The High Calling

The judge turned very red, and was on the point of replying. But

Maxwell broke in.

"This is aside from the question, Senator. The main fact you ignore. The main fact is that what you are planning to do will split the party."

Paul lost his temper.

"Let it split, then! I don't worship the party! What is the party by the side of the people?"

Maxwell looked shocked. I think he really felt as he looked. Paul could not have said anything more treasonable.

"Senator, you will regret those words. Mark me. You will regret it. One of the things I was going to say was–" Maxwell lowered his voice and looked around. "I was going to say that you have it in your power so to shape your own future that the governorship would come to you in two years, or the national senatorship. The party would be willing to reward a man like you–"

Paul exploded again. "Governorship! Senatorship!" he almost shouted while Maxwell looked apprehensively at the open door.

"Do you think I care about them as reward for political slavery?" Then he suddenly realised how useless it was to let a man like Maxwell understand.

"Gentlemen," he said good naturedly, "excuse me. The occasion does not call for excitement. I understand your purpose in coming to see me. It will save your time and mine to say that I shall not change my plans to press these bills even if the result is to disrupt the party. And you are as free to say that as I expect to be in my editorial this evening."

Maxwell nervously interrupted.

"You are committing political suicide, Mr. Douglas."

"That's better than hari kari, eh?" said Douglas with a smile.

Maxwell stared. He had heard of hari kari perhaps, but did not know whether it was the name of a new type of airship or a health food. He went away with his two friends, firmly convinced, however, that the editor of the News was on the road to political destruction.

After Paul had written his editorial for the News he was not certain himself that he had not really done what Maxwell predicted. He had certainly never spoken so plainly and even bluntly on the issues of the campaign, and he knew perfectly well that the Maxwell political type dominated thousands of voters, men who resent any act in politics which threatens to disarrange the smooth running of the machine. In politics it is almost as easy to raise a howl against reform as it is to raise a cry for it. There are thousands of party men in this republic who as long as they can make their bread and butter out of machine politics don't care what price the people have to pay for their bread and butter.

When Paul went home that night he did what he had done for twenty-one years. The minute he was in the hall, he said, "Esther?" with an interrogation point after the name.

Esther was upstairs in the upper hall. She replied in a subdued tone, "Yes, here I am," and Paul ran up three steps at a time to greet her. Marriage may be a failure with some people, but it certainly was not with Paul and Esther who had remained lovers all these years, simply because they had made their married life a joyful, sacred and deeply Christian compact, a genuine union of heart and head and soul. Paul wrote love letters to his wife, sent her flowers and in general courted her in much the same fashion Esther had known when Paul was a struggling reporter. And Esther kept herself bonny for his sake, entered in whole-souled fashion into his ambitions and was not afraid to debate politics with him and keep womanly. One great secret of their joyful married life was found in the perfect frankness each showed the other, and also in the blessed fact that each of them had almost a perfect physical constitution, not frayed nor tortured with nerves and sensitiveness.

The minute Paul saw Esther he knew some unusual event had occurred. Paul was quick to detect the presence of any new thing because Esther's expressive face could never hide a great secret. Paul was on the point of asking what it was when his eye was attracted by a commotion going on behind the door of a cedar linen closet at the end of the hall. There was a sudden wrenching and tearing of cloth, then a great Jovian sized laugh, the door burst open and a huge figure stepped out into the hall where Esther stood laughing hard.

"George Randall!" cried Paul, and the next minute he and his old pupil were in each other's arms.

"As big as ever," cried Paul, as he stepped back to look at his unexpected visitor.

"Bigger," said George, grinning. "Mrs. Douglas, if you'll get a needle and thread I'll mend my coat. You see, I just stepped in there to surprise you a minute and I backed up against a hook and it caught right under my collar and tore half of it off. What makes you make your closets so small?"

While Paul was overwhelming Randall with greetings and questions, and Mrs. Douglas was sewing on the medical missionary's coat collar, Randall was explaining his unexpected appearance in Milton.

