The High Calling

The committeeman broke in with an oath: "All costs! It's your bill. If you desert it now at this pinch, it is down and out. I can't look after your fences."

The receiver at the other end went up with a bang and Paul realised that another one of his cherished measures had received its coup de grace. Partly, he said to himself as he started up to Louis's room, on account of the half hearted action of those who called themselves friends. What friends! Rabbits! Cowards! Self seekers! Real friends could have managed that bill without his presence and there was a show for it owing to its popular character, if anyone would push matters with energy and intelligent enthusiasm. "But was it his duty always to neglect his own children even for service to the state?" He said "No" as he went along up and into Louis's room.

He had seldom been into the boy's sanctum, and as he came in now he was curious, and interested in what he saw. Louis had employed the interval of his father's presence to pick a number of things up off the floor and what he did not have time to throw on top of the bed he had kicked under it, so the room presented a fairly respectable outward appearance.

He had pulled the writing desk out into the middle of the room and as his father stopped in front of it he said suddenly: "There it is, now laugh."

Paul was simply astonished when he examined the article. To be sure, all the joints on it were not perfect by any means and one of the legs looked a little out of plumb. But as a whole the writing desk was so creditable a piece of work that he could not help saying, "I call that pretty fine. Mother will be tremendously pleased. You made it all yourself?"

"Yes, all but this little bit of carving. That Johnson started me on.

The rest of it is mine."

"It's mighty good," said Paul, walking around it. "Straighten that leg out by amputating it just below the knee and it will–"

"Yes, I knew you would laugh at me. All the teachers do," wailed Louis.

"No, I'm not laughing at you, Louis. You have done splendid work. But you mustn't feel badly to have your faults pointed out. That is the way to learn. If you hadn't been in quite such a hurry you would have made a better job, wouldn't you? Your fault, one of your faults, is lack of patience and thorough painstaking over details. Isn't that so?"

"It must be. All my teachers say so all the time."

"Well, if they say so all the time there must be some reason for it. But honest, now, the writing desk is not a bad piece of work viewed as a whole."

Louis felt somewhat mollified and after his father had made one or two more comments they started down stairs. When they reached the hall, the telephone rang again.

"Go into the library and wait for me," Paul said as he went to the instrument.

This time it was Rogers, the doubtful member of the committee. He wanted to ask one or two questions about the bill and Paul quickly and eagerly answered him.

"But we need you right here now. We can't do anything without you. Burke is mad and we can't depend on him. You've just got to come if you want to see the thing through."

"I can't come, Rogers. You can whip them into line." Paul rapidly shot directions at him. "Stand by the thing for my sake if not for the sake of the bill. Don't go back on your promise."

"Promise! What's become of yours? The thing is impossible without you. I can't do anything with Burke and the rest of the committee are hot over your absence. Don't blame anyone but yourself when you read the morning paper."

Paul started to answer, but the committeeman had finished, and after hesitating over the matter he went into the library and resumed his questions with Louis.

"After the manual training, which one of your studies do you take to most?"

"Oh, I don't like any of them. Chemistry, I guess."

"Do you like mathematics?"

"I don't mind, but I want to go into business, father. I want to quit school altogether and go into business."

"What business?"

"Any kind. I want to make money."

"What do you want to make money for?"

"What does any one want money for? I want to buy–"

"Go on. Tell me exactly."

"Well, clothes and—and—I want things, so I can go out and be with other fellows, and have something to spend—and–"

In his burst of unconcealed eagerness to get out of school Louis was really revealing to his father some of the actual reasons for wanting to give up his studies, and as Paul listened to him he felt that the boy's eagerness went even farther. He determined to be very frank with him and get at the bottom of the thing if possible.

"Do you want to make money so as to go with the girls and get popular with them and spend money on them?"

The question was almost brutal in its directness, and one that his father had never before suggested. Louis reddened with an angry but self-conscious manner that told Paul he had not guessed very wide of the real motive that was urging the boy.

He did not answer the question but sat sullenly tearing bits of paper from the leaves of a magazine on the table. And his father sat silently staring at him, wondering how he was going to manage Louis and help him to make a possible manhood for himself. The problem across the library table in this boy of his was even a greater problem than the one down at the State House. He could afford politically to lose the bill. But could he afford parentally to lose the boy?

"You needn't answer my question, Louis, you have answered it. Now listen to me. I am your father and next to your mother I love you more than anyone else in all the world. Do you believe that?"

"I suppose so," Louis managed to say.

