of the head he turned dramatically and sailed, not walked, back to his chair as one more hectic hubbub filled the committee room.

For several minutes, no one in authority said much of anything. Everyone, in fact, felt exhausted. Charles Macklin was temporarily too much for them. By sheer noise and courtroom pyrotechnics he had beaten them verbally to a pulp. Not even Mark could think straight at first, though he knew he must. When he finally did, the prospect was bleak.

He did not dare look around at the press tables for Chuck. He could not consult with him, he could not name him without his permission: he could only reiterate what he had said and hope against hope that his word would be sufficient. This was what he attempted to do.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “the things I have related about Miss Grayson’s alleged suicide attempt, which I believe to be true, were told me by a friend who learned them from authorities present at the time. I believe them to be true—”

“But if my distinguished colleague will forgive me,” Senator Madison interrupted smoothly, “you do not, of your own knowledge, know them to be true?”

“No, sir,” he said lamely, “but I believe my informant to be honest and accurate in his account—”

“There was nothing of this nature in the media reports of Miss Grayson’s unfortunate episode,” Jim Madison observed.

“No, sir,” he said, “my informant was there and learned them firsthand from the police—”

“But there is nothing in the papers about this,” Jim Madison persisted, and now he was not a jolly old soul at all, but someone quite different and suddenly quite hostile. “Nothing from the police. Nothing from the press. Nothing from anyone, Senator—anyone but you. How is this?”

“All I can say, Mr. Chairman,” he repeated lamely, while at his side he could feel Linda move restlessly, hand trembling in his, “is that this was told me by a friend I believe to be honest and truthful-”

“But,” Jim Madison said, and now the audience was very quiet and very intent, “if you can’t produce him, Senator, and if it’s only your unsupported word, then I’m afraid you come close to being guilty of outright slander and libel against Miss Grayson. I hate to say it, Senator, but I’m afraid this destroys pretty much everything you’ve had to say on the subject. Which is a pity,” he added with an unctuous regret, “because it had seemed to us that you had made a manful declaration indeed, and that you might yet be the worthy young man we thought we welcomed to our ranks so short a time ago. Now, unhappily—”

“All I can say, Senator,” he said, and knew himself to be a broken record, “is that the information came to me from a friend I believe to be …

His voice trailed away and for an awful moment there was, it seemed to him, no sound at all in the room. But just as he was deciding with a terrible anguish that Mark Coffin was indeed finished forever as any kind of effective public servant or man, there came a sudden stirring behind him, a new surge of tension that communicated itself so powerfully that he knew with a great relief that he was no longer alone. Someone else had been going through an anguished self-appraisal, too, and had decided to be honest. He looked at Linda and she at him. Her eyes were brimming with tears but she was smiling. He was too.

“Mr. Chairman,” Chuck said in a voice trembling a little but loud and clear, “I am the Senator’s informant. If I may come to the witness stand and be sworn, I will corroborate his statements.”

COFFIN ADMITS AFFAIR WITH GRAYSON, NEWSMAN BACKS STORY OF PHONY SUICIDE. COMMITTEE MEMBERS REPORTED SWINGING AGAINST MACKLIN AFTER BITTER SESSION. HEATED SENATE DEBATE FURTHER DAMAGES NOMINEE.

And so it did, though when Mark entered the chamber shortly after 1 p.m., having barely nibbled at a hasty, polite and wary lunch in his office with Linda, he felt himself to be the damaged one. He was not prepared at all for the generally sympathetic and understanding welcome he received. There was something to be said for being a senator, he found: the club did exist, the ranks did close when one of the Senate’s own was attacked, senators under challenge were extended an extra tolerance by colleagues who, on many occasions, felt that there, but for the grace of God…

He had read about this, heard about it; he was not prepared for the automatic and unquestioning way it went into effect. He entered the swinging doors with profound trepidation, feeling as conspicuous as he had at age ten entering a new classroom: everybody’s watching me. Everybody was, but from the moment Art Hampton and Herb Esplin looked up and saw him standing uncertainly in the doorway, it didn’t matter. They dropped the papers they were reading, jumped up, hurried across the chamber, hands outstretched, clapped Mark on the back, greeted him with the most cordial and friendly words. Within seconds he was surrounded by a dozen other colleagues, his progress to his seat virtually a triumph. Above, the public murmured, the media watched, a scattering of applause swept the chamber. By the time he reached his seat he was feeling very much better. For the first time, not the last as the years went by, he thought of the Senate as home.

At his seat he found Rick on one side, Bob Templeton on the other. Both stood up at his approach, shook hands, said their warm hellos, gave him close, appraising glances.

“Well, buddy”—Rick murmured as they took their seats and across the chamber Art and Herb began their ritualized bickering about the schedule for the day’s activities—“I have to hand it to you. When you make a splash, you make a splash.”

“I wish I had your experience,” he said, still shaken but trying to be humorous. “I would have known better how to handle it.”

“You handled it exactly right,” Bob Templeton said. “It was the only thing to do and you did it. I must say I admire your guts. It took plenty to be that honest. I don’t know whether I would have had them.”

“I wouldn’t,” Rick said. “Hell, I’d have found some other way out. I always have. Except,” he added with a sudden moody candor, “the day is going to come for me sometime when I won’t be able to. I know that. But still I keep right on going.”

“How are things in the harem lately?” Bob inquired. “I keep hearing rumors in the corridors.”

“There’re always rumors in the corridors about everybody,” Rick said. “My principal problem at the moment is this gal from Vermont who thinks I promised to marry her. Of course I did,” he admitted cheerfully, “but what does that mean? Now she’s down here beating on me about it. She thinks she’s giving me a problem. She is. Threatening to go to the media with it, and so on. Not that this would hurt me the way little lover Lisette tried to hurt you, pal, but it would give me a few heavy-breathing moments. I’m supposed to be the bachelor swinger around here, and I’m brave: I admit it. I think staid old Vermont secretly likes my lover-boy image: something to do with the reverse side of the Cotton Mather ethic, maybe. But she’s giving me a bastardly headache, I’ll say that.”

“Maybe she’ll shoot you,” Bob suggested with a smile. “Better marry her and get it over with.”

“She won’t shoot me,” Rick said complacently. “She loves my beautiful bod. But she does get a little hysterical.”

“Better watch out,” Mark said glumly. “She might do something really unpleasant. Like Lisette.”

“I wonder what got into that girl?” Bob Templeton inquired with a puzzled distaste. “Why would she do such a thing—deliberately invite all that notoriety—possibly sacrifice her career? It just doesn’t make sense … unless she’s really in love with you. Which, like you, I find hard to believe.”

“I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “I really don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. Chuck doesn’t understand it, either, and he’s known her a lot longer than I have.”

“There’s a good friend,” Bob remarked. “You know Harvey Hanson just fired him.”

“No!” he exclaimed, appalled. “What in hell for?”

“Helping you, apparently,” Rick said. “There’s a statement on the ticker. It seems Chuck betrayed journalistic ethics, ‘that rigid code that binds all of us in the media to a higher standard of behavior and integrity than is expected of others.’ Also something about ‘that necessary separation of press and politics without which we would speedily have government-by-crony.’ Translated, this means that Chuck didn’t hand the story over to Harvey exclusively so he could use it to beat you over the head with it in his column. So, out with Chuck. Which I suppose is justified from Harvey’s point of view, but hard on Chuck.”

“My God,” he said with a sudden devastating self-bitterness, “am I going to destroy everybody who comes near me?”

“Now, cut that out,” Rick ordered sternly as Bob also made a move of protest. “That’s the way to get yourself really spooked. Chuck did what he felt was right, just as you did. He’s been around here a while. I’m sure he weighed all the consequences.”

“And wasn’t surprised when he got them,” Bob remarked dryly. “I imagine he’ll find another job without much trouble. Harvey Hanson isn’t that popular in this town. Feared, envied, despised, maybe—not popular. Chuck will land very well, I suspect. Somebody will give him something.”

“Maybe I will,” he said, a sudden inspiration. “I’m going to need a new administrative assistant one of these days not too far off. That might be a good solution for both of us.”

“That’s a great idea,” Rick said. “Not too soon, though; otherwise it will look like a put-up job. Let him do something else for a while. Make it gradual.”

“Yes,” he said, pleased with himself. “I will … I wonder: are you guys going to say anything about Macklin today?”

“Plenty,” Bob said grimly. “And from what I hear, we aren’t going to be the only ones. There’s a lot of feeling about his performance this morning. The whole dining room was buzzing with it a little while ago. I don’t think we ought to start the ball rolling, but somebody will… Yes,” he added with satisfaction as the Majority and Minority Leaders, their daily bickering finished, sat down. “Do my eyes deceive me, or is that your distinguished father-in-law?”

“I only hope,” Mark said glumly as Jim Elrod rose at his front-row seat, hands clutching lapels in his familiar stance, “that we can get through the afternoon without too much about me. I’ve had about as much pounding as I can take.”

“With Jim opening the debate,” Rick said, “they won’t dare.”

And they didn’t—not only because Jim Elrod set the tone by never mentioning him, concentrating instead solely on “Mr. Macklin’s uncontrolled, irresponsible, disgraceful, blatherskite posturing, which has lost him my respect, Mr. President, and I am sure that of many others”—but also because there seemed to be a general agreement—for the moment, at least—that Mark had been punished enough. Even those who continued to favor the Macklin nomination—and thanks to party loyalties and some determined phone calls from the White House during the afternoon, there were quite a few—carefully refrained from mentioning Mark and confined themselves to defense of the nominee. It appeared when the session ended that good old Charlie had lost substantial ground as a result of the morning’s activities; and while Mark refrained from entering the debate—he was literally unable even if he had wished, being still too shattered emotionally to trust himself—it was obvious that his silent presence was enough to further hurt the nominee.

He seemed to have emerged from his ordeal with dignity—and apparently with a sudden growth of affection, even among those who disagreed with him. Life in the Senate was a strange business, he decided; but in some very complicated way, a wonderful one—providing your colleagues thought you were genuine. Many seemed to think this about him … and it was true, he told himself with a sort of wistful defiance. It was true, though he had been one of the world’s monumental fools and come within a hair’s breadth of destroying himself forever.

Toward the end of the day, when he was gradually beginning to feel better about life and himself, Johnny brought in word that Chuck wanted to see him in the President’s Room. The message was conveyed in a cool and embarrassed manner. He realized sadly that he still had many fences to mend, not the least the revelation to Johnny that his idol was human after all.

His public apology was obviously not enough to satisfy Johnny: he was up against the stern and unbending judgments of the young. That would be something for tomorrow or next day, however. He couldn’t settle everything with everybody at once.

He went out to see Chuck, not knowing the reception he would receive in that sector, either. He was greatly relieved to find that Bill Adams was with him and that both were smiling.

“Hi,” he said, leading them to a sofa by the window as other senators and newsmen tried not to look, tried to overhear. He lowered his voice. “I didn’t get a chance to say it in the committee, Chuck, but I want you to know how much I—” and abruptly his voice failed him and he looked out the window, eyes suddenly filled with tears.

“That’s all right,” Chuck said roughly. “It had to be done, and thank God I was there to do it.”

“But I didn’t mean for it to cost you your job,” he said after a moment, voice steadier, turning back.

Chuck shrugged.

“I knew it would from the minute I saw you two leaving Kennedy Center. I guess I made up my mind right then that if you needed help, I would have to help, and that if I helped and didn’t tell Harvey, which I couldn’t do or he would have blown the whole thing—that he’d have my ass for it. But— ….”

“Why did you?” he asked humbly.

“He believes in you, Mark,” Bill Adams said with a gruff humor. “You’ve got a true believer. You’re an idealistic young fool and so is he. It was inevitable. You deserve each other.”

“Yes, I know,” he said, managing a smile, “but I sure as hell didn’t want it to mean his job. That’s carrying it to pretty strong extremes, it seems to me.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” Chuck said cheerfully. “Out of a job at noon, into a job by five p.m. How’s that for a Washington record?”

“How did it happen?” he asked, not daring to hope it could be that simple.

“Kindly old Dad of the AP Senate staff, here, has gone to bat for me,” Chuck said. “You are now talking to the newest member of that distinguished group. I don’t know what he had to do to persuade the powers that be, but I’m sure as hell not quibbling.”

“I threw my weight around a little,” Bill Adams said with satisfaction. “I’ve got some. Hell, Mark, I’ve been on this lousy beat, covering stupid jerks like you, for twenty-three years. I ought to have some clout with the clods in the New York office.”

Mark shook his head in amazement.

“It’s wonderful, but why did you do that?”

“Because he’s a damned good reporter,” Bill said. “And also, I guess, because sometimes you young bastards don’t have a monopoly on being idealistic. There can be idealistic old bastards, too. And true believers.”

“Well, thank you,” he said, feeling really humbled now, and once more close to some sort of ridiculous and unbecoming emotional response—it had been quite an emotional day, all things considered, and he hoped to hell he didn’t have another such any time soon. “Thank you very much.”

“Quite all right,” Bill said. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I won’t let you have it sometime if you deserve it. But right now I don’t think you deserve it. I think you did a damned fine thing today—after doing a damned stupid one Inauguration Night. Also, you may have forgotten it, but you gave us a little civics lecture the first time we saw you—I, Mark Coffin, and how I’m going to save the world. Oddly enough, I believed you. I still do. Damned stupid of me, but there it is. I also hate Harvey Hanson’s guts—but that’s a true Washington motivation, the kind you won’t understand until you’ve been here a while. Out in the boondocks they never do understand that kind of motivation here. But it exists…Anyway, you can write Boy Reporter off your conscience, if he was ever on it. He shouldn’t have been, because he did what he felt he had to, which is another reason I hired him. So we can now proceed to more earth-shaking matters. Namely, do you want to make any further comment today on the great Mr. Macklin?”

“I don’t think I should, do you?”

“Exactly right,” Bill said. “Keep your mouth shut. If I were you, I’d keep it shut to the very end of the debate. Then I’d come in and make a very brief, very punchy summation of what you’ve got against the guy—you never really got a chance to tell us in the committee—and let it go at that … unless, of course, some bastard starts getting personal about your girlfriend, in which case you can do a reprise of Noble Young Senator Accepting Responsibility for Moral Shortcomings.”

“I meant it,” he said, flushing, a sudden edge in his voice. Bill Adams smiled.

“I know you did, Mark, that’s why it was so damned effective. You acted like a high-school kid on his first drunk, Inauguration Night, but you had the guts to own up to it like a little man. You aren’t out of the woods yet, but you came a hell of a long way this morning. Have you heard anything more from her?”

“No,” he said, mollified. “I don’t want to, either.”

“If you do,” Bill said, “do me one favor, will you?”

“Anything.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Why?” he demanded, immediately suspicious. “So you can print it?”

“You’ll just have to let me be the judge of that,” Bill said coolly. “Just put it down to an old man’s curiosity. Is it a deal?”

They stared at one another for quite a few seconds, Chuck watching with obvious concern, before Mark said at last, “Okay, I trust you.”

“Good,” Bill said calmly. “There is some news about her on the ticker. I suppose you haven’t seen it yet.”

“No,” he said, the secret hand tightening on his stomach as it hadn’t since morning in the committee. “What is it?”

“ABC has announced she’s taking a leave of absence from Washington for a month and then will be reassigned to the Middle East.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” he said, surprise struggling with relief. “They aren’t going to fire her, then.”

“No,” Bill said, unfolding a piece of ticker tape and reading it with sarcastic emphasis. “They say she has been ‘suffering from overwork brought on by the zealous devotion to her job that has made her one of America’s outstanding newspersons.’ They say they have no wish to lose her services because of ‘an unfortunate set of circumstances created by forces or individuals temporarily beyond her emotional capacities to cope with.’ They are ‘confident she will be restored to full health and vigor and will speedily resume her place as one of the nation’s top reporters’ when she is ‘away from the Washington influences and personalities that have created this unhappy situation for her.’”

Mark shook his head in disbelief.

“Jesus Christ. She’s done it again. How has she done it again?”

“Who knows?” Chuck said. “Throwing herself on their mercy—threatening them with women’s lib—obviously convincing them it was all your fault.”

“Or maybe she just has somebody in the front office by the balls,” Bill Adams suggested dryly. “Never underestimate Lisette. Just be damned glad she’s leaving town.”

“I am,” he said fervently—so fervently that they laughed, thereby, he could see, creating even further interest around the President’s Room. “I am!”

But he was to hear once more from her before the day was over—the last time for a number of years, as it turned out. It explained some things, though he knew he would never really understand her—or ever forget her, either, which, of course, was exactly what she wanted.

“This came for you a little while ago by messenger,” Linda said, face strained, when he got home at six. “It’s from Doctors’ Hospital.”

