Her Infinite Variety

XI

NONE of the ladies relaxed at Vernon’s approach, Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop least of all. On the contrary she seemed to swell into proportions that were colossal and terrifying, and when Vernon came within her sphere of influence his manner at once subdued itself into an apology.

“Why, Amelia—Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop!” he cried, “and Mrs. Standish, Mrs. Barbourton, Mrs. Trales, Mrs. Langdon—how do you do?”

He went, of course, straight to Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop’s side, the side that sheltered Amelia, and he tried to take the hands of both women at once. Amelia gave him hers coldly, without a word and without a look. He grew weak, inane, and laughed uneasily.

“Delightful morning,” he said, “this country air down here is—”

“Morley,” said Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, severely, “take that seat at the foot of the table.”

He obeyed, meekly. The ladies, he thought, from the rustle of their skirts, withdrew themselves subtly. The only glances they vouchsafed him were side-long and disapproving. He found it impossible to speak, and so waited. He could not recall having experienced similar sensations since those menacing occasions of boyhood when he had been sent to the library to await his father’s coming.

“Delightful morning, indeed!” Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop said, in her most select tones. “Delightful morning to bring us poor old ladies down into the country!”

“I bring you down!” ejaculated Vernon.

“Morley,” she said, “I don’t wish to have one word from you, not one; do you understand? Your talent for speech has caused trouble enough as it is. Lucky we shall be if we can undo the half of it!”

Vernon shrank.

“Morley Vernon,” Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop continued, “do you know what I have a notion to do?”

“No, Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop,” he said in a very little voice.

“Well, sir, I’ve a notion to give you a good spanking.”

Vernon shot a glance at her.

“Oh, you needn’t look, sir,” she continued, “you needn’t look! It wouldn’t be the first time, as you well know—and it isn’t so many years ago—and I have your mother’s full permission, too.”

The chain of ladylike sympathy that passed about the table at this declaration was broken only when its ends converged on Vernon. Even then they seemed to pinch him.

“Your poor, dear mother,” Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop went on, “insisted, indeed, on coming down herself, but I knew she could never stand such a trip. I told her,” and here Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop paused for an instant, “I told her that I thought I could manage.”

There was a vast significance in this speech.

The waiter had brought the substantials to the ladies, and Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop began eating determinedly.

“It was, of course, just what I had always predicted,” she went on, in a staccato that was timed by the rise of her fork to her lips, “I knew that politics would inevitably corrupt you, soon or late. And now it has brought you to this.”

“To what?” asked Vernon, suddenly growing bold and reckless. Amelia had not given him one glance; she was picking at her chop.

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, raising her gold glasses and setting them aristocratically on the bridge of her nose, fixed her eyes on Vernon.

“Morley,” she said, “we know. We have heard and we have read. The Chicago press is an institution that, fortunately, still survives in these iconoclastic days. You know very well, of course, what I mean. Please do not compel me to go into the revolting particulars.” She took her glasses down from her nose, as if that officially terminated the matter.

“But really, Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop,” said Vernon. He was growing angry, and then, too, he was conscious somehow that Miss Greene was looking at him. His waiter, John, timidly approached with a glance at the awful presence of Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, and said:

“Yo’ breakfus, Senato’, is gettin’ col’.”

“That may wait,” said Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, and John sprang back out of range.

Vernon was determined, then, to have it out.

“Really, Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop, jesting aside—”

“Jesting!” cried Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, “jesting! Indeed, my boy, this is quite a serious business!” She tapped with her forefinger.

“Well, then, all right,” said Vernon, “I don’t know what I’ve done. All I have done has been to champion a measure—and I may add, without boasting, I hope, with some success—all I have done has been to champion a measure which was to benefit your sex, to secure your rights, to—”

“Morley!” Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop said, cutting him short. “Morley, have you indeed fallen so low? It is incomprehensible to me, that a young man who had the mother you have, who had the advantages you have had, who was born and bred as you were, should so easily have lost his respect for women!”

“Lost my respect for women!” cried Vernon, and then he laughed. “Now, Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop,” he went on with a shade of irritation in his tone, “this is too much!”

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop was calm.

“Have you shown her any respect?” she went on. “Have you not, on the contrary, said and done everything you could, to drag her down from her exalted station, to pull her to the earth, to bring her to a level with men, to make her soil herself with politics, by scheming and voting and caucusing and buttonholing and wire-pulling? You would have her degrade and unsex herself by going to the polls, to caucuses and conventions; you would have her, no doubt, in time, lobbying for and against measures in the council chamber and the legislature.”

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop paused and lifted her gold eye-glasses once more to the bridge of her high, aristocratic nose.

“Is it that kind of women you have been brought up with, Morley? Do we look like that sort? Glance around this table—do we look like that sort of women?”

The ladies stiffened haughtily, disdainfully, under the impending inspection, knowing full well how easily they would pass muster.