"You know it, Louis. There is no guess work. You are sixteen. You have fairly good health and more than average brains. The main business in your life for the next ten years ought to be study and education. The girls—society—all that—do you want to make a fool of yourself and miss the one thing of manhood that's worth getting? If you do, I don't for you. I am several years older than you are, Louis. And I am your father for the purpose, as I believe, of really being worth something to you in the matter of counsel and direction for your voyage over life's great ocean. If you are planning to start out without a compass or the right kind of equipment I would be worse than a fool if I didn't prevent such a voyage, wouldn't I? Well, I don't intend to let you do just as you please just because for the time being you choose to go your own gait. Mind, Louis, I am not going to ask you to do impossible things or be tyrannical with you. But neither do I intend that you should throw away a splendid chance for education just to gratify a present longing to make money for the purpose you want it for."

The telephone rang again at this point and Paul went over to it.

Burke had come to the instrument again.

"We can't agree on the bill in its present shape and it's simply impossible to put it through in your absence. You are being judged by all the committees and some of them don't hesitate to say you are being bought out. If you come down now you may be able to save it. But we are on the point of kicking the bill out or reporting adversely. Can't you come down within an hour?"

"I can't promise. I have a very important engagement here. I might be able to get down by midnight, but wouldn't promise."

"Midnight! The members are dead tired now. Rogers is asleep in his chair and Colfax is dozing on the lounge. If you don't come within an hour you needn't come at all."

"I can't come within an hour."

"What is it? A matter of life and death?"

"Yes, a matter of life and death," Paul answered slowly.

"Oh, very well. Then the old bill is dead, that's all. It's not a matter of question."

And Paul could picture Burke as with an incredulous sneer he hung up, and told the committee to clear out and go to bed.

He went back into the library and sat down by Louis and put his arm around his shoulder and reasoned with him as he had never in all the campaign reasoned with a political acquaintance for the purpose of winning his friendship. He showed the boy clearly what it meant to lose an education, what a handicap it would be to him all his life if he did not have the schooling and culture that history and language and science stood ready to give. He pictured to Louis the tremendous advantages that go with education in the social life of the world and cited numerous instances in the range of his own experience to show Louis what a prize he was throwing away at the age of sixteen if he deliberately threw away the riches of mental power for the dirt of lust and mammon. He got hold of Louis as he never had before, because he divined the really impure and foolish motive the boy had for going into business, and as the minutes ticked into hours Louis gradually became convinced of certain things which he had only vaguely entertained so far.

In the first place he began to have a feeling that his father did care for him tremendously after all. Paul's absorption in politics for the last year had been so deep that, as has been said, he had neglected the boy's interests and had not paid attention to his frequent complaints and appeals. But now that the matter was squarely met, Louis knew from what he caught of the telephone dialogue that his father was neglecting a very important political affair to spend the entire evening with him. The thought added to the feeling he began to have of his father's real character. Then Louis had all his life had the greatest respect for his father's intellectual life and regarded it with admiration. He was fond of quoting him and there was no one in Milton who read Douglas's editorials more regularly and carefully than Louis.

And added to all the rest that influenced him that night was the shame he began to feel that his father knew his real motive for wanting to leave the school and make money. He had become fascinated and led away by a certain set in the High School and he wanted to go with them, wear expensive clothes, frequent society functions and spend freely and get the reputation of a generous and even lavish giver. This he could not do with the allowance his father gave him, and he chafed under it foolishly. He had not supposed his father would detect his underlying motive in his longing to quit school and go into business. Now that he realised his father did understand he felt ashamed to continue his plea as he had first made it. At the end of the evening together, a certain definite agreement was reached between father and son.

Louis agreed to continue his studies for another year and do his best with those branches he found most difficult where he was not allowed to choose electives. His father agreed to study with him in a regular course, helping him through hard places, practically being his tutor and agreeing to give him all the time he needed in the evening. "And why not?" Paul kept asking almost with a sob as he noted the glow that was creeping back into Louis's eye, the glow of a new interest in study. "Why not? What shall it profit the reformer if he reforms the whole state and loses his own children? I don't believe that even high-flown Patriotism requires such a sacrifice as that."

When Louis went up to bed tears were on his cheeks and a choking in his breast. His father had simply said, "My boy, I want you to be a man. Your mother and I have prayed for you all these years. We believe you will not disappoint us. Don't forget God, Louis. You need to pray to overcome this great temptation of impure thinking. The gates of Hell are close by that sort of life. Not even your father and mother can spare you from ruin that way. You have got to fight it out yourself. God helping you."

Paul looked up at the clock and saw it was after midnight, but on a venture he called up the committee room at the State House. A night janitor answered and informed him that the committee had been gone for over an hour.