“Do you want me to read it aloud?” he asked, while the kids, now alert to signs of tension, stared at them solemnly.

“No, of course not. I don’t want to read it at all, if you don’t want me to.”

“I probably should read it first,” he said, tone soothing and reasonable. “But you’re quite free to read it after that. In fact I want you to.”

It was a pledge he did not altogether wish to honor once he had read it, but this seemed to be Honesty Day, and he kept his word.

“Dear Markie”—he winced, but read on:

Here I am lying on my bed of pain, and there you are, out in the big world making points with everybody by being the gallant, noble, honest-if-it-kills-me soul you are. (Really, you are.) How unfair it all is! How will I ever stand it!

As I’m sure you’ve seen by now, I’ll soon be out of your hair. My dear friends at ABC—and I do have one or two dear ones—are seeing to that. In fact, dear Markie, they saw to it about a month ago. It was all arranged then, before I ever met you. The Middle East assignment was sealed, signed and delivered about a week before Fate flung me (or allowed me to find my innocent girlish way) into the arms of Mark Eldridge Coffin, junior—and how junior!—United States Senator from California. So you see, although the world thinks you’re driving me out of town—you naughty boy!—I’ve known for quite a while that I was going out of town. I think it will be a great assignment. People in the Middle East are as bitchy as I am. And I, in case you haven’t gathered by now, am as tough as they are. If not tougher.

In any event, too tough for you, dear Markie. You were a challenge I couldn’t resist. You were so naive—so innocent—so vulnerable—so All-American Boy, Mom’s Apple Pie, and Wave the Flag, that I just couldn’t be a nice girl. I told myself I must be a nice girl, I tried to be a nice girl; but alas, I failed.

Not that it wasn’t fun for you, though, right? I think you quite enjoyed my not being a nice girl; certainly few have co-operated as magnificently, or had more to offer. I won’t forget you, that’s for sure. I really am sorry I couldn’t resist, because of course it has caused a lot of uproar. But there was another reason why I thought I simply must. In addition to your being naive, innocent, vulnerable and the rest of the above, you were so damned perfect. You were so damned goody-goody. You were so damned smug.

I think that’s what really did it, Markie. You were just too good to be true. I had to find out what the truth was and in the process, I hoped—I was really quite altruistic about it, you’ve no idea—I really hoped I could knock you off your high-and-mighty perch and knock a little sense into you. You badly needed it. After watching you at the committee hearing this morning, baring your noble breast and inviting the slings and arrows, I guess I succeeded. Certainly it was a far, far better thing you did than you have ever done—at least in this town. And in spite of my staunch defender, Mr. M., I don’t blame you or Chuck for Telling All about the ‘suicide attempt.’ Nine tenths of the boobs in this world won’t believe you anyway. It will all be soon forgotten or vaguely half-remembered. I’ll be left with a certain half-sinister, very intriguing Woman of the World aura which won’t do me a damned bit of harm, in my profession—in fact, it’ll glamorize me with a lot of stupid people. And let’s face it, most of them are stupid.

And you, dear Markie, will be left with the Noble Image. The Honest One. The Fearless One. The Momentarily Misguided but Frightfully Nice and Responsible One, Never Again to Stray, Dedicated Now, Forever, to the Welfare of His Country and the Salvation of His People. And some day when the time is right, twenty years from now, maybe, you’ll have your chance, I do believe. And though they’ll try to bring me up and smear you with it, it won’t work by then. Maybe the Scarlet Woman, leaning on her cane and peering through her grimy contacts, will even come back and give an interview saying scornfully that it was all a youthful indiscretion, so who the hell’s making such a big deal of it now? Maybe she’ll even say what I’m sure those around the Hill who really know me are saying: the poor guy never had a chance.

You really didn’t, you know, and for a reason you probably won’t ever believe. I wasn’t kidding the other night when you stopped by with old Lyddie-biddie waiting downstairs like the tough old she-hawk she is under the velvet and old lace. I said I loved you and I think probably I do. Certainly I never said it to anybody before: I never begged. And you can bet your little blue booties, buster, I never will to anybody again. Ever. But I did to you: and maybe that tells you something.

So now you’re back home safe and sound—well, damaged a bit, maybe, but basically a lot sounder than ninety-nine and nine tenths of the arrogant, self-important, humorless, power-hungry, ass-kissing, ass-grabbing bastards in this town. Safe and sound with the wife and kiddies, perfect Linda and the tots. She’ll take you a long way, Markie: stick with her and she’ll get you there, because that’s the type she is. She loves you, too, I concede that, but in her quiet way she’s as tough as I am. How did a nice guy like you ever get mixed up with the likes of us? How could you be so foolish? Hell, man, how could you be so lucky?

Take care, dear Mark. I salute you from my bed of pain. Mr. Macklin is under it, trying to close death’s door before I wander, weeping, through. As he does so, I feel a hand on my leg. Can it be—? Can it be—? Yes.’ It is! It’s Charles Macklin, Superstar! Defeat the bastard, Markie! Save the Republic! Screw the unbelievers! Mark Coffin for President, now and forever! E Pluribus Sputum and don’t forget to use your Senate cuspidor!

All my love, dear Markie—

Your Lisette

(Believe it or not).

Later, the kids suitably soothed and safely in bed, he gave it to Linda. She read it without expression, folded it neatly, replaced it in the envelope, returned it.

“I feel sorry for her,” she said. “I think she does love you. I think she is tough. But she isn’t going to have a very happy life.”

“Are we?” he asked quietly.

Their eyes held for what seemed to him a very long time.

“Stick with Linda,” she said at last with a twisted little smile. “She’ll get you there. She’s tough, too.”

And went up to bed, once again, alone.

And so, as Bill Adams had remarked, he was not out of the woods yet, on many counts. His father had called while he was reading the letter: he would have to return the call—tomorrow, he decided—and make his peace as best he could. The governor had called: there would be another lighthearted skipping over the surface of events, the knife always lurking—in the hands of an enemy, now—ready to slash. The President had called: commiseration, castigation, supplication, threat—who knew? He too must be faced. The letters and telegrams, no doubt already piling up in thousands. The Macklin debate, far from finished. His father-in-law’s defense bill, pushed to the back of thought in the last few hectic hours. And Linda. And Linda. And Linda …

Lisette, come and gone, wrapped in her own strange, ironic, self-defensive world, quite possibly far from balanced—dealing her glancing blow and darting away with a sad mocking laugh … Mark Coffin, left to pick up the pieces.

He had done well this day—he was on his way back—but he still had a way to go.

He was to find very swiftly that the challenge was far from over, the one false step far from overcome.

***

Book IV

***

Chapter 1

Yet for a few days, aided by the fact that both the Macklin nomination and Jim Elrod’s bill were still in committee, he was able to go along in the persuasion that while he might have minor difficulties to face, the major ones were over. His mail, some of it extremely disillusioned and severe, nonetheless was running approximately two to one in his favor. His contacts with his colleagues and the administration did not seem to be too disturbing. The media, while commenting extensively on “the case of Senator Mark Coffin”—he was a “case” now, no longer just a senator—was in the main sympathetic, tolerant, earnestly hopeful that after a shattering and upsetting experience, “America’s youngest and perhaps most promising new senator will speedily regain his balance and go on to those major accomplishments his countrymen generally expect of him.” His relations with his wife remained distant and correct but there was no noticeable worsening. “Time,” as Lyddie murmured to him when their paths crossed at a British Embassy party, “takes care of a lot of things. She’ll come around, Mark, you just believe me!” Having no other choice, he did, with a desperate, if sternly suppressed, hope.

His conversations with his father, the governor, the President, various emissaries from the administration, and his colleagues had their bothersome moments but on the whole were less of a strain than he had expected. He returned his father’s call first, reaching him just before press time the day after his own appearance before the Judiciary Committee. Harry Coffin at first sounded cool and distant but quickly warmed up to it.

“Why in the hell,” he demanded, words tumbling over one another, “did a decent half-witted idealist like you let himself get trapped by a two-bit tart like that? I didn’t raise you to be such a fool.”

“I’ve admitted I was a fool,” he replied sharply, “to the whole wide world. You don’t have to rub it in, so cut it out! Okay?”

“I still don’t see—” Harry Coffin repeated stubbornly.

“I don’t care whether you see or not!” he retorted. “It’s done, it’s over, I admitted it, I apologized for it, I’m not going to waste my time or yours going over it again. It’s over!… Now,” he went on more calmly, “tell me about your editorial for today. I suppose you’re going to roast me alive and give Charlie Macklin another big boost. Well, go ahead, if you think we both deserve it.”

“I’m not roasting you alive,” his father said, “but I am agreeing with your own estimate of yourself. I’m saying you have a lot of growing up to do, but maybe this will turn out for the best in the long run because it will make you do it. I’m expressing the hope of the Statesman, and my own hope, that this will be the case. Is that too harsh?”

“I don’t like it,” he said slowly, “but it’s fair enough, I guess … and Charlie?”

“Charlie,” his father said thoughtfully, “is another matter.”

“Oh?” he asked, a stirring of hope on that score. “What’s the matter with Good Old Charlie? I thought he was your bosom buddy to the end.”

“I thought he made a damned fool of himself, too,” Harry Coffin said. “I thought Senator Hardesty had him pinned exactly right: he did act like a two-bit country lawyer. He didn’t have to put on that kind of show.”

“Made you wonder about him a little, did it?” Mark asked. “Made you think possibly his judgment and stability leave a lot to be desired? Well that’s good. I’m glad you’re beginning to see that, even if your own son had to be his victim in order for it to penetrate. Now maybe you can grasp what I’ve been talking about since his nomination.”

“He’s still been one of the best D.A.’s L.A. ever had—”

“You define ‘best.’ You’ve just had an example in your own family. Is that what you mean by ‘best’?”

“I agree with a lot of things he’s done,” Harry Coffin said firmly, “and this episode hasn’t changed my opinion on those.”

“Method is important, too—means can destroy ends. Anyway, I’m not going to argue with you. At least you’re thinking about him, which is what counts. So, what does your editorial say about him?”

“Something along those lines,” his father said. “I’m saying his performance raises some doubts. Not enough to disqualify him, but enough to raise doubts ‘and possibly to warrant further and more intensive analysis of Mr. Macklin’s qualifications for the powerful office he wishes to fill.’”

“You’re saying that?”

“I’m saying that.”

“Well, that seems a handsome concession. And one designed to start the ground crumbling a bit under good old Charlie’s feet.”

“I think so,” his father said. “I’m not conceding you’re right yet, but I’m beginning to have a few doubts. And I think others should, too.”

“Good. Then maybe it wasn’t all in vain.”

“Maybe not,” Harry Coffin said, “even if you were a damned fool. Leaving that aside, I can’t say your mother and I have been exactly happy to see you crucified. And we were both proud of the way you made a clean breast of it.”

“Oh, you were proud of me,” he said in a pleased voice.

“Of course we were, you idiot. Did you doubt it?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“This doesn’t mean we approve, of course. You were a damned fool—”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, we’ve been over that. But as long as you both think I did the right thing to make amends, then that helps me live with myself a little better.”

“I said we were proud of you,” his father pointed out tartly. “I’m also saying in the editorial that ‘most tolerant and compassionate Americans who understand their own weaknesses should be proud of Senator Coffin’s courage and candor.’ Let’s hope you never let us down again. I’m saying that, too.”

“That must be quite an editorial,” he said, more lightly. His father chuckled.

“I’m telexing a copy to the AP with a request they get it to Jim Madison and say I asked him to put it in the Congressional Record.”

“Jim Madison? He’s not such a good choice. He’s still a Macklin man.”

“Oh yes, he is a good choice, and for exactly that reason. And don’t worry about him doing it. He owes me quite a few. He may strangle a bit, which should give you some laughs, but he’ll do it. He’d damned well better.”

“I didn’t realize you were such a tough politician.”

Harry P. Coffin snorted.

“Sonny,” he said dryly, “you don’t know the tree from which you sprang. That’s what comes of all those sheltered years at Stanford University.”

“I’m not sheltered anymore,” he said, a ruefulness in his voice.

“That’s right,” his father said crisply, “and don’t you forget it, ever again.”

“No, sir,” he said obediently. “Of that you can be sure.”

The governor, as he expected, was light, bright, happy—and obviously relishing Mark’s discomfort. The bastard thinks he has me on the run, he thought; and told himself grimly, He has another think coming.

“Well, well!” the governor said when his call came through. “Is this the Reluctant Lothario of Washington, D.C., the Joaquin Murrieta of Capitol Hill romance?”

“Larry,” he said in a tired tone, “will you knock it off, please? It isn’t funny.”

“It has its humorous aspects, you must admit.”

“Not for me. So drop it.”

“I just wanted to cheer you up a little,” the governor said in a tone he made sound injured. “It didn’t work, hmm?”

“It didn’t work. What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Well, if we must plunge straight into business—”

“We must.”

“—I would still like it very much if you would lay off friend Macklin.”

“After what he did to me? Are you crazy?”

“He couldn’t have done anything to you if you hadn’t already done it to yourself, buddy. Right?”

“Right,” he admitted. “You are always so right, Larry. And so perfect, too. It must be a wonderful feeling. How do you stand it?”

“Sometimes I can’t,” the governor said cheerfully, “but as long as the voters don’t complain, I manage … So: the feud goes on, hmm?”

“I see no reason to change my opinion of Mr. Macklin’s soundness of judgment and steadiness of character. Both strike me as minimal. I intend to continue opposing him with everything I have. I would hope other senators would do the same.”

“That sounds like a statement.”

“It is. I gave it to the media this morning. Hasn’t it hit the wires out there yet?”

“It has, as a matter of fact.”

“Well, then, why bother to talk? It’s clear enough.”

“I wanted to satisfy myself you really mean it.”

“I really mean it.”

“Then I’ll have to disown you, I’m afraid—poor, wayward child!”

“Is that supposed to hurt me? I’m in for six years, you know.”

“And I run for re-election in two, and if I make it I’ll be in a great position to take you on when you run again.”

“I’m terrified. Anyway, I thought you had your eyes on the White House.”

“Who doesn’t, including you? Maybe you’ll be the first really notorious womanizer since Warren G. Harding to make it.”

“That’s absurd and you know it, calling me a ‘womanizer.’”

“Oh, I don’t know. You’re in for six years and every single one of them is going to be labeled ‘Lisette.’ You don’t think you’re going to get off this easy, do you?”

“Larry,” he said, a genuine anger in his voice, “you lay off me, you son of a bitch. I don’t mind working with you for the good of California because that’s what we’re both elected for. But I’m not going to play any snide games with you, and by God, you aren’t going to play any with me. I’ve paid my dues on Lisette and that’s the end of it. So lay off.”

“You may think you’ve paid them,” Larry said coolly, “but this is only the beginning, friend, only the beginning. You aren’t really so naive that you think that just because you made a few noble posturings for the television cameras, you’re home free and clear? It isn’t going to be that easy. It’s going to go on and on, believe me. Nine times out of ten when your name is mentioned they’ll work in something about her, some passing blow that will whittle you down again just when you think you’ve climbed up. And as for me—I’ll probably keep it going, too, which will also hurt a lot. Why shouldn’t I? You aren’t doing anything to help me.”

“Larry,” he said evenly, “if supporting Charlie Macklin is what’s known as ‘helping’ you, then no, I’m not, that’s for sure. As for the rest of it, maybe what you say is true but I doubt it. I think after a while people are going to get so damned sick and tired of constant snide references to Lisette—especially when I’ve been perfectly honest about it—that they’re going to turn finally and come to my support. I may be wrong. But that’s what I believe.”

“It’s what you have to believe,” the governor remarked. “I happen to believe the opposite.”

“Then we’ll just have to let time decide, won’t we? In the meantime”—his voice grew harsh—“if I owed you anything where my administrative assistant is concerned, it’s over. I think he’s your spy in my office and I’m going to get him out of there just as fast as I can.”

“Suit yourself if you want to make another enemy.”

“He’s my enemy anyway, I think he always has been. I think he told Jim Madison and Macklin—and you—about Lisette before she broke the story herself. And I think if she hadn’t, he or one of you would have. So he’s going.”

“He has an awful lot of strings back home that he can pull, you know. I’d go a little slowly, if I were you.”

“He can’t touch me now, can’t you see that? Lisette ended all that. I’m my own man now; I don’t owe anybody anything. It’s between me and the voters: there’s no longer anyone in between. So I shall do what I think best.”

“You have to have some excuse, you know. You can’t fire a good man out of hand. That would cause a stink. And further suspicions about noble young Mark Coffin. ‘What’s Harper got on the senator?’ they’ll ask. ‘Does that damned skirt-chaser have something else to hide? Why is he getting rid of his closest official associate? It sure doesn’t look good!’ You can’t win, pal. You might as well keep him on.”

