Decision (19 page)

“I might add,” he said with some pride, “that the building, plus furnishings, was brought in ninety-four thousand dollars under the estimated cost of nine million seven hundred forty thousand dollars authorized by Congress, which then-and now—and I am afraid forever-more—remains something of a miracle in the history of these United States.

“Which concludes my lecture for this evening. That will teach you not to get me started, Mary.”

“I’m sure there is more,” Mary said in her best party manner. “Someday you must tell me much,
much
more.”

“Perhaps,” The Elph said with a chuckle. “It may rank under the heading of things-you-didn’t-really-care-whether-you-knew-or-not about the Supreme Court. However, it
is
interesting to know about the place where we work. Right, Tay?”

“It has always interested me,” Tay said, pulled up out of a deep reverie in which Cathy, the Court and his family were swirling in some sort of fandango he could not seem to unsnarl. “I’ve been a Court history buff for a long time.”

“At his teacher’s knee,” Mary said in a tone that prompted Birdie to laugh quickly and exclaim,

“My, you
have
had a real interest, haven’t you! Mary, we ladies of the Court have our little gatherings from time to time—nothing formal, just as the spirit moves. We do hope you’ll join in.”

“Well—” Mary said in a reserved tone. “I shall have to look at my calendar and see if—”

“You aren’t doing that much,” Tay said. “It sounds great, Mrs. Elphinstone—”

“Birdie, please.”

“Birdie—and I’m sure Mary will be delighted to attend.”

“I shall have to see,” Mary said in the same remote tone. “You don’t know all that I do, Tay. There
are
important things that take my time—”

“But just once every six weeks—!”

“Now,” Birdie interjected firmly. “We won’t say any more about it. Mary knows perfectly well that she’s always welcome and we’d love to have her, but nobody’s pressuring anybody, on Dunc’s Court. I know Mary will do her very best to be with us when she can.”

“I hope so,” Tay said, staring out the window.

“I shall have to see,” Mary repeated, still politely distant. “It will all depend.”

“I hope I didn’t scare you off with too much history,” the Chief said lightly. “I do go on sometimes, when I get started.”

“Oh, no,” she said, “not at all. I’m sure you and Tay will find much to talk about in that area.”

“Oh, we’ll talk a great deal in many areas,” the Chief said, “won’t we, Tay? Particularly,” he said with sudden glumness, “about crime and violence.”

“Yes,” Tay agreed, forced to drop his own broodings, which he thought was a good thing, and concentrate on the kindly little face and bright little eyes peering at him from beneath the shock of white hair. “It does seem,” he added, suddenly somber, “that things get worse every day.”

“They aren’t good,” The Elph said grimly. “They are not good. That fellow down in Moss’ state, what’s his name, that attorney general—Regard Stinnet—you probably saw him on the news last night:

“‘There may yet come a time when an outraged citizenry will take matters into its own hands to punish those the courts allow to perpetrate their execrable acts upon society. That time could be very soon. It could be tomorrow. It could be today.’ His statements are getting more and more inflammatory all the time. And you know what he and your attorney general out there in California are proposing: a conference of all the state attorneys general once a month—”

“‘To coordinate and
put into immediate effect’—
emphasis mine—‘the spontaneous demand for action which is springing up all across our troubled land,’” Tay finished for him. “There’s a call for nationwide vigilantism if I ever heard one.”

“And we’re so helpless,” Duncan Elphinstone said. “It’s ironic. The most powerful Court in the land, maybe in the world, and here we sit paralyzed because our only power is appellate. We can’t
do
anything, in any affirmative sense. We just have to sit and wait until something comes up from the courts below. We can’t make things happen, we can only say they should or shouldn’t. It’s ironic,” he repeated, “and it makes me, for one, feel both foolish and frustrated. Because I’d like to do a lot of things. I’m sure we all would.”

“‘How many divisions does the Pope have?’” Tay quoted wryly. “Not enough, obviously.”

“Maybe something will come before you soon,” Birdie said, being comforting as always as the limousine drew up in front of the Court.