"You see I've been transferred to Feu Chou Fu, the new hospital there. I've been called home by the board to help raise funds for the plant. I left so sudden I didn't have time to write you and I wasn't certain either that I would come here. But my father! Do you know about what's happened to him?"

"No," said Paul. "I knew he'd been travelling with your mother for her health, but I haven't seen either of them for two years since they went abroad the last time."

"My father is going to be a Christian! He and mother never took kindly to my going as a medical missionary, but last year they stopped to see me at Shaowu. I didn't know it at the time, but father was tremendously impressed with the missionary situation. Then over at Ponasang, father was taken ill, and what should happen to him providentially but he had to go to our hospital there. Dr. Wilder fixed up his body, and what is more he reached his soul, and father wrote me just before I left Feu Chou Fu that he had found the light after living in the dark all his life, and at the close of his letter said he and mother were on their way home to Milton and wanting to know how he could best serve the cause of Christ. I hardly slept all the way over to Vancouver for the joy of lying awake thinking of it. A cable from father reached me this morning from San Francisco, saying they would be at Milton next week. They sailed by way of Auckland and Honolulu. So I thought I might as well come and board with Mrs. Douglas and you until they arrived. You can open a can of something, and that will do for me, and I can hang myself up in the closet if you are short of beds.

"But won't father and I have a jolly time when he gets back? I won't ask him for more than half a million to start with to put into the surgical department. Poor old pater! He has never had any fun with his old money. I'm going to help him have the time of his life now spending it for Christ and the Kingdom. My! But won't we have a jolly lot of fun with that money now?"

That evening at the supper table George Randall simply fascinated the whole company with his stories of Chinese life and the victories of the gospel. Esther invited in her brothers, Walter and Louis. Felix Bauer had never seen anyone like Randall, and he sat the whole evening absorbed, listening to the recital of as marvellous a story of conquest as any to be found in the chapters of Caesar, Frederick the Great or Napoleon. And what a conquest! Not war and pillage and pitiful man's ambition for power, but conquest of that great territory called the human heart.

"My, but I wish you folks could have seen what I saw there months ago at Shantung; five thousand people stood up in a public square in front of one of the old temples, no one knows how old, and threw thousands of idols into a heap on the ground and burned them, and then sang in their own language to our tune, 'Anywhere With Jesus I Can Safely Go.' For five days, much of the time through a pouring rain, more than five thousand people met to listen to the gospel of light and life and healing. We rigged up a sort of field hospital, using part of the temple for a clinic, and Walter and Rice and Colfax and I cut off legs and arms and heads of no end of diseased folks and operated for compound cataract and every known and unknown disease, and the Lord was with us. We didn't lose a case, and you never saw or heard such sights in prosaic money-loving America. Why, those people are born again! That whole district is simply awake out of several centuries' sleep. I have the consent of the high powers in that district to negotiate over here for a lot of machinery and stuff for agricultural purposes. And those people are putting up a church at Angfu that will beat any church in Milton for work and worship. Think of that, beloved! In a country that has stood still for twenty-five centuries, worshipping the past and bowing down to nineteen thousand filthy gods, you can hear 'My Faith Looks Up to Thee' and 'All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name' sung by congregations so big that they have to meet out doors. And yet I understand from reading one or two high-browed religious magazines printed in this country that the old gospel has lost its power and that the world must have a new brand of religion of the hermetically canned variety suited to the elevated culture and new thought of the times. But the old gospel seems to do the work in China all right. At any rate it makes real men and women out of animals, and changes sinners into saints. I don't know any test of a religion bigger than that, do you?"

Paul asked one or two questions and started Randall off on an account of a missionary tour into the unexplored parts of west China. Then he spoke of the contemptuous criticism offered by a certain type of globe trotters he had met on his way home. In telling about this his great form seemed to tower up and his great head with its mild blue eyes looked sternly gigantic with righteous indignation.

"There was a bunch of naval officers coming over on the Zarina with us, and some of them were quite fine fellows. But there was one officer who used to get out with the author of a book on the Eastern situation, and they would spend hours criticising the missionaries and laying the blame on them for all the Boxer troubles and the hatred of foreigners generally.

