Her Infinite Variety

“Move to reconsider and to lay on the table,” she said, and with a look of admiration he turned and made the motion. It was put, it was carried of course, and the amendment was lost irrevocably.

“Well, that’s attended to,” said Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop. “Ah, Morley,” she said calmly, “you here? And Amelia?”

“She’s here,” he said, “and I—I didn’t get here on time!” The shame and mortification on his face were pitiable, though they could not have touched Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop’s heart.

“And I didn’t get here on time,” he repeated ruefully.

“Why, my dear boy,” said Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, “I didn’t intend that you should.”

He looked at her fiercely, angrily, a second.

“So that was the game, was it?” he said. He whirled, with another fierce look, on Amelia.

“That was the game, yes, Morley,” said Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, “but you needn’t look at Amelia so—she was utterly innocent, the dear little thing.”

Amelia came up. She had seen Vernon’s expression.

“What is it—what has happened?” she inquired.

“Well, I got here too late, that’s all,” said Vernon. “I was detained, and Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop has just now kindly told me that she had arranged that I should be. I’m ruined, that’s all; I’m lost.”

“No, Morley,” said Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop, “you’re saved. You’re saved from yourself.” She still smiled at him sweetly. “You might have made, don’t you know, another one of your speeches.”

Vernon bit his lip and walked away. He encountered Martin, but could only look at him helplessly. Martin returned his look with one of surprise.

“You here?” he said.

“Well, yes,” replied Vernon. “At last—too late, it seems.”

The surprise had not left Martin’s face; to it was now added a perplexity.

“If we’d known,” said Martin; “but we thought, that is, we heard, that you had ducked.”

Vernon shook his head as with a pain that would not let him speak. He was looking disconsolately across the chamber to where Miss Greene stood talking with Bull Burns. As in a dream, he heard Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop exclaim:

“Ah, there is that Greene woman!”

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop was lifting her gold glasses again. Vernon was wondering how he was to face the Greene woman. But at Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop’s words an idea came to him.

“I’ll go bring her and introduce her,” he said. He bolted away and went toward her. She was cold and distant. Fortunately, Burns fled at his approach.

“Can you forgive me?” he said. “I’ll explain it all in an instant.”

“And how?” she asked with a chill rise in her tone.

“Have you ever met Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop?” he asked significantly.

“No,” she answered.

“Then permit me,” he said. She went with him. Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop had withdrawn her delegation to the rear of the chamber, and there awaited Vernon’s return.

“Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, permit me to present Miss Greene; Miss Ansley, Miss Greene.” And so on, in the order of relative rank, he introduced her to the other ladies.

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop extended her hand officially. Miss Greene took it with a smile.

“I am very glad,” she said, “to meet Mrs.—Mrs.—ah, pardon me, but what was the name?”

“Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop,” Vernon said.

“Ah, Mrs. Lathrop.”

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop seemed, to the eye, to swell.

“You have a charming little city here, Mrs. Lathrop. We poor Chicagoans love to get down into the country once in a while, you know.”

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop reared back a little.

“No doubt,” she stammered. “I have always found it so.”

Miss Greene feigned surprise, and affected a look of perplexity. Vernon withdrew a step, and with his chin in his hand looked on out of eyes that gloated. The other women in the party exchanged glances of horror and wrath. Mrs. Barbourton, for her part, seemed unable to endure it.

“Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop lives in Chicago,” she interjected.

“Oh!” cried Miss Greene. “Is it possible? How very strange that one could live in the city all one’s life and yet not have heard!”

“Not so very strange, I fancy,” said Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop. “One’s circle is apt to be so far removed.”

“Yes?” said Miss Greene, with that rising inflection. “Then you can not have lived in Chicago long?”

“All my life,” snapped Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop.

“So long as that!” said Miss Greene with eyes that stared incredibility. Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop actually colored.

“You are enjoying your visit to Springfield, I trust? You have seen the Lincoln Monument and the Homestead? How very interesting they must be! And the Legislature offers novelty; don’t you find it so?” She gathered her skirts as if to withdraw. But Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop achieved a smile.

“We have not enjoyed the pleasures of sight-seeing. On the contrary, we came to appear before the Senate,” she said.

Miss Greene surveyed her critically, with that look in which one woman inspects another woman’s attire. She then extended her critical scrutiny to the dress of the others.

“To be sure!” she said, “I should have known.”

The ladies again exchanged glances. Mrs. Barbourton plainly could not bear that their position should be equivocal. She doubtless had her little vainglorious wish to have their success known.

“Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop came down to appear in opposition to the woman’s-rights resolution!” She emphasized the word woman as if she would not for worlds have been a woman herself.

“Indeed!” exclaimed Miss Greene. “I am sure her appearance must have been a very convincing argument.” She gave her opponent another searching glance. Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop was having difficulty in getting her breath.

“We have been having a taste of lobbying, Miss Greene,” she began, “and—”

“How unpleasant!” said she.

“You know, possibly,” said Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, regaining something of her position.

“Indeed I do,” Miss Greene assented sweetly, “but where it is in the line of one’s profession, duty obscures the unpleasantness. One can not, you know, always choose one’s occupation. Good morning!”

And catching her skirts, with a smile and a bow she left.

The successful lobbyists stood in silence a moment, looked one to another with wide and staring eyes. Then at last Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop spoke.

“Morley,” she said, “I do wish you could learn to discriminate in your introductions.”

XV

IN the evening, just before dinner, Amelia and Vernon sat in the little waiting room of the hotel. Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop and her ladies had gone up to the suite they had taken and were engaged in repairing the toilets their political labors of the day had somewhat damaged. Amelia had completed her toilet more quickly than they and had joined Vernon, waiting for her below.

