“What in the devil has he written? What is in it?”
“Arthur, I can’t speak. I’d better see you as soon as possible, before the others. Shall I come to your office?”
“Yes-no, wait-I think we want some seclusion. You use the E Street entrance. Take my private elevator right up to the top, to the eighth floor. I’ll leave word for them to let you come up, and the others, also. I’ll be waiting in the Madison Dining Room… How does it look to you, Governor? He’s going to sign the bill, of course?”
“I think so, I think so, there’s nothing else he can do. It’s what he’s going to say about it that bothers me. I’ll get over to State right away, Arthur. Good-bye.”
That was all the evidence Eaton had to go by, ten minutes ago and now.
The degree to which the news had flustered him was a surprise. He had been schooled to be poised for the unexpected. Even international masters of the unexpected, like Premier Kasatkin, could be anticipated. One studied their arcs of reasoning, from the top curve of predictability to the bottom curve of unpredictability, and if one knew their backgrounds, ambitions, pressures, one could be ready to bisect and contain them at any point of the arc. But Dilman, apparently, had proved himself to be unlike other men.
This, then, was a part of what had unsettled Arthur Eaton, jolted his superior complacency. He had, of course, made his study of the new President, a shallow study, to be truthful, but then, the man had appeared to have no subtle resources that would require an examination of more depth. Dilman had given the impression, from the first, of a person obvious and simple to divine, or so it had seemed to one of Eaton’s wide experience with more clever and devious men.
Of three dozen important demands made upon him, Dilman had been agreeable to all, well, all save two, and even in these two matters he had finally performed what was requested of him. He had not signed the New Succession Bill into law, that was true, but he had weakly permitted it to become law, with only the mildest legalistic protest. No one had minded that too much, considering Dilman’s color and sensitivity and his need not to condone publicly a legislative insult. The fact was: he had come along.
Then, in the invoking of the Subversive Activities Control Act, he had displayed faint resistance, evidenced by hesitancy and delay. Yet his hesitancy, if one was reasonable, could not be regarded as unexpected. He had been asked to outlaw a segment of his own race, and suffer their ire, and had recoiled from it as long as possible. Too, his behavior toward the Turnerites, if one studied these matters as Eaton did, was the natural result of his personality. Time and again he had shown himself to be fearful and uncertain, and therefore indecisive and slow. This was simply his style. In the end, predictably, he had banned the Turnerite Group.
But this new development of ten or fifteen minutes ago, this was unusual. To date, his slowness in signing the Minorities Rehabilitation Program Bill was not unexpected, but part of his pattern. His sudden announcement yesterday, before the Cabinet meeting adjourned, that he had decided to address the nation on the bill, had been a minor surprise to Eaton and all of them only because they did not expect an act of impulse on Dilman’s part. Yet, once more, it was an understandable desire. Many Presidents, before approving of a crucial or gigantic piece of spending legislation, liked to explain their belief in what they were doing, mention minor reservations (as political self-protection if anything went wrong or there was dissent), and to dramatize their own roles in a useful action. No, it was not unexpected that Dilman, conscious that the minorities bill was T. C.’s bill, would wish to reap some of T. C.’s popularity and curry some favor (when he needed it most) by projecting himself before the public on millions of television screens as one of the authors of the bountiful bill.
It had been routine for T. C.’s writers and special counselors to spend the remainder of yesterday afternoon, following the Cabinet meeting, and most of the evening, sketching out and molding into final form a public speech, in this case the fifteen-minute address on the minorities bill that explained its virtues and Dilman’s own approval. Dilman had known that they were preparing his address, and had offered no objections. Late last night Dilman had received the polished final draft from Talley, with no indication of protest, indeed with thanks. And to Talley’s suggestion that should Dilman desire any changes today, everyone would be standing by to help him, Dilman had again been appreciative.
And now, for the first time, the unpredictable: Dilman had rejected their speech in favor of one he had written, was writing, himself. He had displayed his first evidence of decisive action, of individuality, of independence, of ignoring advice from his betters-no, not his betters-his more experienced advisers.
Eaton had tried to penetrate the President’s motivation for this silly and small rebellion. It did not mean that Dilman was opposing their wishes, the wishes, in fact, of Congress, the country, his own race, in regard to the important bill. No, one unaccountable action did not imply or indicate a more drastic one to follow. All Dilman was doing was demanding to write their speech his way. A sensitive colored man was asserting his rights. That was it. Eaton could see it more clearly now. By overlooking consideration of that one dimension of President Dilman’s color, Eaton had almost erred in anticipating his behavior. Dilman’s color had been largely responsible for his quick servility, his readiness to come along, his indecisiveness. This same color, Eaton saw, must occasionally drive him into some action of immature self-assertion, as if to remind the whites around him that he was their equal, a man with a mind of his own. That was it, of course, the complete explanation. Dilman was doing their bidding, whatever his secret qualms, on the Minorities Rehabilitation Bill, but was reminding them that although he must do what he was being told to do, he still would not allow himself to be held in utter contempt. In short, Eaton saw, the President must at least be permitted to say in his own words what his advisers wanted said.
Eaton told himself that his analysis made sense. He congratulated himself on clearing up the enigma. Yet, he realized, he was still unnerved. Why? Well, dammit, what President of the United States had ever shielded the contents of a vital domestic policy speech-in this case the most vital one in a decade-from everyone around him?
Tired of trying to solve mysteries with insufficient clues, impatient to learn the details of Talley’s encounter with Dilman, or with the protective Miss Foster, Arthur Eaton left his office. He proceeded through his stenographer’s office-reminded, those moments, that he was to have met Sally Watson in his home shortly after the speech, resenting the fact that he might now be delayed, and had better phone her to come later-and then he entered the small reception room and went on into the main reception room. The desk there, too, was empty. He noted the time. It was eleven minutes after six o’clock. Everyone had gone home.
Yet not quite everyone, Eaton realized. Two clerks passed busily through the corridor. Assistant Secretary Stover, in his shirt-sleeves, carrying a dispatch, waved at him. The sight of such activity pleased Eaton. At least here, in his dominion, there were no mysteries, and nothing was unknown to him. Under his exacting rule, guided by his cool intelligence and supported by a five-hundred-million-dollar annual budget, his army of seven thousand foreign affairs specialists toiled, and one thousand of these worked through the night. It gave him pride that his palace, the Department of State Building, was never dark-as, so suddenly, the White House had become dark.
Restlessly, to kill time, Arthur Eaton wandered into the corridor. He turned right, made his way across the rich blue carpeting, absently glanced at the framed pictures of the nation’s previous Secretaries of State on the wall, then came to a halt before Room 7228, the corridor entrance to his own office. He studied the two words lettered on the walnut panel of his door. They read simply: the secretary. He thought of the many persons who saw these two words daily, and how few understood the encompassing, far-reaching nature of his responsibility, reaching back to T. C., reaching ahead to every American citizen everywhere, reaching now into that suddenly secretive Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.