“And, if that were not enough,” Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop went on inexorably, “we come here to plead with you and find you hobnobbing with that mannish thing, that female lawyer!”

She spoke the word female as if it conveyed some distinct idea of reproach. She was probing another chop with her fork. She had sent the pot of coffee back to the kitchen, ordering the waiter to tell the cook that she was accustomed to drink her coffee hot.

“And now, Morley Vernon, listen to me,” she said, as if he were about to hear the conclusion of the whole matter. “If you have any spark of honor left in you, you will undo what you have already done. This resolution must be defeated in the Senate to-day; I am down here to see that it is done. We go to the State House after breakfast, and these ladies will assist me in laying before each member of the Senate this matter in its true and exact light. As for our rights,” she paused and looked at him fixedly, “as for our rights, I think we are perfectly capable of preserving them.”

Her look put that question beyond all dispute.

“And now,” she resumed, “you would better take a little breakfast yourself; you look as if you needed strength.”

Vernon rose. He stood for an instant looking at Amelia, but she glanced at him only casually.

“I suppose, Amelia, I shall see you later in the morning?”

“I suppose so, Mr. Vernon,” she said. “But pray do not let me keep you from rejoining your companion.” She was quite airy, and lifted her coffee-cup with one little finger quirked up higher than he had ever seen it before.

He went back to where Miss Greene sat, and where his breakfast lay.

“My goodness!” he said, seating himself. “I’ve had a time!”

“I should imagine so,” said Miss Greene.

She was just touching her napkin to her lips with a final air. She carefully pushed back her chair, and rose from the table.

“I beg your pardon,” he stammered, getting up himself, “I’ll see you after breakfast.”

Miss Greene bowed. Then she left the dining-room.

XII

MORLEY VERNON came out of the dining-room in a temper far different from that he had worn when he went in. His breakfast, after so many vicissitudes, was sure to be a failure, though John, striving against fate, had tried to restore the repast to its original excellence by replacing each dish with a fresh one. He affected a heroic cheerfulness, too, but the cheer was hollow, for his experience of men and of breakfasts must have taught him that such disasters can never be repaired.

Vernon, however, had heavier things on his mind. In his new position as knight-errant of Illinois womankind, he had looked forward to this day as the one of triumph; now, at its beginning, he found himself with two offended women on his hands, and two hopelessly irreconcilable mistresses to serve. He began to see that the lot of a constructive statesman is trying; he would never criticize leaders again.

The lobby of the hotel was filling rapidly, and men with their hair still damp from the morning combing were passing into the breakfast room with newspapers in their hands. In the center of the lobby, however, he saw a group of senators, and out of the middle of the group rose a dark bonnet; the flowers on the bonnet bobbed now and then decisively. Around it were clustered other bonnets, but they were motionless, and, as it were, subordinate.

“Can you tell me who that is?” asked Brooks of Alexander, jerking his thumb at the group.

“Yes,” said Vernon, “that’s General Hodge-Lathrop. She’s on her way to the front to assume command.”

“Oh!” said Brooks. “I saw something in the papers—” And he went away, reading as he walked.

Vernon looked everywhere for Miss Greene, but he could not find her. The porter at the Capitol Avenue entrance told him that she had driven over to the State House a few minutes before. Vernon was seized by an impulse to follow, but he remembered Amelia. He could not let matters go on thus between them. If only Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop were not in command; if he could get Amelia away from her for a while, if he could see her alone, he felt that explanations would be possible.

He looked at his watch; it was half-past nine; the Senate would convene at ten; the resolution would not be reached before half-past ten at any rate; and so he determined to brave Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop again. He turned back into the lobby; there she was, hobnobbing with men; she did not pass from group to group, after the manner of any other lobbyist, but by some coercion he wished he might be master of, she drew them unerringly to her side. Now she had Braidwood, the leader of the House, and chairman of the steering committee, and Porter, the leader of the Senate. She appeared to be giving them instructions.

She had set her committee on less important game; the ladies were scattered over the rotunda, each talking to a little set of men. When Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop saw Vernon coming, she turned from Braidwood and Porter and stood awaiting him. Strangely enough Braidwood and Porter stayed where they were, as if she had put them there. And Vernon reflected that he had never known them, as doubtless no one else had ever known them, to do such a thing as that before.

“Where’s Amelia?” he asked before she could speak.

“I have sent her upstairs,” said Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop, “poor child!”

Vernon wondered why “poor child.”

“It’s really too bad,” Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop continued.

“What is too bad?” demanded Vernon. He had grown sulky.

Mrs. Overman Hodge-Lathrop looked at him pityingly.

“Morley,” she said in a vast solemn tone that came slowly up from her great stays, “I can make allowances, of course. I know something of the nature of man; I will admit that that Greene woman is remarkably handsome, and of her cleverness there can be no doubt. I don’t altogether blame you.”