“No, I will not. The excuse will come. And if it doesn’t—well, I don’t have to give any. And now I’ve got to run along. Thanks for checking in. Sorry I can’t do more for you on Macklin, but he’s ended the chance.”

“You ended the chance, buddy,” the governor said coldly. “Don’t ever forget it.”

“You won’t let me,” he said calmly. “But, there it is.”

And he hung up, thankful the governor’s position had been what it was. He had been fearful that at any moment Larry would be smart enough to do the really astute thing—announce his unwavering support. That would have tied Mark to the governor, to the lingering loyalty he still felt for the man who had launched his senatorial career, to the support of Charlie Macklin. But Larry had chosen to be an enemy and thereby sacrificed his final claim.

The President, as he had expected, was not so inept; but there was no doubt he was an enemy, too—more subtle but equally adamant.

“Mark,” he began in a fatherly way, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that you got involved in this unfortunate business—and how proud I am of you for the forthright and honest way you’re handling it.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” he said cautiously. “I’m trying to do my best.”

“And a magnificent one it is,” the President agreed admiringly. “Real guts, real courage, real honesty, real integrity. Rare, these days. We could stand a lot more of that in Washington.”

“I’m glad you approved,” he said, again cautiously; thinking, Come on, now, let’s have the other shoe. On schedule, it dropped.

“I’m only regretful,” the President said with a certain wistfulness in his tone, “that somehow it seems to have gotten all tangled up with the Macklin matter.”

“I don’t know that it has ‘somehow’ gotten tangled up with it, Mr. President,” he said evenly. “There isn’t any mystery about how it got ‘tangled up,’ is there? Charlie dragged it in.”

“I’m afraid Charlie was a little impetuous,” the President admitted ruefully. “He does have a way of swinging a little wide, at times.”

“Yes, he does,” Mark agreed. “He tried to swing wide enough to destroy me altogether, didn’t he? How do you suppose old calm, level-headed, responsible Charlie, nominee for the office of Attorney General of the United States where these qualities are imperative, could ever have done such a thing?”

There was a momentary silence. Then the President chuckled.

“You do have a way with words, Mark. Also, I see, a considerable temper when you’re aroused. I thought you were such a nice, quiet boy. I’ll have to remember that.”

“I hope you will, Mr. President. We may get along better in future if you do.”

“And you don’t take any pushing around from anybody, do you?” the President remarked, admiration again in his voice. “I’ll certainly remember that But, about Charlie—”

“Yes?”

“He was too extreme,” the President confessed. “He was too hostile. He did swing a little wide. He did allow himself to be carried away in the heat of the moment—”

“Have you talked to him about it?” Mark asked, and suddenly his growing disgust with the smooth hypocrisies of power flared to the surface. “Has he received a phone call, as I am doing? Have you called him on the carpet and warned him that such tactics have no place in the repertoire of a man who presumes to the highest legal office in the Executive Branch? Has he received a reprimand?”

“We’ve discussed it,” the President said. “He knows how I feel about it.”

“And how do you feel about it, Mr. President?”

“Just as I said. Admiration for your guts, your courage, your honesty, your integrity. Regret that it all happened. Sorrow that it’s become involved in Charlie’s nomination.”

“And regret and sorrow that he was the one who ‘involved’ it? That he was the one who showed a lack of guts, honesty and integrity? That he has shown himself once again to be entirely unfit for the office of Attorney General? I think those are the things I might have said to my nominee if I were President and responsible for such a man as Charlie.”

“But you aren’t President, are you?” the President asked quickly. “And may never be, Mark, if you go through your public career constantly taking big dramatic stands against your own President and your own administration and those in the Senate who are trying to help the President get things done.”

“I’m not taking big dramatic stands,” he protested sharply. “I’m trying to do what I believe to be right. Anyway, I asked you: did you reprimand Charles Macklin for his unseemly and unrestrained behavior before the Senate Judiciary Committee? Did you tell him that is no way to conduct himself as Attorney General of the United States?”

“I told you we discussed it,” the President said, voice suddenly cold. “That is all you have any right to inquire of the President of the United States, and that is all you are going to be told. Is that clear?”

“Suppose it isn’t clear?” he asked with equal coldness, an idea suddenly forming in his mind. “What are you going to do, drag up Lisette Grayson every time you open your mouth about me? You’ve already kept me off Foreign Relations Committee because I wouldn’t bow down on Charlie. Now you’ve got a real weapon, Mr. President. What treatment can I expect that shows your guts, courage, honesty and integrity? More of the same I got from Charlie? Just let me know, so I can be prepared for it!”

Again there was silence, this time quite protracted. Finally the President sighed—Mark could picture him shaking his head sadly over wayward and recalcitrant youth—and resumed his fatherly, wistful tone.

“All right, Mark: I give in. You win. I’ll tell Charlie to watch his language and mind his p’s and q’s. You probably do have a point. I guess he does let himself get carried away sometimes. There are moments when he is a little unrestrained. Those qualities stand him in good stead when he’s going after the criminal elements that he will have to fight as Attorney General, but I guess maybe they aren’t too advisable in the general administration of the office. I’ll tell him that.”

Mark took a deep breath.

“Is that all?”

“What else is there?” the President asked, sounding blank.

“You still won’t withdraw his nomination?”

“What!” the President exclaimed, sounding genuinely shocked. “What on earth for?”

“Because he just isn’t fit, that’s what for! He just isn’t fit. What else can I tell you that you don’t know already?”

Again a pause and regrouping. Finally:

“Well, Mark,” the President said in a calm and reasoned voice, “it’s apparent we aren’t getting very far at the moment. Maybe we can talk about it later when we’re both in a calmer mood. But I did want to tell you how much I admire your courage and your honesty in this unfortunate Grayson affair. I hope you’ll accept my compliments on that.”

“In the spirit in which they’re offered, Mr. President.”

“And of course”—ignoring that—“we are together on Jim Elrod’s bill, aren’t we, Mark? We do see eye to eye on that, don’t we? You will be in my corner on that, won’t you?”

“That’s Washington, I guess,” he said. “Yes, I’ll be with you on that.”

“Good!” the President said heartily. “That makes me feel a lot better. Take care of yourself, Mark. You’re a lively addition to the Washington scene, there’s no doubt about that!”

“Some people,” he said wryly, “are born lively, some achieve liveliness, and some have liveliness thrust upon them. I rather think the latter is what’s happened to me.”

“And a great sense of humor, too,” the President said. “A great sense of humor.”

But humor, he would say, was not the basic mood in which he went about his business in the following days. Lisette disappeared from the front pages and the television channels—she had gone home to her parents in Minnesota for a few weeks prior to leaving for the Middle East, Chuck told him—and with her went much of the attention to the episode, and to himself. He slipped ever more firmly into the Senate routine, the endless round of errands for constituents, the growing burden of committee work and legislation. Interior and District of Columbia Affairs were not his favorite pastimes but he gave them diligent attention and soon found himself becoming familiar with things he had never dreamed he would know about, such as traffic problems on Key Bridge, a new wing for St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, the drive to integrate more whites into the Washington school system, and the like. He told himself grimly that it was good discipline, he was being punished and must do his best and thereby overcome his punishers. When Art Hampton dropped by a District Committee meeting one day and afterward told him with genuine admiration that he was “really getting into the swing of it,” he knew he was succeeding.

Concurrently the two major battles of the new session moved inexorably to a head. Judiciary Committee met a total of seven times on the nomination of Charles Macklin, an unusual number for a Cabinet member, and in the third week of hearings held a closed-door session from which Jim Madison emerged upset to announce that the nomination was being sent to the Senate with a do-pass recommendation on a vote of 9-8. Kal, Clem and Rory Williamson of Wyoming had all defected from the majority to join the six minority members. Charlie was the last Cabinet nominee to come up for action, and Charlie faced a fight. Suddenly Mark was back in the news, his clashes with the nominee recalled, Lisette recalled, everything, as the governor had predicted, rehashed once more.

Armed Services Committee wrangled for just about the same length of time with Senator Elrod’s bill S.1, considered but rejected amendments trimming the amount, finally sent it do-pass to the floor with a favorable vote of 12-6. Jim Elrod emerged beaming: he faced a fight, too, but it appeared for the moment, at least, that it would not be as hard as Charlie’s. Again Mark was sought out for comment, repeated his opposition; again the episode of Inauguration Night was back in the news. Will I never be free of that damned thing? he asked himself with an agonized impatience. The little voice of reality said coldly, Buster, this is only a month after it happened. Ten years from now you’ll probably still be hearing about it. He began to realize, just a little, what he might be in for between now and the day, if ever, when Washington would at last grant him forgiveness and absolution and get off his back.

Jim Madison, as chairman of Judiciary charged with shepherding the Macklin nomination through the Senate, and Jim Elrod, as chairman of Armed Services responsible for S.1, met in a humorous little ceremony in Art Hampton’s office the afternoon they reported both items to the Senate. No other major matters were pending at the moment, it was a tossup which the Senate would take up first. Cabinet nominations almost always got priority, but somehow there was no sense of rush for Charlie Macklin.

“Let’s make it literally a tossup,” Senator Elrod suggested. Reporters and cameramen gathered ‘round and Art flipped the coin. Jim Madison won and the Macklin nomination was placed first on the agenda with Jim Elrod’s defense bill to follow. A lively month loomed ahead. The Senate side of the Capitol began to feel the grip of that pleasant excitement that comes with major legislative contention. The old machine was about to go into high gear, full throttle, flat out. Everybody from senators to elevator boys looked forward to the challenge, the excitement and the fun.

There would be winners and losers on both issues, but Mark knew that in some fundamental personal fashion, having nothing to do with votes, there was an almost certain chance that he would be one of the major losers on both. He determined grimly that this should not be so if he could possibly prevent it. But how could he? It was all too soon after what he had come to refer to in his own mind as “my little episode.”

The night before debate was scheduled to begin on Charlie Macklin, Mark’s father-in-law invited himself to dinner. Linda served it with the correct and rather remote air with which she was still doing everything. After the meal was finished and the kids dismissed, protesting but overruled, her father did what he had come to do and sailed right into the center of it.

“Linda Rand,” he said thoughtfully, a brandy in his hand, “why are you goin’ around as though you’d been sittin’ on a daisy and got a bumblebee up the wrong place?”

“Daddy,” she said, startled into laughter in spite of herself, “why are you sounding like a disrespectful, dirty-minded, dirty-talking old man?”

“Because I am,” Jim Elrod said with satisfaction. “Yes, ma’am, that is exactly what I am, and shameless about it. Absolutely shameless. I’d like an answer, though. It’s got me puzzled, and I’m sure poor Mark, here, has been climbin’ the walls about it. And don’t tell me he deserves to,” he added quickly, “because I won’t stand for any more of that kind of talk. Now, what is it!”

“If you don’t know,” she said in an exasperated tone, “if you really don’t understand, then I’m not going to tell you. You’ll just have to guess.”

“Well, I think it’s carryin’ a grudge too far,” her father remarked, unabashed.

“You think what you please,” she snapped. “It’s my business and Mark’s. It isn’t any of yours. We’ll work it out.”

“I hope so,” Senator Elrod said, “because now, with these two fights comin’ up on the floor, he has plenty on his mind without you addin’ to it at home.”

“And I don’t have anything on my mind?” she demanded, voice trembling. “Well, if that doesn’t sound like a man. And a political man, at that. I’m supposed to submerge all my feelings, forget all my unhappiness, pretend everything is all right again even when it isn’t? What about me?”

“You’re doin’ it for him in public,” her father pointed out gently. “Sooner or later you’re goin’ to have to get out from under the strain of it, honey, and let things get back to normal at home as well. It just isn’t natural to keep it up forever.”

“It isn’t ‘forever,’” she said, beginning to cry, partly from emotion and partly from anger. “It’s only been a month. That isn’t ‘forever.’”

“It is when two people love each other,” Jim Elrod said, still gently. “And I expect you still do.”

“I still do,” Mark said quietly.

“And I don’t?” Linda demanded, tears suddenly full flood. “You two are impossible!”

And she turned and fled from the room, leaving silence behind.

“I’m sorry,” Jim Elrod said finally, “but somebody had to break the log jam and I guess you haven’t been able to do it.”

“Not so far,” he admitted glumly. “And I’m not so sure you have, either. Maybe you’ve just made it worse.”

“Oh no,” Senator Elrod said confidently. “She’ll have a good cry and later tonight it will be all right. You’ll see.”

“I hope so,” he said, still glumly.

“It’ll happen,” his father-in-law promised. “It’s been long enough. Linda Rand’s a strong woman, but she is a woman. I know her, and she’s had enough. Which doesn’t mean, of course,” he added in a pleasantly conversational tone, “that I won’t absolutely destroy you if you ever do a thing like that to her again.”

“You’ve told me that already,” he said wryly, “and I believe you. It doesn’t have to be repeated.”

“Good,” Jim Elrod said. “Now, tell me: how’re we goin’ to beat old Charlie Macklin and get my bill through the Senate?”

“What I’m planning to do,” he said lightly, relieved by the change of subject, “is beat old Charlie Macklin and not get your bill through the Senate.”

“Can’t stop it,” Jim Elrod said placidly. “Can’t stop it any way, shape, fashion or form.”

“I’m going to try.”

“Try away. It’ll be a good exercise for you—part of the edu-catin’ you have to go through to become a good United States Senator. And you may come close. But I think—I just have an inklin’—it isn’t goin’ to work. As for Charlie, now, that’s another matter. I hear there’s quite a stirrin’ in the ranks. But that doesn’t mean, of course, that you’re goin’ to get off easy when you stand up to oppose him. I get the distinct impression that there’s goin’ to be a pretty complete review by some people of your dashin’ private life.”

“But I’ve paid my price for that!” he cried. “Isn’t it ever going to be allowed to die down?”

“Never,” Jim Elrod said crisply—and, at last, Mark believed it. “Oh, you’ll overcome it, all right, in time, and your career will go on just fine, and I expect you’ll be re-elected six years from now, and probably as often after that as you want to be, and maybe you’ll even be President some day, with luck; but as for ever really gettin’ away from unfortunate little Miss Grayson, no, sir, I don’t think you ever really will. That’s why it’s important, if I may say so, to get things straightened out with Linda tonight, once and for all. Because you’re goin’ to need her support more than ever, in the next few days. And for a long time after that.”

“It’s funny,” he said bitterly. “Everybody in the Senate has been so nice about it since I appeared before the committee that I was really beginning to believe they were sincere. I really believed everybody was standing by me. I guess I’m still awfully naive.”

“You are,” his father-in-law agreed, not unkindly, “but you’re learnin’. Everybody’s sincere around here up to a point, that point bein’ where the interests of their state, or their own political self-interest, or their desire for power, either immediate or potential, comes into it. Then all sorts of things begin to happen and you’ll find that, quite sincerely, they’ll be doin’ what they feel they have to do to protect their state, or their own interests, or gain their power, or whatever.”

“Even you, I suppose,” he said somberly.

“Even I,” Jim Elrod agreed, “except I’ll be on your side in the Macklin matter and I can keep most of ’em quiet, because they’re all afraid of me when I get to debatin’. I have a pretty sharp tongue, sometimes, and most of ’em think twice before they challenge me. And on the defense bill I won’t allow it, because your private life has nothin’ whatsoever to do with that.”

“It doesn’t with Macklin, either.”

“Oh yes it does, Mark, I’m sorry to say. You set yourself up as a pretty high and mighty moral young man, you know, where old Charlie’s concerned. That’s where they’ve got you. But I’ll do what I can to keep the lid on, and it’ll be plenty. Just don’t be surprised if a few things slip past me, though. Brace yourself.”

“I haven’t done anything but, for a month,” he said ruefully.

“And now I’m goin’ to leave,” Jim Elrod said, rising and preparing to do so, “and I’d suggest you take your deepest breath and go see Linda. Give her my love and tell her I’ll call tomorrow sometime. I’ll see you on the floor tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll see what we can do about old Charlie.”

“Thanks, Jim,” he said, shaking hands at the door. “For everything.”

“Don’t trust me too far,” his father-in-law said cheerfully. “We may be political enemies day after next.”

“But still personal friends, I hope,” he said, rather desperately.

“Oh, that, sure,” Senator Elrod said comfortably. “Most all of us in the Senate are personal friends. We couldn’t get anythin’ accomplished if we weren’t.”

Buoyed by his father-in-law’s optimism, he went up to Linda’s room and knocked on the door. There was no answer. He tried it, found it locked, pounded with a sudden harsh anger that seemed to shake the house. Down the hall Markie murmured in his sleep, Linnie awoke and cried out in alarm.

