Free Promise of Joy by Allen Drury Page B

distant sea of NAWAC murmured and rumbled, seeming to lap ominously against the walls of the silent room.
    “Mr. President,” Roger P. Croy said into the hush that followed, “I wish to offer a suggested resolution of sorrow on behalf of myself and other friends of the late nominee for Vice President—”
    “On behalf of all of us, I should think,” the President interrupted in a tone he tried to keep impersonal. “I trust the committeeman does not wish the world to think his grief and that of his friends is exclusive.”
    “Mr. President,” Roger Croy said smoothly, “there may be some on this committee less saddened, perhaps, by events, than”—he paused delicately—“some others. For that reason—”
    “For that reason, nothing!” the President snapped. “This resolution will be adopted unanimously by this committee. I assume you have also included in it an expression of the Committee’s condolences to the nominee for President for the loss of his wife.”
    “We had thought, Mr. President,” Roger P. Croy said earnestly, “that perhaps some proponent of the nominee might wish to offer such a—”
    “Shame on you!” the President said angrily. “For shame, Governor! For shame, to try to introduce crude partisanship at such a cruel moment! There will be one resolution expressing the unanimous sense of this committee concerning both Governor Jason and Mrs. Knox, so if you don’t have one ready, sit down and let someone else propose it!”
    “Mr. President—” Roger P. Croy began indignantly, even as Blair Hannah rose on the other side of the room to seek recognition.
    “I have the resolution, Mr. President,” he said in a voice filled with contempt for his mellifluous colleague from Oregon; and read it quickly, a dignified, brief and moving valedictory for Edward Montoya Jason and Elizabeth Henry Knox.
    “Is there objection?” the President asked, staring about the room with an expression that indicated, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch murmured to the Boston Globe, that there damned well better not be. “Then without objection, the resolution of condolence is adopted unanimously by the Committee.”
    He paused for a moment as the room suddenly became very still. Outside, the mob, following closely on television, also fell silent.
    “The business of the Committee,” he said slowly, “is to find a new nominee for Vice President. It is not only the tradition, but it is the courtesy we owe him, that the nominee for President should be allowed to make his recommendation to the Committee before we act. Therefore I shall appoint a committee to wait upon the nominee for President and escort him to this chamber at such time as may be mutually convenient—”
    “Mr. President,” Ewan MacDonald MacDonald inquired in his gentle but not-to-be-trifled-with burr, “can you advise the Committee as to when—or whether—the nominee for President will be able to attend? There are reports and rumors that his health may not permit it. In that case, perhaps we should proceed at once to—”
    “Mr. President!” Mary Buttner Baffleburg said, her roly-poly little body seeming to quiver all over with indignation. “Don’t you try anything like that, now, Ewan! Just don’t you try it! We’re not here to allow any railroading today, I can tell you that! Not one bit of it!”
    “Mr. President,” Ewan MacDonald said patiently, “I admire the zeal with which Mrs. Baffleburg protects her candidate’s interests, I always have, but—”
    “I don’t have a candidate!” Mary Baffleburg said sharply. “I’m waiting for Orrin Knox to tell us who he wants, just as I should!”
    “As I say,” Ewan MacDonald repeated with a little smile, “I admire your independence, Mary. But some of us feel even more independent. We think we ought to go ahead and name a candidate for Vice President and we ought to do it today, not next week sometime.”
    “Nobody is proposing ‘next week sometime’!” Mary