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.
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 forWalter."
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 atBurrton."
"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.
"Doyou?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."
"Can you tell me if you are working on some new thing?"
"I don't mind." Bauer got up and pulled a piece of paper towards him and began to sketch something. Helen got up and went to the end of the table where she could see better.
"There, Miss Douglas. This is my idea for a chicken raiser."
"An incubator?"
"Yes. You see this dome is glass, very much like those domes the glass blowers make to put over their glass ships and flowers. The bottom here is wood. The eggs are placed on it in even rows. Here is a hole in the bottom through which the electric lamp is put. A thermostat will regulate the temperature to a fraction of any degree. And—that is all there is to it except to try it on the eggs to see if they will really hatch out."
"I don't see how they could help it!" said Helen enthusiastically.
"I don't either. There's only one thing I can see that is essential."
"What is that?" Helen asked eagerly.
"The eggs will have to be good," said Bauer solemnly.
Helen in her eagerness to see the drawing, had edged around the table and her face was near Bauer's as she bent over the drawing. She stared at Bauer's solemn face a moment and then burst out laughing, at the same time moving back to the end of the table.
"I believe you are making fun of me," she said. In reality there was a part of Bauer's nature which was unexpected. His quiet habits and his slow speech were apt to give an impression of dullness of intellect and lack of mental quickness. Helen was finding out that Bauer was in many ways the quickest of all her acquaintances. And he had a fund of smileless humour that came as a surprise even to those who thought they knew him best.
"No, I was not making fun of you," said Bauer. As a matter of fact, he was on the defensive with his own feelings, trying by any means to beat them down into the lonesome place where they belonged when that radiant face appeared so near his own.
"Have you tried the machine yet to see if it will work on good eggs?" asked Helen, after a pause, during which Bauer drew a few more lines on the paper.
"No, I'm going to make a full trial of it when I go back to Burrton."
"And if it should be a success, I suppose there would be money in it too, wouldn't there?"
"I suppose so," said Bauer indifferently.
"Then you might actually become rich?"
"I suppose I might. A man who invented a little mouse trap, I understand, made a fortune from it. There are all sorts of possibilities in the world of invention."
"Would you care to be rich?" asked Helen absently.
"I might." For the first time in his life Felix Bauer had flash into his soul the power of money to buy, what? Love? Would it be worth anything if it could be bought? And yet women like Helen Douglas felt the power of money and—and—demanded it in the young man who aspired to be a possible wooer in this age. Was she like all the rest? And if he should some time be rich would that make any difference? And if so, what difference?
"Money is a great power nowadays," said Helen calmly.
"Yes," said Bauer, slower than usual. And at that moment Mrs. Douglas came in.
"Are you willing to show this to mother?" asked Helen.
"Certainly," said Bauer, smiling. "I am sure she will not betray my secret."
Mrs. Douglas, who had instantly taken a great liking to Bauer from the moment of his arrival, was as enthusiastic as Helen and praised the inventor until he was well nigh overwhelmed.
"I need all this encouragement to help me face Anderson. He will probably pick some flaw in it somewhere. He is merciless with all the fellows."
"I don't see what a teacher is for," said Helen indignantly. "Half of the teachers I know pound at the students all the time instead of giving them encouragement."
"They probably need it," said Mrs. Douglas, wisely.
"Mr. Bauer is going to get rich with his invention," said Helen gaily.
"I'll tell you what I will do, if it goes," said Bauer cheerfully. "I'll divide with Walter. We'll manufacture the incubator ourselves and so get all the profits."
"Don't count your chickens before they are hatched," said Mrs. Douglas, and then added gratefully, "I appreciate that thought of Walter. The poor fellow seems to have lost his ambition since the affair of the arc light. I know you will do all you can to encourage him."
"Indeed I will, Mrs. Douglas. I can't tell you how much I owe to Walter.He is like a brother to me."
