“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 cocked his head on one side, sparrow-wise, looked for a moment at the young man and piped, “You’re a brassy 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 God!
So it came to pass 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 75oratorical flight, munching a sandwich to relieve his brain, while the multitude 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 passing 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,” assented 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 passed. He went on: “Oh, she could hold me–she could hold me–I think!”