MISS GREENE'S predictions were all realized in the sensation Vernon's
speech created. The newspapers gave whole columns to it and illustrated
their accounts with portraits of Vernon and of Maria Greene. Vernon
thought of the pleasure Amelia must find in his new fame, and when he
wrote to her he referred briefly but with the proper modesty to his
remarkable personal triumph, and then waited for her congratulations.
The legislative session was drawing to a close; the customary Friday
adjournment was not taken, but sessions were held that day and on
Saturday, for the work was piling up, the procrastinating legislators
having left it all for the last minute.
The week following would see House and Senate sweltering in shirt
sleeves and night sessions, and now, if a bill were to become law it was
necessary that its sponsor stay, as it were, close beside it, lest in
the mighty rush of the last few days it be lost.
Vernon, by virtue of his speech, had assumed the championship of the
woman-suffrage resolution, and he felt it necessary to forego his
customary visit to Chicago that week and remain over Sunday in
Springfield. He devoted the day to composing a long letter to Miss
Greene, in which he described the situation in detail, and suggested
that it would be well for her, if possible, to come down to Springfield
on Monday and stay until the resolution had been adopted. He gave her,
in closing, such pledges of his devotion to the cause of womankind that
she could hardly resist any appeal he might make for her presence and
assistance.
On Monday he wired, urging the necessity of her presence. Tuesday
morning brought him a reply, thanking him, in behalf of women, for his
disinterested devotion to their cause, assuring him of her own
appreciation of his services, and saying that she would reach
Springfield--Wednesday morning.
Meanwhile he had had no letter from Amelia, and he began to wonder at
her silence. He was not only disappointed, but piqued. He felt that his
achievement deserved the promptest recognition from her, but he found a
consolation, that grew in spite of him, in the thought that Maria Greene
would soon be in Springfield, and to his heart he permitted Amelia's
silence to justify him in a freer indulgence of attention to this
fascinating woman lawyer.
Tuesday evening the crowd, that grows larger as the session nears its
close, filled the lobby of the Leland. The night was warm, and to the
heat of politics was suddenly added the heat of summer. Doors and
windows were flung wide to the night, and the tall Egyptians, used as
they were to the sultry atmospheres of southern Illinois, strode lazily
about under their wide slouch hats with waistcoats open and cravats
loosened, delighting in a new cause for chaffing the Chicago men, who
had resumed their customary complaints of the Springfield weather.
The smoke of cigars hung in the air. The sound of many voices, the ring
of heavy laughter, the shuffle of feet over the tiles, the clang of the
clerk's gong, the incessant chitter of a telegraph instrument that sped
news to Chicago over the _Courier's_ private wire, all these influences
surcharged the heavy air with a nervous excitement that made men speak
quickly and their eyes glitter under the brilliant lights of countless
electric bulbs. There was in that atmosphere the play of myriad hopes
and ambitions, political, social, financial. Special delegations of
eminent lawyers, leading citizens and prominent capitalists were down
from Chicago to look after certain measures of importance. Newspaper
correspondents hurried from group to group, gathering bits of
information to be woven into their night's despatches.
Late in the evening the governor came over from the mansion, and his
coming stirred the throng with a new sensation. His secretary was by his
side, and they mingled a while with the boys, as the governor called
them, after the politician's manner. Half a dozen congressmen were
there, thinking always of renomination. Over in one corner sat a United
States senator, his high hat tilted back on his perspiring brow. A group
of men had drawn their chairs about him; they laughed at his stories.
One was aware that the speaker's apartments upstairs were crowded. One
could easily imagine it; the door of his inner room, as men came and
went, opening now and then, and giving a glimpse of the speaker himself,
tired and worn under the strain that would tell so sorely on him before
another week could bring his labors and his powers and his glories to an
end. Through all that hotel that night, in lobby and in bar-room, on the
stairs, in the side halls and up and down in the elevators, throbbed the
fascination of politics, which men play not so much for its ends as for
its means.
Vernon was of this crowd, moving from one group to another, smoking,
laughing, talking. His heart may have been a little sore at the thought
of Amelia's strange neglect of him, but the soreness had subsided until
now it was but a slight numbness which he could forget at times, and
when he did think of it, it but gave him resolution to play the game
more fiercely.
He knew that it was incumbent on him to make sure of the adoption of the
resolution on the morrow. He had already spoken to the
lieutenant-governor and had promise of recognition. But he realized that
it would be wise to make a little canvass, though he had no doubt that
all was well, and that by the next night he could mingle with this crowd
serene and happy in the thought that his work was done; perhaps he might
even spend the evening in the company of Maria Greene. His heart gave a
little leap at this new and happy thought, and if the remembrance of
Amelia came back just at that instant, its obtrusion only made his eyes
burn the brighter.
He found it pleasant as he threaded his way through the crowd to halt
senators as he met them and say:
"Well, the woman-suffrage resolution comes up to-morrow. You'll be for
it, of course?"
It gave him such a legislative and statesmanlike importance to do this.
As he was going leisurely about this quest, testing some of the
sensations of a parliamentary leader, Cowley, the correspondent of the
_Courier_, accosted him, and, showing his teeth in that odd smile of
his, asked if he cared to say anything about the resolution.
"Only that it comes up as a special order in the morning, and that I
have no doubt whatever of its adoption by the Senate."
"Have you assurances from--"
"From everybody, and every assurance," said Vernon. "They're all for it.
Come and have a cigar."
They went over to the cigar stand, and when they had lighted their
cigars Cowley said:
"Let's go out for a little walk; I may be able to tell you something
that will interest you."