The minute he uttered the words he caught himself up and half turned, blushing furiously, towards Helen. But she had already started to go out of the library and Bauer was not sure that she had heard him or paid any attention.
Mrs. Douglas, however, had seen his face and his half startled look and deepening colour, and her own face grew grave. It did not seem possible to her that anything serious could happen to the quiet German student during his brief stay with the family. And yet, she was a wise and observant woman who did not at all blind herself to the fact that her daughter had natural gifts of physical and mental attractions, which young men like Bauer inevitably feel. And it needed only this one glimpse of Bauer's face to reveal to her quick mother's sense the fact that Helen had attracted him, how far or how deeply for the loss of his own peace, of course she could not tell.
It was partly on that account that Mrs. Douglas welcomed Helen's confidence when, that same afternoon, the girl came into her mother's room and after a few moments of nervous, restless and aimless talk came and sat down on a low chair near Mrs. Douglas and said, "Mother, I want a plain talk."
"A plain talk" in the Douglas family meant heart secrets, and Mrs.Douglas knew at once what Helen wanted.
"Hide nothing," said Esther, smiling, and patting Helen's head cheerfully.
"Hide nothing," repeated Helen, with a faint smile; which meant that the utmost frankness was going to be shown on both sides.
"Mother," said Helen, after a pause of some length during which her mother calmly went on with her sewing. "How old were you when you were married?"
"Not quite twenty-two."
"And how old was father?"
"Twenty-six. Almost twenty-seven."
"Were you very much in love with him?"
Esther let her work fall from her hands into her lap, and looked out across the room over her daughter's head. The passing of the years had not dimmed the love light in Esther's eyes nor faded the glow of the love look on her face.
"I can't tell you how much I was in love with him. He was the whole world to me."
"More than your own father and mother?"
"Yes, more."
"More and different?"
"Yes, more and different."
There was another pause and Helen put her hand up to her mother's. The girl had not yet looked up. Her eyes were cast down and she seemed very thoughtful.
"Mother, do you think I will ever feel that way? As you did?"
Mrs. Douglas was startled by the question, in spite of the fact that from Helen's babyhood the utmost frankness had existed between them. She wanted a few moments before she spoke. Helen was "till looking down, but her hand tightened its hold on her mother's.
"Yes, Helen, I would not wish you any greater happiness than to love as your mother did."
"But men like father seem very scarce."
Mrs. Douglas could not help laughing, and at that Helen looked up soberly.
"You know they are, mother," said Helen almost indignantly. "Just look at that Randolph boy. And—and—Mr. Damon. I don't believe there are any young men like father was when he was young. Wasn't he very handsome?"
"He certainly was, and he is now."
"And didn't he talk sensibly? Didn't he know how to say things?"
"He didn't say anything very wise or deep while he was courting me," laughed Esther. "I would not dare say how many foolish things he said. I don't remember all of them."
"Mother, you know what I mean. The young men nowadays can't talk any. They don't know half so much as the young women. Why, I feel superior to all the young men I know."
Mrs. Douglas looked amused.
"And I could never marry an inferior man. I would just despise myself and him, too. But why should I get married at all, mother? Why can't I just be a physical training teacher all my life?"
"I don't want you to marry an inferior man, You would just despise yourself and if you do not love in a natural way someone who is altogether worthy of you, you ought never to marry at all. What has made you think of it?"
Helen did not look up, and after a long pause Esther said gently, "Hide nothing?"
Then Helen looked up suddenly and burst out: "That horrid Mr. Damon proposed to me last night! I went with him to the organ recital and he was very nice at first, but on the way home he made a fool of himself and tried to make one of me. I told him I wouldn't marry him if he was the only man left. Why, mother, he is ten years older than I am, and he has false teeth and I believe he wears a wig and he makes a living selling rubber goods!" And at that Helen burst into a flood of weeping, laying her head down in her mother's lap.
