"New way to buttonhole a man, eh?" said Vernon to Bull Burns, who had
the seat next Vernon's. "What's it all about, anyway?"
Vernon took up his printed synopsis of bills and resolutions.
"Oh, yes," he said, speaking as much to himself as to Burns; "old man
Ames's resolution." Then he turned to the calendar. There it was--House
Joint Resolution No. 19. He glanced at Burns again. Burns was fastening
his rose in his buttonhole.
"So you're for it, eh?" he said.
"To hell with it," Burns growled in the gruff voice that spoke for the
First District. In trying to look down at his own adornment he screwed
his fat neck, fold on fold, into his low collar and then, with a grunt
of satisfaction, lighted a morning cigar.
"But--" Vernon began, surprises multiplying. He looked about the
chamber. The secretary was reading the journal of the preceding day and
the senators were variously occupied, reading newspapers, writing
letters, or merely smoking; some were gathered in little groups, talking
and laughing. But they all wore their roses. Vernon might have concluded
that House Joint Resolution No. 19 was safe, had it not been for the
inconsistency of Burns, though inconsistency was nothing new in Burns.
Vernon ventured once more with his neighbor:
"Looks as if the resolution were as good as adopted, doesn't it?"
But Burns cast a glance of pity at him, and then growled in
half-humorous contempt. The action stung Vernon. Burns seemed to resent
his presence in the Senate as he always resented the presence of
Vernon's kind in politics.
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 Constitution 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 pass 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 embarrassing attitude 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 passed 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
fashion, 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
fashion 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 title 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.