“It wouldn’t help you nationally either,” Dr. Holt said. “A lot of the newspaper and magazine people that used to be after your scalp still have the same jobs and they’d just love to get in a couple licks at you for old time’s sake. You so much as run for dogcatcher, they’ll make a national race out of it.”
“I’ve been in rough campaigns before,” Lockridge said. “I would even say I’ve been in a couple of campaigns that got dirty. On both sides. Now, why should the idea frighten me at this stage?”
“It’s just another consideration,” Dr. Holt said.
“All right,” Lockridge said. “You’re against the idea. Len’s scared to death of it.” He turned to Robert. “What about you?”
“Uh,” Robert said. The idea, still strange, didn’t seem quite as impossible as when Evelyn Canby had first told him about it. The historical precedent, the undeniable fact that Bradford Lockridge was still a hearty active man, the additional fact of his boredom in his enforced retirement, all tended to make the suggestion seem more rational than he’d thought. But enough so? Didn’t he still have qualms, all of those mentioned by the doctor and Orr, plus some vague undefined feeling of wrongness inside his head that he couldn’t quite put a name to? There was something unstated, or unacknowledged, or unconsidered about this plan of Lockridge’s, but Robert’s feeling about it was too tentative and unfocused for him to be able to describe it even to himself, much less articulate it to Lockridge.
The older man was still watching him, and now he pushed slightly, saying, “Well?”
“I don’t know,” Robert said. “I’m sorry, I’d like to be able to give you a straight yes or no, this is the way I feel, but I just don’t know. I think both sides are right, I just don’t know which side is righter.”
Lockridge smiled. “I’m righter,” he said. “I think you’ll see that.”
“Could be,” Robert said.
iv
She came out of the woods beside the road, riding a tall chestnut with skittish eyes, and waved to Robert that she wanted him to stop. She’d emerged well ahead of the Jaguar, but her horse was plainly nervous about the growling car just the same. His hoofs made small panicky movements on the gravel, like trapped mice not knowing which way to run.
Robert stopped, and switched off the engine. In the abrupt silence, the trees seemed to bulge upward for just a few seconds, only to snap back at the first bird call.
Evelyn heeled her mount, which was calmer now that the noise had stopped and so walked gracefully over to stand beside the car. Robert looked up at her, she so high astride the horse, he so low folded into the car, and grinned: “Another dominating female.”
She wasn’t interested in jokes. “Did he talk about it?” she asked. She looked worried, almost angry.
It was now nearly four-thirty, and Robert was the last guest to leave. He wondered how long she’d been lurking on horseback in the woods beside the road, like some distaff highwayman, disappointed first by Leonard Orr, who had departed immediately after lunch, and later by Dr. Holt, who had left around three. But she was too concerned, Robert couldn’t feel right considering her comic, so he answered soberly, saying, “At the end of lunch. He threw it open for discussion.”
“Did you all talk him out of it? What did Len Orr say?”
“Evelyn, I’m getting a crick in my neck looking up at you there. Can you leave Trigger tied to a handy redskin and come sit in the car?”
She was reluctant, and dallied for a minute, frowning toward the hidden house. At first he thought her reluctance was because of him for some reason, but then he understood it was a part of the urgency she was feeling. She would feel better mounted, ready to dash off to the house on a rescue mission at the first call.
But that was silly, and she knew it. Abruptly she smiled and said, “Of course. I’m sorry.” And gracefully dismounted. She left the reins trailing, and came around to sit in the car. “Now,” she said.
“Well,” Robert said. “Everybody was against it, the doctor most and me least.”
“You least?”
“Maybe I simply take a more historical view, I don’t know. But it isn’t as totally crazy an idea as it seems at first. There is a prece—”
“I didn’t say it was crazy. I know Bradford’s bored, I know the strain of retirement and all the rest of it. But I also know he shouldn’t do this, he shouldn’t even think of doing it.”
Robert half-turned in the seat, his left forearm on the steering wheel, and said, “Why not?”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Why not?”
“Just for curiosity’s sake,” he said. “I heard the arguments for and against at lunch, and I came away less sure than when I arrived. You’re absolutely one hundred percent sure, so tell me why.”
She studied him for a minute in silence, and he wasn’t sure whether she was trying to work out the best way to answer him or was still merely stunned by his having asked the question. Finally she nodded, and faced front, looking out through the windshield as she said, “You’ve driven through Eustace. Have you ever noticed the movie house?”
“I may have, I’m not sure.”
“It’s a small brick building with a little square marquee. It’s called The Eustace. A couple of days ago I was in town, and I noticed a sign in the cashier’s window. Cashier Wanted. You know, for just a minute I was tempted to go in and take that job.” She turned her head again to look at him with level eyes. “I’m serious. I can give you all the arguments for it, too. It would ease my boredom, it would give me something to do. I’d get out of the house, and I’d see the movies, which I never seem to get around to doing. I don’t need the money, of course, Bradford gives me whatever I need, but I don’t really have any spending money of my own, and it would be a nice feeling to have a few dollars every week that I’d earned all by myself. And I’d get to meet a lot of local people that I don’t know, maybe make new friends. Most of my friends are hundreds of miles away, I can’t just drop in on them.” She smiled crookedly, and said, “Think I should take the job?”
“I see the parallel, of course,” Robert said, “but I don’t know what to tell you about that job any more than I know what to think about Bradford Lockridge running for Congress. I suppose there are arguments against your going to work as a cashier in a movie house, but—” He stopped, and grinned, and said, “Just describing the job, for instance, and looking at you, that’s one argument right there, isn’t it? The job’s beneath you.”
“Isn’t that snobbish?” she asked him. “What would John Quincy Adams say about a girl who thought she was too good to be a cashier in a movie house?”
“It isn’t snobbery,” he insisted. “I know you’re being sardonic, but it really isn’t snobbery. You have a specific kind of background and intelligence and education and sophistication, and you’d just be in the wrong place if you took that job. You’d demean yourself.”
“Wouldn’t John Quincy Adams say that no one could demean themselves by doing an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay?”
Robert grinned. “Something like that, I suppose he would. So the point you’re making is that Bradford Lockridge would demean himself by running for Congressman. Not exactly the same as demeaning the Presidency.”
“No, that isn’t the point. That’s perfectly true, Bradford can’t really hurt the prestige of the Presidency, he can only hurt his own reputation, but that isn’t the point.”