Her Infinite Variety

“What’s that?” said Miss Greene, in some alarm. “It couldn’t have been thunder.”

“No,” said Vernon, “it was the miners, blasting.”

“Where?”

“Down in the ground underneath us.”

She gave him a strange look which he did not comprehend. Then she turned and glanced quickly at the black breakers of the coal shaft, half a mile away; then at the golf-players.

“Do the mines run under this ground?” she asked, sweeping her hand about and including the links in her gesture.

“Yes, all over here, or rather under here,” Vernon said. He was proud of his knowledge of the locality. He thought it argued well that a legislator should be informed on all questions. Maria thought a moment, then she said:

“The golfers above, the miners below.”

Vernon looked at her in surprise. The pleasure of the spring had gone out of her eyes.

“Drive on, please,” she said.

“There’s no danger,” said Vernon reassuringly, clucking at his horse, and the beast flung up its head in a spasmodic burst of speed, as livery-stable horses will. The horse did not have to trot very far to bear them away from the crack of the golf-balls and the dull subterranean echoes of the miners’ blasts, but Vernon felt that a cloud had floated all at once over this first spring day. The woman sitting there beside him seemed to withdraw herself to an infinite distance.

“You love the country?” he asked, feeling the need of speech.

“Yes,” she said, but she went no farther.

“And you once lived there?”

“Yes,” she said again, but she vouchsafed no more. Vernon found a deep curiosity springing within him; he longed to know more about this young woman who in all outward ways seemed to be just like the women he knew, and yet was so essentially different from them. But though he tried, he could not move her to speak of her own life or its affairs. At the last he said boldly:

“Tell me, how did you come to be a lawyer?”

Miss Greene turned to meet his inquisitive gaze.

“How did you?” she asked.

Vernon cracked his whip at the road.

“Well—” he stammered. “I don’t know; I had to do something.”

“So did I,” she replied.

Vernon cut the lazy horse with the whip, and the horse jerked the buggy as it made its professional feint at trotting.

“I did not care to lead a useless life,” he said. “I wanted to do something—to have some part in the world’s work. The law seemed to be a respectable profession and I felt that maybe I could do some good in politics. I don’t think the men of my class take as much interest in politics as they should. And then, I’d like to make my own living.”

“I have to make mine,” said Maria Greene.

“But you never thought of teaching, or nursing, or—well—painting or music, or that sort of thing, did you?”

“No,” she replied; “did you?”

Vernon laughed at an absurdity that needed no answering comment, and then he hastened on:

“Of course, you know I think it fine that you should have done as you have. You must have met with discouragements.”

She laughed, and Vernon did not note the bitterness there was concealed in the laugh; to him it seemed intended to express only that polite deprecation demanded in the treatment of a personal situation.

“I can sympathize with you there,” said Vernon, though Miss Greene had not admitted the need of sympathy. Perhaps it was Vernon’s own need of sympathy, or his feeling of the need of it, that made him confess that his own family and friends had never sympathized with him, especially with what he called his work in politics; he felt, at any rate, that he had struck the right note at last, and he went on to assure her how unusual it was to meet a woman who understood public questions as well as she understood them. And it may have been his curiosity that led him to inquire:

“How did your people feel about your taking up the law?”

Miss Greene said that she did not know how her people felt, and Vernon again had that baffled sense of her evading him.

“I’ve felt pretty much alone in my work,” he said. “The women I know won’t talk with me about it; they won’t even read the newspapers. And I’ve tried so hard to interest them in it!”

Vernon sighed, and he waited for Miss Greene to sigh with him. He did not look at her, but he could feel her presence there close beside him. Her gloved hands lay quietly in her lap; she was gazing out over the prairies. The light winds were faintly stirring her hair, and the beauty of it, its warm red tones brought out by the burnishing sun, suddenly overwhelmed him. He stirred and his breath came hard.

“Do you know,” he said, in a new confidence, “that this has been a great day for me? To meet you, and to know you as I think I do know you now! This morning, when I was speaking, I felt that with you to help me, I could do great things.”

