Silas Timberman (6 page)

Brady said, “Without getting into a long argument about Russia, Sue, isn't it a hell of a note when we have to justify our own actions by saying it's worse somewhere else?”

Silas looked at his watch and then rose. “My time's up. The great god has asked to see me, and I mustn't be late.”

“Cabot?” Ike Amsterdam asked. Silas nodded, and as he walked away, Spencer said.

“I hope he doesn't find the argument resolved.”

“Not Silas Timberman,” Brady said, and Susan Allen half-cynically added, “The good man.”

“If he is,” Ike Amsterdam observed, “God help him.”

* * *

In some ways, the presidency of Clemington University was a far cry from the leadership of such famous eastern colleges as Harvard, Princeton or Columbia; in other ways it was not, for Clemington had a unique relationship to the whole middle area of the nation and the whole central concentration of industry and agriculture. If fewer career diplomats emerged from Clemington than from certain eastern universities, this was more than balanced by those who were later to become leaders of heavy industry, congressmen, senators, not to mention governors and mayors of western cities. A secretary of state, a governor of Illinois, and a Supreme Court justice had each in turn been president of Clemington; and it had occurred to others as well as Anthony C. Cabot that it was time this region as well as the culture and industry of the region should be honored by a higher post.

Therefore, people who understood the curious workings of American politics felt that Anthony C. Cabot had been well advised, some years before, to accept the call that made him president. His had been an interesting if not unusual career, and one well planned and regulated. Coming from a wealthy family, he had himself been a student at Groton and Yale and had then entered the diplomatic service. Seven years of this brought him the ministry of a middle-sized, not too important South American republic, from which he resigned to run for Congress on the Republican ticket. Elected to the House, he served several terms before it was felt that the time had come for him to enter the Senate—and he survived as a senator through a good deal of the Roosevelt Administration. In Congress, he remained a diplomat, never placing his name on any important, consequential legislation, never allowing himself to be publicly grouped with the die-hard enemies of Roosevelt or with the independent Republicans who occasionally supported the administration. Without submitting any proof of the qualities, he gained a reputation for calm intelligence, judicious non-partisanship in the nation's good, and thoughtful open-mindedness. Eight years before, he had wisely decided not to run for re-election, but to accept, under public pressure, the presidency of a great university, because, as he usually put it,

“In this arena will be fought the battle so decisive in this great world struggle—the battle for a free and upright youth who will never falter in the contest against tyranny.”

In October of 1950 he had just passed his sixtieth birthday, and all in all, the years had dealt well with him. He had a fine, commanding figure, a great shock of white hair, and a head that inevitably called for the adjective
leonine
. A firm chin gave him an appearance of forcefulness, and a high, wide brow balanced the force with an indication of deep thought and sober judgment.

All of this was public knowledge and only surface deep. There were very few men at the university who knew him well, who were his friends and intimates, and Silas was not among them; and when all was said and done, he knew as little about Cabot as most people did. The president's aloofness had become traditional among the faculty, but Silas was slower than others to judge him on that score, sensing how often aloofness stems from a deep fear of people rather than from any basic dislike. He did know that Cabot could, on occasion, be most charming, which rather counted against the theory of fear, but Silas had never been sufficiently concerned to speculate unduly upon the matter.

He was concerned now, if the truth be told. That morning, he had found a note in his box, asking him to stop by the president's office at one-fifteen, if he could manage it, and since the time coincided with the beginning of a two-hour break in his classes, he felt it was a little more than a casual matter. If a summons from Cabot was not too usual, it was nevertheless not a singular matter, and in a routine sense not a disturbing one. The fact that it disturbed Silas meant simply that he was in a condition to be disturbed by any number of things. Yet whenever he attempted to pin down the source of this condition and analyze it, he came to a dead end in his thinking and resorted to a variety of rationalization. He knew that things were changing; he knew that people were becoming different; he knew that he himself was becoming different; yet he could not successfully articulate a definition of that difference.

