As she slept young Thomas Van Dorn walked alone under the elm trees that plumed over the sidewalks in those environs with hands clasped behind him, occasionally gazing into the twinkling stars of the summer night, considering rather seriously many things. He had come out to think over his speech to the jury the next day in a murder case pending in the court. But the murderer kept sinking from his consciousness; the speech would not shape itself to please him, and the young lawyer was forever meeting rather squarely and abruptly the vision of Laura Nesbit, who seemed to be asking him disagreeable and conclusive questions, which he did not like to answer. Was she worth it--the sacrifice that marriage would require of him? Was he in love with her? What is love anyway?
Wherein did it differ from certain other pleasurable emotions, to which he was not a stranger? And why was the consciousness of her growing larger and larger in his life? He tried to whistle reflectively, but he had no music in his soul and whistling gave him no solace.
It was midnight when he found himself walking past the Nesbit home, looking toward it and wondering which of the open windows was nearest to her. He flinched with shame when he recollected himself before other houses gazing at other windows, and he unpursed his lips that were wont to whistle a signal, and went down the street shuddering. Then after an impulse in which some good angel of remorse shook his teeth to rouse his soul, he lifted his face to the sky and would have cried in his heart for help, but instead he smiled and went on, trying to think of his speech and resolving mightily to put Laura Nesbit out of his heart finally for the night. He held himself to his high resolve for four or five minutes. It is only fair to say that the white clad figure of the Doctor coming clicking up the street with his cane keeping time to a merry air that he hummed as he walked distracted the young man. His first thought was to turn off and avoid the Doctor who came along swinging his medicine case gayly. But there rushed over Van Dorn a feeling that he would like to meet the Doctor. He recognized that he would like to see any one who was near to Her. It was a pleasing sensation. He coddled it. He was proud of it; he knew what it meant. So he stopped the preoccupied figure in white, and cried, "Doctor--we"re late to-night!"
"Well, Tom, I"ve got a right to be! Two more people in Harvey to-night than were here at five o"clock this afternoon because I am a trifle behindhand. Girl at your partner"s--Joe Calvin"s, and a boy down at d.i.c.k Bowman"s!" He paused and smiled and added musingly, "And they"re as tickled down at d.i.c.k"s as though he was heir to a kingdom!"
"And Joe--I suppose--not quite--"
"Oh, Joe, he"s still in the barn, I dropped in to tell him it was a girl. But he won"t venture into the house to see the mother before noon to-morrow! Then he"ll go when she"s asleep!"
"d.i.c.k really isn"t more than two jumps ahead of the wolf, is he, Doctor?"
"Well," grinned the elder man, "maybe a jump-and-a-half or two jumps."
The young man exclaimed, "Say, Doctor! I think it would be a pious act to make the fellows put up fifty dollars for d.i.c.k to-night. I"ll just go down and raid a few poker games and make them do it."
The Doctor stopped him: "Better let me give it to d.i.c.k if you get it, Tom!" Then he added, "Why don"t you keep Christian hours, boy? You can"t try that Yengst case to-morrow and be up all night!"
"That"s just what I"m out here for, Doctor--to get my head in shape for the closing speech."
"Well," sniffed the Doctor, "I wish you no bad luck, but I hope you lose. Yengst is guilty, and you"ve no business--"
"Doctor," cut in Van Dorn, "there"s not a penny in the Yengst case for me! He was a poor devil in trouble and he came to my office for help! Do you consider the morals of your sick folks--whether they have lived virtuous and upright lives when they come to you stricken and in pain?
They"re just sick folks to you in your office, and they"re just poor devils in trouble for me."
The Doctor c.o.c.ked his head on one side, sparrow-wise, looked for a moment at the young man and piped, "You"re a bra.s.sy pup, aren"t you!"
A second later the Doctor was trudging up the street, homeward, humming his bee-like song. Van Dorn watched him until his white clothes faded into the shades of the night, then he turned and walked slowly townward, with his hands behind him and his eyes on the ground. He forgot the Yengst case, and everything else in the universe except a girl"s gray eyes, her radiant face, and the glory of her aspiring soul. It was calling with all its power to Tom Van Dorn to rise and shine and take up the journey to the stars. And when one hears that call, whether it come from man or maid, from friend or brother, or sweetheart or child, or from the challenge within him of the holy spirit, when he heeds its call, no matter where he is while he hears, he walks with G.o.d!
So it came to pa.s.s the next day that Thomas Van Dorn went before the jury and pleaded for the murderer in the Yengst case with the tongue of men and of angels. For he knew that Dr. Nesbit was loitering in the clerk"s office, adjoining the courtroom to listen to the plea. Every faculty of his mind and every capacity of his body was awake, and they said around the court house that it was "the speech of Tom"s life!" The Doctor on the front steps of the courthouse met the young man in the daze that follows an oratorical flight, munching a sandwich to relieve his brain, while the mult.i.tude made way for him as he went to his office.
