The High Calling

by Charles M. Sheldon

FELIX BAUER sat at his bench in the electrical machine shop at Burrton just about to open a letter which had been left there late in the afternoon. The shop men sometimes brought one another's mail up from the village and Bauer, who often worked at his task without going out to tea, was glad to get his occasional letters before he finished his bench work late into the night.

Bauer's mail was not very frequent nor very heavy. After that vacation at the Douglas home, he had come back to Burrton and plunged into the work in a vain endeavour to forget Helen Douglas. He did not forget her in the least and did not try to pretend that he ever could. He had never ventured to ask if he might write to her, but Mrs. Douglas had dropped a friendly note now and then for which he was grateful and Paul had sent him a copy of Heine, which Bauer had admired on the library shelves at Milton.

The only additional letters he received were those which belonged to his correspondence with the people in Washington who were interested in his electrical patent. The circular glass incubator was finally completed, and Bauer had experimented on it to such satisfaction that it was a common joke with the boy that Bauer's electrical chickens were so thick they ate up all the currents in the shop.

Bauer could afford to take all the criticism, even the caustic remarks of Anderson the foreman, because it began to look now very much as if the stubborn, dogged, plodding German were on the road to financial success. He had been through the regular struggles necessary to make his model and get his patent. But he had finally succeeded in all the preliminary stages, his model was in the patent office, and he had even begun to receive letters from two or three manufacturing firms about putting the incubator on the market.

He was totally inexperienced in this business and needed much counsel from older heads. Anderson the foreman finally saw that Bauer had really invented a very valuable article and he came to his assistance in the final correspondence over the patent, but Bauer had some reluctance about sharing with him the correspondence over the actual manufacture and sale of the incubators, because of Anderson's unfortunate habit of antagonising the shop men in various matters. He had never been able to overcome a general distrust on the part of the students, and Bauer shared that distrust so keenly that he did not feel willing to risk any great amount of confidence in him.

Since his return from Milton, Bauer had brooded over money matters. A small inheritance from his grandfather's estate in Lausbrachen had helped him through school, and his living wants were so few that he had not suffered any from privations which most of the rich men's sons at Burrton would have considered absolutely impossible.

But a new and unknown ambition had invaded Bauer's hitherto placid and somewhat passive soul since Helen Douglas had come into his circle of interest. What was it the girl had said during that talk in the library that day when she had made a vow not to speak first and had broken it? Bauer remembered every phase of that incident; the girl's real sparkle of interest in his invention; her eager questions; her coming up to the library table and bending over Bauer's plan; her head so close to his that a stray curl of her hair had almost touched his cheek; her startled drawing back at Bauer's solemn remark about the eggs having to be good before they could hatch; her frank but entirely innocent questioning of him about his home life, and how she unknowingly hurt him; her swift realisation of something wrong and her tactful change of conversation; and then her remark about the power of money when she had asked Bauer about the possibility of his becoming rich. The girl's enthusiasm, her perfect physical animal health, her smile, her unquestioned interest in his work, her ingenuous and pure joy in life,—all affected poor Bauer so deeply that he felt as if he were walking through an apple orchard in full bloom, his feet pressing through fragrant red clover, and the apple blossom petals floating down gently, caressing his face and hands, the sky a robin egg blue and the air elixir of heaven—and then, he was suddenly recalled to the plain, dusty, weed-bordered road he was actually travelling, he, Felix Bauer, German, poor, homely, with a dishonoured family history, with no prospects worth considering and no future worth dreaming over. And the road became very dusty, and the weeds very coarse, and the sky very grey and the air very heavy for Bauer, as Helen went out of the library and left him there staring intently at the place where she had been and recalling what she had said about money.

After all, money was the great power of the world. It could buy anything, even a wife, even in these modern times. But could it buy love? Had it ever bought so divine a thing as that since the foundation of the world?

Bauer's question did not go much farther. Somehow he shrank from trying to answer it. But he brooded over the utter hopelessness of his thought of Helen as he stood, penniless and obscure, and dishonoured, as he believed, through the sin of his parents. And as his patent grew under his hands and the possibility of his really making money from it became more possible, he found himself growing possessed with the "auri fames" and nourishing it as if it were the one indispensable factor in his final possession of the one being in the whole world worth living for. He believed he could never win such a life without money. There might be some hope for him or any man with it.

The letter which he was about to open bore the Washington postmark and he took for granted it was from someone interested in the purchase of his patent rights. He opened it in his usual slow deliberate manner, but the moment he began to read his whole manner changed. It was as if one had opened a cage door to take a pet bird in his hand suddenly to find his fingers in contact with a snake.