Whereupon, he was nervous and ill at ease as he entered the
Main Building
and climbed the arched marble stairs to President Cabot's office. The
Main Building
, which dated from the immediate post-Civil War period, was magnificent in an ornate and thoughtless manner, and this mahogany and marble decor carried into the office of the president. Silas had imagined that Cabot enjoyed its similarity with the old government office buildings in Washington, and indeed the red carpeting, the over-sized desks and over-stuffed black leather chairs made a good setting for a man like Cabot.

In the waiting room, a secretary nodded at Silas, smiled, and said, “Dr. Cabot is waiting for you, Professor Timberman. Won't you go in.”

As Silas entered, Cabot got up from behind his desk and walked forward and shook hands with him. “Glad you came, Professor Timberman. Suppose we sit here,” indicating the oval conference table that stood at one side of the large room. “I hate these front and back desk affairs. It's one part of management I could never get used to.” He led Silas over to the table, pulled out two chairs, and produced cigars, cigarettes and a manila folder of papers. “Which will you have?” he asked Silas. “I don't remember your preference.”

“Mostly a pipe,” Silas answered.

“Well, light up if you want to, and make yourself comfortable. I think a good talk between us is overdue, and something we should have gotten to long ago. The trouble is that Clemington is a big place, too big, I sometimes think.”

Silas stuffed his pipe and waited. He had to wait. Cabot was being delicate and enticing, and there was nothing else that Silas could do but wait. He waited while Cabot lit a cigar, puffed gently on it, and examined Silas with curiosity but with no animosity. Silas was surprised when he said.

“A name's a private matter entirely, but I must admit I'm fascinated by yours. You don't mind?”

“Not at all,” Silas said. “It's a very ordinary name.”

“In some places. Quite extraordinary in others. You're from Minnesota, aren't you, Timberman?”

“Originally—yes.”

“Father in the wood business?”

“Nothing as exalted as that. He worked in a sawmill.”

“Forgive me. I didn't mean to pry, but genealogy is a hobby of mine. Some day, if I find the time, I'll do a book on American names. Take a name like Timberman. The few times I've run into it, it's always stemmed from Minnesota. Nothing so unusual about that and hardly even a scientific observation. But why Minnesota? Well, it could be a family name—one family settled and spread out—but why Timberman? Does it mean that these people were woodsmen in whatever land they stemmed from, or did they take the name working in the forests of Minnesota? And if they did, why? Or is it an Anglicization of a foreign name with a similar sound?”

Silas wondered whether this unexpected and rather remarkable dissertation on his name was an oblique attempt by Cabot to discover his national origin. If so, it was rather clumsy, yet he was unwilling to suspect Cabot of such childish maneuvering. He answered bluntly.

“I've never given it any thought, I suppose. My grandfather was a Norwegian who came here as a little boy in 1857. I always thought he brought the name with him. Perhaps not. He worked in the woods, and it may be that name was easier to pronounce than his own.”

“Very likely,” Cabot smiled. “I wasn't prying, Professor Timberman. As a matter of fact, we're a good deal afield from what brought me to ask you here. I understand you're quite close to Professor Amsterdam?”

“He's an old and dear friend of ours.”

Cabot nodded. “Which means patience and understanding upon your part. Old men can be quite trying.”

“I suppose so,” Silas admitted, again knowing what he was going to say and attempting to reject it and find other words, “yet I don't think rules hold any better for the old than for the young. We've always found Professor Amsterdam an interesting companion. A comfortable one too, I might say.”

“Yet I've noticed his capacity to be quite uncomfortable.”

“He has that,” Silas answered, glad of an opportunity to smile, but still apprehensive, uncertain.

