Her Infinite Variety Part 11

"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 fas.h.i.+on.

"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 pa.s.sed 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 bra.s.s 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."

"Nonsense," said Vernon, "come on. I'll deliver you to Mrs.

Hodge-Lathrop in a minute; then you'll be perfectly safe. Besides, you have your lobbying to do."

They reached the Senate entrance, and the doorkeeper, seeing a senator, opened a way through the crowd for their pa.s.sage. There was confusion everywhere, the nervous and excited hum of voices from the floor, from the vestibule, from the galleries, from all around. And just as they stepped up to the raised floor whereon the desks of senators are placed, the gavel fell, and stillness with it. They saw the lieutenant-governor leaning over his desk, studying a slip of paper he held in his hand.

"On this question," he said, "the yeas are thirty and the nays are seventeen; and two-thirds of the members-elect having failed to vote in the affirmative, the resolution is lost."