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.”
