MARIA GREENE would not let Vernon attend to her tickets; she said it was
a matter of principle with her; but late in the afternoon, when they had
had luncheon, and she had got the tickets herself, she did accept his
invitation to drive. The afternoon had justified all the morning's
promise of a fine spring day, and as they left the edges of the town and
turned into the road that stretched away over the low undulations of
ground they call hills in Illinois, and lost itself mysteriously in the
country far beyond, Miss Greene became enthusiastic.
"Isn't it glorious!" she cried. "And to think that when I left Chicago
last night it was still winter!" She shuddered, as if she would shake
off the memory of the city's ugliness. Her face was flushed and she
inhaled the sweet air eagerly.
"To be in the country once more!" she went on.
"Did you ever live in the country?" Vernon asked.
"Once," she said, and then after a grave pause she added: "A long time
ago."
The road they had turned into was as soft and as smooth as velvet now
that the spring had released it from the thrall of winter's mud. It led
beside a golf links, and the new greens were already dotted with
golfers, who played with the zest they had accumulated in the forbidding
winter months. They showed their enthusiasm by playing bare-armed, as if
already it were the height of summer.
As the buggy rolled noiselessly along, Vernon and Miss Greene were
silent; the spell of the spring was on them. To their right rolled the
prairies, that never can become mere fields, however much they be tilled
or fenced. The brown earth, with its tinge of young green here and
there, or its newly ploughed clods glistening and steaming in the sun,
rolled away like the sea. Far off, standing out black and forbidding
against the horizon, they could see the ugly buildings of a coal shaft;
behind, above the trees that grew for the city's shade, the convent
lifted its tower, and above all, the gray dome of the State House reared
itself, dominating the whole scene. The air shimmered in the haze of
spring. Birds were chirping in the hedges; now and then a meadow-lark
sprang into the air and fled, crying out its strange staccato song as it
skimmed the surface of the prairies. Vernon idly snapped the whip as he
drove along; neither of them seemed to care to speak. Suddenly they
heard a distant, heavy thud. The earth trembled slightly.
"What's that?" said Miss Greene, in some alarm. "It couldn't have been
thunder."
"No," said Vernon, "it was the miners, blasting."
"Where?"
"Down in the ground underneath us."
She gave him a strange look which he did not comprehend. Then she turned
and glanced quickly at the black breakers of the coal shaft, half a mile
away; then at the golf-players.
"Do the mines run under this ground?" she asked, sweeping her hand about
and including the links in her gesture.
"Yes, all over here, or rather under here," Vernon said. He was proud of
his knowledge of the locality. He thought it argued well that a
legislator should be informed on all questions. Maria thought a moment,
then she said:
"The golfers above, the miners below."
Vernon looked at her in surprise. The pleasure of the spring had gone
out of her eyes.
"Drive on, please," she said.
"There's no danger," said Vernon reassuringly, clucking at his horse,
and the beast flung up its head in a spasmodic burst of speed, as
livery-stable horses will. The horse did not have to trot very far to
bear them away from the crack of the golf-balls and the dull
subterranean echoes of the miners' blasts, but Vernon felt that a cloud
had floated all at once over this first spring day. The woman sitting
there beside him seemed to withdraw herself to an infinite distance.
"You love the country?" he asked, feeling the need of speech.
"Yes," she said, but she went no farther.
"And you once lived there?"
"Yes," she said again, but she vouchsafed no more. Vernon found a deep
curiosity springing within him; he longed to know more about this young
woman who in all outward ways seemed to be just like the women he knew,
and yet was so essentially different from them. But though he tried, he
could not move her to speak of her own life or its affairs. At the last
he said boldly:
"Tell me, how did you come to be a lawyer?"
Miss Greene turned to meet his inquisitive gaze.
"How did you?" she asked.
Vernon cracked his whip at the road.
"Well--" he stammered. "I don't know; I had to do something."
"So did I," she replied.
Vernon cut the lazy horse with the whip, and the horse jerked the buggy
as it made its professional feint at trotting.
"I did not care to lead a useless life," he said. "I wanted to do
something--to have some part in the world's work. The law seemed to be a
respectable profession and I felt that maybe I could do some good in
politics. I don't think the men of my class take as much interest in
politics as they should. And then, I'd like to make my own living."
"I have to make mine," said Maria Greene.
"But you never thought of teaching, or nursing, or--well--painting or
music, or that sort of thing, did you?"
"No," she replied; "did you?"
Vernon laughed at an absurdity that needed no answering comment, and
then he hastened on:
"Of course, you know I think it fine that you should have done as you
have. You must have met with discouragements."
She laughed, and Vernon did not note the bitterness there was concealed
in the laugh; to him it seemed intended to express only that polite
deprecation demanded in the treatment of a personal situation.