When she was cried out, Esther said: "Mr. Damon is a good man, or I wouldn't have let you go with him. But I had no idea he was thinking of you that way. Of course he is out of the question. Not on account of the false teeth, the wig and the rubber goods, for women marry men with those encumbrances every day and are happy, but for other reasons."
"Mother, did you ever have any other proposals besides father's?"
"Yes, I had three while I was in college."
"At my age?"
"I was two years younger."
"That makes me feel better some; but I don't want such things to come to me. It frightens me."
"Daughter, you probably know you are more than good looking. Do you?"
"Yes," said Helen, in a low tone.
"It is a great gift, but it is a dangerous one. You must use it in the right way."
"Mother, I do try. I am not a flirt, am I, mother?" Helen looked up appealingly.
"Look right into my eyes, mother, and see?"
Mrs. Douglas looked and with a sigh of relief saw there as pure and womanly a soul waiting development as ever lived.
"No, thank God, Helen, I believe you realise what your beauty might mean to bless or to curse. But sometimes the hurt comes in spite of one's self."
There was a very long pause and then Helen said timidly, "Mother, you are thinking of someone in particular. I have tried to be very careful. I had to be kind. But how could I know———"
"You mean Felix Bauer?"
"Yes, mother."
"Do you mean he has spoken to you in so short a time?"
"No, no, mother, not spoken. Only, only, looked at me. You don't blame me, do you, do you, mother?"
Helen began to cry again, but in a different way from the outburst before. She cried softly and Mrs. Douglas could feel the girl's hand pressing her arm convulsively.
She was really puzzled to know what to say in spite of the evident fact that Felix Bauer had simply yielded to the inevitable through no fault of Helen's or anybody's. At last she said:
"Do you feel superior to Mr. Bauer?"
Helen raised her head and blushed as she looked up.
"Why, no, that is, of course, he knows German and I don't, and he knows a lot about electricity and I don't and—and———"
"He's not much of a talker," said her mother.
"No, but on that account he avoids saying so many foolish things. And he is very interesting, and, and, good. But he is only a poor student and it looks now as if he might grow up to be nothing but a manufacturer of incubators to raise chickens."
"Which is almost as bad as rubber goods," murmured Esther.
Helen did not reply. After a while her mother said, "Tell me just one thing dear, if you can. Do you care for Mr. Bauer?"
Helen bent her head and warm colour flowed over her cheeks, then she looked up.
"No, mother, not that way."
Mrs. Douglas sighed and said to herself, "Poor Bauer. He will have to outlive it somehow. I hope his studies will help him out."
That was what Bauer was saying to himself back in Burrton after that eventful Christmas vacation. He had parted with the family in a cheerful fashion, but all his self-possession and restraint and feeling of utter hopelessness regarding Helen could not prevent his giving her a look that told his story as plain as day when he said good-bye. Helen had gone upstairs and cried half the forenoon at the memory of Bauer's face. But Bauer did not know that. Neither did he know that the very fact of his silence had made Helen think favourably towards him. He had at least succeeded in securing a place in Helen's exclusive list of possible lovers, for she was obliged to confess as the days went on that she missed Felix Bauer, and that she could not say of him as she could of all her other admirers that she was superior to him.
It might have gone badly with Felix Bauer at this crisis in his life if an event had not occurred which compelled him to come to Walter's assistance. This event was as unexpected to Walter as anything could be. And the suddenness of it smote both the friends for a time into a condition of mutual dependence.
The President of Burrton followed the custom in other schools of inviting some well known speaker to have charge of the chapel services for special lectures or religious addresses. When the announcement was made that Dr. Powers, the eminent scholar and theologian, would preach at Burrton on a special date, Walter and Bauer both planned to go, and when the time came they found themselves in the audience with one of the largest crowds that had ever gathered at Burrton Chapel service.
