“Yes, I know,” said Dilman. “I know the Crispus Society, the NAACP, and the Urban League have approved, with reservations.”
Eaton had been not only listening to Talley, but watching the President’s broad, black face. Except for an expression of unceasing anxiety, nothing else, either affirmative or negative, was betrayed. On familiar Caucasian faces, Eaton was always able to detect inner response, a closing, a widening, a dilation, an expansion, a wrinkling of some feature, that was often as eloquent and revealing as words. On this unfamiliar black face Eaton could read no subtle definition of reaction. The blackness hid Dilman’s thoughts as successfully as the darkest moonless night.
Eaton’s instinct, which he and T. C. had regarded as unerring, led him to a quick decision. To continue overwhelming Dilman with a landslide of information would be useless now. He had been made aware of the key issues, the immediate ones, and of how T. C. had felt about each. It was enough for the time. If more indoctrination were required, the Cabinet meeting might supply it.
Eaton straightened, and squinted down at his wristwatch. “I’m afraid we’re expected in the Cabinet Room.”
Talley protested. “There’s still some more to-”
“You’ve briefed the President on the main points, Wayne. That’s enough.” He rose, and smiled at Dilman. “I’m sure you’re ready to say uncle to this stuff, Mr. President. I know that I am.”
Dilman smiled back. “I appreciate your understanding, Mr. Secretary. I feel like a computer that’s been overloaded with data. I’m afraid something might clog or short-circuit.”
Eaton waited for the President to rise and precede him. Then, with Talley, he followed Dilman across the Oval Office, through Edna Foster’s cubicle, and into the cool chamber that was the Cabinet Room.
T. C.’s team was present and seated, and immediately upon Dilman’s entrance they rose to their feet. Dilman took his place in the handsome chair at the center of the twenty-foot mahogany table, the only spot on the table covered by a desk blotter, near which a telephone rested. About the table were ceramic ashtrays, some partially filled, silver carafes of water and trays of glasses, and sheaves of notes and documents belonging to individual members of the Cabinet.
Once the President was seated, and Eaton had taken his chair next to Dilman, the others in the room sat down. Talley found his place at the far end of the tapering table, near the fireplace and the portrait of George Washington above it. Across from Talley sat the only other non-Cabinet member in the room, Ambassador to the United Nations Slater.
Eaton’s gaze swept the table, taking in the attendance: Secretary of the Treasury Moody, Secretary of Defense Steinbrenner, Attorney General Kemmler, Postmaster General Guthrie, Secretary of Interior Ruttenberg, Secretary of Agriculture Allen, Secretary of Commerce Purcell, Secretary of Labor Barnes, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Mrs. Cummins. They were each well-known to Eaton. Despite their differences in years, their varied backgrounds-some had been university professors, some businessmen, some career politicians-they had always been a lively and unceremonious clan. But that had been at another time, under the informal leadership of the one who had appointed them, and knew and respected them.
This morning they were different, Eaton could see. They were quiet, almost hushed, inquisitive about their new Chief Executive. They were strangers to him, and he to them. In the afterwave of shock, Dilman had asked them to stay on, to assist him. They had agreed. Now they were confronted by one with whom they had had little previous contact, a man whose mind they did not know, whose desires were a mystery to them, a man separated by a color barrier that made understanding of him almost impossible. It was reflected in their cautious eyes, and probably loomed large in the brains behind those eyes, Eaton guessed. He could be wrong, he told himself. He doubted it.
He wondered why the meeting had not begun, and then he realized that Douglass Dilman had pulled an envelope out of his inner suit-coat pocket and was reviewing some notes penciled on the back of the envelope.
Dilman placed the envelope on the blotter, and scanned the Cabinet personnel surrounding him.
“I’ll call our first meeting to order,” Dilman said. “I know that we met once last week, but I cannot think of it as a conference on government business. Now we must not fall out of step with one another. We must go ahead together. I do not know you. I have inherited you. And you do not know me. You have inherited me. However, we do have one mighty factor in common, and that is our belief in the ideals T. C. represented.”