Miss Greene drew in her lips, as if to compress their fullness; she moved away on the seat, and raised her hand uneasily and thrust it under her veil to put back a tress of hair that had strayed from its fastening. Vernon saw the flush of her white cheeks come and go. Her eyebrows were drawn together wistfully, and in her blue eyes, that looked far away through the meshes of her dotted veil, there was a little cloud of trouble. She caught her lip delicately between the edges of her teeth. Vernon leaned slightly forward as if he would peer into her face. For him the day had grown suddenly hot, the spring had developed on the instant the oppressive heat of summer. He felt its fire; he could see its intensity vibrating in the air all about him, and he had a sense as of all the summer’s voices droning in unison. The reins drooped from his listless fingers; the horse moped along as it pleased.

“I have always felt it, vaguely,” Vernon went on, his voice dropping to a low tone, “and this morning it was suddenly revealed to me—”

Miss Greene raised her hand as if to draw it across her brow; her veil stopped her.

“Let’s not talk about that now,” she pleaded. “Let’s enjoy the air and the country. I don’t have them often.” Her hand fell to her lap. The color had gone out of her cheeks. And Vernon suddenly felt that the summer had gone out of the air; a cold wind was blowing as over soiled patches of snow left in shaded depressions of the fields; the earth was brown and bare; the birds were silent. He jerked the horse smartly, and it gave an angry toss of its head, as it broke into its tentative trot.

“I do wish you could know the women I know,” said Vernon, obviously breaking a silence. He spoke in an entirely different voice. “I meant to put it the other way. I meant that I wish they could know you, and I mean that they shall. You would be a revelation to them.”

Miss Greene smiled, though her face was now careworn, almost old.

“Right along the line of our constitutional amendment, now,” he said, with a briskness, “do you think the women will become interested?”

“The women of your acquaintance, or of mine?” asked Miss Greene.

“You’re guying,” said Vernon, and when Miss Greene seriously protested, Vernon said he meant all the women, as politicians pretend to mean all the people, when they mean only the party.

“I’m afraid not,” she said. “They could have the ballot to-morrow if they’d only ask for it. The trouble is they don’t want it.”

“Well, we must educate them,” said Vernon. “I have great hopes that the women whom I know will be aroused by what we are doing.”

“I have no doubt they will,” said Miss Greene. There was something enigmatical in her words, and Vernon glanced uneasily at her again.

“How do you mean?” he asked.

“You’ll learn when you see the newspapers to-morrow,” said Miss Greene.

“Do you think they’ll have it in full?” asked Vernon. He was all alert, and his eyes sparkled in a new interest.

“On the first page,” she replied, with conviction. “Have they your picture?”

“I don’t know,” Vernon replied. “They can get it, though,” he added, thoughtfully.

“They keep the portraits of all distinguished public men on hand,” Miss Greene said, with a certain reassurance in her tone.

“Oh, well, I hope they’ll not print it,” said Vernon, as if just then recalling what was expected of a distinguished public man under such circumstances.

“That’s one of the penalties of being in public life,” she answered with a curious smile.

“A penalty the ladies will be glad to pay when our reform is accomplished; isn’t that so?” said Vernon, seeking relief in a light bantering tone.

“I thought we were not going to talk politics,” she said, turning and looking at him. She adjusted her hat and held herself resolutely erect.

The sun was going down behind the prairies, the afternoon was almost gone; as they watched the sunset, Miss Greene broke the silence.

“It’s a familiar sight,” she said, and Vernon thought that he had a clue at last. She must know the prairies.

“It is just like a sunset at sea,” she added.

When they had driven back to the town and Vernon had left her at the hotel, he turned to drive to the livery stable.

“By George!” he said, suddenly, speaking to himself. “I haven’t read Amelia’s letter!”

He fumbled in his coat pocket.

VIII

MISS GREENE’S predictions were all realized in the sensation Vernon’s speech created. The newspapers gave whole columns to it and illustrated their accounts with portraits of Vernon and of Maria Greene. Vernon thought of the pleasure Amelia must find in his new fame, and when he wrote to her he referred briefly but with the proper modesty to his remarkable personal triumph, and then waited for her congratulations.

