Her Infinite Variety Part 2

The rose still lay on Vernon's desk; he was the only one of the fifty-one senators of Illinois that had not put his rose on. He opened his bill file and turned up House Joint Resolution No. 19. He read it carefully, as he felt a senator should before making up his mind on such an important, even revolutionary measure. He remembered that at the time it had been adopted in the House, every one had laughed; no one, with the exception of its author, Doctor Ames, had taken it seriously.

Ames was known to be a crank; he was referred to as "Doc" Ames, usually as "Old Doc" Ames. He had introduced more strange bills and resolutions than any member at that session; bills to curb the homeopathists, bills to annihilate English sparrows, bills to prohibit cigarettes, bills to curtail the liquor traffic, and now this resolution providing for the submission of an amendment to the Const.i.tution that would extend the electoral franchise to women.

His other measures had received little consideration; he never got any of them out of committee. But on the female suffrage resolution he had been obdurate, and when-with a majority so bare that sick men had to be borne on cots into the House now and then to pa.s.s its measures-the party had succeeded, after weeks of agony, in framing an apportionment bill that satisfied every one, Doctor Ames had seen his chance. He had flatly refused to vote for the reapportionment act unless his woman-suffrage resolution were first adopted.

It was useless for the party managers to urge upon him the impossibility of providing the necessary two-thirds' vote; Ames said he could get the remaining votes from the other side. And so the steering committee had given the word to put it through for him. Then the other side, seeing a chance to place the majority in an embarra.s.sing att.i.tude before the people, either as the proponents or the opponents of such a radical measure-whichever way it went in the end-had been glad enough to furnish the additional votes. The members of the steering committee had afterward whispered it about that the resolution was to die in the Senate. Then every one, especially the women of Illinois, had promptly forgotten the measure.

As Vernon thought over it all he picked up the rose again, then laid it down, and idly picked up the card. Turning it over in his hand he saw that its other side was engraved, and he read:

MARIA BURLEY GREENE _Attorney and Counselor at law_ _The Rookery_ CHICAGO

Then he knew; it was the work of the woman lawyer. Vernon had heard of her often; he had never seen her. He gave a little sniff of disgust.

The Senate was droning along on the order of reports from standing committees, and Vernon, growing tired of the monotony, rose and sauntered back to the lobby in search of company more congenial than that of the gruff Burns. He carried the rose as he went, raising it now and then to enjoy its cool petals and its fragrance. On one of the leather divans that stretch themselves invitingly under the tall windows on each side of the Senate chamber sat a woman, and about her was a little group of men, bending deferentially. As he pa.s.sed within easy distance one of the men saw him and beckoned. Vernon went over to them.

"Miss Greene," said Senator Martin, "let me present Senator Vernon, of Chicago."

Miss Greene gave him the little hand that looked yet smaller in its glove of black _suede_. He bowed low to conceal a surprise that had sprung incautiously to his eyes. Instead of the thin, short-haired, spectacled old maid that had always, in his mind, typified Maria Burley Greene, here was a young woman who apparently conformed to every fas.h.i.+on, though her beauty and distinction might have made her independent of conventions. Physically she was too nearly perfect to give at once an impression of aristocracy; but it was her expression that charmed; it was plain that her intellectuality was of the higher degrees.

As Vernon possessed himself he was able to note that this surprising young woman was clad in a black traveling gown that fitted her perfectly. From her spring hat down to the toes of her boots there was nothing in her attire that was mannish, but she was of an exquisite daintiness wholly feminine and alluring.

All these superficial things faded into their proper background when, at last, his eyes looked full in her face. Reddish brown hair that doubtless had been combed into some resemblance to the prevailing fas.h.i.+on of the pompadour, had fallen in a natural part on the right side and lightly swept a brow not too high, but white and thoughtful. Her other features-the delicate nose, the full lips, the perfect teeth, the fine chin-all were lost in the eyes that looked frankly at him. As he gazed he was conscious that he feared to hear her speak; surely her voice would betray her masculine quality.

She had seated herself again, and now made a movement that suggested a drawing aside of her skirts to make a place for some one at her side.

And then she spoke.

"Will you sit down, Senator Vernon?" she said, with a scrupulous regard for t.i.tle unusual in a woman. "I must make a convert of Senator Vernon, you know," she smiled on the other men about her. Her accent implied that this conversion was of the utmost importance. The other men, of whom she seemed to be quite sure, evidently felt themselves under the compulsion of withdrawing, and so fell back in reluctant retreat.

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 cla.s.sical 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 const.i.tuents, 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 embarra.s.sment 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 a.s.surances 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 b.u.t.tonholing them!"

"It was a novel way of b.u.t.tonholing 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 s.e.x." She said it impressively, and then with a quick little laugh that recognized the theatrical that had been in her att.i.tude, 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 pet.i.tioned 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 b.u.t.tonhole. 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.