"Well, Tom--" piped the Doctor as he grasped the sweaty, cold hands of the young orator, "if Yengst had been innocent do you suppose you could have done as well?"
Van Dora, gave his sandwich to a pa.s.sing dog, and took the Doctor"s arm as they walked to their common stairway. Before they had walked a dozen steps the Doctor had unfolded a situation in local politics that needed attention, and Van Dorn could not lead the elder man back to further praises of his speech. Yet the young lawyer knew that he had moved the Doctor deeply.
That night in his office Tom Van Dorn and Henry Fenn sat with their feet in the window sill, looking through the open window into the moon. In their discourse they used that elaborate, impersonal anonymity that youth engages to carry the baggage of its intimate confidences.
"I"ve got to have a pretty woman, Henry," quoth the lawyer to his friend, while the moon blushed behind a cloud. "She must have beauty above everything, and after that good manners, and after that good blood."
The moon came out and smiled at Henry. "Tom, let me tell you something, I don"t care! I used to think I"d be pickey and choosey. But I know my own heart. I don"t care! I"m the kind of fellow, I guess, who just gets it bad and comes down all broken out with it." He turned his glowing smile into Tom Van Dorn"s face, and finding no quick response smiled whimsically back at the moon.
"Some fellows are that way, Henry," a.s.sented Van Dorn, "but not I! I couldn"t love a servant girl no matter how pretty she was--not for keeps, and I couldn"t love an ugly princess, and I"d leave a bluestocking and elope with a chorus girl if I found the bluestocking crocked or faded in the wash! Yet a beautiful woman, who remained a woman and didn"t become a moral guide--" he stared brazenly at the moon and in the cloud that whisked by he saw a score of fancies of other women whose faces had shone there, and had pa.s.sed. He went on: "Oh, she could hold me--she could hold me--I think!"
The street noises below filled the pause. Henry rose, looked eagerly into the sky and wistfully at the moon as he spoke, "Hold me? Hold me?"
he cried. "Why, Tom, though I"d fall into h.e.l.l myself a thousand times--she couldn"t lose me! I"d still--still," he faltered, "I"d still--" He did not finish, but sat down and putting his hand on the arm of his friend"s chair, he bent forward, smiled into the handsome young face in the moonlight and said: "Well--you know the kind of a fool I am, Tom--now!"
"That"s what you say, Henry--that"s what you say now." Van Dorn turned and looked at his friend. "You"re sticking it out all right, Henry--against the rum fiend--I presume? When does your sentence expire?"
"Next October," answered Fenn.
"Going to make it then?"
"That"s the understanding," returned Fenn.
"And you say you"ve got it bad," laughed Van Dorn. "And yet--say, Henry--why didn"t you do better with the jury this afternoon in the Yengst case? Doesn"t it--I mean that tremendous case you have on with the d.u.c.h.ess of Muller--doesn"t it put an edge on you? What was the matter with you to-day?"
Fenn shook his head slowly and said: "It"s different with me. I just couldn"t help feeling that if I was worth any woman"s giving herself--was worth anything as a man, I"d want to be dead square with that Yengst creature--and I got to thinking, maybe in his place, drunk and hungry--well, I just couldn"t, Tom--because--because of--well, I wanted her to marry a human being first--not a county attorney!"
"You"re a d.a.m.n fool!" retorted Van Dorn. "Do you think you"ll succeed in this world on that basis! I tell you if I was in love with a woman I"d want to take that Yengst case and lay it before her as a trophy I"d won--lay it before her like a dog!"
Fenn hesitated. He disliked to give pain. But finally he said, "I suppose, Tom, I"d like to lay it before her--like a man!"
"h.e.l.l"s delight!" sneered Van Dorn, and they turned off the subject of the tender pa.s.sion, and went to considering certain stipulations that Van Dorn was asking of the county attorney in another matter before the court.
The next day young Thomas Van Dorn began rather definitely to prepare his pleading in still another suit in another court, and before the summer"s end, Morty Sands"s mandolin was wrapped in its chamois skin bag and locked in its mahogany case. Sometimes Morty, whistling softly and dolefully, would pa.s.s the Nesbit home late at night, hoping that his chirping might reach her heart; at times he made a rather formal call upon the entire Nesbit family, which he was obviously encouraged to repeat by the elders. But Morty was inclined to hide in the thicket of his sorrow and twitter his heart out to the cold stars. Tom Van Dorn pervaded the Nesbit home by day with his flowers and books and candy, and by night--as many nights a week as he could buy, beg or steal--by night he pervaded the Nesbit home like an obstinate haunt.
