Advise and Consent (48 page)

In addition to Lafe, he soon developed strong personal ties to the older members who had in effect adopted him, made him their protégé, and actively promoted his career. As Bob Munson once remarked to Stanley Danta, “We don’t get material as good as that very often, we’d better make the most of it,” and they did. Of them all he found himself most drawn to Orrin, who had an uncompromising honesty and a bluntly forthright way with the truth that immediately appealed to his young friend from Utah. Tart, tactless, impatient, fearless, and unimpressed, the senior Senator from Illinois wasted little time on fools; but on those he liked who were not fools he conferred a friendship of absolute loyalty and a deep warmth of affection that appeared surprisingly from beneath his shyly abrupt exterior. The twenty years that separated them were no barrier, and a very close relationship, almost father-son, was soon established. Happily it had extended to their wives. With Orrin and Beth he and Mabel had developed an in-and-out-of-the-house friendship that took them to Bethany Beach in nearby Delaware together for a couple of weeks and quite a few weekends each summer and generally made them members of the Knox family. It was Brig and Mabel, in fact, who had happened to bring Crystal Danta over one weekend when Stanley was away on a speaking trip and so had begun what Beth Knox referred to as “this joining of the ancient houses of Montague and Capulet,” though the analogy wasn’t very apt but just one of those dry and humorous things Beth would say. Both he and Mabel valued the Knoxes most highly, and of course in the Senate the friendship of the two men made for a strategic alliance that, added to all the other little strategic alliances that existed in the Senate, was frequently most profitable for them both. Neither ever asked the other to moderate his honest opinion in any degree, neither made much attempt to swing the other to his views; but in the majority of cases, they found, their views coincided, and when this wasn’t so they went their separate ways in mutual respect and reformed their alliance the next time they saw eye to eye.

It was at Bethany with the Knoxes last Labor Day, in fact, that he had suddenly realized that he had found a happiness to equal or surpass any he had known. Pidge had been out at water-line shoveling busily in the sand; it was time for lunch and he had gone to bring her in. There had been some minor, muted disagreement with Mabel just before he had left the Knoxes’ cottage and he was not in a very good mood; the waves had crashed, swimmers out in the sea had called to one another, a reminiscent melancholy had suddenly gripped his heart. Then he had reached his daughter, and with perfect love and trust and acceptance she had stood up and smiled at him. It had seemed to him then with a feeling close to revelation that in this tiny, sway-backed, ridiculous figure with her little behind sticking out in back and her little tummy sticking out in front, her blond hair caught up with a ribbon in a horsetail mop and her dark eyes filled with an amiable candor, all the love and hope of the world were concentrated. At that moment a surreptitious wave suddenly arrived at the rear of the ridiculous figure with surprising force, and the ridiculous figure sat down abruptly. There she remained for several seconds while a look of thoughtful concentration passed over her face. Then she looked up at her father with a sunny smile.

“I wetted the water,” she explained.

Brigham Anderson gave a shout of laughter so completely happy that Mabel, coming contritely up the beach behind them, sighed with relief.

“The water wetted you, so you wetted the water,” he said, scooping Pidge up onto his shoulder. “We’ll pass a resolution and do something about it.” And the three of them had started back in perfect harmony along the sand to the Knoxes’ cottage.

It was that day, also, however, on which he had begun to realize most fully that the happiness he wanted would never come with Mabel, for all his conscientious efforts and her desperate attempts to match them, for she was one of those good people who are also in spite of all their earnest efforts basically dull. Perhaps if Pidge had come at once instead of five years after their marriage, perhaps if the bloom, laboring under handicaps Mabel would never understand, had not had time to go quite so fully off the rose before it was rekindled briefly by their daughter’s birth, it might have been different; as it was, despite all his cares and attentions, they were no longer as close as they used to be, and he could not honestly say where the greater fault lay, though he was quite sure he had done everything mortally possible on his side. Of late there had been at times a gnawing boredom that he had not always quite concealed, though he never let it get out of hand. Nonetheless, Mabel knew, and there had been an increasing number of arguments about it, usually not very serious and turned off with a joke and a kiss and sometimes a small gift or a night out. The night before the morning Pidge had fussed so long over her oatmeal, however, the situation had suddenly become more serious for some reason neither of them could analyze. There had been a rather long argument over trivia, ending with Mabel in tears uttering the ancient cry of those who love more than they are loved, “Sometimes I don’t think I know you at all!” At this her husband had given her a startled look she could not define from those level dark eyes she worshipped so much and in a faraway voice had said softly, “Maybe you don’t.” And then with a sudden contrition he had told her how much he loved her and done things she fiercely enjoyed to prove it, and they had gone to sleep at relative peace with one another. Later in the night, however, she had awakened to cry again, and the next morning she had slept late and then taken Pidge and gone over to the Knoxes’ after telling Ellabelle to clean up the attic, and cried some more on Beth’s shoulder. Since then they had re-established an outward harmony, and this morning in the bright spring day she had laughed and kissed him and sent him out to the garden in apparent high spirits, so things were easier again.

Searching his heart and mind with complete and unsparing honesty about it now, he knew with absolute certainty that the situation they were in could have happened, and indeed did happen, to many and many a marriage; it had nothing to do with ghosts from the past, though he never denied their importance to his life. He was a good father, a good if temporarily troubled husband, a good servant, a good Senator, and a good man; and central to all this, in a way he understood thoroughly in his own nature, was the episode in Honolulu.