"I didn't know until later on that the reason for the distinguished author's feelings against missionaries was because some of his own personal immoralities had been rebuked by a missionary in Pao Ting Fu and he had been mad ever since.

"His friend, the naval officer (and I was thankful he didn't belong to our country), took great pride in describing his conquests with the fair sex in the different quarters of the globe where he had been on his war vessel.

"Think of that, dearly beloved! Here was a man who when he touched at a foreign port had no more exact knowledge of the work done by missionaries than the knowledge he gained from going to a high-priced ball or champagne supper held a few feet from the shore, expressing the most emphatic opinions concerning the value of a foreign missionary's life and influence! He changed his costume several times a day. And I learned from a midshipman who volunteered the information that the following comprises the regular and compulsory list of clothes a naval officer in this Christian age is obliged to possess and solemnly wear on the proper occasions. Want to hear it?"

Louis, who had of late been begging his father to let him try for a place in a naval academy, eagerly said, "Yes, tell us, Mr. Randall."

"Well, here is a list of this human being's clothes that he must, according to the naval rules, lug around the world with him:

"A double-breasted frock coat of dark navy blue cloth with a sleeve stripe of gold lace a quarter of an inch wide and a gold star, which indicates the line officer. 'Service coat of blue cloth and with the same sleeve lace and a gold foul anchor on the collar.' 'White service coat with gold shoulder marks indicating the rank.' 'Evening dress coat of blue cloth with gilt buttons and sleeve lace.' 'Blue evening dress waistcoat with gilt buttons.' 'Whiteevening dress coat.' 'White mess jacket.' 'Full dress trousers of blue cloth and gold lace a quarter-inch wide.' 'Undress blue trousers, plain.' 'White trousers and many of them.' 'Service overcoat of heavy blue cloth.' 'Cloak of blue cloth.' 'A black mackintosh.' 'Blue uniform cap.' 'White uniform cap.' 'Cork or pith helmet.' 'Sword with sword knot.' 'Leggings.' 'A suit of rain clothes.' 'Black satin or silk, four-in-hand tie.' 'Plain black tie for evening dress uniform.' 'White gloves.' 'Black shoes.' 'White shoes.'"

In the pause that followed this reading, Louis looked disappointed.

"Would I have to get all these and take care of them if I went into the navy?"

"That's right, my boy, and not only get 'em but wear 'em at the proper times. My! Think of how you would have to hustle yourself out of one suit into another in order not to break some rule of naval etiquette."

"And think of Louis," said Helen, "who can't find his clothes in the morning when he has only one suit to look after, keeping track of all that. Why, that is enough to give a girl nervous prostration, to say nothing of a boy."

"I guess I don't want to enter the navy," said Louis in disgust.

Everybody roared, and then Randall said gravely:

"Do you know, beloved, that while I pray the Lord every day to keep me from judging my fellow men, I just couldn't for the life of me help passing judgment on a civilised custom which keeps alive all this war fuss and feathers and asking men made in God's image to strut around in all this gilt and lace toggery when immortal creatures are starving to death by the million for the bread of life. And I just couldn't keep still when day after day I heard on deck this naval fashion plate girding at men and women whose plain shoes he wasn't worthy to black. One day I up and gave him some real information about missionaries. He had to listen, and when I got through, to my great joy, a plainly dressed gentleman corroborated what I said and went me several better, saying that the real awakening of China and Turkey and Japan and India was due to the great work done by the missionaries. During his talk it turned out he was the British Consul at Hong Kong, quietly travelling home by way of America. I haven't had anything do me more good in years than that little incident."

The Douglas family stayed up late that night and two nights following.

Then Randall went to his father's, to the great regret of all.