The legislative session was drawing to a close; the customary Friday adjournment was not taken, but sessions were held that day and on Saturday, for the work was piling up, the procrastinating legislators having left it all for the last minute.

The week following would see House and Senate sweltering in shirt sleeves and night sessions, and now, if a bill were to become law it was necessary that its sponsor stay, as it were, close beside it, lest in the mighty rush of the last few days it be lost.

Vernon, by virtue of his speech, had assumed the championship of the woman-suffrage resolution, and he felt it necessary to forego his customary visit to Chicago that week and remain over Sunday in Springfield. He devoted the day to composing a long letter to Miss Greene, in which he described the situation in detail, and suggested that it would be well for her, if possible, to come down to Springfield on Monday and stay until the resolution had been adopted. He gave her, in closing, such pledges of his devotion to the cause of womankind that she could hardly resist any appeal he might make for her presence and assistance.

On Monday he wired, urging the necessity of her presence. Tuesday morning brought him a reply, thanking him, in behalf of women, for his disinterested devotion to their cause, assuring him of her own appreciation of his services, and saying that she would reach Springfield—Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile he had had no letter from Amelia, and he began to wonder at her silence. He was not only disappointed, but piqued. He felt that his achievement deserved the promptest recognition from her, but he found a consolation, that grew in spite of him, in the thought that Maria Greene would soon be in Springfield, and to his heart he permitted Amelia’s silence to justify him in a freer indulgence of attention to this fascinating woman lawyer.

Tuesday evening the crowd, that grows larger as the session nears its close, filled the lobby of the Leland. The night was warm, and to the heat of politics was suddenly added the heat of summer. Doors and windows were flung wide to the night, and the tall Egyptians, used as they were to the sultry atmospheres of southern Illinois, strode lazily about under their wide slouch hats with waistcoats open and cravats loosened, delighting in a new cause for chaffing the Chicago men, who had resumed their customary complaints of the Springfield weather.

The smoke of cigars hung in the air. The sound of many voices, the ring of heavy laughter, the shuffle of feet over the tiles, the clang of the clerk’s gong, the incessant chitter of a telegraph instrument that sped news to Chicago over the Courier’s private wire, all these influences surcharged the heavy air with a nervous excitement that made men speak quickly and their eyes glitter under the brilliant lights of countless electric bulbs. There was in that atmosphere the play of myriad hopes and ambitions, political, social, financial. Special delegations of eminent lawyers, leading citizens and prominent capitalists were down from Chicago to look after certain measures of importance. Newspaper correspondents hurried from group to group, gathering bits of information to be woven into their night’s despatches.

Late in the evening the governor came over from the mansion, and his coming stirred the throng with a new sensation. His secretary was by his side, and they mingled a while with the boys, as the governor called them, after the politician’s manner. Half a dozen congressmen were there, thinking always of renomination. Over in one corner sat a United States senator, his high hat tilted back on his perspiring brow. A group of men had drawn their chairs about him; they laughed at his stories.

One was aware that the speaker’s apartments upstairs were crowded. One could easily imagine it; the door of his inner room, as men came and went, opening now and then, and giving a glimpse of the speaker himself, tired and worn under the strain that would tell so sorely on him before another week could bring his labors and his powers and his glories to an end. Through all that hotel that night, in lobby and in bar-room, on the stairs, in the side halls and up and down in the elevators, throbbed the fascination of politics, which men play not so much for its ends as for its means.

Vernon was of this crowd, moving from one group to another, smoking, laughing, talking. His heart may have been a little sore at the thought of Amelia’s strange neglect of him, but the soreness had subsided until now it was but a slight numbness which he could forget at times, and when he did think of it, it but gave him resolution to play the game more fiercely.

He knew that it was incumbent on him to make sure of the adoption of the resolution on the morrow. He had already spoken to the lieutenant-governor and had promise of recognition. But he realized that it would be wise to make a little canvass, though he had no doubt that all was well, and that by the next night he could mingle with this crowd serene and happy in the thought that his work was done; perhaps he might even spend the evening in the company of Maria Greene. His heart gave a little leap at this new and happy thought, and if the remembrance of Amelia came back just at that instant, its obtrusion only made his eyes burn the brighter.