Dilman reached forward and picked up the envelope upon which he had scribbled.
“Leaving the second floor of the White House for this meeting, I had occasion to run into the late President’s widow. We talked, and coming down in the elevator I jotted a few reminders of our talk. I was moved that, in this period of her deep personal grief, her one concern was that I, as her husband’s successor, continue to uphold his program for the welfare of all the people of the nation. This good woman was thinking not of herself but of others. She hoped I would be the transmitting agency of a solution to her concern over the fate of her husband’s vast and dependent following.”
Dilman laid down the envelope and looked around the table.
“I am here to pledge to you that I shall, to the best of my ability, within my limitations, serve the United States in such a way as to relieve the First Lady’s concern about our program ahead, and in such a way as to assure the millions who voted for and backed T. C. that their support was not given in vain.”
The ringing out of applause was spontaneous, and it surprised Arthur Eaton. He could not remember ever having witnessed such a demonstration during T. C.’s tenure. He cast a glance at the black man to his left, sitting hunched forward, head lowered, one hand folded over the other on the blotter. The blackness still made Dilman impenetrable, but now, for the first time, Eaton wondered if behind the stolid, dull mask there lay astuteness and the intuition needed for winning favor. Now it occurred to Eaton that perhaps Dilman had not been elected to Congress by political accident and shenanigans, but that he had been elected because he was clever enough to judge people and use them. Yet this evaluation of Dilman was so drastically the opposite of Eaton’s judgment of the man the past week that he was not ready to accept it. More likely, Dilman had just scored because of the emotional climate created by T. C.’s death, which had affected not only his listeners but Dilman himself.
Eaton looked down the table at Talley, who winked. Then Eaton understood why Talley had winked, and what had just happened. Dilman had made his pledge. He would not walk outside of T. C.’s shadow.
Dilman was addressing them once more.
“At this first meeting, I have no specific problems or legislation about which to ask your advice. It is too soon. Except for my knowledge of what is going on as a senator, and from briefings by the former President’s advisers, I am not yet fully conversant with what T. C. had to face and what I must now face in his stead. I require all the information I can get, as fast as possible, and I need any suggestions you have to offer. So let me say, for this get-together at least, I would like each of you, specialists in your own fields, to speak of your problems, so I may understand my problems. You do the talking today. I’ll be only too ready to listen. At the next meeting, perhaps, I’ll be able to be more constructive. There are ten of you, and the Ambassador, eleven of you, and if you each take five minutes, I’ll be sufficiently befuddled and informed to feel we’ve got off to a good start, and I’ll still be out of here in time to keep a heavy day of other appointments… Mr. Secretary Eaton, do you wish to start off my education?”
Eaton tried to smile. “Mr. President, you are doing so well that I feel you can educate us. As a matter of fact, there are a number of foreign-policy problems of the most pressing nature to remark upon.”
Eaton found himself vividly reporting to the Cabinet the last conversation with T. C., and T. C.’s desires up to that moment when he had been killed. Carefully, he elaborated upon what Talley had tried to tell Dilman in the Oval Office. Premier Kasatkin and the Russian Presidium were suspicious of United States intervention in emerging Africa.
“The Russians,” said Eaton, “feel that our renewal of membership in the African Unity Pact, promising these African countries economic aid and military support if their independence should be threatened from the outside, is a provocative slap at Moscow. In short, another NATO. However, T. C. said, the Russians would overlook our Pact if we would cease to encourage anti-Communist legislation in Baraza. Almost the last words T. C. spoke were that we must compromise with honor, maintain a moderate course, to insure world peace. While he wanted the Pact ratified, he also wanted to give the Russians their bone-our promise that Baraza would lift its anti-Communist measures. This week, as Secretary of State, I did two things-I brought Ambassador Slater from the United Nations meetings to hold talks with the Barazan Ambassador to this country, and I sent Assistant Secretary for African