“It’s all right,” he called. “It’s just Daddy. Go back to sleep.”

Their uneasy murmurings died away.

“Linda,” he said quietly, “let me in, please.”

“Mark,” she said with equal quietness from behind the door, “just go to bed and stop upsetting the children, will you, please? This isn’t an old-fashioned melodrama, you know: you can’t just pound on the door and demand your rights. That went out a long time ago. When it’s time for it to happen, it will happen. Don’t worry about it.”

“When you say it’s time for it to happen,” he retorted bitterly.

“That’s right,” she said calmly. “That’s one of the things you should have thought about, I’m afraid. Good night, Mark. Get some rest. You have a big day ahead.”

“Which you aren’t helping,” he said between his teeth, “one little bit.”

“Oh yes I am. I’ll be there in the gallery. And that isn’t going to be easy for me, either. And I need my rest for it, too. So, good night!”

“Christ!” he said, leaning his head against the door. “Don’t you love me at all?”

“Too much to turn this into a cliché. Good night, Mark.”

“Good night,” he said miserably. “See you in the morning.”

But there was no answer, though he thought he heard a muffled sob. He told himself bitterly that it was imagination, though in honesty he had to admit that it probably was not.

***

Chapter 2

Excitement in the Senate. Floor and galleries full. In their seats in the public gallery, Linda and Lyddie, looking. In the Press Gallery, Chuck and Bill Adams, looking. In the Diplomatic Gallery, Sir Harry and Pierre DeLatour, looking. Everywhere across the chamber, members and staff, looking. Everybody, he feels, looking—at him.

Again the rustle of tension, the bustle of preparation, the noisy. stirrings of news and contention about to be born: the constantly recurring reprise that goes on in the Senate every time a major issue nears decision, already familiar to him in every detail, already a part of life; already framework of the past and predictor of the future.

On the floor the routine “morning hour”—the chaplain’s prayer, the introduction of bills, the statements on local matters, the partisan insertions of editorials and commentaries, the routine nominations of postmasters, minor judicial officers, civil servants, sent up by the White House. Behind the routine the rehearsing of arguments, the refining of points, the last-minute shuffling of papers, the careful marshaling of energies for the battle about to begin.

At 1:12 p.m. the senior senator from California is recognized by Vice-President Hamilton Delbacher. Sudden silence for a moment, a portentous clearing of the throat—“Ah, hem!” from Jim Madison. The battle is joined.

“Mr. President,” he says in his most statesmanly manner, “I ask unanimous consent to call up the Judiciary Committee report on the nomination of Charles A. Macklin to be Attorney General of the United States, and to move that the Senate do advise and consent to this nomination.”

On his feet in a flash, Senator Elrod looks about him blandly.

“Mr. President,” he says, “without objectin’ to the Senator’s request or attemptin’ to prejudice consideration of this nomination or anythin’, but can the Senator tell us what the vote was in Judiciary Committee on this nomination?”

“It was nine to eight in favor of Mr. Macklin,” Jim Madison says, “as the Senate is well aware. Does the Senator from North Carolina wish to comment on this fact?”

“Oh, I will,” Jim Elrod says, “in due course. First of all, since we’re now in legislative session, the Senator’s motion to take up the nomination does require unanimous consent, and I join him in hopin’ it will be approved, as we’re all rarin’ to go on this one. But I do suggest he separate his motion and not try to tag on advisin’ and consentin’ to it. That comes automatically at the end of debate, anyway; and I expect a lot of us will want to be heard before we get to that point and cast our votes. Isn’t that right, Senator?”

“That’s right,” Jim Madison says stiffly. “Very well: I ask unanimous consent that the Senate do now proceed to the consideration of the nomination of Charles A. Macklin of California to be Attorney General of the United States, period. Does that suit my distinguished friend?”

“Much better,” Jim Elrod says placidly, and amid considerable laughter.

“Without objection it is so ordered,” says Ham Delbacher in the Chair.

There is a pause, for a moment, a heightened tension as of forces being finally committed. Mark is yet more intensely aware that many eyes are upon him where he sits restlessly at his desk between Rick Duclos and Bob Templeton. He can see that almost a full Senate is present. Of the hallowed hundred only MacLain Morrison of Nevada and Peter Fleury of Louisiana are absent. Everyone else is in place and, as Jim Elrod says, rarin’ to go.

“Mr. President,” Senator Madison announces, “I will try to keep my remarks in support of the nominee short and to the point.”

There are clearly audible murmurs of “Good!” from various areas of the floor, and, flushed with injured dignity, he responds tartly, “Even though I feel that this nomination deserves a little more than the tabloid type of treatment it has received in connection with certain members of this Senate.”

“Oh-oh,” Rick murmurs. “There’s a zinger for you, pal. Watch out.”

“I’m watching out,” Mark says somberly. “But I guess for a while I’ll just have to take it.”

His father-in-law, however, does not.

“Now, what,” he inquires softly, “does the distinguished senior Senator from California mean by that?”

“I mean,” Senator Madison says, not at all abashed, thinking he has a useful weapon and determined to employ it, “the way in which this most important nomination has seemed to become inextricably bogged down in the sexual peccadilloes [“Good Lord,” Bob Templeton says in quiet disgust] of certain members of this Senate.”

“Which?” Senator Elrod persists. “You? Me? I haven’t been keepin’ track of you lately, Senator, but I’ve been pretty pure, myself. Mebbe you know somethin’ about someone else that we don’t know. Who is it, Senator? Let’s have this villain exposed!”

Bluff thus called, Jim Madison flushes again, looks angrily about, starts to say something, stops. A titter of laughter sweeps the chamber, all eyes go again to Mark, trying desperately to look as impassive as he possibly can. Senator Madison, as Senator Elrod knows, doesn’t quite have the nerve: he shakes his head angrily, plunges headlong into a belligerent and determined defense of the nominee, refers no more to sexual peccadilloes. But the damage has been done, of course, as he intended it should. Mark’s task this day—never, he has known, an easy one—is tougher now.

Above in the galleries while Jim Madison plows on, doing his duty by the President, the nominee and his own hopes for future preferment at the hands of his party, Linda, too, does her best to remain impassive. She has been recognized, of course: eyes also turn frequently to her. At her side Lyddie keeps up a determinedly cheerful running commentary, uttering such remarks as “Oh, that awful man!” when Senator Madison makes some especially ringing defense of the nominee, exclaiming quite audibly, “Why, Jim, you old fraud, you know that isn’t true!” when Senator Madison strays, as he often does, away from the facts into partisan hyperbole. Her cheerful brightness distracts Linda to some degree; now and again she does manage a smile. But it is apparent to all the many devouring eyes that the wife of the junior senator from California is an unhappy young woman, however gallantly she holds her head high and defies the world to pity or patronize. And it is obvious that her unhappiness is shared by her husband, no matter that their eyes do meet from time to time, and that between them there passes what is meant to be, but never quite convinces, a loving and encouraging smile.

As the debate progresses it soon becomes apparent that, for all Senator Elrod’s attempts to protect him, he is not going to be able to escape his difficult position at the center of it. Even Janet Hardesty, who in the absence of MacLain Morrison, ranking minority member of Judiciary Committee, is in charge of the opposition, inevitably has to bring him into focus again: because the tactics and methods of Charlie Macklin are of course the issue. And what better example than his conduct in the committee?

“Mr. President,” she says when James Monroe Madison has finished his ponderous but not entirely ineffective presentation, “it is obvious from the nine to eight vote on which this nomination comes narrowly to the floor, that there exist in the Judiciary Committee, as I think there exist in the Senate as a whole, very grave and substantial doubts about Mr. Macklin’s qualifications. Particularly is there doubt of his judgment—his stability—his fairness—his balance. He uses very ruthless methods when he is on the attack against someone. This was apparent during his testimony before the committee. The episode cast a very vivid light upon just those doubts and uncertainties about him that disturb many people.”

“Mr. President,” blandly inquires newcomer Morgan Smith of Idaho, a supporter of Charles Macklin and no friend to Mark, “perhaps the Senator could enlighten us. What exactly was the episode she refers to, and exactly how did it reveal this horrendous side of Mr. Macklin?”

“I think the Senator is well aware of what I am talking about,” she says, making no attempt to conceal her annoyance. “I do not wish to rehash frivolous headlines in the midst of a serious debate. But the Senator knows.”

“Mr. President,” Morgan Smith responds with an unctuous puzzlement, “I’m sorry I don’t quite—”

“Then the Senator may drag up the headlines himself, if he wishes to reduce the debate to that level,” she snaps. “But he will do it on his own time because I have more important things to talk about. Mr. Macklin put himself on display, and not nicely, in the hearings. We all know about it, we are all aware of the spectacle he made of himself. He exercised no restraint, he showed no sense of balance of fairness, he played fast and loose with the truth—”

“I would still like to know what the truth was,” Morgan Smith mutters audibly to his seat-mate, and Jan rounds on him with a genuine anger this time.

“The truth was and is that Mr. Macklin pays no attention to the truth. When he wishes to attack someone he shows himself to be completely ruthless and without scruples. Fair-mindedness and a strict adherence to the facts and the evidence are imperative in the office of Attorney General. He has shown himself to be incapable of these qualities; he has proved, at least to me, that he does not possess them. I went into the hearings in favor of his nomination. By his own ruthless excesses he lost my vote and that of a near-majority of the committee. I think he deserves to lose the approving vote of the Senate. He shows all the qualities of a witch-hunter. Is that what we want for Attorney General? I can’t believe that to be the considered judgment of the Senate.”

There is substantial applause from the galleries as she sits down, and in the face of it Jim Madison, once more on his feet in defense of his candidate, is forced to wait for a moment before he can rebut. When he does, the debate moves closer again to Mark.

“Mr. President,” he says, “the distinguished Senator from Michigan swings a little wildly herself, it seems to me, when she talks about a ‘witch-hunter.’ That is an unfortunate and opprobrious term, Mr. President. It is not a term befitting reasoned debate. It is antagonistic. It is prejudicial. It robs the Senate of perspective when it considers this nominee. It is a sad spectacle the Senator makes of herself when she uses an inflammatory term like ‘witch-hunter.’”

Jan starts to her feet in the hubbub that ensues, but she does not lack defenders. Kal Tokumatsu towers at his desk, demanding recognition. Clem Chisholm is also on his feet. Kal is recognized, with a nervous promise to Clem from the Vice-President that he will be next.

“Mr. President,” Kal says, looking about indignantly from his enormous height and bulk, his normally sunny face creased with a frown like thunder over Waimea Gorge, “what kind of business is this from my good friend the senior Senator from California, attacking a lady? Not that she needs any defense from me, of course”—a sudden smile wipes away the frown for a moment—“that ain’t no lady, that’s a senator, and she’s more than capable of taking care of herself. However”—the frown returns and a momentary wave of tension-breaking laughter quickly dies away—“I think it’s best we stick right to Mr. Macklin’s character as shown in his conduct of himself before the committee, because there it was on full display in Washington for the first time. It was not a very pleasant sight, Mr. President. If that was Grade-A Macklin, and we have to assume it was because he certainly insisted on displaying it despite the chairman’s attempts to restrain him, then I think the Senate had better think very, very carefully about this nomination.”

“Mr. President,” Morgan Smith says, on his feet again and ready for trouble, “isn’t it true that Mr. Macklin had considerable provocation in the conduct of one of our colleagues? One who had set himself up as perhaps Mr. Macklin’s most vociferous and determined critic, always speaking from a high moral ground, yet whose high moral ground proved to be, unhappily for him, just so much quicksand? Shouldn’t we take this fact into account when we hear these ringing denunciations of Mr. Macklin?”

“All I can say to the Senator from Idaho,” Kal says in a somber rumble, “is that if that is his conception of how to be compassionate and how to make points in this Senate, then God help him if he ever sets one foot wrong, because this won’t be forgotten by me or anybody. Live and let live is a good rule to follow. It works better on Capitol Hill than almost anyplace else. What the Senator refers to, like what Mr. Macklin referred to in the committee, has absolutely no bearing on Mr. Macklin’s qualifications. What Mr. Macklin did about it in the committee says one he—heck—of a lot about Mr. Macklin and his character and his qualifications. After that performance, I wouldn’t vote to confirm him for dogcatcher. It would be too hard on the dogs.”

“Now, Mr. President!” Jim Madison cries with conspicuous outrage while floor and galleries explode in contentious sound. “That is going too far! That is violating all the canons of decency and fair debate! That is too much! I object, Mr. President, I object!”

“On what grounds, Senator?” Kal asks, smiling broadly. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t vote for you for dogcatcher.”

After that for a few moments things are in a state of considerable flux while Jim Madison approaches apoplexy, his colleagues, the media, and galleries rock with laughter, and Kal, with a cheerful wave, resumes his seat. In the infectious jollity that has broken the building tension, Linda and Mark do exchange, for the first time in many days, a genuinely amused and understanding look that promises better things; Lyddie observes it with an approving smile; Jim Elrod beams from across the chamber; Rick and Bob Templeton slap him on the back in delight at Kal’s neat puncturing of one of their less-favorite elders; and Clem Chisholm comes over quickly, bends down, and murmurs in his ear. Rick and Bob draw away a little to allow them privacy. Above in the Press Gallery Chuck and Bill Adams observe them intently. They note that Clem is speaking earnestly, that Mark at first shakes his head, then ponders for a long, somber moment, then finally nods. Clem, looking relieved, returns to his desk. The uproar dies, order is restored, Clem demands, “Mr. President!” and is recognized.

“Mr. President,” he says solemnly, “I wish to associate myself with the distinguished Senator from North Carolina, our lovely lady from Michigan, and my good friend the Senator from Hawaii, in opposing Mr. Macklin’s nomination. Like Senator Hardesty and all of us, I think, I was at first disposed to vote for the nominee. But his conduct in the committee blew all that. It also proved to me beyond question or doubt that my very good friend the junior Senator from California was right all along in what he had been saying about Mr. Macklin. It proved to me conclusively that Mr. Macklin is just what Senator Coffin said he was: a ruthless, unrestrained, uncontrolled, almost unbalanced gentleman, not scrupulous in any way about the methods he uses. The country can’t stand that in the Attorney General’s office. As witness, Mr. President, what he tried to do in the committee to Senator Coffin.”

At this sudden introduction of Mark’s name, and candor about what everyone has been skirting around, there is an audible gasp and murmur from the galleries. Once again all eyes focus upon him and upon Linda: again their own eyes meet and hold. Simply and unashamed in front of these witnesses, his say: Will everything be all right? And hers say: Everything will be all right. He feels at last with a great surge of emotion that he is on the way to being forgiven and that all is going to be well with them again; and he knows that what he agreed to with Clem was the right and only thing to do.

“Mr. President,” Clem says, “there seems to be a disposition in this debate, as there was on Mr. Macklin’s part in the committee, to dwell on an unfortunate episode for which the junior Senator from California, it seems to many of us, has made more than ample restitution by his candid and forthright conduct before the committee. As the Senator from Hawaii has so astutely said, it is not the episode itself that is important to our consideration of Mr. Macklin, but the use Mr. Macklin made of it in his appearance before the committee. That was the key to Mr. Macklin, right there. Sensible and perceptive men need look no further.

“However, Mr. President”—he raises a hand to forestall the disagreeing murmurs that come from some parts of the floor and some areas in the galleries—“however, since the episode is being made such an issue here, I am going to yield to the junior Senator from California to make one last statement about it and see if we can’t clear the air once and for all of this unfortunate matter whose only importance is the light it sheds on Mr. Macklin … Senator?”

Abruptly Mark starts, blinks, stands up: he has been momentarily far away, mind racing over the past few weeks, the sad spectacle of bright young Mark Coffin tumbling by his own act from his golden giddy heights, never, probably, to regain them again. But much can be regained—much has been regained. Now, and he hopes for the last time, he must do public penance. Then he will be through with it forever, as far as he is concerned. On that he is determined.

“Mr. President,” he says formally, “will the Senator yield?”

“I yield,” Clem says and sits down, looking at him expectantly. Everyone is looking at him expectantly. The whole world is looking at him expectantly. For a second it all blurs. Then it clears and he begins to speak in a calm, level voice into the complete silence of the attentive chamber.

“Mr. President,” he says, “I am making my last statement on this matter. I have made one statement to the Judiciary Committee which was publicized to the farthest extent the media can reach. Apparently that was not enough for some of my colleagues. I suggest they listen hard, because I am not going to mention it again. And from now on, if anyone else mentions it, I am going to rise on a point of personal privilege and demand the immediate silencing and seating of the senator involved.”