The address was on the subject of "Modern Belief." As the speaker went on, Walter, who had at first not paid close attention, began to fasten his whole hearted and minded interest on the statements that were being made. As the talk went on, Walter felt as if all the ground of his religious faith was slipping out from under him. The speaker gradually unfolded a universe of religious thought from which all the miracles were excluded. There was no reason, he said, for believing in the superhuman or the wonderful. Everything in the Bible could be explained on natural grounds and what could not be explained was either a mistake or a misapprehension on the part of the writers. God was defined as a power and all personality taken from him. Christ was only a superior man who said many things not agreeing with the facts of modern psychology. Much of his forecast of the future had been discredited. There was no such thing as a resurrection and a future existence was very problematical.
When the address was over, Walter sat like one dazed and did not rise to go out. Bauer whispered to him:
"Are you sick?"
"No," said Walter with an effort. He rose and went up to his room and Bauer, who did not know what was the matter, went in with him, as the two friends invariably spent their Sunday evenings together.
But on this occasion Walter almost stunned Bauer with a request made in a low voice.
"I want to be alone, Bauer, if you don't mind."
Bauer rose at once.
"I am on hand to serve you, Walter. Don't forget?"
"No," Walter said abruptly.
Bauer went out, and Walter went into his bedroom and got down on his knees.
That same evening at Milton, Mrs. Douglas had just gone up to her room, and as her custom had been for years, she had kneeled to pray for her children and especially for her absent boy.
Over both mother and son the darkness brooded. Only the stars shone through it.
WALTER DOUGLAS was not what would be called ordinarily a religious young man. That is, he was not pious, in the sense that he was a lover of prayer meetings and church gatherings. He was a member of the Congregational church at Milton and had joined it from the Sunday School when he was twelve years old, growing up in the church like any average boy whose father and mother were members. He had a tremendous respect for his father's and mother's religious life and example and would probably have been willing to die for their faith if not for his own. For the rest, he had grown up in the home atmosphere, which from his childhood had been deeply reverent towards the Bible and the superhuman element.
The effect on his mind, now, of the address he had just heard, was very much the same as if someone far above him in education and age had attacked his father and mother, bringing forward a great array of argument and proof to show that they were unworthy of his love and confidence. Walter's mind could not have been more disturbed by such an attempt than it actually was by what had been said that evening, undermining his lifelong confidence in Christ as a divine being, and the superhuman and miraculous as part of his own life.
He was stunned by it and at first his only desire was to be alone. As the night wore on, this desire gave way to a longing for counsel from someone who could answer his questions and relieve his mind of the terrible uncertainty which had invaded it. And it was at least a strange comment on the teaching force in the Burrton school that Walter at this crisis could not think of anyone to whom he cared to go with a religious doubt. There were plenty of men at Burrton occupying responsible places as professors or instructors who knew plenty of mathematics and physics and electricity and engineering and science. But not one that Walter could think of who knew or cared about a student's moral or religious character. The president was a keen, wide-awake, sharp man of affairs, but as Walter thought of him he shrank from the idea of going to him with a real heart trouble or with a genuine mental difficulty. He would as soon have thought of telling his personal griefs or sorrows into a phonograph. And yet President Davis of Burrton was a church member, a highly educated gentleman, a great money getter from rich men, and had the reputation in the educational world of being a success as such school presidents go. He could extract half a million for Burrton from some great pirate of industry, but he did not know how to extract a poisonous doubt from a tortured mind like Walter's, or, better yet, instill the balm of healing faith into a spirit that had for the time being lost its God and its heaven. Great thing, our boasted education is, isn't it! How many of our cultured, highly developed university men are all head and no heart! And yet in the history of this old world who would dare say that in the long run it does not need more heart than head, or at least an equal division of each, for its comfort, its happiness and its real progress?