Two weeks after that Felix Bauer, who was getting more out of this visit at his friend's than he had ever experienced before, went into the library and sat down by the long table. The family was scattered, Paul at his office, Esther in the kitchen, Walter visiting some old friends out at the college, Louis not yet home from his uncle's. Felix picked up a magazine and began to read. He was fairly started in a story when Helen came in. Bauer instantly arose and bowed in his slow but pleasant manner. Helen went over to a favourite seat of hers in the corner of the library and sat down, looking at Bauer earnestly.

CHAPTER VIII

FELIX BAUER very seldom began a conversation with anyone and on this occasion he did not venture to say anything first. During his whole stay in the house, Helen had learned that fact about his habits as a talker. He was a splendid listener and that made him popular with anyone who talked to him. If you want to be popular you don't have to be a brilliant talker. Being a brilliant listener is better.

But Helen had a touch of her father's stubbornness on certain occasions. She was not in any sense what could be called a flirt, or a girl who planned, out of a set purpose, to make a conquest or use her powers of attractiveness to disturb the peace of her young men acquaintances. But she was vain to a certain degree, and she knew when she looked in her mirror that she was unusually attractive, as every beautiful woman knows, and Felix Bauer was different from the other young men she knew. She said to herself as she looked across the room at him that he was certainly no fashion plate and was in fact extremely plain looking, all but his eyes, and Helen acknowledged that Walter was right when he wrote that Bauer had the most beautiful brown eyes he ever saw in a human being. When Helen was a little girl she had once seen Phillips Brooks, and she had never forgotten his wonderful eyes. Bauer's were like that. She could not help wondering what sort of people his parents were and what his home life was. The stubborn feeling prompted her to say to herself, "I'll make him speak first. He doesn't need to be so stupid. And besides it is not gentlemanly in him always to wait for the other person to begin."

She was working at some piece of embroidery, which is an advantage in helping one in situations of possible embarrassment to keep up an appearance, at least, of self-possession. And the pattern being a difficult one gave her the excuse of keeping her eyes fixed on her work most of the time. She sat there in the corner absolutely dumb, waiting for Bauer to speak. A noisy little clock on the shelf over the grate ticked away at least three minutes. Bauer opened his lips once or twice as if to say a word, but nothing came of it. He looked at Helen almost appealingly and once he seemed on the point of leaving the room. But Helen's eyes were fixed on her work and the silence was unbroken by any movement.

At last Helen looked up after a longer period than any other, and to her disgust saw that Bauer had picked up the magazine he had dropped when she came in, and had resumed his reading, or at least seemed to have done so.

For a minute she looked and felt vexed. "The horrid creature!" she exclaimed to herself, and then out loud she said in a sweet voice:

"Is that an interesting story you are reading?"

Bauer instantly closed the magazine and put it on the table.

"I don't know yet. I haven't finished it."

"Were you going to?"

"Yes, some time."

"Can't you tell me what the story is about?"

"It's about two people," said Bauer tamely.

"Is that all?" asked Helen after a pause on Bauer's part of several seconds.

"They start out with a ridiculous misunderstanding and it seems to be getting worse."

Helen looked amused and said, "Won't you go on?"

"The young woman thinks the young man is in love with her. He isn't at all—that is—not yet, but he is afraid he will be."

"Afraid? Is the girl so bad looking as that?"

"No, she is enough good looking to make up for both of them. And he is in some need of it."

Helen laughed. "These magazine stories are the most absurd things that ever were printed."

"I think so myself."

"What makes you read them then?"

"I was just doing it to pass the time."

"That's flattering."

"Flattering?"

"Yes."

Bauer was silent thirty seconds. Then he said, "Flattering to whom?"

"To me, isn't it?"

Bauer's face was a study. Helen laughed again.

"Why didn't you speak to me when I came in?"

"I didn't know you wanted to talk." Bauer looked actually hurt.

"Honest?"

"How could I know you wanted to talk."

"A woman always cares, Mr. Bauer."

"You seemed intent on your work and I am no mind reader."

"I had made up my mind not to speak first. But I broke my determination." The noisy little clock made itself prominent during the next half minute and then Bauer, to Helen's surprise, actually led off with a question.

"Would you tell me what you are making?"