He went upstairs and found Esther in her sewing room, her face pale and troubled, traces of tears on her cheeks and such a look of real fear on her face that Paul exclaimed, "Esther! What is it?"

She turned to her table and picked up a package of postcards and with a shudder of loathing held them out to Paul.

He took them and saw at a second's glance that they were the vulgar, coarse, suggestive and even indecent photographic postcards which this great civilised, supposedly Christian, government even yet allows to pass through the post office and be displayed and sold at every news stand and book store in the country.

"They dropped out of Louis's coat when I began to mend it this evening. And there was worse. He or some other boy had written this vile thing." Esther handed it to Paul what she had found. Paul read it and his face grew white and stern. Esther sat down and put her head on her arms and almost shrieked.

"Oh, I can't bear it! Louis! Louis! How could you! Oh, how can his soul ever be clean again! Oh, boy, your mother's heart is broken! After all my prayers for you! After all the days and nights of consecration! Oh, my son, my son! Would God I had died before I knew or saw this! Oh, my Master, the cup is too bitter! I can't drink it!"

Never in all his knowledge of Esther had Paul ever seen her like this. His own heart almost stopped at the sight. For years she had been so uniformly calm and strong even when her children had disappointed her. She had with high-spirited motherhood faced their sins and wrong-doing with a peaceful faith that they would do right in the end. But this discovery seemed to smite her soul down into a hopeless darkness, where there was no redemption. And as Paul looked at her there was in his soul more anguish for her than fear for Louis over what she had discovered. In a sense he was prepared for this, somewhat, because of the glimpses he had been getting that very evening of Louis's nature and its temptations.

He kneeled by his wife and put his arm about her.

"This is too great for you to bear alone. Besides, it may not be as hopeless or as terrible as you think. Let me see Louis. I have just been having an evening with him. If he hasn't gone to bed I believe now is the time for me to see him."

Esther had grown quiet. She seemed to be praying. Paul got up and went out of the room along the hallway to Louis's room and knocked. At Louis's answer he went in and found him at work on the writing desk.

Without any preliminary Paul held out the cards to Louis and said,

"Louis, are these yours?"

Louis' face blanched on the instant. His hand trembled so he could not hold the cards still. He tried to answer but his tongue seemed paralysed. His father repeated the question more sternly. Louis broke down completely, flung himself on the bed in a spasm of fear and shame.

His father eyed him with conflicting feelings. Again he was strongly reminded of Louis Darcy and his many experiences with him. Louis still refused to answer, and Paul said:

"Look up here, Louis. Look up and answer me. Did you write that?"

His father thrust the paper his mother had found close up to the boy. Louis cried out. "No, no, father. That is not mine. One of the boys–"

Paul felt relieved as far as that went, for Louis had never lied to him.

"But these cards. Are these yours?"

"Yes."

"How long have you had them?"

"I got them yesterday."

"Give them to me." Louis handed them over and Paul tore them across again and again and flung the pieces into the waste paper basket. Louis had never seen his father angry like that before. He shrank and cowered back while his father said:

"Louis, I would almost rather see you in your coffin than with those vile things in your hands and their foul imaginings in your heart. Do you realise what this will lead to? Your manhood will be blasted! your soul blackened! your body tortured! all the angel in you turned into animal–"

Paul nearly broke down himself. He shuddered and for one instant Louis really caught a glimpse into the horror that sin causes.

But Paul Douglas was not a cowardly father nor one who is content to leave it to boys to learn unaided bitter lessons from evil. He sat down by Louis and gave him the plainest talk on the subject of personal purity the boy had ever had. And the effect on him in all his after life was even more than either Paul or Esther had dared to hope. Paul never did a better hour's work. When he was through, Louis was completely broken. In the moment of his cry to his father for help, Paul kneeled by him, put his arm around him and prayed for him such a prayer of appeal and hope and good cheer that Louis Douglas will never forget. The whole thing was the beginning of a new manhood for the boy. And when the next day he plucked up courage to confess to his mother, one of the hardest things he ever did in all his life, the entire unfolding of his mother's love, her passionate appeal to his better nature, her cry to him to seek God's help in overcoming all, overwhelmed him. Again the boy caught a glimpse of the mightiness of father and mother affection and young as he was he came from that soul yearning of Esther with a manly determination in his boyish heart not to disappoint either father or mother in the struggle he would make to be true to the high calling. For as the time slipped away many and many a time he was reminded of the black pit on the edge of which he had almost slipped, to fall into its slimy and murky abyss, and perhaps never again come up into the pure sweet air of God under his blue sky and its silver stars. O Louis, you will never be able to measure the rescue your father and mother made for you at that crisis when your soul was wandering over the treeless moor of passion.