There is a stir across the floor. A sudden burst of applause from the galleries overwhelms it. If so small a microcosm is any indication, public opinion is finally turning his way. He takes a deep breath and continues, face white and strained but manner inflexible.

“When I came here in January, I met a woman television reporter on this Hill. I assumed her friendship for me was strictly professional; certainly mine was for her. On Inauguration Night, for a number of reasons involving personal disappointment here in the Senate and the absence of certain steadying factors in my company that evening [“We should have stayed with him,” Lyddie murmurs in the gallery. “Oh, dear, why didn’t we stay with him?”] I had considerably more to drink than I normally do, and I became involved with this—this woman. This was the first, last and only time that I did so. A day later she threatened suicide if I would not see her again. I said I would not see her again. She attempted suicide—or”—for the first time he loses control of his calm manner and a bitter sarcasm comes into his voice—“at least pretended to do so—and made sure that her action would receive extensive coverage by the media. It did receive this coverage.

“Subsequently I appeared before the Judiciary Committee to testify on the nomination of Mr. Macklin. Mr. Macklin chose to make the episode his principal—indeed, while I was there, his only—defense against charges that he is ruthless, unprincipled, unfair and unethical. I think he proved beyond sensible doubt that he is all these things. Since he had raised the issue—”

He is interrupted by renewed applause, prolonged and steady. He acknowledges it with a tight nod, goes quickly on.

“Since he had raised the issue, I decided to make a clean breast of it to the committee and to the public. I did so. I said I was not proud of myself. I said I apologized. I said it would never happen again. I did all I could to make public amends. I repeat to the Senate: I am not proud of myself: I apologize: it will never happen again. And”—his voice became strong and emphatic—“I am never going to say any of this again, either.

“If my colleague from California, his friend from Idaho and all their other friends who want a pound of flesh from me are not satisfied with that one, then that is just too damned bad, Mr. President, because that is all they are going to get. Now I suggest we return to Mr. Macklin.”

And he sits down. For a moment there is silence. Then the reporters break it by starting to dash up the gallery stairs to file their stories. A new wave of applause, louder, more intense, more prolonged, rolls over the chamber. Jim Madison looks upset, Jim Elrod and Mark’s other friends look grimly pleased. Suddenly from across the chamber Mandell Richardson of Ohio, placed by press tabulations in the Macklin camp, gets up, walks quickly over, shakes Mark’s hand. Instantly, it seems, he is surrounded by colleagues crowding around his desk, pumping his hand, slapping his back, uttering congratulations. And instantly, as everyone knowledgeable of the Senate can perceive, the climate has changed for Charlie Macklin—very much for the worse.

“You’ve had to lay yourself on the line to do it, buddy,” Bob Templeton says excitedly as order is gradually restored, “but I think you’ve beaten the nominee.”

“The bastard has beaten himself,” Rick says. “The silly, stupid damned son of a bitch.”

And this, as it turns out, is exactly what has happened.

Jim Madison, Morgan Smith and their forces try valiantly to reverse the tide as the afternoon wears on. Stout speeches (aware of Mark’s threat to invoke personal privilege, and sticking to the point) are made in Charlie Macklin’s defense. The majority cloakroom telephones are in constant use as an alarmed President, and Charlie himself, call members off the floor to argue, browbeat and cajole. Rick, Bob, Clem, Kal and Jan form an impromptu flying squad and go about the floor buttonholing, pleading and cajoling on the other side. Excitement rises ever higher as Charlie’s friends make their last desperate appeals, Mark’s friends, led by his sternly thundering father-in-law, counter with scorn and fury. Art Hampton and Herb Esplin keep revising their timetable for a vote: first 4 p.m., then 5 p.m., then 6 p.m. Finally, at ten minutes past eight, it comes.

In a silent Senate electric with tension the Vice-President instructs the clerk to call the roll to determine whether the Senate will advise and consent to the nomination of Charles A. Macklin of California to be Attorney General of the United States.

By a very close vote—close, but enough—the Senate will not.

Fifty of the 98 members present vote no to the question, 48 vote aye; and Good Old Charlie is on his way back to California.

Besieged by the press after the vote, Mark decided to take his cue from Rick’s comment and refrain from personal references.

“How does it feel to beat a President’s nominee for the Cabinet, Senator?” someone asked as they cornered him in a clamoring circle outside the Senate door, pencils poised, microphones and tape recorders ready, lights blazing, cameras whirring.

“I don’t believe I beat anybody,” he said quietly. “I think Mr. Macklin beat himself. I think a majority of the Senate observed him in action and decided this was not what was desirable in the office of Attorney General.”

“Do you feel that this makes you a power the President will have to reckon with hereafter in his dealings with the Senate?”

“You will have to ask the President that question,” he replied, a slight edge in his voice. “I don’t make any claims on that score. I voted with the majority and the majority rejected Mr. Macklin. That’s all I have to say about it.”

And despite their further attempts, that was all he did say.

At the White House, they asked the President.

“I am naturally disappointed by the Senate’s rejection of Mr. Macklin,” he said, calling them together for an unexpected and unusual 10 p.m. press conference, reading from a prepared statement in a matter-of-fact voice. “I had hoped Mr. Macklin’s strong and effective qualities as a public servant would not be overshadowed by personal considerations. Apparently this was not entirely the case. In any event, I expect to have another nominee, whom I hope will be more acceptable, before the Senate within twenty-four hours. The Attorney Generalship is the last remaining Cabinet post to be filled. It is time for the government to move on. I hope my new nominee will receive speedy confirmation in the spirit of amicable co-operation my Administration has been able to maintain with the Congress up to now.”

“Who do you blame for the lack of co-operation in this case, Mr. President? Senator Coffin?”

“Senator Coffin and I are good friends,” the President said blandly, “and I hope we will remain so. He is a strong young man who fights for what he believes. I hope he will be satisfied now, and”—with a sudden twinkle—“get off my back! We have a lot of work to do together for the American people.”

“Do you plan to see him any time soon, Mr. President?”

“My door is always open and he knows my address,” the President replied with a smile. “I hope I’ll be seeing him soon.”

“You aren’t angry with him, then?”

“Angry? Angry? Presidents never get angry, you know that.” Again the amiable smile. “We can’t afford to!”

“Oh yeah,” said somebody, and everybody, including the President, laughed.

But when he called Mark at home a few moments later, he was full of charm and candor and apparently ready to let bygones be bygones.

“Well, you licked me,” he said when Linda handed Mark the phone and mouthed, “It’s him,” with a warning look.

“No, Mr. President,” he said, “I don’t feel that.” His voice turned rueful. “If I did, it was through a set of unfortunate circumstances I would certainly prefer not to have had happen.”

The President joined in his rueful laugh.

“Yes,” he agreed, “but that’s all over now. Forget it. She’s gone, Charlie’s gone, and I’ll have someone I think you’re going to like much better up there by tomorrow noon. Maybe you’ll be with me on that one.”

“I hope I will be able to be, Mr. President.”

“And don’t start sounding starchy,” the President chided with mock severity. “We’ve got a long time ahead working together—and I want to work with you, Mark. I need your help and support. After all,” he confessed with a flattering burst of candor, “you carried me to victory once and I’m going to need you to carry me to victory on a lot of things. I hope I can depend upon you.”

“I think you can, Mr. President,” he said, flattered in spite of himself and Linda’s continued warning looks. “I’ll be happy to do what I can—when I can.”

“Which I hope will be most of the time,” the President said promptly. “Starting tomorrow with your father-in-law’s bill.”

“You know where I stand on that, Mr. President.”

“Great. I knew I could count on you. How does it look?”

“I haven’t had time to do much checking,” he said, again flattered in spite of himself at this assumption that he was, indeed, a key figure. “I think it’s going to be close, but I think we have a good chance of winning.”

“Good for you,” the President said. “Keep me advised during the debate if you think there’s anything I ought to know. Will you do that?”

“I will,” he promised, more earnestly than he felt he should: but the President had a way of sweeping one along. “I’ll be happy to do that.”

“Good man,” the President said approvingly. “I think we’re going to have some great times together doing things in this Administration. Now, go to bed and get a good night’s sleep. There’ll be a hot time in the old Senate tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” he agreed. “I’m looking forward to it. Good night.”

“Good night, Mark. Give my love to Linda.”

“I will, thank you. Good night …He says to give you his love.”

“That’s nice,” she said dryly. “He’s obviously given it to you. Do you believe him?”

“Not entirely yet. But,” he confessed, “I think I’m beginning to. After all, we do have to work together, as he says. And there’s no point in harboring grudges.”

“Don’t trust him too much. He’s a tricky man. I don’t think he’s forgetting many grudges.”

“I’m not going to get a complex about it. I’ve got too many other things to worry about.”

“Like defeating Daddy’s bill. I assume you think the President wants it defeated?”

“Yes,” he said blankly. “He’s said so a dozen times.”

“Not lately.”

“Why shouldn’t he want it defeated?”

“There was a White House announcement earlier this evening that he and President Suvarov are going to meet in Geneva next month. You probably didn’t hear about it because of the debate. But anyway, it’s been announced.”

“So?”

“I know what I would do if I were President,” she said. “Think about it.”

“I will,” he said, puzzled. “But I still don’t see—”

“Well, think. Maybe you will.” She moved about briskly turning off lights; the usual tension gripped his being. Suddenly she turned. He saw that her face was flushed. Suddenly she looked very pretty. “Are you coming along to bed now, or not?”

“What?” he said, unable to believe it was over at last.

“I said, ‘Are you coming along to bed now, or not?’” she said defiantly, flushing deeper. “You heard me, Mark Coffin, I may be pregnant but I’m not that pregnant. I’m not going to repeat it again, either. So good night, unless you—” and she started toward the stairs.

“Wait a minute,” he said with a surge of joyful relief, jumping up, swinging her about, pulling her close. “Waaait a minute, you shameless hussy. If you mean what I think you mean—”

“Of course not,” she said with a breathless little laugh. “Just try me and find out.”

And so he did, and that solved that problem: perhaps not entirely, and perhaps not as permanently and unshatterably as he might have wished, but enough for present and future purposes-enough to restore theirs to “one of the better political marriages”—as political marriages go.

There still remained her father’s bill, before the education of Young Mark Coffin in the ways of Washington could be said to be reasonably complete. Long after she was sleeping peacefully at his side he lay awake and considered that. Her advice took root. He did think about what he would do if he were President; and resolved to be very, very careful tomorrow—even though he knew he would, as usual, do what his bothersome but inescapable honesty told him he must.

***

Chapter 3

“My!” Mary Fran remarked next morning when he entered the office humming happily to himself. “You’re in a cheerful mood today, and thank goodness for that. A little victory helps, doesn’t it?”

“Another such victory,” he quoted wryly, “and we are undone. But, yes, M.F., it is good to be on the winning side. And get rid of Good Old Charlie. I don’t suppose you’re happy about that, are you?” he added, poking his head in Brad’s door with a sudden deliberate challenge that made him jump. “Why don’t you come in for a minute and we’ll talk about that? And other things.”

“All right,” Brad said, not knowing what to make of it, unable to conceal a certain apprehension, but rising and coming along as requested. At his desk, head carefully lowered, eyes on his papers, Johnny McVickers gave him a sidelong, enigmatic look as he passed.

“Do you want coffee?” Mary Fran called after them.

“Not today,” he said briskly. “Brad may want some.”

“Yes, I think I will,” Brad said, his uneasiness showing in his voice.

“With a little cyanide on the side,” Mark said cheerfully. “He may want to take it before we’re through.”

“What does that mean?” Brad demanded as she closed the door behind them, tossing Mark a sudden pleased and interested glance behind Brad’s back.

“It means,” he said, sitting down at his desk and gesturing Brad to a seat opposite, “that you and I are going to have a little talk, about Macklin and about a lot of things.”

“What things?” Brad asked sharply, something in his tone causing Mark to give him a sudden quick look.

“What things, indeed?” he asked with a deliberate innocence. “Is there something about you I’m supposed to know—or not know?”

“There isn’t anything about me you’re supposed to know that you don’t know,” Brad said stiffly, recovering a bit, “so what is this all about?”

“Are you sure?” Mark asked slowly. Brad looked angry, a little too angry.

“What is this all about?” he demanded again loudly. “Some sort of Inquisition, or what?”

“Not at all,” Mark said smoothly as Mary Fran rapped on the door. “Come!… I’m just interested, that’s all … Thanks, Mary Fran. No calls or visitors for the next few minutes, please.”

“Good,” she said; and then, with a sunny smile at Brad, “I’ll be sure you’re not interrupted. Take just as long as you like.”

“Great gal, Mary Fran,” Mark said approvingly. Brad made no comment, stirring his coffee, eyes averted.

“I’m sorry your friend didn’t get confirmed,” Mark said conversationally. “Sorry also that you couldn’t see your way to being loyal to me about it. It’s created a situation, I’m afraid.”

“I was loyal to you about it!” Brad said sharply. “Show me the proof I wasn’t!”

“Oh, I haven’t got any, really,” he said. “Just hunches—suspicions—certain obvious things. A lack of enthusiasm when there should have been some. Tattle about Lisette when there shouldn’t have been any. Lunch with Jim Madison. Phone calls to the governor”—a sudden inspiration—“behind my back—”

“There weren’t any phone calls to the governor behind your back!”

“Oh, I think there were,” Mark said, sure of it now. “Yes, I think there were. And”—another quick hunch—“to various people in the media.”

“There weren’t—” Brad began but Mark stopped him with a lifted hand.

“Anyway,” he said, “I’m not going to brawl with you about it. I think the time has come for us to have a parting of the ways. Shall I fire you, or do you want to resign gracefully?”

“What?” Brad said, too shocked and upset to do other than gape at him in angry dismay.

“Clear enough,” he said. “Your choice. Which will it be?”

“You’ll have to fire me,” Brad grated. “I’ll never resign. You’ll have to fire me, and then my friends in California will—will—”

“If they’re smart they’ll give you a job,” Mark overrode him calmly, “after I have accepted your resignation with deep regret. Just a minute—” He buzzed for Mary Fran, waited with an apparently absent-minded hum while Brad watched, helpless and livid.

“Get me the governor in Sacramento,” he said when she came in.

“Yes, sir!” she said, not quite sure what was going on, but prepared to be delighted if her guess based on Brad’s expression should prove to be correct.

For a minute or two there was silence. Mark stopped humming, examined constituency mail on his desk; Brad breathed heavily. The buzzer sounded and he lifted the phone.

“Larry?” he said cheerfully. “How are you, you canny son of a gun? Everything going fine out there in the golden West?”

“Reasonably fine,” the governor said, tone considerably reserved. “I suppose you’re riding high now that you’ve won your little triumph.”

“I paid for it.”

“You’ll pay for it a lot more, too,” the governor said viciously. “A lot of us will see to that.”

“No doubt, Lar,” he agreed, “but I’m afraid we’ll have to talk about that some other time. Right now, I’m calling to see if you have a job in your administration for a good loyal public servant—at least I’m sure he’s loyal to you. He hasn’t been to me, I’m afraid, so this morning when he offered his resignation, I accepted it.”

“You haven’t fired Brad Harper, you son of a bitch!”

“No, I said he resigned. At least, I think we should all say he resigned. Don’t you, Lar? It might get too sticky all around if it got out that I had to fire him, because then I’d have to give reasons and some of them”—he looked sharply at Brad and again, for just a second, a shadow he could not interpret crossed his angry eyes—“might not be too comfortable for him. Anyway, he’s leaving Washington, I think, and I was wondering if maybe you could—”

“Put him on!”

“Surely, Larry,” he said amicably. “I’m going to listen in on the other extension, though.”

“Listen and be damned, you bastard…Brad?”

“Yes, Larry,” Brad said, and a sudden enormous indignation filled his voice. “This—this —”

“I know what he is,” the governor said. “The whole world knows what he is. A hypocritical two-faced son of a bitch who betrays his friends and deserts his backers. But that isn’t your problem at the moment, is it? Bob Graham is resigning as director of transportation to go with the automobile association. Do you want his job? It’s about the same salary.”

“I want to stay where I am,” Brad said harshly.

“Well, you aren’t going to,” the governor said with equal harshness, “so cut your losses and get out lucky. Do you want Graham’s job or don’t you?”

“I’m going to get this guy for this!”

“We’re all going to join you,” the governor said impatiently, “but right now, God damn it, I want an answer. Do you want Graham’s job or don’t you? Take it or be damned.”

“And don’t you talk to me like that either,” Brad said in a tone that matched his. “I know plenty—”

“And I know plenty,” Larry said with a savage pleasantry. “Shall I spill it to the media?… Now, God damn it, give me an answer on that job. Right now.”