She paused that Vernon might comprehend to the fullest her marvelous magnanimity.

“But at the same time it has been hard on poor little Amelia. I saw no other way than to bring her down. You must go to her at once.”

She turned toward Braidwood and Porter, still standing where she had left them.

“When you have done, I’ll see you with reference to this miserable resolution; but that can wait till we are at the Capitol. This other matter comes first, of course.”

She smiled with a fat sweetness.

“And Morley,” she said, “order two carriages for us at ten o’clock. You may drive to the Capitol with us.”

And she went away.

Vernon ordered the carriages, and in turning the whole matter over in his mind he came to the conclusion that he must deal with these complications one at a time; Miss Greene, as events now had shaped themselves, would have to wait until he got over to the State House.

XIII

VERNON found Amelia in one of the hotel parlors, seated on a sofa by a window. She was resting her chin in her hand and looking down into Capitol Avenue.

“Amelia,” he said, bending over her. “What is it? tell me.”

He sat down beside her, and sought to engage one of her hands in his own, but she withdrew it, and pressed it with the other and the handkerchief in both, to her lips and chin. Vernon glanced about the respectable parlors, maintained in instant readiness for anybody that might happen along with his little comedy or his little tragedy. She continued to look obdurately out of the window.

“Amelia,” he said, “aren’t you going to speak to me? Tell me what I have done.”

Still there came no answer. He flung himself back on the sofa helplessly.

“Well,” he said, “I don’t know what it all means. I’ve tried to fathom it in the last hour, but it’s too deep for me; I give it up.” He flung out his hands to illustrate his abandonment.

“God knows,” he suddenly exclaimed, “I was only trying to do something worthy—for your sake!”

“Please don’t swear, Morley,” Amelia said.

He looked up swiftly.

“Well—” he began explosively, but he didn’t continue. He relapsed into a moody silence. He stretched his legs out before him in an ungainly attitude, with his hands plunged deep in his trousers’ pockets. Then he knitted his brows and tried to think.

“I suppose,” he said, as if he were thinking aloud, “that you expect some explanation, some apology.”

“Oh, not at all,” she said lightly, in the most musical tone she could command.

“Very well,” he said, “I wouldn’t know where to begin if you did. I’m sure I’m not aware of having—”

She began to hum softly, to herself, as it were, some tuneless air. He remembered that it was a way she had when she was angry. It was intended to show the last and utmost personal unconcern. In such circumstances the tune was apt to be an improvisation and was never melodious. Sometimes it made her easier to deal with, sometimes harder; he could never tell.

“I don’t exactly see what we are here for,” he ventured, stealing a look at her. She had no reply. He fidgeted a moment and then began drumming with his fingers on the arm of the sofa.

“Please don’t do that,” she said.

He stopped suddenly.

“If you would be good enough, kind enough,” he said it sarcastically, “to indicate, to suggest even, what I am to do—to say.”

“I’m sure I can’t,” she said. “You came. I presumed you had something to say to me.”

“Well, I have something to say to you,” Vernon went on impetuously. “Why didn’t you answer my letters? Why have you treated me this way? That’s what I want to know.”

He leaned toward her. He was conscious of two emotions, two passions, struggling within him, one of anger, almost hate, the other of love, and strangely enough they had a striking similarity in their effect upon him. He felt like reproaching, yet he knew that was not the way, and he made a desperate struggle to conquer himself.

He tried to look into her face, but she only turned farther away from him.

“I’ve spent the most miserable week I ever knew, doomed to stay here, unable to get away to go to you, and with this fight on my hands!”

“You seemed to be having a fairly good time,” the girl said.

“Now, Amelia, look here,” said Vernon, “let’s not act like children any longer; let’s not have anything so foolish and little between us.”

His tone made his words a plea, but it plainly had no effect upon her, for she did not answer. They sat there, then, in silence.

“Why didn’t you write?” Vernon demanded after a little while. He looked at her, and she straightened up and her eyes flashed.

“Why didn’t I write!” she exclaimed. “What was I to write, pray? Were not your letters full of this odious Maria Burlaps Greene? And as if that were not enough, weren’t the papers full of you two? And that speech—oh, that speech—that Portia and Helen, and ‘I fill this cup to one made up,’ ah, it was sickening!” She flirted away again.

“But, darling,” Vernon cried, “listen—you misunderstood—I meant all that for you, didn’t you understand?”

She stirred.

“Didn’t you see? Why, dearest, I thought that when you read the papers you’d be the proudest girl alive!”

Her lip curled.

“I read the papers,” she said, and then added, significantly, “this once, anyway.”

“Well, you certainly don’t intend to hold me responsible for what the papers say, do you?”