Walter, going over the list of possible men who might help him now, thought of the pastor of the Congregational church in Burrton. This man was a strong, earnest pastor, a tireless worker and an interesting preacher. But here again Walter had no one to blame but himself that he did not feel well enough acquainted with this man to go to him with his personal religious questions. He had been to the church several times and he always liked the Rev. James Harris, but like so many students who are attendants and workers in their own churches, Walter on coming to Burrton had found it easy to lapse into lazy Sunday morning habits. After he had a late breakfast and read the Sunday morningDaily Megaphone, it was generally too late to go to the Sunday School and it was easier on stormy Sundays to curl up on a lounge and read a novel, or on pleasant Sundays to stroll out to the lake two miles away and get an appetite for a big dinner. Then an afternoon of sleep or visiting or walking out used up the rest of the day for him. One of the topics he had avoided with his mother on his recent visit home had been his Sunday program, and he recalled even now the earnest wish she had expressed that he would get to work in the Sunday School when he went back to Burrton. No, he had been so indifferent to all church matters while a student that he could not bring himself to go to the minister, he was too much a stranger to him, and this was a matter that seemed to call for a friend.
"Oh, I wish mother was here!" he exclaimed out loud.
And then because he felt so hungry for comfort and so eager to relieve his mind of its burden, he went over to his writing desk, and wrote a long letter to his mother.
When he finished, it was after one o'clock and he went to bed and slept as if exhausted, but to his dismay when he awoke, his depression and fear were there to greet him and he found himself waiting for his mother's answer almost as if her letter were a reprieve from a sentence of death.
A part of this letter will reveal Walter's excited and even chaotic feeling.
"The bottom seems to be dropped right out of everything, mother. Of what use is it to try to do right when there isn't any likelihood of a future and no personal God and no Redeemer, and no standard for conduct? The doctor said we could not depend upon Christ's own statements about his own resurrection. How then can we trust Him for any statement He made about Himself? The fellows here in Burrton who have money to spend and do about as they please, the fast set that drinks and carouses and gambles and gives the chorus girls wine suppers seems to be pretty happy. They don't worry over the matter of sin or moral responsibility or going to church or getting serious over the condition of the heathen or the wrongs of the world, or the 'high calling' you are so fond of calling my attention to. And why should I be any different from them? Mother, does it pay to be religious? It seems to me religious people are always sober, dull people, always talking reform and disagreeable things and never having much fun. But I want you to help me, mother, no one else can, if you can't. I don't seem to be able to pray any. Why should I pray, if there isn't any super-human, nothing but a force somewhere? I am just groping in the dark and it's awful dark. And I don't know a soul here to help me any. Bauer—well—I never said a word to him on religious matters. I don't know whether he is a Catholic or what he is. And I don't know any minister in Burrton well enough to go to him. And the teachers here don't care about the students' religious life, or if they do I never saw any signs of it, at least not enough to show where to go now.
"Mother, I can't tell you how I feel over all this. But I'm just about down and out. If what Dr. Powers said is true, it seems to me we are living in an awful world. It isn't the world you and father believe in or you taught me to believe in, and I can't understand it. Oh, mother, help me, won't you, if you can! WALTER."
Now his letter reached Mrs. Douglas on the anniversary of her marriage. She was planning as she always did to make the day bright for Paul, had invited her brothers, Walter and Louis, and was going to make it a great family gathering.
The boy's letter smote her heart as nothing in all his experience had ever troubled her. She managed to get through the evening without betraying her feeling, but when her brothers had gone home, and Helen and Louis had retired, she showed the letter to Paul.
He read it and then looked up at Esther.
"You are the one to help him through this," he said. "You are the only person who can do it right now. But you are tired with all the events of the day. Hadn't you better wait until to-morrow?"
"No," Esther said positively. "He is waiting. When a soul is drifting down like his, it is a case of rescue."
"Dear," said Paul, quietly, "I don't have any fears for him. He has too good a mother to make a wreck of his religion."
"He is my son," said Esther proudly. "I would not be worthy of the name mother if I did not have confidence in the eternal things of redemption. I will write him tonight. But you must add to my letter, Paul. He needs us both."