“It can’t be soon enough,” her husband said, a comment he would remember with a rending sadness before the night was out.

For the moment however, all was cheerfulness, friendliness and goodwill as they emerged from the limousine into the glare of a few modest lights and a couple of hand-held television cameras. Someone in the press room had got wind of their dinner, as someone usually did. The Chief congratulated himself that security was pretty good at the Court but reporters did have their contacts and some of them would talk. As long as it was something harmless like this, however, he didn’t mind. It would be good for a picture in the
Post
and the
Inquirer
and perhaps a snippet on tomorrow night’s news. CASTLE STODGY THROWS A BASH, he thought to himself with an inner humor the media might have been surprised to learn he had. It wouldn’t hurt the image.

The rest arrived just behind them, and on a wave of amicability they walked slowly up the steps and went in.

The Great Hall was brightly illuminated just as it always was—“white, white,
white,”
as he had overheard some tourist’s child remarking one day. The night guards smiled and bowed; one young newcomer even stood to attention and snapped them a smart salute. A few late-working law clerks were still in the Hall; they smiled and stepped back respectfully. From their niches along the walls the busts of his predecessors looked down upon them as they passed.

They ascended to the second floor, turned left and made their way along the corridor—again, the Chief reflected, white, white,
white—
to the dining room. He noted that the staff had outdone itself: ferns and flowers on the snowy tablecloth, the gleam of old silver, the soft glow of old china, the patina of antique chairs and cabinets, candlelight, candlelight everywhere. It seemed like John Marshall’s day again, welcoming, warm, charming—and snug, for a little while, against the clamors of the angry world, from whose constant concerns this was for them a most rare and precious escape.

The Chief felt a sudden warmly sentimental glow for them all, and for the Court… The Court! How they all loved it and how much it meant to them and to their country! Eight fallible men and a woman, embodying the Law—how many long centuries, how much bitter struggle, how much pain and blood and sacrifice it had taken to bring civilization to this point! And how darkly it was threatened, and how easily it could be toppled were it not constantly, constantly protected.

He was sorry Moss and Sue-Ann were missing the occasion, because they always added a charm of their own, particularly to such faintly antiquarian scenes as this; but he supposed they must be having a good time down in South Carolina. He had seen Moss on his home grounds a couple of times before. He loved to play the grand seigneur when he got to South Carolina, and nobody did it better. Right now, the Chief supposed, he was making some graceful little speech that would set them all roaring. They loved Moss, down there, and everybody was always anxious to hear him speak.

And indeed he was preparing to hold them spellbound in the palm of his hand once again as he sat patiently on the speaker’s platform with Sue-Ann on one side and Sarah and Janie on the other. The girls, as he had accurately predicted, were having a grand time of it. Both were used to public life to some degree, but this trip, with its flight in the plane provided by the President, its gala reception concluded just an hour ago, its quick tour of the just-finished plant with all its fresh new smells and spick-and-span cleanness, the friendly crowd gathered to witness the ceremony, the setting in the beautiful little valley in the tree-clad hills, the floodlights, the noise, the fun, the excitement—“Your eyes are bigger than saucers,” he told them and they went off, without further prompting, into gales of giggles.

“Girls!” Sue-Ann whispered, leaning over to them. “Girls! The governor is speaking. Now, you-all stop that and listen, hear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sarah said, struggling without much success for composure. “I’m trying, I’m trying.”

But it was too much for them and they began to giggle again behind their hands while Moss, smiling a little and shaking his head, commanded the amused sympathy of the parents in the crowd. There was a little murmur of laughter. The governor, puzzled, hesitated in midflight, turned around and glanced back; saw what was causing it and promptly joined in.

“You two young ladies are disruptin’ my speech, you know that?” he said good-naturedly. “Now, you just hush and pay attention, because this is serious business.”

“Yes, sir,” Janie squeaked, voice cracking, and immediately they were off again.

