Free Decision by Allen Drury

along as a blind date. The whole thing was very conventional and clichéd—“No surprises,” as he had put it once not long ago, and with a sudden bitter twist to her mouth she had echoed, “No surprises. That’s for sure.” But he could not honestly see that this was his fault. “It takes two to tango,” he had snapped back, more sharply than he had intended; and then they were off again into one of those upward-spiraling exchanges that more and more often ended in angry silence, until now the angry silence was virtually unbroken save for the ordinary civilities of getting through the day.
    How this had happened he was not exactly sure, because at first and for a long time thereafter things seemed to go very well. The original blind date escalated into more, and then soon into weekend trips to Mary’s Main Line home outside Philadelphia. There he met her bank-president father and her fashionable party-giving mother and was gradually accepted as worthy despite his rural background—“A farmer, my dear, from California. But a good boy, and really rather sweet.” Engagement and marriage soon seemed inevitable and came about on his graduation from law school.
    If anything, he thought with a wry smile for Mrs. Stranahan which he kept to himself, Mary had more trouble passing inspection with his family than he did with hers. Frank Barbour was strongly opposed at first and did a lot of dark talking about “upper-crust arrogance” and “watered-down Eastern bloodlines.” Helen, more tolerant and ready to accept whatever would make Tay happy, expressed mild reservations about Mary’s “somewhat superior manner.” But eventually they came around, as they had about the law, and when the day arrived they were in Philadelphia to do their part as smoothly and pleasantly as he could possibly have wished. The day ended in amicable harmony for the parents and ecstatic happiness for the bride and groom. Everything seemed set for the rest of their lives.
    He graduated third in his class—Moss Pomeroy was fifth—and went to New York, where his grades had brought him an invitation to join a prestigious firm that had many dealings with the government. One of its senior partners had been in the Cabinet, some of its juniors were “on the shuttle,” as they put it, commuting frequently to Washington to serve on temporary boards, commissions, congressional committee staffs, corporate law cases. Washington had always been a dream of his. He was not sure for quite a long time whether he wanted to use experience there as a springboard from which to go home and run for Congress, or concentrate on the type of pleading before the government that brought enormous fees from corporations and guaranteed a living both desirable and admirable in Main Line eyes.
    Mary’s instincts and influence of course were all for the latter—understandably enough, given nature and background. She had been a little rich girl and she intended to remain one. That, he supposed, was the first start of the slow erosion, because his own ideas, conditioned by the compassion he got from his mother, and perhaps more than he knew by Erma Tillson and Civics I, moved increasingly in the direction of public service. He had no memories of great depression such as still haunted his parents’ generation, but taking care of people and making life better for the society as a whole seemed to him just common sense. Not only was it right in what he conceived to be the moral sense, it was right from the standpoint of keeping the democracy on an even keel. It was not on an even keel during his first years out of law school, and although the reasons were not economic at that time, they became increasingly so as he and the century grew older.
    Five years after joining the firm in New York he was a hardworking, diligent and highly respected younger member who could ask for, and get, transfer to the Washington office. From then on his life became more and more involved with