Preserve and Protect by Allen Drury Page A

again.”
    Once more there was silence from “Vistazo.” When she spoke it was in a tired and dismissive tone that re-awoke all the uncertain terrors that had surrounded him when she fled the convention.
    “Well … I’m sorry I called. Obviously it’s too late for you to back out now, and obviously you don’t want to. So there’s nothing I can do. Is President Abbott going to support you?”
    “I would consider it unlikely,” he said, diverted for a second back to politics; and then, the terrors breaking through in a way that quite surprised him, self-assured Jason that he was, “Ceil, Ceil! I wish you were here!”
    “So do I,” she said quietly. “But I can’t, for now.”
    “What will you do?” he asked, and his voice was trembling again, though he fought desperately to control it. “Stay down there, or”—suddenly he sounded desperately unsure—“You aren’t going to really leave me, are you?”
    “I expect not,” she said, after a moment. “After all, you’re my husband and I love you.”
    “You do?” he asked humbly. “I’m not—very sure, right now.”
    “Let me think a little. I need the quiet. I’m going to take Trumpet and go riding over the hills this afternoon. Then I may go to the beach for a while with the Macombers. They’re going to be next door all week, so tomorrow I may go again. I’ll read some and rest some. Don’t worry about me. The staff is taking good care of me and the press doesn’t know I’m here, so I’m not being bothered with that. We can just rock along for a while the way we are. It will probably be good for both of us.”
    “Not for me,” he said, but her response was back to bantering.
    “Oh, yes. The candidate may suffer but the man may profit. And I too. Goodbye, my darling. Have a good lunch to make up for the skimpy breakfast.”
    “Ceil,” he said, hating himself for asking, but knowing he must, “will you refuse my calls if I try to reach you?”
    “Oh, no,” she said quietly. “Never. Call whenever you want to. I’ll be here.”
    After that, he was not too prepared for his sister when she called five minutes later, bright and ebullient, from Washington. But he decided to talk to her because it would keep him from succumbing to the black melancholy into which Ceil’s call was threatening to plunge him.
    This was a new thing for him. Ceil’s striking blonde beauty and honest personality had meant many things to him over the years, but she had never had this effect on him before. He had always felt that in the last analysis she needed him rather more than he needed her. Suddenly this was no longer true. It was odd and unsettling.
    For this mood Patsy, if not an absolute antidote, was at least a jolt. She was obviously off and running about something.
    “DARLING,” she said, “you’ll never GUESS what I’m going to do.”
    “I don’t dare.”
    “No, seriously, now, it’s going to be such a help to you. You MUST listen seriously.”
    “I will,” he said, “but I won’t promise anything.”
    But after he heard what she had in mind, he thought for several moments and then told her to go ahead; an indication, perhaps, that he still was not functioning quite normally, in the aftermath of the strange convention.
    Left to himself again, he contemplated the cool, dark lawns and the stately trees for a while longer and then tried once more to call Bob Leffingwell, now, presumably, returned to his home in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac from Washington. He did so fully aware of the probable mood of the director of the President’s Commission on Administrative Reform, whom he had last seen three days ago when they had parted in mutual bitterness and dislike. Bob Leffingwell had served him faithfully as campaign manager up to the point when violence got out of hand at the Cow Palace. Then he had resigned without any pretense of concealing his horror and contempt. His next appearance had been on the podium when he had started