This was too much for everyone, and for a moment the little vale filled with laughter, its sound rising pleasantly through the trees to the cave mouth where the only one who was not amused wished with a furious impatience that they would stop the insane yakking and get on with it. He was growing more tense by the minute. His lips now were drawn back from his teeth and unconsciously his face was set in a wolflike mask that would have frightened anyone who saw it. No one did. His hands, resting on knees that steadied a detonator, trembled and were wet with sweat. He stood up suddenly, unzipped his pants and freed himself: he knew from experience what would happen when he hit the charge. Then he leaned back against a tree and stared up unseeing into the velvet night.
Get on with it,
he told them savagely.
For God’s sake, get on with it.

After allowing the laughter to run on for a few more seconds, the governor did. His amiable banalities floated out through the soft cool air, echoing slightly from the low rolling hills all around.

“And so now,” he said finally—Janie and Sarah having managed to contain themselves, everyone now listening approvingly to his words, the little group of demonstrators corralled off in a corner, silenced by police with clubs who gestured threateningly if they so much as coughed (and also silenced because the television cameras were being kept away from them)—“now, we come to our principal speaker of the evening, my great predecessor in the office of governor, a great Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, but above all”—he took a deep breath and sailed on—“above all, a great son of South Carolina, a man we all know and love, a man whose ancestors came to this state almost three hundred years ago, to this very ground we stand on, which was their first ancestral home in the New World, a man who”—he took another breath and rumbled on—“wherever he goes and whatever he does, is always and indubitably a true son of South Carolina—Justice STANLEY MOSSITER POMEROY! Of,” he added almost as an afterthought as the crowd surged shouting and applauding to its feet, “SOUTH CAROLINA!”

Moss rose and stepped forward, shaking hands with the governor, lifting their joined hands high in the standard political gesture, nodding, smiling, waving with his free hand, while the generous and affectionate welcome engulfed them.

When it died down he stepped forward and started to speak. Then he stopped, grinned and turned to gesture to the girls.

“You all know Sue-Ann,” he said as they came obediently forward, “but I want you to meet the two young ladies who have caused such a disturbance here tonight. This is my daughter Sarah—and this is her good friend, the daughter of our newest Supreme Court Justice, just seated on the Court, as you all know—Jane Barbour. Girls—”

And he gestured them forward and stepped back while they stood giggling and waving in the floodlights and the friendly applause surged up once more.

Above in the trees, having ceased his attempts to really listen after he had heard the Justice’s name, off in a world of his own that was racing to a climax of terrible tension and almost unbearable excitement, the watcher calculated that the speaker must now be well launched; and, reaching down, touched the detonator.

Instantly he leaped up, his back arched, his body convulsed. He staggered back gasping and groaning against the tree and gave himself up helplessly to the agonizing pleasure he could not have stopped had he wanted to, which he did not.

On the platform his rose of death flowered in the soft summer night. All along the dark side of the plant that faced his shuddering oblivious body, companion roses flowered too.

“Justice Barbour,” the Chief Justice was saying with a benign smile in the cozily candlelit, peaceful, eminently civilized room, “before we begin this charming repast in this charming place, perhaps it would be fitting to say a few words and offer a toast of goodwill to our new Associate, whose presence honors this Court as we know it will serve the country.

“We are glad to have you here. We wish you well. We are certain that you will perform great service.

“Perhaps we should warn you, however, that it is not only in the White House—although,” he interjected with a wry little smile, “various Chief Executives have sought to take all the credit to themselves—that it can truthfully be said, ‘The buck stops here.’ It also stops
right here,
in this Court. There is nobody above us to appeal to. There is no way, saving only a law of Congress or an amendment to the Constitution, to change the basis for one of our rulings. There is no one we can pass the burden along to. Here we must deliberate and decide. Once we have accepted a case there is no way we can discharge ourselves of it except by a decision. We have to vote it up or down. We may delay a bit, sometimes, to permit further argument or further study; but then the day comes and the decision must be rendered. Up or down, it must be voted; yea or nay, we must give voice. And once we have, that is it—unless reversed freely and in their own good time by future Justices—for so long as this Republic remains as we now know it. Which, pray God under whom we hold our liberties, will be for quite some time to come.