Physically of course it was a closed book, for nothing ever again induced in him quite that combination of restlessness, uncertainty, impulse, and desire. It had come about after a long period of self-questioning, because of a unique set of circumstances that were never duplicated again, and he felt no need to try to recreate something that had flared once and was, he was quite sure, gone forever. Furthermore, there were ten thousand reasons of reputation, family, home, and career why it should not be revived, and so he steered deliberately clear of any such situations, which in Washington as everywhere were numerous, that even remotely seemed capable of leading to it. Furthermore, and this he knew honestly was also fundamental, it had meant something very important to him at the time, it couldn’t be recaptured and he knew it, and that too was a major reason along with all the others of self-preservation, obligation to society, integrity, and self-denial.

If he had been possessed of a cowardly and self-protective mind he could have pretended to himself that this was not the case, but he was not the type to spare himself on anything and no more did he spare himself on that. Nor did he see any reason why he should, for in a way he came consciously to realize, what had started as a weakness became transmuted by a very strong character and a very decent heart into a profoundly important strength. As surely as Seab Cooley, surviving his own private hell in Barnwell half a century before, Brig knew when he emerged from his that it had been a proving ground. For all its pain, and for all that it was not exactly the sort of thing you would want to discuss in Salt Lake City, he did not regret that it had happened. There were things he had to find out about himself; the war, as it did for so many, furnished the crucible, and in it that episode had probably been the single most illuminating episode of all. He could not honestly say he was sorry; his only sorrow was that fate had ended it so hurtfully for them both instead of allowing the war to send them apart again as calmly and simply and inevitably as it had brought them together.

He was forthright enough to admit to himself that finding good in what many would consider evil might be all an elaborate rationalization, and yet if it was, both he and society profited from it, so what matter the label that was put upon it? Men, he had observed, believed about themselves what they had to believe to keep going; and matched against the general motley he did not think his method for coming to terms with himself was any worse than anyone else’s. At least he felt that it was a positive reaction to something that otherwise could have been a constant drag upon his life, and so he did not quibble over the thought processes that permitted it. He had managed to emerge whole: he was grateful that it should be so, and wise enough not to question it.

Not, however, that anything changed the fact born in him that beneath the solid, easygoing, and likeable exterior there lived what was basically a highly independent and lone-wolf character: if anything, the years had strengthened the tendency to that. The self-reliance he had shown so early, the ability to smile and keep his counsel and go his own way had been steadily strengthened, in school, in war, in politics. One of those people, found so often in high official position, whose outward cordiality, responsiveness, and warmth persuade that they are giving much more of themselves than they actually are, he continued to remain essentially alone. He moved slowly and carefully, seeking few men’s advice, usually withholding his own, weighing all the facts before taking action, acting decisively on his own independent conclusions, and considering himself answerable to practically nothing but his own conscience and the state of Utah. There was always that area of unreachability remaining inside where he worked things out in his own mind and formed his own judgments without much regard to those of others; it was this, though she did not realize it fully, that Mabel was up against in a more personal context. Fortunately, because his mind was astute and very well informed, this habit of independence usually brought him out on the right side of things in most cases, however much it might sometimes bother those who valued his support and sought to win it. Even to Orrin and Lafe he would on occasion show a frustratingly obdurate aloofness, sometimes on subjects on which they thought they were entitled as his two closest friends in the Senate to know his thinking. If he wished to let them have it, he did, and if he didn’t, he didn’t. Both had exploded at him at times for this, but he had only remained good-natured and uncommunicative, not telling them until he got good and ready.

It was this trait, perhaps, which more than any other accounted for his action last night when he had decided entirely on his own initiative to reopen the Leffingwell hearings. He might have consulted with Orrin, if Orrin had been available, but most probably he wouldn’t have. He might, if he were someone else, explain his reasons to the subcommittee, the Majority Leader, and the press during the day today; but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t. He had made the decision which seemed most valid to him, to make an announcement keeping the hearings alive if they should be needed, and then to refuse comment until he had been given an opportunity to talk to the man who had appointed Bob Leffingwell and find out what he intended to do. It might be that the whole thing could be ironed out in private conference, that the nomination could be withdrawn—the step he now felt imperative and the only one he would accept without an open fight—and another sent in before the truth could get out; and then in all probability it never would. Then it might all be smoothed over, with some embarrassment for the President, true, and with great disappointment and public reproach for the nominee; but that was politics, and politics, as Brigham Anderson had noted in seven years could sometimes be a most cruel and heartless business. Those who entered it took upon themselves always the possibility that it might someday turn without pity upon them. This the President knew; this the nominee knew; and so did he.

So he had made his decision alone shortly after midnight, not knowing what had prompted James Morton’s call, for the man did not tell him, knowing only that it had come to him as chairman of the subcommittee bearing a responsibility to the Senate, the country, and his own integrity to do something about it. Given the character he had, he could have taken no other course. As he was, so he acted; a human tendency that in the average run of things produces nothing very drastic, even though in this case, time, place, and circumstance again combined against him to see to it that it did.

And even so, the sun was bright, the winds were warm, and spring was here. And even so, despite his recurring somber mood and despite the steadily-widening ramifications of the Leffingwell matter in the wake of his decision, he was glad to be alive and confident he could easily handle whatever, in this golden season, the future might divulge.

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