He found it pleasant as he threaded his way through the crowd to halt senators as he met them and say:

“Well, the woman-suffrage resolution comes up to-morrow. You’ll be for it, of course?”

It gave him such a legislative and statesmanlike importance to do this. As he was going leisurely about this quest, testing some of the sensations of a parliamentary leader, Cowley, the correspondent of the Courier, accosted him, and, showing his teeth in that odd smile of his, asked if he cared to say anything about the resolution.

“Only that it comes up as a special order in the morning, and that I have no doubt whatever of its adoption by the Senate.”

“Have you assurances from—”

“From everybody, and every assurance,” said Vernon. “They’re all for it. Come and have a cigar.”

They went over to the cigar stand, and when they had lighted their cigars Cowley said:

“Let’s go out for a little walk; I may be able to tell you something that will interest you.”

IX

VERNON was glad enough of a breath of the evening air, and they went down the steps to the sidewalk. Along the curbstone many men had placed chairs and in these cool and quiet eddies of the brawling stream of politics they joked and laughed peacefully. Sixth Street stretched away dark and inviting. Vernon and Cowley turned southward and strolled along companionably. The air was delicious after the blaze of the hotel; the black shade of a moonless night was restful; their cigars were fragrant.

“I’ve just got hold of a story,” began Cowley, after they had enjoyed the night for a moment in silence. “I’ve just got hold of a story—” he spoke, of course, as always, from the detached standpoint of a newspaper man, “which you ought to know.”

“What is it?” asked Vernon.

“Porter and Braidwood are against your resolution.” Cowley spoke these names in a tone that told how futile any opposition would be. “And Wright and his fellows are against it, too,” he added.

“Nonsense,” said Vernon.

“Well, you’ll see,” replied Cowley.

“But they told me—”

“Oh, well, that’s all right. They’ve changed in the last day or two.”

“Why?”

“Well, they say it’s risky from a party standpoint. They think they already have all the load they want to carry in the fall campaign. Besides, they—”

“What?”

“They say there’s no demand for such a radical step, and so see no reason for taking it.”

“No demand for it?”

“No, on the contrary,” Cowley halted an instant and in his palm sheltered a lighted match for his extinguished cigar. “On the contrary, there’s a lot of people against it.”

“Since when?”

“They’ve been getting letters in the last few days—they’ve just been pouring in on ’em—and they’re from women, too.”

“From women!”

“Yes, from women; the first ladies in the land.” Cowley spoke with a sneer.

Vernon laughed.

“All right,” said Cowley in the careless tone of one who has discharged a duty. “Wait till you see Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop land in here to-morrow.”

“Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop!” Vernon stopped still in the middle of the sidewalk and turned in surprise and fear to Cowley. Cowley enjoyed the little sensation he had produced.

“Yes, she’s coming down on the Alton to-night. And she’s bringing some of her crowd with her. The women’s clubs are all stirred up about the matter.”

Vernon was silent for a moment, then he wheeled suddenly, and said: “Well, I’m much obliged to you, Cowley, but I’d better be getting back to the hotel.”

“It may not be serious after all,” Cowley said with tardy reassurance, “but there’s danger, and I thought I’d let you know. I’m sending a pretty good story in to-night about it; they’ll cover the Chicago end from the office.”

“But they were all for it,” Vernon muttered.

“Oh, well, you know they never took the thing very seriously. Of course they passed it in the House just to line up old man Ames for the apportionment bill. They didn’t think it would amount to anything.”

“Yes, I know—but Maria Burley Greene—”

“Well, she’s a pretty woman; that’s all.”

“You bet she is,” said Vernon, “and she’ll be down here again to-morrow, too.”

“Will she?” said Cowley eagerly, with his strange smile.

“Yes—but, look here, Charlie!” Vernon exclaimed, “don’t you go mixing me up with her, now, understand?”

“Oh, I understand,” said Cowley, and he laughed significantly.