“I want you to understand that I'm not proceeding behind his back. I called you in because I know you are a friend of his. I felt that a friend might be helpful in this situation, helpful to him, helpful to all of us. At the same time, to be perfectly honest, I wanted to talk to you. I suppose there might have been a place and a time when being a university president was a simple and an uncomplicated affair. Not today, I assure you. We are too big, Timberman, and we suffer the curse of our size—”

Silas sucked at his pipe and waited. Cabot suddenly broke the flow of thought and word, ruffled through the manila folder, and took out a letterhead.

“Would you read this, Professor Timberman?” handing it to Silas. It was on Ike Amsterdam's personal stationery, handwritten in the cramped, painful scrawl of the old man, and dated a week past. It was addressed to Dr. Anthony C. Cabot, and it said.

“I am constrained to write to you, so that I may explain more precisely an action which I performed only by abstention. Last week, you issued an urgent call to the faculty of this university to enlist in a civilian defense organization for the campus, and we were further informed that a major enlistment by most of the faculty would serve as a morale factor to the entire state, where, as a whole, enlistments in civil defense have been inconsequential—in spite of great prodding and calamity howling.

“After due reflection, I came to the conclusion that your request was motivated not by concern for the national good but by political expediency, and that the manner in which it was put to the members of the faculty deprived them of that most precious democratic right, the right of free choice and judgment. In other words, the implication was present that any refusal to concur with your wishes, as expressed by the department heads, could lead to reprisal of one sort or another.

“Having come to this conclusion, I felt that only one course of action lay open to me—to refuse to participate in any manner in this civilian defense organization. I know that such a course has only symbolic value, as the contribution of one old man to such an organization would be extremely dubious; nevertheless, I had to pursue the dictates of my own conscience.

“Yet I would not be telling the whole truth if I allowed my action to rest upon the aforementioned grounds alone. Neither political expediency nor bad manners are sufficient to absolve one from a patriotic duty. However, I am a scientist and a physicist—one who has given the better part of his life to a study of natural forces and natural causes, and I know enough about the atom and the atom bomb to understand that the only defense against this bomb is the non-use of it—in other words, the preparation of a situation, nationally and internationally, which will enable us to remove this curse and horror from the eyes of mankind forever. Such organization as you propose can only excite an already sore situation and cannot lead to peace. Therefore, I consider such action detrimental to the best interests of my country, and basically unpatriotic.

“Very sincerely yours,

“Isaac Amsterdam.”

Silas finished reading and laid the letter down on the table. His pipe had gone out, and he was grateful for the diversion of lighting it. Cabot looked at him non-committally, and now the president waited.

“I'm rather sorry you let me read it,” Silas said finally.

“Why?”

Silas shrugged. “Isn't it obvious, sir?”

“You mean you find it embarrassing, and feel for my own embarrassment?”

“Professor Amsterdam is a friend of mine.”

“Which is why I credited you with the virtue of patience. Yet I was wondering whether you saw the letter before it was dispatched.”

Silas felt a cold chill run down his spine, and his hand shook a little as he placed his pipe on the table. He fought for control, found it, and managed to reply very quietly,

“No, I did not, Dr. Cabot. You may be assured that if I had, I would have done my utmost to persuade him not to send it.”

“Why? Because it is insulting and intolerable?”

“Because I believe it to be ill-advised,” Silas said, just as quietly.

“Again I must ask—because you cannot accept its content or its tone?”

“I am responsible for neither the content nor the tone. It is not my letter, and Professor Amsterdam is perfectly capable of doing his own thinking and of accepting the responsibility as well.”

“I have some doubts of that,” Cabot said, his voice and manner unruffled and unheated, “but in essence, you are right. Any more than he can be responsible for your actions, Professor Timberman. Yet you will admit to a curious parallelism. You also chose to have no part of civil defense.”

“For reasons of my own. I see nothing wrong with my choice, nor was I advised that I did not have the right to make it.”

“Then you could hardly blame me for surmising that you see nothing wrong with any of Professor Amsterdam's arguments.”