Brad thought for a long moment, looking, Mark decided, quite feral and trapped; but maybe that was imagination.

Finally he said in a sullen voice, “I’ll take it.”

“Out here in two weeks,” the governor said crisply. “Will you be bringing Janie, or is she getting a divorce at last?”

“She’s getting a divorce.”

“You’ll be coming alone, then,” the governor said. “Or will you?”

“I’ll be coming alone,” Brad said angrily. “Don’t be so damned smart-ass about—about everything.”

“Don’t be so confident about it,” the governor retorted. “It could blow anytime. If you’ll forgive the expression.”

“Hell with you,” Brad said, but he sounded suddenly halfhearted and down. Mark was almost sorry for him, in a remote sort of way.

“Likewise,” Larry said. “See you in my office in two weeks. Mark: make the announcement today, will you? He’s resigning to come work for me. With great reluctance you’re letting him go, but you have to respect his wishes to take this new and challenging job which will permit him to give continuing and even greater service to the people of California. And all that other B.S. Okay?”

“Okay, Larry,” Mark said pleasantly. “Give our love to Helen and keep in touch.”

“You can bet on that,” the governor said flatly. “Yes, buddy-boy, you can bet on that.”

“And now, Brad,” Mark said, hanging up the phone, “go and write that announcement and bring it to me and I’ll release it to the media and then you can clear out of here.”

“You haven’t heard the last of me,” Brad promised harshly as he stood up.

“Watch it,” Mark warned, suddenly harsh himself. “Apparently there’s something, and sooner or later I’ll find it. Never forget I have it. You behave—I behave. You might tell Larry I said the same to him, too—if I have to be,” he added with an almost desperate little laugh—“if I have to be that son of bitch he says I am, in order to survive in politics.”

But he didn’t really want to be; and so when he had his talk with Johnny McVickers a little later in the morning it was with genuine reluctance that he turned the conversation finally from Lisette to what he sensed must be behind all this.

Not, of course, that turning the conversation proved to be quite as easy as he had hoped it would be, because Johnny seemed genuinely stricken by what he appeared to regard as Mark’s betrayal. The sudden revelation of an older, rigid morality among the supposedly swinging young had quite often surprised him on campus. Now it was directed at him, and he found it an unexpected and unnerving experience.

“Johnny,” he began, “I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the last few days, because I get the feeling you’re pretty unhappy about them.”

“That’s right,” Johnny said, giving him a steady, wide-eyed look that he found quite disconcerting. “I really am.”

“Oh,” he said lamely. “Well—”

“How could you do a thing like that with that—that tramp? How could you lower yourself—”

“Oh, come on,” he said, deciding to meet it head-on. “Don’t give me that crap, friend. Don’t tell me you’re a virgin at twenty, because I’m not going to believe it.”

“A lot of people are,” Johnny said, blushing but holding his ground. “More than you think. I’m not saying I am, but—”

“Well, then.”

“But, I’m not a married man, either. I’m not a member of the United States Senate. I’m not a guy a lot of other people believe in, like they do you. I’m just me. You’re you, Mark. That’s different.”

“How different?” he asked, trying to make it deliberately flippant. It didn’t work with earnest Johnny, as he had known it wouldn’t.

“Well, if you don’t know,” Johnny said in exasperated dismay, “then I can’t tell you. God, Mark! You don’t mean that?”

“No,” he said, dropping it, “I don’t mean that. I understand your feeling, but, Jesus! I’ve apologized all over the face of the earth the last few days. What more can I say? Let me up, okay? Come off it. I’ve got to live, man! Give me a chance, all right? Linda has. If she can, I guess you can.”

“Has she?” Johnny asked, looking at him narrowly. He reached for the phone.

“Here. Call her and ask. She’s home.”

“She hasn’t been in the office much in the last few days,” Johnny observed, ignoring the phone. “That’s why I thought maybe she wasn’t—forgiving you. Of course I’ve seen her in the gallery a few times, but I thought maybe that was just show. I expected she’d do that.”

“It was show,” he admitted. “She has her concept of what a good wife in politics should do, and she did it. But last night she really forgave me. In bed.”

“Well,” Johnny said, blushing again, “you didn’t have to tell me that, for God’s sake. I didn’t want to know that. It’s none of my business—”

“Oh yes it is. You’ve made it your business by being so rigid and righteous about it.”

“I’m not rigid and righteous!” Johnny protested. “I just want you to be—what I believed you were, that’s all.”

“And I’m not?” he demanded. “Everything else is forgotten because of one little half-assed sophomoric roll in the hay? That’s destroyed everything I am, in your mind? Tell me that! I dare you to!”

They stared at one another for a long moment; then Johnny’s eyes dropped.

“No,” he said at last, very low. “I can’t tell you that, I guess. Hell, Mark, I still believe in you but it—it isn’t quite the same, that’s all.”

“The secret is,” he said in a gentler tone, “that I’m just more human now.” His expression became ironic. “Lisette told me I would be. She said that was what she was doing for me. She said I’d be a better man for it, and a better public servant. Maybe she was right. Maybe I owe her something, after all.”

“Maybe,” Johnny said with a sudden smile. “But I sure as hell wouldn’t say that to the voters back home.”

“No,” he agreed, feeling much relieved because he knew the crisis with Johnny, if it had ever really been one, was over. “I do not intend, in fact, to say it to anyone else in this entire world, ever. So I hope you’re suitably flattered and impressed.”

“I am,” Johnny said, laughing and relaxing too. “And I won’t ever tell anybody you said it, either.”

“I should hope not,” he said, realizing with some surprise that his young friend really was very young still, thinking he had to promise that. “I should hope to hell not!…Now,” he said with a sudden briskness he hoped would catch him off balance, “tell me what’s with you and Brad. You’re giving him some awfully funny looks these days. What’s up?”

He saw that he had caught him off balance; saw also that Johnny wasn’t going to say much, even so.

For a moment he didn’t say anything, as surprise gave way to a cautious, closed-off expression.

“Have I been giving funny looks? I wasn’t aware of it.”

“I saw you this morning. And a few other times. What’s it all about?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“He’s all right, I guess,” Johnny said in a guarded tone. “I just don’t care for his type, that’s all.”

“I don’t either,” Mark said, “but maybe not for the same reason. I fired him this morning.”

Johnny nodded.

“Mary Fran and I guessed as much. We’re glad. I don’t think he was very loyal to you or helpful to you.”

“No, not very. So you aren’t going to tell me what it is, hmm?”

Johnny gave him a sudden candid look.

“Do I have to?”

“Did he ever—?”

“No, but I got the message. And”—a grim little laugh—“I think he got mine, too.”

Mark shook his head.

“Too bad.”

“Yes, but he didn’t have to try to make it my problem, too.”

“Was he beginning to get back at you, in the office?”

Johnny nodded.

“Oh sure. Nothing serious. Little things. But it would have grown. I’m glad he’s leaving.”

“Yes, I think it’s best for everybody, him included … Well—”

“Yes,” Johnny said, standing up and suddenly—already a child of the Senate—holding out his hand for the inevitable handshake. “Thanks for our talk, Mark. It makes me feel better about you—and everything.”

“Good,” he said, returning the pressure warmly. “Got to keep my right-hand man happy, you know. The whole shebang might flounder without you.”

“Not without me,” Johnny said with a pleased laugh. “Without you, that’s for sure.”

“I like to think so,” he responded. “Keep me thinking that, all of you. I love it! Take care, now. I’ll see you over on the floor.”

“Yep,” Johnny said. “We have to give Jim Elrod hell, don’t we?”

“More likely he’s going to give it to us,” he said with a mock ruefulness. “But that’s life.”

After Johnny left he spent a few minutes at his desk going through further correspondence. An obviously pleased Mary Fran came in to get it. Her mood touched him with an odd melancholy, for Brad but perhaps even more for himself.

Johnny’s revelation had not particularly surprised him. It was an area of life and politics into which he did not want to go. But he was aware that he would file it away in his mind for future reference, knowing that if necessary he would very likely use it—and, very likely, without hesitating very long about it, either.

He marveled, not too happily, at how far the political education of Young Mark Coffin had proceeded, in so short a time.

The Senate convened at 10 a.m., Art Hampton and Herb Esplin hoping to dispose of Jim Elrod’s bill by nightfall, and Mark was plunged once more into Senate battle, all else forgotten in the challenge and excitement of it. He was free now of the incubus of Inauguration Night, engaged upon an issue in which he passionately believed, confident he would have the support of many colleagues, convinced it was possible to win. His father-in-law, he was swiftly made aware when he took his seat between Rick and Bob Templeton, was equally confident.

Senator Elrod came over soon after the session opened to lean down and visit, giving them friendly greetings, resting a hand easily on Mark’s shoulder.

“How’re you boys this mornin?” he inquired. “All ready and rarin’ to take my poor old head off?”

“We’ll try, sir,” Rick said cheerfully, and Bob echoed, “We’ll do our best.”

“’Spect you will,” Jim Elrod said. “’Spect you will. One word of caution, though: there are two Jims on this floor. And I’m not the dumb one.”

“That’s for sure,” Mark agreed as they all laughed. “As a matter of fact, that reminds me. I haven’t heard from Dumb Jim since the Macklin vote yesterday.”

“He’ll be around,” Senator Elrod said. “He’ll come oozin’ and wigglin’ and puffin’ over, just to make sure everythin’s all right with his tough young colleague. Don’t be too hard on him, now. Nothin’ wrong with him that a presidential nomination wouldn’t cure.”

“God forbid,” Bob Templeton said fervently, and again they all laughed.

“God and the party,” Jim Elrod said. “Don’t worry about it…Well, I guess I’d better be gettin’ back to my seat. Mornin’ hour will be over soon and we’ll be in legislative session and it’ll be time for me to get up and mow you down with my impeccable logic. I expect you young fellows to stay mowed, now. I want this to be an easy debate.”

“Can’t promise, Jim,” Mark said with a smile.

“I’m afraid we may not behave,” Rick said.

“We may be naughty,” Bob agreed.

“Pity,” Senator Elrod said. “I’d hate to have to indulge myself in a public spankin’, right here on the floor of the Senate.”

“We’re on notice,” Rick said; and added with a mischievous grin, “Take it easy, Smart Jim.”

“Shucks, now,” Jim Elrod responded with an equally mischievous twinkle. “Smart Jim and Dumb Jim. I’d hate to see that get in the papers. Don’t you tell anybody, now!”

“Oh no, sir,” Rick said solemnly. “We won’t!”

“You boys are so blamed cute and nice,” Senator Elrod said with mock regret, “that I just hate to have to give you the lickin’ you’re goin’ to get. I do hate it!”

“We’ll manage, Smart Jim,” Mark said. “You worry about your votes and we’ll worry about ours.”

“Got ’em all sewed up,” his father-in-law said, departing with a cheerful wave. “All sewed up!”

“He’s a charming old scoundrel,” Bob remarked as they watched him crossing the floor with a smile here, a handshake there, a murmured confidence, an uproarious laugh, somewhere else. “And, I imagine, a nice father-in-law.”

“The best,” Mark said.

“Everything all right with Linda?” Rick inquired.

“Everything all right with your harem?” Mark shot back.

“I asked first,” Rick said.

“She’s fine,” Mark said. “We’re fine. Finally. It’s been rough these past few days, but all’s well now.”

“Really?”

“Really. And now, about your harem—”

“I may be having a little trouble pretty soon,” Rick admitted, looking for a moment genuinely worried. “You remember I mentioned this gal from Vermont—”

“You’ve mentioned so many,” Bob said, “from so many states of the Union, that I’m afraid that one hardly registered.”

“Election Night. My ex-secretary. I told you,” Rick said impatiently. “Anyway, she seems to think I promised to marry her when I got down here—”

“Which, of course, you didn’t do,” Bob suggested.

“Well—anyway. Now she’s got a lawyer and they’re threatening suit for breach of promise and I’m supposed to fork over either a wedding ring or a lot of money—and it could mean a hell of a fight—and,” he finished disconsolately, “I’m just too damned busy to worry about that crap.”

“I could point out that you might have thought of that,” Bob said, “but I won’t.”

“Don’t,” Rick said. “Please. And don’t make me laugh. It only hurts when I laugh.”

“Tough,” Mark observed. “We bleed for you.” He glanced up at the galleries, empty now of ghosts and hostile eyes. Linda smiled down at him, Lyddie as usual at her side. Chauncey Baron was seated with them. Chuck, Bill Adams and half a hundred colleagues occupied the Press Gallery. In the Diplomatic Gallery Sir Harry and Pierre DeLatour once again enjoyed their uneasy comradeship. Nearby sat Valerian Bukanin, wearing the chronic professional frown of the Soviets. Off somewhere below in that area known to the Hill as “Downtown,” he knew a Formidable Man lurked beside his telephone, ready to receive reports and give instructions as the battle proceeded.

And here they were, he thought with a sudden amazed amusement, discussing Rick Duclos’ love life. Probably their countrymen thought they were discussing profound matters of state. Instead, it was just Rick’s uncontrollable screwing around. He chortled aloud.

“What?” Rick asked.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he said, winking at Bob. “Just the contrast between your love life and what we’re about to debate here. Secretaries and Soviets. It’s just life in the Senate, that’s all. Sometimes it strikes me funny.”

“It is funny,” Bob said. “That’s how we all keep our sanity. I think Smart Jim is about to let us have it.”

And as the Senate and galleries quieted down and began to pay attention, Smart Jim did, in a reasoned and calmly delivered speech that laid out the facts as he and many others saw them: the steady growth of Soviet power, the implacable and undeniable figures on a Soviet military machine constantly expanding, an American military machine constantly declining; the fateful growth of Soviet intervention, troublemaking and imperialism from Africa to Asia, Arctic to Antarctic; the calm appeal, barely concealing the frantic questions, Where will it stop? and What will we do about it?—and the terrifying counterquestion that disturbed so many on the Hill and throughout the country, What can we do about it?

“Mr. President,” Senator Elrod said, “to the question, ‘What can we do about it?’ I think my bill, S.1, provides, if not a permanent, at least a badly needed stop-gap answer. We can begin an immediate and dramatic strengthenin’ of our armed forces. We can show—not tell—the Soviets that we mean business. We can prove it by our votes here today and then by a speedy build-up by the Commander in Chief. We can put our military house in order and stop this seemingly endless and inexorable downward drift which if continued can only result—and not far off—in our abject surrender at some point of conflict provoked by an overwhelmingly ready and nakedly aggressive Soviet machine.

“If we surrender at that point, Mr. President,” he said somberly, “it does not matter what we surrender. The fact of our surrender, that act alone, will turn the balance of power forever against us and guarantee the end, the speedy end, of the United States of America as a free nation. The issue may be big or small when it comes, but if we are too weak to maintain our position, the size of it won’t matter. And it won’t matter how much we try to smooth it over and rationalize it to ourselves. The world will know: the United States has surrendered. And the pack will turn on us, and the end will come, so fast we will not be able to believe it …

“Mr. President, I don’t want that to happen to my country. I want to live in peace with the Soviet Union, but they have made it very clear in these recent years and months that if we want to live in peace with them we will have to be as strong as they are. Otherwise we will be allowed to live with them in the peace of the grave; and that is not, I think, what most Americans want.

“The vote on this bill in the Armed Services Committee was twelve for, six against. It comes to you with the strong recommendation of the committee charged with the responsibility of overseeing your nation’s defenses. A majority of its members think this move is necessary in the context of growin’ Soviet strength and increasingly overt Soviet imperialism. The facts are clear for everyone to see: to deny them is wishful thinking and empty hope. It takes courage to admit them and respond to them; but we must. We must, or we are through.

“Mr. President, I hope the Senate will so vote.”

And he sat down to a good hand from the galleries. The Vice-President rapped his gavel and admonished visitors that they were there at the sufferance of the Senate and should refrain from demonstrations. Lyddie and Linda looked pleased, Chauncey Baron impassive. The British ambassador appeared approving, the French ambassador appeared to be reserving judgment. The frown on the face of the Soviet ambassador remained the same. Sir Harry had once accused him of having it painted on, which did serve to deepen it so that everybody could see it was real; but today it did not change one iota—yet, at any rate.

John Delaney of South Dakota, ranking member of the six on Armed Services who had voted against S.1, rose to defend his position. He was seventy-four years old, not feeling particularly well, already worn down by the demands of the new session. He had called Mark yesterday afternoon after the Macklin vote and requested his help. Now he spoke very briefly, in a thin and reedy voice, arguing against the bill in not very effective fashion. Then he turned to the Chair and in an abrupt voice said,

“Mr. President, I yield to the junior Senator from California such time as he may wish,” and with a peremptory little wave in Mark’s direction, sat down, obviously glad to be relieved of the burden.

