She lowered her head, casting a quick mutinous glance in the direction of the house, saying, “That’s humiliating.”
“Well, me, too. I get hauled down here like a prize stud. But you can’t blame them, older people like to mess around in younger people’s affairs.”
“Not Bradford,” she said. “That’s beneath him.”
“Apparently not. But the point is, I’m sorry I brought it up, since that isn’t what the summons was about this time. Or is it?”
She glanced up at him, squinting a bit in the sunlight, looking annoyed and embarrassed and irritated and much livelier than at any point in the course of their last meeting. She said, “Or is it? What do you mean?”
“He obviously gave you some other reason for my visit this time, but maybe it was just a cover-up and he’s back doing Hello, Dolly! again.”
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head with finality. “I only wish it were,” she said, and looked out over the pond, then turned back quickly to say, “Don’t misunderstand that.”
“I don’t. What does he want me for?”
“Advice,” she said. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you first, give you a chance to think about what to say to him when he asks you.”
“Advice? From me?”
“You’re a history teacher, aren’t you? American history?”
“Yes?”
“Well, Bradford’s decided he needs advice from a history teacher, and that is why he sent for you.”
“What kind of advice?” he asked, still thinking it had to be a mask some way to cover continued matchmaking. Why should Bradford Lockridge want advice from an obscure young history teacher? It made no sense.
“Suggestions for his campaign,” she answered, and twisted the words with a surprising amount of bitterness. Robert sensed in her attitude that her own advice had been neither sought nor heeded. Was it usually? Perhaps.
Then the word she’d used caught up with his thinking and he said, “Campaign?”
She shook her head, in annoyance rather than negation, and faced him to say, “Bradford’s decided to run for Congress.”
iii
Evelyn didn’t join them for lunch. Whether that was an expression of her disapproval or not Robert didn’t know, but he did know she was making her disapproval evident, and he could see that Lockridge understood the meaning of her expression and her silences. An uneasy wordless truce stretched taut within the household.
Lunch was a respite from that, obviously, with Lockridge relaxing in the presence of his visitors from outside, of which there were two others in addition to Robert.
Opposite Robert sat a solidly-built man of about fifty, Dr. Joseph Holt, Lockridge’s personal physician, whose brother (Evelyn’s father) had apparently been married to Lockridge’s daughter. Robert remembered hearing Dr. Holt’s name mentioned at the end of his last visit here, when Lockridge had some sort of attack and Evelyn was told that Dr. Holt had been sent for. Given the circumstances, he had built up a vague mental image of Dr. Holt as a tall, grim, cadaverous man with deepset eyes and no optimism, but in the flesh he was much heartier and healthier than that, a pleasant cheerful man who reminded Robert most of a type occasionally found on campus: an older man, a professor, whose outlook and interests had (without degradation to himself) remained young and in touch with his students. Dr. Holt led the small talk during lunch, and Robert found himself enjoying the man greatly.
The other visitor, to his left, was a different type entirely. Though probably a decade younger than Dr. Holt, in his early forties, this man gave the impression of being much older, much more settled and weighty in his manner. His name was Leonard Orr, and he was a local politician of apparently some importance, being both mayor of a nearby town and the county chairman of the political party to which Bradford Lockridge also belonged. He was a stout man with a broad solemn face and thinning hair, and his eyeglasses had clear plastic frames. He said little, and that judiciously. At first, Robert thought Leonard Orr pompous beyond belief, but finally he realized that Orr was merely over-awed by Bradford Lockridge. A town mayor and county chairman, at the table of a former President of the United States, would have to be over-awed.
They ate in a different dining room from the last time, this one smaller and on the first floor, a green and white room with a wall of tiny-paned windows overlooking a good part of the orchard, the rows of pear and peach and apple trees lush with leaves and ripening fruit in the sunlight. Whether the house was air-conditioned or just naturally cool Robert couldn’t tell.
He had been braced for Lockridge to bring up the subject of Congress from the instant he entered the man’s presence, but Lockridge was in no hurry to get to it, allowing Dr. Holt to lead the small talk, which the doctor did gracefully, drawing anecdotes of college life from Robert and of his recent European visit from Lockridge. Leonard Orr, for whom today’s invitation was obviously a rarity, clearly was too conscious of protecting his dignity to descend into anecdote, limiting himself to the sort of portentous statement that made John Bartlett famous.
There was excellent rice pudding for dessert, followed by coffee. After the coffee had been served, Lockridge turned to Robert and said, “What do you know about John Quincy Adams?”
The topic had come out of midair. Robert finished pouring cream into his coffee, passed the pitcher to Orr, and said, “John Quincy? Sixth President of the United States.”
“A specialist in American history should know more than that,” Lockridge said.
Robert looked at him in surprise, to see that he was smiling but that he really wanted an answer. “You want a capsule biography of John Quincy Adams?”
“Yes, please.”
“Well, let’s see. Dates. 1767. That’s an easy one to remember, nine years before 1776. Died, uh—18—”
“1848,” Lockridge said.
Robert gave a tentative grin. “I have the feeling you boned up for this one, sir.”
“Admitted. But tell me more.”
“You’re going to know more than me, I can feel it,” Robert said, and shrugged. “But I’m game. John Quincy Adams. The only President’s son ever to be elected President himself. He was elected in 1824, even though he didn’t have a plurality of the popular vote or even of the electoral college. Andrew Jackson beat him on both. But because nobody had a majority, the election was decided in the House, where Henry Clay threw his support to Adams, which squeaked him in.”
Dr. Holt said, “Isn’t that what we were all worried about a few years ago? Nixon, Humphrey, Wallace. That it would get decided in the House, and Wallace would have the spoiler votes.”
Robert smiled at him, nodding. “Yes, sir, it had already happened. And the Republic still stands.”
“Not quite as tall, perhaps,” Dr. Holt said.
Lockridge forestalled that one by saying, “Let’s stay in the nineteenth century a little longer, Joe. Go on, Robert.”
“Well, Adams snuck into the White House under Andrew Jackson in 1824, but four years later, in 1828, Jackson defeated him more conclusively and took over.”
“Justice triumphant,” Dr. Holt said.
Lockridge said, “Don’t be cynical, Joe. Go on, Robert.”
“Well, after Jackson defeated him in 1828, he retired to his home in Massachusetts for two years, but then in 1830 he—” Robert came to an abrupt stop, his expression startled by the realization of what he’d been about to say.
Lockridge was smiling in satisfaction. He said, “I suspected Evelyn had managed to intercept you on the way in, to warn you against me. Well, go on, Robert. What did ex-President Adams do in 1830?”