The High Calling Part 11

"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 Was.h.i.+ngton. 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 a.s.sociating 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, blus.h.i.+ng.

"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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Was.h.i.+ngton. 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 gla.s.s, 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 a.s.sertive 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."

Bauer looked doubtfully at her. Helen was quick to detect the slight hint of suspicion as to her sincerity.

"Do you doubt? What makes you?"

"Well, I--it isn't common for girls to care much about such things generally, and I couldn't help------"

Bauer stumbled along painfully and finally stopped, and Helen was cruel enough to enjoy his confusion.

"But I am interested, Mr. Bauer. I really am. And you must believe I am.

You will, won't you?"

"Yes! yes!" Bauer flung the last shred of his doubt to the winds and eagerly begged pardon for his distrust.

"All right. Now that we have settled the quarrel, we will be good friends, won't we?"

"Yes," said Bauer, smiling. "If you want to call it a quarrel."

"It was a quarrel all right," said Helen hastily. "Now you must tell me what your ambitions are, what you are really working for. I have wondered often if it wasn't awfully dangerous to be experimenting with electricity, and how do you try new things with wires and batteries and dynamos and--and--things without getting killed several times while you are trying?"

"It's not as dangerous as some other things," thought Bauer, as Helen, in her real earnestness, put her work down and came across the room and took a chair by the table opposite him. If she had been a real coquette intent on making an onslaught on poor Bauer she could not have chosen a more perfect way to do it. For if you want to engage the hearty good will of anyone, ask him rapid fire questions about the one thing he is most interested in and would like to talk about, if his modesty did not forbid.

So Felix Bauer was never in so electrically dangerous a situation in all his life as at this moment when Helen Douglas came over and sat down there with a real eagerness to know about his ambitions as an inventor.

For Helen was honestly interested in many things that naturally belong to mere man's domain, especially in the realm of mechanical invention.

"Walter has told me what you said about making a writing machine that would take a visible spelled word on paper when you talked into it. You don't really think a thing like that could be done, do you?"

Bauer looked at the handsome quizzical face opposite, gravely.

"Do _you?_ How do you dare say what can or cannot be done in the great universe of electricity?"

"But it would throw out a great army of stenographer girls and that would be a pity. Only, you know," said Helen demurely, "Walter could marry one of them and you could marry another. That would take care of two of them."

Bauer stared, and then blushed furiously and finally laughed.

"Walter has been taking my name------"

"Not in vain," interrupted Helen. "I thought your suggestion for the talking machine was fascinating. I don't suppose you are working at that, are you?"

"No. I haven't got that far yet."