She resumed her old attitude, her elbow on the arm of the sofa, her chin in her hand, and looked out the window. And she began to hum again.

“And then,” he pressed on, “to come down here and not even let me know; why you even called me Mister Vernon when I came into the dining-room.”

“Yes,” she exclaimed, suddenly wheeling about, “I saw you come into the dining-room this morning!” Her eyes grew dark and flashed.

He regretted, on the instant.

“I saw you!” she went on. “I saw you rush up to that Maria Burlaps Greene woman, and—oh, it was horrid!”

“Her name isn’t Burlaps, dear,” said Vernon.

“How do you know her name, I’d like to know!” She put her hands to her face. He saw her tears.

“Amelia,” he said masterfully, “if you don’t stop that! Listen—we’ve got to get down to business.”

She hastily brushed the tears from her eyes. She was humming once more, and tapping the toe of her boot on the carpet, though she was not tapping it in time to her tune.

“Why did you come down without letting me know?” Vernon went on; but still she was silent.

“You might at least have given me—”

“Warning?” she said, with a keen inflection.

“Amelia!” he said, and his tone carried a rebuke.

“Well, I don’t care!” she cried. “It’s all true! You couldn’t stay for my dinner, but you could come off down here and—”

She covered her face with her hands and burst suddenly into tears. Vernon gazed at her in astonishment.

“Why, dearest!” he said, leaning over, and trying to take her in his arms. She drew away from him, and sobbed. Vernon glanced about the room helplessly. He pleaded with her, but she would not listen; neither would she be comforted, but continued to sob. Vernon, in a man’s anguish with a weeping woman, stood up.

“Amelia! Amelia!” He bent over her and spoke firmly. “You must not! Listen to me! We must go over to—”

Suddenly he stood erect, and jerked out his watch.

“Heavens!” he cried. “It’s half-past ten!”

She tried to control herself then, and sitting up, began to wipe her eyes.

“Sweetheart,” he said, “I must go now. I should have been in the Senate at ten o’clock; I hate to leave you, but I’ll explain everything when I get back.”

He waited an instant, then he went on:

“Aren’t you going to say ‘Good bye’?”

Amelia got up.

“I’ll go, too,” she said. She was still catching little sobs in her throat, now and then. Vernon looked at her in some surprise.

“Why—” he began, incredulously.

She must have divined his surprise.

“I have to help Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop,” she said, as if in explanation. “But, of course, I hate to bother you.”

“Oh, nonsense, dearest,” he said, impatiently. “Come on. Let’s start.”

“But I can’t go looking this way,” she said. She walked across the room, and standing before a mirror, wiped her eyes carefully, then arranged her hat and her veil.

“Would anybody know?” she asked, facing about for his inspection.

“Never—come on.”

They went out, and down the elevator. When they reached the entrance, Vernon looked up and down the street, but there was no carriage in sight. The street was quiet and the hotel wore an air of desertion, telling that all the political activity of Illinois had been transferred to the State House. Vernon looked around the corner, but the old hack that always stood there was not at its post.

“We’ll have to walk,” he said. “It’ll take too long for them to get a carriage around for us. It’s only a few blocks, anyway. The air will do you good.”

As they set forth in the bright morning sun they were calmer, and, having come out into public view, for the time being they dropped their differences and their misunderstandings, and began to talk in their common, ordinary fashion.

“Did Mrs. Hodge-Lathrop ask you to change me on the Ames Amendment?” Vernon asked her.

“The what?”

“The Ames Amendment; that’s the woman-suffrage measure.”

“No, do her justice; she didn’t.”

“What then?”

“She said she wanted me to work against it, that’s all.”

“Didn’t she say anything about asking me not to vote for it?”

“Well, yes; but I told her—”

“What?”

“That I wouldn’t try to influence you in the least.”

Vernon made no reply.

“No,” she went on, “I’m to work against it, of course.”

They were silent then, till suddenly she appealed to him:

“Oh, Morley, I’ve got to ask strange men, men I never met, to vote against it! How am I ever!”

She shuddered.

“It’s all very strange,” Vernon said.

XIV

THEY walked briskly down the sloping street under the railroad bridge and then up the little hill whereon sits the Capitol of Illinois. They could see the big flag high up on the dome standing out in the prairie wind, and the little flags on the House wing and the Senate wing whipping joyously, sprightly symbols of the sitting of both houses.

Now and then they heard cheers from the House wing, where the legislative riot that ends a session was already beginning. They passed into the dark and cool corridors of the State House, then up to the third floor, where members and messenger-boys, correspondents and page-boys, rushed always across from one house to the other, swinging hurriedly around the brass railing of the rotunda. It seemed that the tide of legislative life was just then setting in toward the Senate.

“Oh, Morley,” whispered Amelia, forgetting his offense, and clinging close to him, “I can’t go in there, really I can’t.”