Kitabı oku: «Her Infinite Variety», sayfa 2

III

THE surprise had leaped to Vernon’s eyes again at the final impression of perfection made by her voice, and the surprise changed to a regret of lost and irreclaimable opportunity when he reflected that he had lived for years near this woman lawyer and yet never had seen her once in all that time. When Miss Greene turned to look him in the face again, after the others were gone, Vernon grew suddenly bashful, like a big boy. He felt his face flame hotly. He had been meditating some drawing-room speech; he had already turned in his mind a pretty sentence in which there was a discreet reference to Portia; Vernon was just at the age for classical allusions. But when he saw her blue eyes fixed on him and read the utter seriousness in them he knew that compliments would all be lost.

“I am one of your constituents, Senator Vernon,” she began, “and I am down, frankly, lobbying for this resolution.”

“And we both,” he replied, “are, I believe, members of the Cook County bar. Strange, isn’t it, that two Chicago lawyers should have to wait until they are in Springfield to meet?”

“Not altogether,” she said. “It is not so very strange—my practice is almost wholly confined to office work; I am more of a counselor than a barrister. I have not often appeared in court; in fact I prefer not to do so; I am—well, just a little timid in that part of the work.”

The femininity of it touched him. He might have told her that he did not often appear in court himself, but he was new enough at the bar to have to practise the dissimulation of the young professional man. He indulged himself in the temptation to allow her to go undeceived, though with a pang he remembered that her practice, from all that he had heard, must be much more lucrative than his. Something of the pretty embarrassment she felt before courts and juries was evidently on her in this her first appearance in the Senate, but she put it away; her breast rose with the deep breath of resolution she drew, and she straightened to look him once more in the eyes.

“But about this resolution, Senator Vernon; I must not take up too much of your time. If you will give me your objections to it perhaps I may be able to explain them away. We should very much like to have your support.”

Vernon scarcely knew what to reply; such objections as he might have found at other times—the old masculine objections to women’s voting and meddling in politics—had all disappeared at sight of this remarkable young woman who wished to vote herself; he could not think of one of them, try as he would. His eyes were on the rose.

“Perhaps your objections are merely prejudices,” she ventured boldly, in her eyes a latent twinkle that disturbed him.

“I confess, Miss Greene,” he began, trying to get back something of his senatorial dignity, such as state senatorial dignity is, “that I have not devoted much thought to the subject; I am indeed rather ashamed to acknowledge that I did not even know the amendment was coming up to-day, until I was—ah—so delightfully reminded by your rose.”

He raised the rose to inhale its fragrance. She made no reply, but she kept her eyes on him, and her gaze compelled him to go on. It was hard for him to go on, for it was now but a struggle against the formality of a surrender that had been inevitable from the beginning. But his man’s pride forced him to delay it as long as possible.

“What assurances have you from other senators?” he asked. “Though, perhaps, I need not ask—they have unanimously mounted your colors.” He looked at his colleagues, sporting their roses. Miss Greene gave a little exclamation of annoyance.

“Do you think I don’t know,” she said; “that I don’t understand all that? I might have known that they would not take it seriously! And I thought—I thought—to put the matter so easily to them that I should be spared the necessity of buttonholing them!”

“It was a novel way of buttonholing them,” he laughed.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, catching her breath, “they wear the roses—and laugh at me!”

Her eyes flashed through the mists of vexation that suggested tears.

“You are all alone then?”

Vernon said this in a low, solicitous tone, as if he were dealing with some deep grief.

“All alone.”

“And you represent no one—that is, no society, no club?”

“I am not a paid lobbyist,” she said, “though I believe it is not beyond the proprieties of our profession. I do what I do only from a love of principle. I represent only my sex.” She said it impressively, and then with a quick little laugh that recognized the theatrical that had been in her attitude, she added: “And that, I suspect, without authorization.”

“The ladies, generally, do not seem to be interested,” Vernon acquiesced.

“No,” she shook her head sadly, “no, on the contrary, I suppose most of them oppose the measure.”

“I have generally found them of that feeling,” Vernon observed.

“The slaves, before the war, often petitioned congress not to set them free, you will remember.”

Miss Greene spoke with a bitterness. Then quickly she collected herself.

“But your objections, Senator Vernon?” she said. “Really, we must get down to business.”

She raised the little chatelaine watch that hung at her bosom and looked down at it. And then suddenly, without waiting for his objections, as if she had quite forgotten them indeed, she impulsively stretched forth a hand and said:

“You will help me, won’t you?”