He fell upon the whole family and made violent love to the Doctor and Mrs. Nesbit. He read Browning to the Doctor and did his errands in politics like a retrieving dog. Mrs. Nesbit learned through him to her great joy that the Satterthwaite, who was the maternal grandfather of the Tory governor of Maryland, was not descended from the same Satterlee hanged by King John in his war with the barons, but from the Suss.e.x branch of the family that remained loyal to the Crown. But Tom Van Dorn wasted no time or strength in foolishness with the daughter of the house. His attack upon her heart was direct and unhalting. He fended off other suitors with a kind of animal jealousy. He drove her even from so unimportant a family friend as Grant Adams.
Gradually, as the autumn deepened into winter and Tom Van Dorn found himself spending more and more time in the girl"s company he had glimpses of his own low estate through the contrast forced upon him daily by his knowledge of what a good woman"s soul was. The self-revelation frightened him; he was afraid of what he saw inside himself in those days, and there can be no doubt that for a season his soul was wrestling with its doom for release. No make-believe pa.s.sion was it that spurred him forward in his attack upon the heart of Laura Nesbit. Within him, there raged the fierce battle between the spirit of the times--cra.s.s, material and ruthless--and the spirit of things as they should be. It was the old fight between compromise and the ideal.
As for the girl, she was in that unsettled mind in which young women in their first twenties often find themselves when sensing by an instinct new to them the coming of a grown-up man with real matrimonial intentions. Given a girl somewhat above the middle height, with a slim, full-blown figure, with fair hair, curling and blowing about a pink and white face, and with solemn eyes--prematurely gray eyes, her father called them--with red lips, with white teeth that flashed when she smiled, and with a laugh like the murmur of gay waters; given a more than usual amount of inherited good sense, and combine that with a world of sentiment that perfect health can bring to a girl of twenty-two; then add one exceptionally fascinating man of thirty--more or less--a handsome young man; a successful man as young men go, with the oratorical temperament and enough of a head to be a good consulting lawyer as well as a jury lawyer with more than local reputation; add to the young man that vague social iridescence, or aura or halo that young men wear in glamor, and that old men wear in shame--a past; and then let public opinion agree that he is his own worst enemy and declare that if he only had some strong woman to take hold of him--and behold there are the ingredients of human gunpowder!
Doctor Nesbit smelled the burning powder. Vainly he tried to stamp out the fire before the explosion.
"Bedelia," said the Doctor one day, as the parents heard the girl talking eagerly with the young man, "what do you make out of this everlasting "Tom, Tom, Tom," out there in the living room?"
Mrs. Nesbit rocked in her chair and shook an ominous head. Finally she said: "I wish he"d Tom himself home and stay there, Doctor." The wife spoke as an oracle with emphasis and authority. "You must speak to the child!"
The little man puckered his loose-skinned face into a sad, absurdly pitiful smile and shrilled back:
"Yes--I did speak to her. And she--" he paused.
"Well?" demanded the mother.
"She just fed me back all the decent things I have said of Tom when he has done my errands." He drummed his fingers helplessly on his chair and sighed mournfully: "I wonder why I said those things! I really wonder!"
But the voices of the young people rose gayly and disturbed his musings.
It is easy now after a quarter of a century has unfolded its events for us to lay blame and grow wise in retrospect. It is easy to say that what happened was foredoomed to happen; and yet here was a man, walking up and down the curved verandahs that Mrs. Nesbit had added to the house at odd times, walking up and down, and speaking to a girl in the moonlight, with much power and fire, of life and his dreams and his aspirations.
Over and over he had sung his mating song. Formerly he had made love as he tried lawsuits, exhibiting only such fervor as the case required.
There can be no doubt, however, that when he made love to Laura Nesbit, it was with all the powers of his heart and mind. If he could plead with a jury for hire, if he could argue with the court and wrangle with council, how could he meet reason, combat objections, and present the case of his soul and make up the brief for his own destiny?
He did not try to shield himself when he wooed Laura Nesbit, but she saw all that he could be. A woman has her vanity of s.e.x, her elaborate, prematernal pride in her powers, and when man appeals to a woman"s powers for saving him, when he submits the proofs that he is worth saving, and when he is handsome, with an education in the lore of the heart that gives him charm and breaks down reserves and barriers--but these are bygones now--bygones these twenty-five years and more. What was to be had to be, and what might have been never was, and what their hopes and high aims were, whose hearts glowed in the fires of life in Harvey so long ago--and what all our vain, unfruited hopes are worth, only a just G.o.d who reads us truly may say. And a just G.o.d would give to the time and the place, the spirit of the age, its share in all that followed.
CHAPTER VIII