"I will," said Paul, gravely. He was more disturbed over the letter from Walter than he cared to acknowledge to Esther, but he managed to conceal his feelings for her sake. Esther went up to her little corner room, where she had a sewing table and a writing desk. When she had shut herself in there she spread Walter's letter out before the Lord.
That meant that her simple mother faith said to God, "Oh, my Father, I need wisdom now to write this letter. My boy, my first born son is in need of Thee. But he has turned to his mother for help. Show me how to say the right thing. For I can not do it without thy help."
And then without any hesitation or fear of the final result, Esther wrote to Walter. It was a sacred letter, but a part of it belongs to this narrative.
"You must not forget, boy," Esther went on after cheerfully reminding him that he was not the only person in the world to have such an experience; "you must not forget that religion is a universal thing, and that it is a cry of the heart for God. It is not a matter to figure out like mathematics, but it is an answer to the real longing of the soul for a divine life in the world.
"You must not forget, either, that your faith does not depend on what someone else says, but upon the actual needs of your own life. You know that you need God. You know that you are wretched now because you are afraid God has been taken away. Isn't that a sign to you that your simple faith as you have been taught it here at home is a real and necessary thing? What Dr. Powers said (and you must remember you may not have understood his full meaning), what he said has not changed the everlasting facts of sin and moral responsibility and the facts of the plain right and wrong of the world. And when it comes to the resurrection and a future life—all we can do is to take Christ's word for it. He knows more about it than Dr. Powers knows. Your mother is no theologian and no great scholar, but when it comes to taking Dr. Powers's word as against Jesus's own statements about himself, I don't hesitate, and you ought not to. Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. Just trust him. It is what thousands of souls bigger than yours have done and they have found the light as you will. We are praying for you, father and I. Father can give you better reasons than I can, perhaps, because he knows more, but listen to me, boy, to your mother, whose heart goes out to you at this time. You don't have to answer all the hard questions of religion all at once. Some of them can bide for an answer. But, oh, plant your feet down on the rock, Christ Jesus! Abide with him and your soul will not be lost. He will not let you go wrong. He came to give you abundant life. The love of God is greater than all other things. Trust simply and don't be afraid. Get to work in the Sunday school and church. Doubt can not live in the atmosphere of doing God's will every moment. Perhaps one reason you have been so overthrown is because you have neglected your church and religious duties since you left home. Pray; trust; act; live for others; listen for God's voice; be true to the high calling. It is the only real and living way for you. And the prayers of your mother go out to God for you now and always. Walter, you are God's child before you are mine. Go to him at once and ask his help as you have asked mine. May He bless you as I can not. Lovingly and prayerfully,
Mrs. Douglas was so eager to get her letter off that she did not wait for Paul's added word. But two days later Paul wrote quite at length, in much the same fashion, taking up one or two points Esther had not touched.
"You say in your letter to your mother that you feel the bottom has dropped out of everything. Why? Because a stranger to you who has some reputation as a public speaker has made some statements which destroy your faith in religion.
"Do you think that is a very sensible thing for you to do—to let a man you have never seen before come along and in one address take from you the faith of years? Would you let a man you didn't know destroy your faith in your mother so quickly? Would you simply take his word for it, because he said so?
"You must remember, Walter, that some of the finest theologians and scholars in the world believe in and teach the miracles and a personal God and a personal divine Christ and a personal resurrection. I don't mean old fashioned scholars, but men who are up to date, who rank with the best in the thinking world. If Dr. Powers does not believe in the resurrection there are other men, better scholars than he is, who do. You have no right to let one man's statements be final for you.
"You say again that you don't see what is the use of being good, and you ask if it pays to be religious, citing the example of the fast set in Burrton, who, you say, seem to be pretty happy, and free from anxiety about others, etc. Walter, do you know that is the most terrible thing that can be said about a human creature? That he is satisfied like an animal with an animal's appetite and passions, and careless of any one else or of the world's moral needs? The flies that buzz over a battle field have the same indifference for the agony and struggle going on under them. And would you even now while under the depression you describe, really care to risk your life by becoming like the men in the fast set? Don't you know that they are sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind?