Vernon looked into her eyes. His gaze, after an instant, fell. He tried to run the stem of the rose through his buttonhole. The thorns caught in the cloth.

“You’ll have to do it,” he said, helplessly.

From some mysterious fold of her habit she took a pin, and then, leaning over, she pinned the rose to his coat, pinned it with its long stem hanging, as a woman would pin a flower to a man’s lapel.

“Thank you.” He was looking into her eyes again.

“Rather let me thank you,” she said. “It’s so good of you to vote for my measure.”

His eyes widened suddenly. He had quite forgotten the resolution. She must have perceived this, for she blushed, and he hastened to make amends.

“I’ll not only vote for it,” he rushed ahead impulsively, “but I’ll make a speech for it.” He straightened and leaned away from her to give a proper perspective in which she could admire him. He sat there smiling.

“How splendid of you!” she cried. “I feel encouraged now.”

Then Vernon’s face lengthened. He stammered: “But you’ll have to give me some data; I—I don’t know a thing about the subject.”

“Oh,” she laughed, “I brought some literature. It shall all be at your disposal. And now, I must be about my work. Can you make any suggestions? Can you tell me whom I should see, whom I should interest, who has the—ah—pull, I believe you call it?”

“I’ll bring them to you,” Vernon said. “You sit here and hold court.”

He rose and his eyes swept the chamber. They lighted on Burns, and an idea suddenly came to him. He would revenge himself on Burns for all the slights of the session.

“Of course you’ll have to see Sam Porter, but I’ll begin by bringing Senator Burns—familiarly known as Bull Burns.”

“I’ve read of him so often in the newspapers,” she said. “It would be an experience.”

Vernon went over to Burns’s seat and touched him on the shoulder.

“Come on,” he said in a tone of command, speaking for once from the altitude of his social superiority. And for once he was successful. The burly fellow from the First District stood up and looked inquiringly.

“Come with me,” Vernon said; “there’s a Chicago lawyer back here who wants to see you.”

Burns followed and an instant later Vernon halted before Miss Greene. The other men, who had quickly returned to her side, made way, and Vernon said:

“Miss Greene, may I present Senator Burns, of the First District?”

Miss Greene smiled on the big saloon-keeper, who instantly flamed with embarrassment. She gave him her hand, and he took it in his fat palm, carefully, lest he crush it.

“I am delighted to meet Senator Burns; I’ve heard of you so often,” she said, looking up at him. “And do you know I count it a privilege to meet one of your acknowledged influence in our state’s affairs?”

Vernon stood back, delighted beyond measure with the confusion into which Burns for once had been betrayed. The senator from the First District was struggling for some word to say, and at last he broke out with:

“Aw now, lady, don’t be t’rowin’ de con into me.”

The men in the little group on that side of the Senate chamber burst out in a laugh, but Burns becoming suddenly grave, and dangerous and terrible in his gravity, they broke off in the very midst of their mirth. The group became silent.

“Really, Senator Burns,” said Miss Greene, “this is no—ah—confidence game, I assure you.” She rose with a graceful sweep of her skirts. Then she went on: “If you will permit me, I should like to explain my mission to you. I am down here to ask the Senate to adopt a resolution that will submit an amendment to the Constitution permitting the women of Illinois to vote at all elections, as they vote at school elections now. If you can give it, I should like your support; I should, at least, like to tell you my reasons.”

Slowly she seated herself again, saying: “Will you sit down?”

But Burns only stood and looked at her. There was a trace of fear in her face.

“Do you want dis resolution put t’rough?” he asked bluntly.

“I? Indeed I do!” she said.

“Is dere anyt’ing in it fer you?” he went on.

“Why,” Miss Greene said, somewhat at a loss, “only that I am interested as a matter of principle in seeing it adopted. It would be a great day for me if I could go back to Chicago feeling that I had had just a little bit to do with such a result.”

“Den I’m wit’ you,” said Burns, and wheeling, he went back to his desk.

Miss Greene watched him a moment, and then turned to the men, their numbers augmented now by others who had come up to see Burns in the presence of such a woman. The glance she gave them was a question.

“Oh, he means it,” said Monroe of Whiteside. “He’ll vote for the resolution.”

“Yes, he’s given his word,” said Brownell of Cook.

Vernon devoted half an hour to bringing senators to meet Maria Greene. It was not difficult work, though it had its disadvantages; it did not allow Vernon to remain with her long at a time. But at last it was done, and he found a moment alone with her. She had given him some pamphlets on equal suffrage.