Thus called before his peers much earlier in the debate than he had anticipated, he stood for a moment looking soberly around the chamber. Then he lowered his head, adjusted the papers on his desk, looked up again. Silence and attention waited. He began to speak in a calm and quiet voice.

“Mr. President, let me say at the outset that I respect the sincerity and conviction with which the distinguished Chairman of the Armed Services Committee states his case. I know he accords me the same. I regret that we have to disagree on an issue so fundamental to the welfare of the country, possibly of the world. But we apparently do.

“Senator Elrod makes much of the Soviet build-up. He cites figures which, on their face, seem ominous and foreboding indeed. Yet, Mr. President—”

“Mr. President,” Jim Elrod interrupted, “does the Senator dispute my figures?”

“Obviously I cannot. The Senator is chairman of Armed Services, he has intelligence reports available to him that we do not have—”

“And the figures are also public knowledge, are they not? They can be found—now, at last, when it may be too late—in all the publications and media outlets that have pooh-poohed and played them down for so long, can they not? It is now journalistically and literarily fashionable to be scared, is it not? Why, then, does the Senator from California remain so brave?”

“Mr. President,” he said, smiling a little in spite of himself, “I remain brave, perhaps, because I still have a faith in the American ability to rise to challenge and to surmount adversities, which I think perhaps the Senator from North Carolina no longer shares.”

“Now, Mr. President!” his father-in-law exclaimed. “Now, Mr. President, tut, tut, tut! Nobody has more faith in the American people than I do. My distinguished young friend is engaging in deliberate debating tricks when he implies I do not. But I also have a little faith in what I read and hear about the massive and overwhelming Soviet build-up, far beyond any possible needs of self-defense. To me it is simply the fruition of a decades-long plan, beginning with the deliberate seeking of strategic advantage in the readjustments following World War II, spurred immeasurably by humiliation in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, entering now, aided by the willful self-blindness of too many Presidents, members of Congress and leaders of the media, into its final crushing and almost unstoppable phase. Does the Senator think we can fight this with high hopes and good intentions? A lot of well-meaning Americans have tried in recent years. Nothing has stopped the Soviets. Why does the Senator think his naive hopes are any more effective?”

“Mr. President,” he said, a slight annoyance showing for the first time in his tone, “I don’t think I am all that naive. I concede the Senator’s figures, I concede the Soviet build-up. I do not concede it is designed to overwhelm the world or conquer us or make us surrender or any of the Senator’s other bugaboos. I think a good case can still be made for a paranoid Soviet fear of attack, a paranoid desire for overwhelming self-protection, a paranoid suspicion of everything we do, a paranoid—”

“Senator,” Jim Elrod said, “if the end result of paranoia is the same as the end result of imperialism, what difference does it make which it is? Basically we are not called upon to deal with theories about why the Soviets are doing what they are doing: we have to deal with what they are doing. And what they are doing bodes very little good for the United States or the independent nations which face the threat of increasing Soviet encroachment and look to us as their only shield. That is where my bill enters the picture, if we might get back to discussing it.”

“I am discussing it!” Mark said sharply. “And I think I can do no better than to quote the Commander in Chief, who only the other day described S.1 as ‘an unnecessary slap in the face to a power with whom we must strengthen cordial and trustworthy relations for the benefit of all mankind.’ Does the Senator deny the President said this?”

“How can I?” his father-in-law agreed with an amiable smile. “He said it. Does the Senator deny that it is mighty fine rhetoric but perhaps doesn’t mean very much if one party to this ‘cordial and trustworthy’ relationship is scramblin’ like mad to push the other one into a hole and stomp all over him? And the other party doesn’t have the will or the guts to stop him?”

“That’s a matter of opinion. Also of rhetoric.”

“Pretty widely held opinion nowadays,” Jim Elrod said, ignoring the thrust. “Anyway, the Senator’s goin’ to have to go some to convince me that there isn’t any growin’ and extremely dangerous threat from the Soviet Union!”

“I concede the threat,” he said patiently. “I disagree with how to meet it. I think we have overwhelming atomic superiority, overwhelming means of pressure of our own, not only military but economic, that we can bring to bear. I agree with the President that the Senator’s bill is an unnecessary provocation and should not be passed.”

“Did he say that?” Jim Elrod inquired mildly, and for just a second the doubts Jim Elrod’s daughter had aroused last night came back disturbingly. But how could the President not mean this?

“The obvious implication of his comments on this issue from the beginning has been that S.1 should be defeated. How else can his remarks be interpreted?”

Leavin’ aside the astute and experienced way in which the Senator from California has made the transition from opposin’ the President yesterday to embracin’ him today,” Jim Elrod said, stirring a murmur of amusement in Senate and galleries, “for which, don’t get me wrong, I commend him, it has to be done sometimes—I still don’t recall the President sayin’ outright that he wants the bill defeated. Mebbe the Senator should check with him on that before the afternoon is over.”

“Don’t let the old fox throw you off!” Rick whispered, and Bob Templeton agreed, “He’s just trying to bluff you. Don’t let him get away with it.”

“I’ll check,” he promised. “In the meantime, I’d like to hear the Senator from North Carolina defend his position, taking into account the atomic arsenal we have and the uses we can make of it if we have to.”

“Oh no,” Senator Elrod said cheerfully. “I’ve made my statement. The Senator’s defendin’ his position now, and he has all the time yielded to him that he wants to take. So don’t try to turn it back on me. Let’s hear from you, Senator.”

“Very well,” he said with a sudden defiant determination. “You will.”

And for more than three hours, aided by Rick and Bob and the opposing members of the Armed Services Committee—but not, he noted, disturbed, by Kal or Clem or Jan Hardesty—he argued determinedly for his beliefs. He could not in all honesty bring himself to accept the picture of a Soviet Union about to launch an insane and impossible attempt to conquer the globe, a military machine poised on the brink of not only the destruction of the Western world, but its own inevitable self-destruction as well. Jim Elrod told him he had been conditioned too much by teachers either naive or deliberately subversive; he said perhaps he had, and perhaps he had inadvertently been one himself, but nonetheless he could not agree with ancient cold-war rhetoric. No more, said Jim Elrod, could he agree with naive talk of detente when detente was interpreted in Moscow to mean “anything that will put you off guard and let us grab what we want.”

From time to time others entered the debate, but essentially it was between himself and his father-in-law. There seemed to be consensus in the Senate to let the two of them battle it out, aided from time to time by those who wished to put themselves on record concerning what Mark presently began to feel, with considerable dismay, must be a foregone conclusion. A number of Senators came to Jim Elrod’s support, fewer to his; presently even Kal and Clem, expressing their admiration for his courage and honesty but confessing to an overriding concern about steady Soviet advances, announced their support for S.1. Presently only Mark, Rick, Bob and a handful of younger members were still on their feet arguing against it. No word of any kind had come from the White House. Shortly after 5 p.m. he whispered hurriedly to Bob, who had the floor, “Keep it going!” and went out to telephone. Not a care in the world seemed to be bothering the man at the other end of the line.

“Mark!” he said cordially. “I hear you’re doing a great job up there this afternoon opposing Jim Elrod’s bill. Nice going!”

“We’re losing ground, Mr. President,” he said, unable to keep the concern and disappointment from his voice. “I think the bill’s going to carry.”

“Hmm,” the President said thoughtfully. “You really think so, eh?”

“Yes, sir, I do. Short of some strong action from you indicating opposition to it… You … are opposed to it… aren’t you?”

“Oh, heavens!” the President said. “We can’t have that kind of warmongering going on!”

“Well, perhaps if you could say so—or authorize me to quote you—”

“Now, let me see,” the President said slowly. “You really do think it’s going to pass, do you?”

“Yes, sir,” he repeated, puzzled and beginning to be a little alarmed. “I do. Otherwise I wouldn’t be asking your help.”

“Yes, well, of course you realize I have said on several occasions that I was against it—”

“Not in the last few days.”

“True enough. We’ve all been rather busy in the last few days … well, let me see. So it’s really going to pass.”

“Mr. President,” he said, trying not to let annoyance surface, “surely you’ve been in contact with Art Hampton and Jim Elrod. They must be feeling very confident.”

“Yes, they are.”

“Is that why you’re hesitating, for fear of offending them?”

“Oh, no, no, no, no! It’s just a matter of strategy here … ” his voice trailed thoughtfully away as Mark wondered angrily: toward whom and for what? But suddenly the President was back again, brisk and cheerful. “Tell you what, Mark. Why don’t you go back on the floor and say you’ve talked to me and that I’ve expressed grave concern that passage of the bill might be interpreted by the Soviet Union as a hostile act, and that I would be sorry to see it passed in its present form.”

“But, Mr. President-!”

“What’s wrong with that?” the President asked, apparently genuinely surprised. “Isn’t that what you want?”

“I want you to say you’re strongly opposed to it!”

“I thought that was clear,” the President said, still sounding surprised. “Anyway, Mark”—his tone became businesslike—“that’s the best I can do since, as you say, it’s going to pass anyway. There’s a limit to butting your head against stone walls, you know—or I guess you don’t know, but you will. Anyway, why don’t you take my message back to the Senate and see what happens? It may be enough to turn the tide.”

“You certainly aren’t fighting this the way you fought for Charlie Macklin!” Mark said bitterly. “Don’t you think relations with the Soviet Union are as important as an appointment for Attorney General?”

“Desperately important,” the President agreed solemnly. “Desperately so. That’s why I’m authorizing you to put my position once more before the Senate. Don’t tell me you’re going to let me down, Mark!”

“No, I’m not going to let you down!” he cried, feeling as though he were in the midst of some gossamer nightmare trying to fight his way through a mass of clinging cobwebs. “But, Mr. President—”

“Hurry out there and tell them what I said, Mark! It may not be too late!”

And the telephone went click! and that was that.

He had a sudden bleak conviction that he was an innocent fool in the middle of a game he hardly understood. The conviction grew when he returned to the floor a moment later to find Jim Elrod calling for a vote on S.1. Bob Templeton, Rick, a dozen others were on their feet shouting for recognition, but of course it was Jim Elrod’s calmly persistent, “Mr. President! Mr. President!” that brought the Vice-President’s equally calm, “The Senator from North Carolina.”

“Mr. President,” Senator Elrod said, “it seems to me that the Senate has pretty well considered most of the aspects of this bill by now. It’s a pretty clear-cut proposition, it seems to me. I don’t really think we need any more debate on it. I’d suggest you put the question and have the Clerk call the roll.”

“Without objection—” Hamilton Delbacher began. Mark, hardly aware of how he got there, was on his feet shouting for recognition.

“For what purpose does the Senator from California rise?” Ham Delbacher inquired in a politely puzzled tone that implied: hadn’t you really better sit down and stop making a spectacle of yourself? But suddenly it was now or never, and Mark went stubbornly ahead.

“Mr. President,” he said, “will the Senator from North Carolina yield?”

“Gladly,” Jim Elrod said with the complacent air of one who has called in all his debts, cashed all his IOUs, persuaded all the doubters and has the votes solidly in hand, “though I don’t quite see why—”

“Because I have a message from the President of the United States!” Mark said desperately. His father-in-law looked dramatically surprised.

“Fancy!” he said. “A message! Well, what is it, Senator? I’m sure we all want to hear it.”

“I have just talked to the President on the telephone,” Mark enunciated carefully, voice husky with tension, “and he has authorized me to say that he is gravely concerned that passage of S.1 might be regarded by the Soviet Union as a hostile act. He said he would be sorry to see it passed in its present form.”

“Is that all?” Senator Elrod asked politely.

“The President doesn’t want the bill! Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“Not much,” Jim Elrod said, and amusement again traveled floor and galleries. “However,” he added in a kindlier tone, “let’s dissect his ‘message’ for a moment. Accordin’ to the Senator, and I’m sure he’s relayin’ the conversation just as he heard it, the President says he’s concerned because the Soviet Union might regard passage of S.1 as a hostile act. He doesn’t say he’s certain they will, and he doesn’t say he’d be too much upset if they did regard it that way. Does he, now?”

“Not exactly, but his implication is—”

“Have to be mighty exact, with Presidents,” Senator Elrod observed, “and have to be very sure what their implications are. Now, the Senator was busy on other matters, but in the last three days or so I’ve been doin’ a lot of visitin’ and talkin’ and linin’ up votes, and last night I found myself in the flatterin’ position where I could call the President and tell him my bill was goin’ to pass whether it concerned him or not. And right there I found out that he’s probably goin’ to be a pretty good President when all is said and done, because he kind of implied—and this time he was doin’ his implyin’ to an old implier himself, so I wasn’t too surprised—that mebbe he wasn’t all that devastated by my news, after all. In fact, he said he’d write me a letter about it. I just happen”—he paused and searched carefully through several pockets while his colleagues smiled at one another—“to have it here. It’s brief, and if the Senator agrees, I’ll read it to the Senate.”

“I agree,” he said in a muffled voice and thought: fool, fool, fool.

‘“Dear Senator Elrod: Your information, which I take to be accurate, that you have sufficient votes to pass S.1 by an extremely comfortable margin, leaves me no alternative but to bow to the will of the Senate.

“‘You tell me you have also had extensive contacts with the leadership of the House of Representatives, and that chances for passage in that body are also overwhelming. Reluctantly, but aware of my constitutional duty, I must accede to the Congress.

“‘If the bill does indeed pass both houses, I shall regard it as not only advisory, which it is in its present form, but mandatory, and will at once begin the build-up of our armed forces which your bill contemplates.

“I have, as you know, been deeply concerned that passage of your bill at this time—when I am on the eve of departing for the United Nations for my first talks with President Suvarov—might be misinterpreted by our friends in Russia as a revival of ‘big stick’-diplomacy that might set detente back substantially.

“‘This is still a vital concern, and I deplore the fact that the Congress apparently deems it necessary to resort to such methods. But while I may question the wisdom of Congress, I do not question its sincerity and will, as I say, be guided accordingly—trusting that our friends in the Soviet Union will appreciate both my position and the position of the Congress. Yours most cordially, et cetera.’”

And Jim Elrod neatly folded the letter and returned it to his pocket, while at Mark’s side Rick hissed, “If that isn’t the damnedest two-faced—” and Mark murmured bleakly, “He wants this bill. He wants it, and what he said before was only pretense. Only pretense.”

And again he thought: fool, oh fool, oh fool.

“You couldn’t have done anything else and be true to yourself,” Bob Templeton whispered earnestly at his side. “None of us who stood with you could have. We just got caught.”

Mark nodded, still more bleakly.

“In history, I guess … if that’s what they call it, in these parts.”

“And now, Mr. President,” Senator Elrod said, “I think we might have a vote—unless, that is”—he paused and looked with friendly interest at his son-in-law—“anyone wishes to offer an amendment? Does the Senator from California have anything to offer?”

Somehow he managed to stand up, for a moment almost blind with hatred for his father-in-law: this was the final humiliation.

“No, Mr. President,” he said in a voice thick with emotion, “I have nothing to offer.”

But Jim Elrod, not for the last time, surprised him completely.

“The Senator forgets,” he said gently. “I remember back on his very first day in this Senate, when we first discussed this, that he said he would offer an amendment to request the President to insist upon greater human rights and freedoms within the Soviet Union. This struck me as a worthwhile and responsible thing to do, although”—he smiled—“I believe I did not admit as much to the Senator at the time. Nonetheless, when I perceived that the Senator was so occupied with defeatin’ Mr. Macklin—which he did, Mr. President, and nobody can take that away from him—it occurred to me that he might not remember what he wanted to do with my bill. So I took the liberty of havin’ a human rights amendment prepared, and if the Senator would do me the honor, I should be most proud and happy to have him present it to the Senate. And if he would do me the further honor, I should be most proud and happy to join in cosponsorin’ the Coffin-Elrod Amendment. Will the Senator grant me that kindness?”

For what seemed to him a very long time he stared across the chamber at his father-in-law’s friendly face while the Senate, which loves its sentimental moments, made approving and encouraging noises. Finally he spoke, voice still muffled but growing stronger; beginning to smile himself, tentatively at first, then more naturally.

“Thank you, Senator,” he said. “Send it over. I will be happy to introduce it, and happy to have you as cosponsor.”

From couches along the wall both Johnny McVickers and Pat Duclos jumped up and hurried toward Senator Elrod. They reached him at the same time, grabbed for the amendment. Each got a corner. Smiling, he relinquished it and sat down, while Senate and galleries broke into laughter and applause. Together they carried it across the chamber to Mark, who accepted it with a grin that by now was completely relaxed. He read it through quickly, nodded, looked up.

“Mr. President,” he said, “I send to the desk the Coffin-Elrod Amendment and ask that the clerk read it to the Senate.”