When Vernon reached the hotel he set to work in earnest. He tramped about half the night, until he had seen every senator who could be found. He noted a change in them; if he did not find them hostile he found many of them shy and reluctant. But when he went to his room he had enough promises to allay his fears and to restore, in a measure, his confidence, and he fell asleep thinking of Maria Greene, happy in the thought that she would be there with her charms to offset the social influence of Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop.

X

VERNON went down to breakfast the next morning wearing the new summer clothes his tailor had sent to him from Chicago the day before. He had a flower in his buttonhole; a red rose, indeed, showing his colors for the final triumphant day.

The rotunda of the hotel, swept of the litter of the night before, was clean and cool, and the morning air of a perfect day came in refreshingly at the open doors. The farmer members, confirmed in the habit of early rising, were already sauntering aimlessly about, but otherwise statesmen still slumbered, tired out by their labors of the night before.

Vernon, in the nervous excitement which arouses one at the dawn of any day that is to be big with events, had risen earlier than was his wont. He hastened into the dining-room, and there, at the first table his eye alighted on, sat Maria Burley Greene. She saw him at once, for she faced the door, and she greeted him with a brilliant smile. With springing step he rushed toward her, both hands extended in his eagerness. She half rose to take them; their greeting silenced the early breakfasters for an instant. Then he sat down opposite her and leaned over with a radiant face as near to her as might be, considering the width of table-cloth and the breakfast things between.

“And so you’re here at last!” he exclaimed.

His eyes quickly took in her toilet; remarkably fresh it was, though it had been made on the Springfield sleeper. It gave none of those evidences of being but the late flowering of a toilet that had been made the night before, as do the toilets of some ladies under similar circumstances. She wore this morning a suit of brown, tailored faultlessly to every flat seam, and a little turban to match it. Beside her plate lay her veil, her gloves, and a brass tagged key. And her face, clear and rosy in its rich beauty, was good to look upon. The waiter had just brought her strawberries.

“Send John to me,” said Vernon to the waiter. “I’ll take my breakfast here. May I?” He lifted his eyes to Miss Greene’s.

“Surely,” said she, “we’ll have much to discuss.”

“And so you’re here again at last,” repeated Vernon, as if he had not already made the same observation. He laid, this time, perhaps a little more stress on the “at last.” She must have noted that fact, for she blushed, red as the strawberries she began to turn over with a critically poised fork.

“And did you come down alone?” Vernon went on.

“No, not exactly,” said Miss Greene. “Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, and, I believe, several—”

“Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop!”

“I think,” said Miss Greene, “that she sits somewhere behind.” There was a twinkle in the eyes she lifted for an instant from her berries.

Vernon scanned the dining-room. There was Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, in all her—and yes, beside her, sheltered snugly under her all-protecting wing, was Amelia Ansley! They were at a long table, Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop at the head, and with them half a dozen women, severe, and most aggressively respectable. They sat—all of them—erect, pecking at their food with a distrust that was not so much a material caution as a spiritual evidence of their superiority to most of the things with which they were thrust in contact every day. Their hats scarcely trembled, such was the immense propriety of their attitudes; they did not bend at all, even to the cream.

Vernon, who was taking all this in at a glance, saw that Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop was severer than he had ever imagined it possible for women to be—even such a woman as she. He would not have been surprised had he suddenly been told that her name had acquired another hyphen; certainly her dignity had been rehyphenated. There she sat, with her broad shoulders and ample bust, her arms jeopardizing the sleeves of her jacket.

It was the most impressive breakfast table he had ever seen. It might have given him a vision of the future, when he should have secured for women all their civil and political rights, and the nation had progressed to female lieutenant-generals, who would be forced at times to dine in public with their staffs. But he had no such vision, of course; the very spiritual aversion of those women to such a thought would have prevented it, occultly.

In point of fact, his regard in an instant had ceased to be general and had become specific, having Amelia for its objective. She sat on the right of her commander, a rather timid aide; and she seemed spiritually to snuggle more closely under her protecting shadow with each passing moment. She seemed to be half frightened, and had the look of a little girl who is about to cry. Her gray figure, with its hat of violets above her dark hair, was, on the instant, half pathetic to Vernon. She sat facing him, her face downcast.