“Ah, if you could only address the Senate!” he exclaimed, in open admiration. And then, as if an inspiration had come to him, he added:

“Perhaps I could arrange it; it has been done.”

She gasped and stretched out her hand to stay him.

“Oh, not for all the world!” she protested.

“But you’ll come and meet the lieutenant-governor?”

“Up there?” she said, incredulously, pointing to the dais under the flags.

“Why, yes,” Vernon answered; “why not? It’s where all the eminent lawyers who come down here to lobby sit.”

She looked up at the desk behind which the lieutenant-governor sat, swinging gently in his swivel chair, while the secretary read Senate bills on third reading. There was a reluctance in her eyes, but when she caught Vernon’s smile, she gathered her skirts and said:

“Well, if I must.”

IV

WHILE Miss Greene sat chatting with the lieutenant-governor, who gladly neglected the duties of his high office, Vernon went out into the rotunda, lighted a cigarette, glanced over the pamphlets, and tried to arrange the heads of his speech in his mind.

At the thought of the speech, Vernon grew cold and limp with nervousness. His hands were clammy, his knees trembled, his mouth became dry and parched, and the cigarette he had lighted imparted all at once an evil taste. Yet he smoked on, and as he wandered around the rotunda, men from both houses, passing to and fro, greeted him, but they seemed to him to be strange new creatures flitting by in a dream. If he was conscious of them at all it was only as of envied beings, all on a common happy plane, fortunate ones who did not have to make a speech within the hour. He went over to the state library, thinking that its quiet would soothe, but when he stood among the tall stacks of books he suddenly remembered that he must not smoke in those precincts; and so he turned out into the rotunda again, for he must smoke. He walked round and round the rotunda, pausing at times to lean over the brass railing and look far down to the main floor where the red light glowed at the cigar stand; he sauntered back into the dim and undisturbed corridors, his mind racing over all the things he might say.

Once or twice he glanced into the pamphlets Miss Greene had given him, but he could not fix his mind on them; their types danced meaninglessly before his eyes. He was angry with himself for this nervousness. Why must it assail him now, just when he wished to be at his best? He had spoken before, a hundred times; he knew his audience, and he had the proper contempt for his colleagues. He had never, to be sure, made a set speech in that presence; seldom did any one do that; the speeches were usually short and impromptu, and there was no time for anticipation to generate nervous dread. And yet his mind seemed to be extraordinarily clear just then; it seemed to be able to comprehend all realms of thought at once.

But it was not so much the speech he thought of, as the effect of the speech; already he could see the newspapers and the big headlines they would display on their first pages the next morning; he could see his mother reading them at breakfast, and then he could see Amelia reading them. How her dark eyes would widen, her cheeks flush pink! She would raise her hand and put back her hair with that pretty mannerism of hers; then impulsively resting her arms on the table before her, she would eagerly read the long columns through, while her mother reminded her that her breakfast was getting cold. How proud she would be of him! She would never chide him again; she would see that at last he had found himself.

The Eltons, too, would read, and his absence from their dinner would react on them impressively. And Maria Greene—but a confusion arose—Maria Greene! He had not thought of Amelia all the morning until that very instant; Amelia’s letter lay still unopened on his desk back there in the Senate chamber. Maria Greene! She would hear, she would color as she looked at him, and her eyes would glow; he could feel the warm pressure of the hand she would give him in congratulation.

And it was this handsome young woman’s presence in the chamber that gave rise to all this nervousness. He was sure that he would not have been nervous if Amelia were to be there. She had never heard him speak in public, though he had often pressed her to do so; somehow the places where he spoke were never those to which it would be proper for her to go. She would wish she had heard this speech, for in twenty-four hours it would be the one topic of conversation throughout the state; his picture would be in the newspapers—“The brilliant young Chicago lawyer who electrified the Illinois Senate with his passionate oratory and passed the woman-suffrage measure.” It would be an event to mark the beginning of a new era—

But his imaginings were broken, his name was spoken; he turned and saw Miss Greene.

“Come,” she said. “It’s up! Hurry!”

She was excited and her cheeks glowed. His teeth began to chatter. He followed her quick steps in the direction of the chamber.

“But,” he stammered. “I—I didn’t know—I haven’t even arranged for recognition.”

“Oh, I’ve fixed all that!” the woman said. “The lieutenant-governor promised me.” She was holding her rustling skirts and almost running.