“But, Tom,” remonstrated Henry as he looked at the ground, “it’s nothing to me of course, but Lizzie–”
“Ah, Henry,” Van Dorn laughed gayly, “I’m not going to hurt Lizzie. She’s good fun: that’s all. And now look here, Mr. Preacher–you come moralizing around me about what I’m doing to some one else, which after all is not my business but hers; and I’m right here to tell you, what you’re doing to yourself, and that’s your business and no one’s else. You’re drinking too much. People are talking about it. Quit it! Whisky never won a jury. In the Morse case you loaded up for your speech and I beat you because in all your agonizing about the wrong to old man Müller and his ‘pretty brown-eyed daughter’ as you called her, you forgot slick and clean the flaw in Morse’s deed.”
“I suppose you’re right, Tom. But I was feeling kind of off that day, mother’d been sick the night before and–”
“And so you filled up with a lot of bad whisky and driveled and wept and stumbled through the case and I beat you. I tell you, Henry, I keep myself fit. I have no time to look after others. My job is myself and you’ll find that unless you look after yourself no one else will, at least whisky won’t. If 20I find girling is beating me in my law cases I quit girling. But it doesn’t. Lord, man, the more I know of human nature, the more I pick over the souls of these country girls and blow open the petals of their pretty hearts, the wiser I am.”
“But the girls, Tom–the girls–” protested the somber-eyed Mr. Fenn.
“Ah, I don’t hurt ’em and they like it. And so long as your whisky hamestrings you and my girls give me what I need in my business–don’t talk to me.”
Tom Van Dorn left Fenn at his mother’s door and as Fenn saw his friend turn toward the south he called, “Aren’t you going to your room?”
“Why, it’s only eleven o’clock,” answered Van Dorn. To the inquiring silence Van Dorn called, “I’m going down to see Lizzie.”
Henry Fenn stood looking at his friend, who explained: “That’s all right. I said I’d be down to-night and she’ll wait.”
“Well–” said Fenn. But Van Dorn cut him short with “Now, Henry, I can take care of myself. Lizzie can take care of herself–and you’re the only one of us who, as I see it, needs careful nursing!” And with that he went striding away.