They sat in the dim little room where Amelia could look across the corridor to the elevator, expecting every moment the coming of Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop. Now that they found themselves alone and face to face with the necessity of reconciliation, a constraint had fallen on them. Amelia constantly kept her eye on the elevator. Men were passing and repassing the open door, going to or coming from the bar-room, and their loud talk and laughter beat in waves into the dim little retreat of the lovers.

As Vernon sat there he imagined that all that talk was of him; more than all, that all that laughter was at him—though there was no more of either than there was every evening when the legislators came over to the hotel for dinner. At last Amelia turned to him.

“You’ve got the blues, haven’t you?” she said. It would seem that somehow he did her an injustice by having the blues.

“No,” he answered.

“Then what’s the matter?” she demanded.

Vernon glanced at her, and his glance carried its own reproach.

“Oh!” she said, as if suddenly recalling a trivial incident. “Still worrying about that?”

“Well,” Vernon answered, “it has some seriousness for me.”

Amelia, sitting properly erect, her hands folded in her lap, twisted about and faced him.

“You don’t mean, Morley, that you are sorry it didn’t pass, do you?”

“It puts me in rather an awkward position,” he said. “I suppose you know that.”

“I don’t see how,” Amelia replied.

“Well,” Vernon explained, “to stand for a measure of that importance, and then at the final, critical moment, to fail—”

“Oh, I see!” said Amelia, moving away from him on the couch. “Of course, if you regret the time, if you’d rather have been over in the Senate than to have been with me—why, of course!” She gave a little deprecating laugh.

Vernon leaned impulsively toward her.

“But, dear,” he said, “you don’t understand!”

“And after your begging me to come down to Springfield to see you!” Amelia said. Her eyes were fixed on the elevator, and just at that moment the car came rushing down the shaft and swished itself to a stop just when, it seemed, it should have shattered itself to pieces at the bottom. The elevator boy clanged the iron door back, and Maria Greene stepped out.

“There she is now!” said Amelia, raising her head to see. Miss Greene paused a moment to reply to the greeting of some one of the politicians who stopped to speak to her.

Amelia’s nose was elevated.

“And so that’s the wonderful hair you all admire so much, is it?” she said.

“Well,” replied Vernon, almost defiantly, “don’t you think it is rather exceptional hair?”

Amelia turned on him with a look of superior and pitying penetration.

“Does that shade deceive you?” she asked. She smiled disconcertingly, as she looked away again at Maria Greene. The woman lawyer was just leaving the politicians.

“And to think of wearing that hat with that hair!” Amelia went on. “Though of course,” she added with deep meaning, “it may originally have been the right shade; the poor hat can’t be expected to change its color.”

Vernon had no answer for her.

“I wonder what explanation she’ll have for her defeat,” said Amelia in a tone that could not conceal its spirit of triumph.

“I’m not worried about that,” said Vernon. “I’m more concerned about the explanation I’ll have.”

“Dearest!” exclaimed Amelia, swiftly laying her hand on his. Her tone had changed, and as she leaned toward him with the new tenderness that her new manner exhaled, Vernon felt a change within himself, and his heart swelled.

“Dearest,” she said, in a voice that hesitated before the idea of some necessary reparation, “are you really so badly disappointed?”

He looked at her, then suddenly he drew her into his arms, and she let her head rest for an instant on his shoulder; but only for an instant. Then she exclaimed and was erect and all propriety.

“You forget where we are, dear,” she said.

“I don’t care about that,” he replied, and then glancing swiftly about in all directions, he kissed her.

“Morley!” she cried, and her cheeks went red, a new and happy red.

They sat there, looking at each other.

“You didn’t consider, you didn’t really consider her pretty, did you?” Amelia asked.

“Why, Amelia, what a question!”

“But you didn’t? Don’t evade, Morley.”

“Oh well, now, she’s not bad looking, exactly, but as for beauty—well, she’s rather what I’d call handsome.”

“Handsome!” Amelia exclaimed, drawing back.

“Why, yes. Don’t you see, dear?” Vernon was trying to laugh. “Can’t you see the distinction? We call men handsome, don’t we? Not pretty, or anything like that. But women! Ah, women! Them we call, now and then, beautiful! And you, darling, you are beautiful!”

They were face to face again, both smiling radiantly. Then Amelia drew away, saying:

“Morley, don’t be ridiculous.”

“But I’m dead in earnest, dear,” he went on. “And I think you ought to make some sort of amends for all the misery you’ve caused me.”

“You poor boy!” she said, with the pity that is part of a woman’s triumph.

“I did it,” he said, “just because I love you, and have learned in you what women are capable of, what they might do in politics—”

“In politics! Morley! Can you imagine me in politics? I thought you had a more exalted opinion of women; I thought you kept them on a higher plane.”

“But you—” Vernon laughed, and shook his head at the mystery of it, but did not go on.

“Why, Morley, would you want to see your mother or your sister or me, or even Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop in politics?”

“Well,” he said, with a sudden and serious emphasis, “not Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop exactly. She’d be chairman of the state central committee from the start and, well—the machine would be a corker, that’s all.”

The elevator was rushing down again in its perilous descent, and when its door flew open they saw Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop come out of the car. Vernon rose hastily.

“There she is,” he said. “We mustn’t keep her waiting.”

Amelia rose, but she caught his hand and gave it a sudden pressure.

“But you haven’t answered my question,” she said, with a continuity of thought that was her final surprise for him. “Are you so very badly disappointed, after all?”

“Well, no,” he said. “I don’t think it would do. It would—well, it would complicate.”

Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop was standing in the door, peering impatiently into the dim little room. They started toward her.

“Anyway, dear heart,” Amelia whispered as they went, “remember this—that you did it all for me.”