He bowed and waved to his father-in-law, waited quietly, head erect, gaze far away and thoughtful, while the clerk did so.

“Now, Mr. President,” he said, “if there are no objections, I move the Senate vote on the amendment.”

“Without objection, it is so ordered,” the Vice-President said; and ten minutes later, by a vote of 100 to nothing, the amendment was approved.

Ten minutes after that, by a vote of 63-37—Mark voting in the negative, since he did not honestly see how he could do other, and knowing his father-in-law would understand—S.1 passed the Senate and was on its way to an equally certain victory, sometime in the next week or so, in the House.

And the education of Young Mark Coffin, while still very far from complete in the curious yet curiously effective ways of democracy and free men, was advanced a little further.

***

Chapter 4

On many occasions in his life he went back in memory to the night following the vote on S.1.

(How inadequate S.1 seemed, as the years advanced and the terror grew and the needs of survival pressed even more harshly upon a lax and luxury-loving land whose people presently found themselves stripped of their luxury and robbed of their ease—but, somehow, survived.)

He found himself on that night in a wondering and reflective mood. He thought he had successfully concealed it until his father-in-law, invited to dinner with Janet Hardesty and Lyddie Bates on a shrewd last-minute impulse of Linda’s, challenged him as they sat over coffee.

“You seem mighty thoughtful tonight,” Senator Elrod remarked after Linnie and Markie had made their dutiful rounds, kissed everyone good night, and trailed reluctantly but sleepily up to bed. “A penny for your thoughts—or, allowin’ for inflation, five bucks. How about it?”

“I didn’t know they showed,” he responded with a smile.

“They’re practically talkin’ out loud all over your face,” Jim Elrod said.

“Well, they certainly aren’t worth five bucks, that’s for sure.”

“I disagree,” Jan Hardesty said. “Anything Mark Coffin does is worth five bucks. At least.”

“I’ll need a better offer.”

Lyddie chuckled.

“Five million. I can afford it.”

“Well, you don’t have to boast, Lyddie!” Linda told her as they all laughed—at ease together, he realized, as they had not been since the night in early January when they all met at Lyddie’s house on Foxhall Road.

“Not boasting,” she said with a cheerful twinkle. “Fact. Of course I’m hoping he won’t call me on it, as I have a few other things I’d like to do with the money. But he has witnesses. I may be stuck for it.”

“Not by me, Lyddie,” he promised as the laughter died. His eyes widened, he stared into the fire that danced against a howling storm outside. “I was just thinking,” he said slowly, “what a naive and stupid fool people must think I am, after these last few weeks. First I—messed everything up. Then I got myself out on a limb over your bill, Jim, for a President who said one thing and wanted another, and who must have been laughing at me all the time. I guess I have a lot to learn.” Suddenly he sounded forlorn and very young. “An awful lot to learn ….”

“Don’t feel that way about it,” his father-in-law said comfortably. “We all had a lot to learn when we first came to this town. Not all of us learned it quite so fast or so brutally, but we all had to do it. Nobody comes to Washington really knowin’ Washington : it takes a while.”

“And in time,” Jan agreed thoughtfully, “you understand. You realize that maybe it’s all rather necessary, in a way. You need the bumps and the bruises, the beliefs and the betrayals, before you begin to get a real inkling of what democracy is all about and how it operates. The President, for instance, had a perfectly valid policy to pursue, and I think—taking everything into consideration—that he executed it very effectively.”

“Over my bleeding body,” Mark said ruefully.

“Yes, but there had to be somebody’s, you see. Somebody had to go out on a limb and make a brave fight, for the very reason that by doing so he gave the President the opportunity to say to the Soviets—and those Americans he has to carry along with him if he’s to face the Soviets effectively—I’m for Mark Coffin and what he believes in.’”

“And at the same time say to Daddy, I’m for Jim Elrod and what he believes in,’” Linda remarked with some resentment.

“That’s right,” her father agreed. “And you see what he accomplished by it. He went on record opposin’ the bill, which as Jan says made him look good to the Russians. Then he told me confidentially that he really wanted the bill, which meant I could get the word around and guarantee its passage. So now he’s goin’ off next week to meet old Suvarov with a nice soothin’ reputation for bein’ a peace-lovin’ gent who tried hard to stave off the warmongers—and a ten-billion-dollar club that will enable him to be plenty tough when the chips are down. He’s come out of it eatin’ his cake and havin’ it too, which is a pretty nice thing for a President to be able to do, especially in a situation like this.”

“And I was stupid enough to fall for it,” Mark said bitterly. “What a jackass!”

“But as Jan said,” Lyddie remarked, “somebody had to.”

“But I believed what I said about the bill! Don’t any of you understand that?”

“We understand, dear,” Lyddie said. “The President believed what he said, too.”

“Both things he said? How could that be, if a man has any integrity at all?”

“There’s integrity and integrity,” Senator Elrod observed, “and when you’re balancin’ power and all the threats there are in this world to this country, you’re allowed a little leeway in which kind you select.”

“That’s a damned cynical remark,” he said angrily. Linda nodded.

“I agree, Daddy. I’ve never known you to go quite this far.”

“It works,” Senator Elrod said unperturbed. “When you’re in a killin’ fight like we are with the Soviets, that’s got to be the guide: it works. They don’t give a damn about nice ideas: they want what works for them. We’ve got to think that way, too, or we’re goin’ under as sure as we’re sittin’ here.”

“I don’t believe all that!” he cried desperately. “That’s the bleakest picture of the world I ever saw! You’re looking into hell!”

“That’s right,” Jim Elrod said somberly, “and unless we see it clear and sure, we aren’t comin’ out on the other side. And don’t you forget it. Don’t you forget it.”

There was silence while they all stared into the fire, expressions as somber as Senator Elrod’s. Finally Mark sighed.

“I guess maybe I don’t really belong here. I’m too naive—too innocent—too young. I think it’s all real—and I guess it’s just a deadly game in which honor, integrity, morals, worthwhile principies, hopes, dreams, ideals—nothing matters but advantage. And survival.”

“That is young,” his father-in-law observed. “Don’t let me put you under with my cynicism, now. I expect I sound a lot more that way than I really am. Why do you think I’m so concerned about the way the world’s goin? Why do you think I fight so hard for what I believe in, after all these years, knowin’ sometimes I’ll win but more often I’ll be beaten? Because it does matter, that’s why; it is important. All those ideals and hopes and dreams and principles are worth strugglin’ for—they are worth defendin’—they are worth preservin’.

“I’m not sayin’ that just because we have to be as tough as our opponents we have to sacrifice everythin’ that makes us a decent nation. I’m just sayin’ we’ve got to be tough—mighty tough if we’re to save ourselves in the long run. I think we can. I think we can be idealistic and hopeful and decent—and tough—all at one and the same time. I think we’ve got to be. They just aren’t givin’ us any other choice ….”

“And as for you, Mark Coffin,” Jan Hardesty said quietly into the hush that followed, “you are needed here, you do belong here. Without young people like you coming into the government it really wouldn’t matter and we really would go down. With young people like you, we at least have a chance. That’s your job—that’s what you’re here for—to keep the chance alive. And don’t you ever forget it!”

To which Lyddie murmured a soft and emphatic “Amen!”

Later when they had left, he and Linda standing hand in hand looking down upon a peacefully sleeping Linnie, a rosy-cheeked oblivious Markie, their admonitions and advice came back to strengthen him, as they were to do many times across the years.

The decades passed for Young Mark Coffin, who all too soon became middle-aged Mark Coffin and then elderly Mark Coffin—fought his battles—won his elections—and found in the course of time that he had achieved some, if not all, of the goals he had set for himself when first he arrived on Capitol Hill as the newest, youngest, freshest and in some ways most naive member of the United States Senate.

Terrible events happened in the world, things did not go easily for his country or for free men anywhere. Here and there some survived, he and his country among them. To that survival he felt he contributed as much as an essentially honest man, faced with the demands of survival, could.

His marriage continued, his children (including the second boy Linda had eight months later), grew and in their turn married. Defying the eternal question, “How can one bring children into such a world?” they did, and gave him pleasure in that. Linda aged gracefully, always “the perfect political wife.” Jim Elrod, Lyddie, the President went to their final rewards as did many another friend and colleague as the years passed by. Lessons were learned, friendships left their imprint, the education of Mark Coffin continued to the day he died. Few things left more lasting imprint than his first days in the Senate; few lessons went deeper. He never forgot, and was always thankful for, the things he learned then, painful though they were difficult for him to accept.

Nor did he forget what his two Senate seniors said to him on that night of defeat that soon became distant and long ago—

Jim Elrod, agreeing that they were “looking into hell,” admonishing that “unless we see it clear and sure, we aren’t comin’ out on the other side. And don’t you forget it. Don’t you forget it”

And Jan Hardesty, more personal, handing on the generational burden, placing it where it rightfully belonged:

“That’s your job—that’s what you’re here for—to keep the chance alive. And don’t you ever forget it.”

Somehow, through all the trials and tribulations, the terrible challenges and testings that in time unfolded for him and his hopeful, well-meaning, bumbling, beleaguered country, he never did.

December 1977–June 1978

***

Afterword

Citizenship

(Previously Unpublished, 1940)

Citizenship, in essence a private thing, does not lend itself easily to instruction. You are a citizen in your fashion, I in mine; within the laws we keep the peace or break it as we see fit, and are rewarded or punished accordingly. For the rest, it is between ourselves and the country. I cannot tell you how to feel when the flag goes by, or what prayers to offer for the Republic, or how you should cast your vote to the most consistent with its preservation. I can no more establish a criterion for you than you for me. All we can do for each other is to try to exchange, quietly as possible, such information on the state of our own minds and hearts as may contribute toward mutual understanding and good will, and so in some manner lend the strength of our common sympathy to the common effort That is undertaking enough, God knows, and of a nature to daunt the most hardy.

Nonetheless, I should like to try it, while we are still free to talk with one another. I should like to try to tell you quite simply how I feel about the duties of the citizen I know best, and perhaps indirectly make clear to you what I conceive to be the duties of a whole class of citizens, the class to which I belong, the class which has lately become everybody’s pet whipping-boy: the Younger Generation; more particularly, since we seem to be the official root of all evil, the College Generation. I hope you will bear with me, for I tell you frankly we are a sadly bewildered lot.

To begin with, let me admit at once that I have no particular qualification for the task I set myself; I can claim no special distinction, save the distinction of claiming none. My college background is much the same as that of many thousands of others. In the fall of 1935 I entered Stanford, lived there four years, leaned much, had many good times, made many good friends, enjoyed my world thoroughly and left it on September 2, 1939, the day after it came to an end forever in the bleak Polish dawn. The academic record was passable, the campus career a little better, but the sum total near enough the average so that any one of a thousand campuses can match it ten times over. I was College Student A.D. 1935-39. It is only lately that a great many people have arisen to inform me that I was also An Impractical Idealistic Dreamer In A World Dominated By Force.

It is a little hard to accept this designation even now, as a matter of fact, although it seems to be a generally held principle among that unhappy generation which fought a war, dreamed a dream, and then didn’t have quite enough staying-power to make it come true. It is hard to accept because it is not quite broad enough; it is a little too restricted in scope, when applied solely to us. We were not alone in this, and no amount of sound and fury can conceal the fact. It is only since the Lowlands blitzkrieg that patriotism and the omniscient wisdom of hindsight became the fashion. The number of deathbed converts among those who were College Student A.D. 1913-17 is awesome in size but not big enough to conceal the last-minute nature of the ceremony. We were all too late together; and the only charge which can truthfully be leveled against my generation is that we, having no background of old hates and old fears, have been and continue to be a little uneasy in the Joseph’s coat of the new antagonisms.

I admit that for this we are not to blame, for we were taught the wrong things. We were taught to hate war and admire peace, and to feel that the things of the spirit are somewhat more valid for the long haul than the things of steel. No one bothered to inform us that it might be necessary to devote some effort to their preservation. No one, indeed, conceived that such effort would ever again be demanded of free men. Education aligned itself accordingly. In the New Utopia there must be no animosities, no hate, no bitterness; memories must be erased, and no one must carry greater shame than his fellows into the council-chamber of the nations. Since stigma could not be removed, it must be made equal. Consequently, the moral and human bases for the War of 1914-18 were never told us. Consequently, so careful a balance was devised between this side and that, so neatly was blame distributed, with such jealous care was guilt apportioned, that in all logic it did indeed appear that nothing justified the conflict, or would ever justify another. In the school of desperately self-conscious historical liberalism which followed Versailles and dominated the years of our youth the war was scientifically dehumanized, stripped of all reality, reduced to formula until it became a gigantic, impersonal struggle between opposing economic forces. As to why it began, who caused it, what human hates and fears and jealousies went into its making and brought it to a head, we were left in ignorance We were never told why men fight each other, evidently because it was assumed that men would never fight each other again. The fact that these were human beings, moved by human impulses which had moved men before at various points in the past and might conceivably move them again at some point in the future, was consistently ignored in the discussion. Wars are human; they are fought by human beings. You would never know it from the histories, which substitute for the arrogance of a Wilhelm and the cynicism of an Edward Gray the lifeless record of the Anglo-German naval race, and find in the date on the Anglo-Nazi trade war in the Balkans the excuse for ignoring the mad fanaticism of a Hitler, the tragic stupidity of a Chamberlain.

Yet woefully inadequate though our education has been in this regard, I would not have you think I condemn it too severely, for from it have come those things which give it it’s very great value to my generation. Grown of a great idealism following a great war, they form the basis for certain ideals and principles and beliefs which are eternally valid regardless of the contemporary trend of events at any given point in history. As a basis for citizenship, not only in a town, a city, a state, a nation, but even in a community of nations, they cannot be downed by hate or challenged by cowardice.

In some curious fashion my generation has been taught what might almost be termed a streamlined version of Christianity. Most of us would reject the word outright, but in essence that is what it has been. For the great majority it has produced a certain basic tolerance, a certain easy-going charity, a great skepticism of pretense, a great disinclination to accept anything or anybody until a proven worth has been demonstrated, willingness to give credit where credit is due, a ruthless reduction of people and events to their approximate size in the scale of things, a dislike for war, a liking for peace and freedom and the opportunity they offer for the development of the individual, a respect for the other fellow’s opinion and his right to express it, a good-natured live-and-let-live philosophy which approximates the Christian ideal insofar as it can be adapted to the tempo of the life in which we have come to maturity.

Further, we have been taught that no lasting peace can be conceived, put through, or maintained in hate; and we believe it. To a considerable extent hate has been educated out of my generation. We hear it said frequently that the mistake in the last war was in “not going right on through to Berlin and brining it right home to them.” My generation does not think so. To our way of thinking the ghost of man’s lost hope does not haunt the road to Berlin, but the empty corridors of a palace on the shores of Lake Geneva. That was the great chance lost by a margin so narrow as to change in no way its essential verity as an indication of what humanity can achieve if it will. Just a little more foresight, a little more forbearance, a little more charity, a little more faith—just a little; so very little. So little that we are convinced that it can still be done and someday will be.

I know fully how easy it is for the unthinking to mistake this idealism for cowardice, for there is ample evidence that many do. Yet I think I speak for the overwhelming majority of my generation when I say that if it becomes necessary we will unhesitatingly give to or nation whatever sacrifice she demands for her preservation in this strange chaotic time. All we ask is that you permit us to do so a human beings instead of animals. We want you to stop wasting your time and your tears upon our apparent unenthusiasm for war. Certainly we’re unenthusiastic. War is one hell of a mess, and we know it. Furthermore, so do you. Nobody wins and everybody loses. But if events so move that it becomes necessary for us to be drawn into it, I daresay we can take it, and take it in all probability considerably better than the armchair colonels whose chief pursuit seems to be the diligent dispatch of verbal white feathers. If there is a job to be done, my generation is ready to do it; but we should like to be able to do it without the ghastly over sentimentalizing which makes of every decent human emotion a mockery and drags in the dust every ideal worth fighting for. We should like to be able to do it with a certain amount of hope. We should like to be able to do it in such a way that we can remain true to our training, our humanity and ourselves.

You will gather now, I think, what I conceive to be the duty of my generation, and what I feel should be the nature of its citizenship. We are skeptical; we are tolerant; we are peace-loving; we are free from hate. We bear few men malice and we are willing and able to get along with almost anybody. You might almost say that we believe in human nature and the ultimate triumph of human reason and human decency.

And that is our citizenship: to carry unchanged through whatever lies ahead our faith and our idealism, so that if peace ever does come again to our generation and we are spared to enjoy it, we may bring them as our contribution to that brave new world which must someday, sometime, rise upon the ruins of the old.

—Allen Drury

***