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.
V
AS they entered the Senate chamber, Vernon heard the lieutenant-governor
say: "And the question is: Shall the resolution be adopted? Those in
favor will vote 'aye,' those opposed will vote 'no,' when their names
are called; and the secretary will call the--"
"Mr. President!" Vernon shouted. There was no time now to retreat; he
had launched himself on the sea of glory. A dozen other senators were on
their feet, likewise demanding recognition.
"The senator from Cook," said the lieutenant-governor.
Vernon stood by his desk, arranging complacently the documents Miss
Greene had given him. Once or twice he cleared his throat and wiped his
lips with his handkerchief. The other senators subsided into their
seats, and, seeing that they themselves were not then to be permitted to
speak, and like all speakers, not caring to listen to the speeches of
others, they turned philosophically to the little diversions with which
they whiled away the hours of the session--writing letters, reading
newspapers, smoking. Vernon glanced around. Maria Greene was sitting
precariously on the edge of a divan. Her face was white and drawn. She
gave a quick nod, and a smile just touched her fixed lips. And then
Vernon began. He spoke slowly and with vast deliberation; his voice was
very low. He outlined his subject with exquisite pains, detail by
detail, making it clear just what propositions he would advance. His
manner was that of the lawyer in an appellate court, making a masterly
and purely legal argument; when it was done, the Senate, if it had paid
attention--though it seldom did pay attention--would know all about the
question of woman-suffrage.
In his deliberation, Vernon glanced now and then at Maria Greene. Her
eyes were sparkling with intelligent interest. As if to choose the
lowest point possible from which to trace the rise and progress of
legislation favorable to women, Vernon would call the attention of the
Senate, first, to the decision of the Illinois Supreme Court _In re_
Bradwell, 55 Ill. 525. That was away back in 1869, when the age was
virtually dark; and that was the case, gentlemen would remember, just as
if they all kept each decision of the court at their tongues' ends, in
which the court held that no woman could be admitted, under the laws of
Illinois, to practise as an attorney at law. But,--and Vernon implored
his colleagues to mark,--long years afterward, the court of its own
motion, entered a _nunc pro tunc_ order, reversing its own decision in
the Bradwell case. Vernon dilated upon the importance of this decision;
he extolled the court; it had set a white milestone to mark the
progressing emancipation of the race. Then, briefly, he proposed to
outline for them the legislative steps by which woman's right to
equality with man had been at least partly recognized.
He fumbled for a moment among the papers on his desk, until he found one
of the pamphlets Miss Greene had given him, and then he said he wished
to call the Senate's attention to the Employment Act of 1872, the
Drainage Act of 1885, and the Sanitary District Act of 1890. Vernon
spoke quite familiarly of these acts. Furthermore, gentlemen would, he
was sure, instantly recall the decisions of the courts in which those
acts were under review, as for instance, in Wilson _vs._ Board of
Trustees, 133 Ill. 443; and in Davenport _vs._ Drainage Commissioners,
25 Ill. App. 92.
Those among the senators who were lawyers, as most of them were, looked
up from their letter writing at this, and nodded profoundly, in order to
show their familiarity with Vernon's citations, although, of course,
they never had heard of the cases before.
"This recognition of woman's natural right," Vernon shouted, "this
recognition of her equality with man, can not be overestimated in
importance!" He shook his head fiercely and struck his desk with his
fist. But then, having used up all the facts he had marked in Miss
Greene's pamphlets, he was forced to become more general in his remarks,
and so he began to celebrate woman, ecstatically. He conjured for the
senators the presence of their mothers and sisters, their sweethearts
and wives; and then, some quotations fortunately occurring to him, he
reminded them that Castiglione had truly said that "God is seen only
through women"; that "the woman's soul leadeth us upward and on." He
recounted the services of women in time of war, their deeds in the days
of peace, and in the end he became involved in an allegory about the
exclusion of the roses from the garden.
The senators had begun to pay attention to him as soon as he talked
about things they really understood and were interested in, and now they
shouted to him to go on. It was spread abroad over the third floor of
the State House that some one was making a big speech in the Senate, and
representatives came rushing over from the House. The correspondents of
the Chicago newspapers came over also to see if the Associated Press man
in the Senate was getting the speech down fully. All the space on the
Senate floor was soon crowded, and the applause shook the desks and made
the glass prisms on the chandeliers jingle. The lieutenant-governor
tapped from time to time with his gavel, but he did it perfunctorily, as
though he enjoyed the applause himself, as vicariously expressing his
own feelings; his eyes twinkled until it seemed that, were it not for
certain traditions, he would join in the delighted laughter that made up
most of the applause.
Once a page came to Vernon with a glass of water, and as he paused to
wipe his brow and to sip from the glass, he glanced again at Maria
Greene. Her face was solemn and a wonder was growing in her eyes. Beside
her sat old "Doc" Ames, scowling fiercely and stroking his long white
beard. There were sharp cries of "Go on! Go on!"
But Vernon, not accustomed to thinking on his feet, as talkers love to
phrase it, and having stopped, could not instantly go on, and that
awkward halt disconcerted him. He was conscious that the moments were
slipping by, and there were other things--many other things--that he had
intended to say; but these things evaded him--floated off,
tantalizingly, out of reach. And so, for refuge, he rushed on to the
conclusion he had half formed in his mind. The conclusion was made up
mostly from a toast to which he had once responded while in college,
entitled "The Ladies." The words came back to him readily enough; he had
only to apply them a little differently and to change his figures. Thus
it was easy to work up to a panegyric in which Illinois stood as a
beautiful woman leading her sister states up to new heights of peace, of
virtue and of concord. He had a rapt vision of this woman, by her sweet
and gentle influence settling all disputes and bringing heaven down to
earth at last.
The Senate was in raptures.
"This is the face," he cried, "'that launched a thousand ships and
burned the topless towers of Ilium!' ... 'she is wholly like in feature
to the deathless goddesses!'" So he went on. "'Age can not wither, nor
custom stale, her infinite variety.'"
He was growing weary. He already showed the impressive exhaustion of the
peroration. He had sacrificed a collar and drunk all the water from his
glass. He fingered the empty tumbler for a moment, and then lifted it on
high while he said:
"'I filled this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon--
Her health! and would on earth there stood
Some more of such a frame,
That life might be all poetry,
And weariness a name.'"
When he had done, there was a moment's stillness; then came the long
sweep of applause that rang through the chamber, and while the
lieutenant-governor rapped for order, men crowded around Vernon and
wrung his hand, as he wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. And then
the roll was called. It had not proceeded far when there was that
subtile change in the atmosphere which is so easily recognized by those
who have acquired the sense of political aeroscepsy; the change that
betokens some new, unexpected and dangerous manoeuver. Braidwood had
come over from the House. His face, framed in its dark beard, was stern
and serious. He whispered an instant to Porter, the Senate leader.
Porter rose.
"Mr. President," he said.
The lieutenant-governor was looking at him expectantly.
"The gentleman from Cook," the lieutenant-governor said.
"Mr. President," said Senator Porter, "I move you, sir, that the further
discussion of the resolution be postponed until Wednesday morning, one
week from to-morrow, and that it be made a special order immediately
following the reading of the journal."
"If there are no objections it will be so ordered," said the
lieutenant-governor.