"I can sympathize with you there," said Vernon, though Miss Greene had
not admitted the need of sympathy. Perhaps it was Vernon's own need of
sympathy, or his feeling of the need of it, that made him confess that
his own family and friends had never sympathized with him, especially
with what he called his work in politics; he felt, at any rate, that he
had struck the right note at last, and he went on to assure her how
unusual it was to meet a woman who understood public questions as well
as she understood them. And it may have been his curiosity that led him
to inquire:
"How did your people feel about your taking up the law?"
Miss Greene said that she did not know how her people felt, and Vernon
again had that baffled sense of her evading him.
"I've felt pretty much alone in my work," he said. "The women I know
won't talk with me about it; they won't even read the newspapers. And
I've tried so hard to interest them in it!"
Vernon sighed, and he waited for Miss Greene to sigh with him. He did
not look at her, but he could feel her presence there close beside him.
Her gloved hands lay quietly in her lap; she was gazing out over the
prairies. The light winds were faintly stirring her hair, and the beauty
of it, its warm red tones brought out by the burnishing sun, suddenly
overwhelmed him. He stirred and his breath came hard.
"Do you know," he said, in a new confidence, "that this has been a great
day for me? To meet you, and to know you as I think I do know you now!
This morning, when I was speaking, I felt that with you to help me, I
could do great things."
Miss Greene drew in her lips, as if to compress their fullness; she
moved away on the seat, and raised her hand uneasily and thrust it under
her veil to put back a tress of hair that had strayed from its
fastening. Vernon saw the flush of her white cheeks come and go. Her
eyebrows were drawn together wistfully, and in her blue eyes, that
looked far away through the meshes of her dotted veil, there was a
little cloud of trouble. She caught her lip delicately between the edges
of her teeth. Vernon leaned slightly forward as if he would peer into
her face. For him the day had grown suddenly hot, the spring had
developed on the instant the oppressive heat of summer. He felt its
fire; he could see its intensity vibrating in the air all about him, and
he had a sense as of all the summer's voices droning in unison. The
reins drooped from his listless fingers; the horse moped along as it
pleased.
"I have always felt it, vaguely," Vernon went on, his voice dropping to
a low tone, "and this morning it was suddenly revealed to me--"
Miss Greene raised her hand as if to draw it across her brow; her veil
stopped her.
"Let's not talk about that now," she pleaded. "Let's enjoy the air and
the country. I don't have them often." Her hand fell to her lap. The
color had gone out of her cheeks. And Vernon suddenly felt that the
summer had gone out of the air; a cold wind was blowing as over soiled
patches of snow left in shaded depressions of the fields; the earth was
brown and bare; the birds were silent. He jerked the horse smartly, and
it gave an angry toss of its head, as it broke into its tentative trot.
"I do wish you could know the women I know," said Vernon, obviously
breaking a silence. He spoke in an entirely different voice. "I meant to
put it the other way. I meant that I wish they could know you, and I
mean that they shall. You would be a revelation to them."
Miss Greene smiled, though her face was now careworn, almost old.
"Right along the line of our constitutional amendment, now," he said,
with a briskness, "do you think the women will become interested?"
"The women of your acquaintance, or of mine?" asked Miss Greene.
"You're guying," said Vernon, and when Miss Greene seriously protested,
Vernon said he meant all the women, as politicians pretend to mean all
the people, when they mean only the party.
"I'm afraid not," she said. "They could have the ballot to-morrow if
they'd only ask for it. The trouble is they don't want it."
"Well, we must educate them," said Vernon. "I have great hopes that the
women whom I know will be aroused by what we are doing."
"I have no doubt they will," said Miss Greene. There was something
enigmatical in her words, and Vernon glanced uneasily at her again.
"How do you mean?" he asked.
"You'll learn when you see the newspapers to-morrow," said Miss Greene.
"Do you think they'll have it in full?" asked Vernon. He was all alert,
and his eyes sparkled in a new interest.
"On the first page," she replied, with conviction. "Have they your
picture?"
"I don't know," Vernon replied. "They can get it, though," he added,
thoughtfully.
"They keep the portraits of all distinguished public men on hand," Miss
Greene said, with a certain reassurance in her tone.
"Oh, well, I hope they'll not print it," said Vernon, as if just then
recalling what was expected of a distinguished public man under such
circumstances.
"That's one of the penalties of being in public life," she answered with
a curious smile.
"A penalty the ladies will be glad to pay when our reform is
accomplished; isn't that so?" said Vernon, seeking relief in a light
bantering tone.
"I thought we were not going to talk politics," she said, turning and
looking at him. She adjusted her hat and held herself resolutely erect.
The sun was going down behind the prairies, the afternoon was almost
gone; as they watched the sunset, Miss Greene broke the silence.
"It's a familiar sight," she said, and Vernon thought that he had a clue
at last. She must know the prairies.
"It is just like a sunset at sea," she added.
When they had driven back to the town and Vernon had left her at the
hotel, he turned to drive to the livery stable.
"By George!" he said, suddenly, speaking to himself. "I haven't read
Amelia's letter!"
He fumbled in his coat pocket.