Helen held up her work. "It's a sofa pillow cover. I'm making it for

Walter."

Bauer looked at it gravely. Helen would not have been surprised if any one of a dozen of her men friends had said, "I'd give anything for one like it."

But Bauer simply said, "It's beautiful. Walter is fortunate."

"We are all grateful for your friendship with Walter. It's meant a great deal to him," said Helen with a burst of frankness.

"His means everything to me. I can't tell you all it means."

Another period was marked by the demonstrative clock and then suddenly Helen said, "Mr. Bauer, I wish you would tell me something about your folks, and your home."

The simple question smote Bauer like a blow in his face. Instantly he said to himself, "Walter has not told the family about me, about the disgrace, about the ruined home." And at first he felt hurt that Walter had not put the family on their guard. It was not fair to expose him to such questions. How could a girl like Helen Douglas possibly be made a sharer in his tragedy? His father had been a small diplomat at Washington. His mother a high spirited American girl whose ambition had suddenly terminated on the eve of her husband's promotion to a higher post of responsibility, through a scandal that involved both her husband and herself. Both of them were in the wrong, and nothing but unusual effort on the part of those interested had kept the affair out of the papers, at least to a great extent, and besides, the numerous accounts of such home tragedies lessened the emphasis placed on this one, so that Bauer knew that the Douglas family, outside of the editor himself and Walter, were not associating him with an event which left him alone in the world to bear a disgrace that seemed at times to overwhelm him.

But while Felix Bauer was simple hearted and clear souled as day himself, he did possess to a remarkable degree the power of self-possession and self-restraint. His soul had already to a certain degree learned the sad lesson of bearing disaster with calm inward poise. Whatever the tragedy might mean to him in the future, he was not so poor spirited as to let it ruin his own development or poison the peace of others. So he was able to say, after what seemed to Helen only a natural hesitation:

"My people were both born in Germany. My mother was the daughter of the American Consul. I was born in this country. That accounts for my being so good a patriot."

"And I suppose it also accounts for your unusually good use of English.

Do you know you speak very correct and pure English, Mr. Bauer?"

"No, do I?"

"Yes, that is, what little you speak," said Helen with a smile. "Do you want to know what I asked Walter in one of my letters?"

"Yes," said Bauer, blushing.

"I asked him if you spoke broken English very badly?"

Bauer did not reply to this and Helen came back to the question of his home life.

"Do your folks live in Washington now?"

"Yes, that is"—all Bauer's self restraint could not avoid betraying something, and Helen looked at him quickly, and her quick eager mind could not avoid detecting something wrong. She would not for the world have been guilty of a vulgar curiosity or an intrusion into another's secret, and she had enough tact to say at once:

"I've always wanted to go to Washington. Father has promised to take me some time. There must be a great deal of happiness there?"

Bauer looked at her, his great eyes calmly sad. Then he quoted:

"'Gluck und Glas wie bald bricht das?'"

Helen did not know enough German to understand.

"Would you mind translating?"

"'Happiness and glass, how soon they are broken.'"

"You mean some kinds of happiness, don't you?" asked Helen timidly.

"Yes, some kinds."

"I hope you have had some of the unbreakable kind during your visit here?"

"Yes." But down deep in his quiet soul Felix Bauer was almost saying to himself, "Will it be for me the heart-breaking kind of happiness?"

After another interlude, which the assertive clock took advantage of,

Helen said, "I wish you would tell me something about your work at

Burrton."

"My work?"

"Yes, your shop work. Your invention work. You know we were all terribly disappointed that you and Walter did not get the patent. But there are a great many other chances to discover things, aren't there?"

"Well, yes. I suppose there are." Bauer began to wake up mentally. His face took on an alert look and the glow of the born inventor enveloped his whole being. "You see, Miss Douglas, the field of electricity is in one sense limitless. We know so little about it. And I suppose it is true that new things are possible to an extent beyond our imagination."

"You mean inventions?"

"Yes?"

"That's what interests me particularly. I should think it would be awfully fascinating to find new things."