"The main facts of life always remain the same. We may learn more about the facts, but we can't change the real nature and needs of mankind by any belief or absence of belief. Even if there were no God and no future and no miracles and no Jesus of history, sin would be sin and its harvest the same; goodness and right and virtue would always be the same and their harvest the same. But men can not live without God without living in hopeless despair. Walter, what did Christ come into the world for, if not to do for us the very things we really needed and were dying to get? He revealed God to us. Made the future plain. Showed man his duty to his neighbour. Brought light and life and joy into the world. The Christmas season we have enjoyed together ought to show you (and it will when this cloud has gone from your heart) that the world owes more to Jesus Christ than to any other being. The best conditions in the world are found where Christ has been most honoured and his teachings best obeyed. The wrongs of the world are being righted in his name. And the kingdom of God is taking the place of the kingdoms of physical might.
"All this, your father and mother believe, could not be true if Jesus were a mere man. It is the presence of the divine and superhuman, not supernatural, but superhuman, which has made all this redemption of the world possible.
"Walter, trust in God. Believe in Christ. Pray. Seek the light. Keep doing right. Get to work for others. All the inventions in creation are not worth anything if your own soul has no motive power and no track to run on. Religion is as natural as eating and drinking. Prayer is as natural as sleep or work. And I believe with all my might that my feelings are as trustworthy as my reason when both are exercised in a healthy, happy way.
"I haven't any fear for you. It is too bad you can not get help from some of the teachers in the school. There must be something wrong with the management of an educational institution when the teachers know everything except the moral needs of the students.
"Can't your friend, Bauer, help you? You say you have never talked with him. Try it. From one or two talks I had with him while he was with us I gained the impression that he was deeply religious. Affectionately, your father,
Both of these letters reached Walter about the same time and he read and reread them and received vast help from them, more than he himself knew at the time. But he could not throw off the feeling of depression and fear that seemed to haunt his spirit. He longed to talk the thing over with someone and the day after his father's letter came, he resolved to take Bauer into his confidence. He had never talked with him on any serious questions except when Bauer had confided in him about his home troubles, and the occasions were rare and only occurred at times when Bauer was so tortured with lonesomeness that he could not endure it any longer and fled to Walter as he did that night in the shop, when he first appealed to him for his friendship.
They had gone up to Walter's room together; and had just finished a discussion over Bauer's incubator and the arrangement for the thermostat when Walter said suddenly:
"Felix, I can't talk this stuff any longer. I want to take up something else, if you don't mind. Of course, you've noticed I've not been up to the mark lately, haven't you?"
"Yes." Bauer blushed as he said it. He had noted Walter's condition, but if truth be told his own state of hopeless feeling towards Helen had absorbed him to such an extent that he had not paid the attention to Walter's feelings that he otherwise might. No one quite so egotistic as your hopeless lover. The world of Bauer revolved around the star of Helen, and the rest of the universe, including Walter, was for the time being not counted as there. With Walter's trouble now made more apparent to him, Bauer's mind at once waked up and stood ready alert to listen to him.
"I might as well confess that Dr. Powers's address two weeks ago knocked the props out from under me. What he said cut under me like a great engine that destroyed my faith."
"You mean your faith in God?" asked Bauer in a tone almost of horror.
"Well, no, not that exactly. I don't think anyone could reason me out of a belief in a God. But when Dr. Powers got through I felt as if all the God he believed in was a kind of electrical force, a little bigger unit of amperes. A sort of international ampere, so to speak, but not much more."
"Do you mean that you can't say 'Our Father' any more?"
Walter was silent half a minute. When he looked up at Bauer his face was haggard.
"I haven't prayed any since that address. What is the use of prayer ifGod is a machine?"
"But if God is a machine, who made the machine?"
Walter stared. Bauer went on.
"And if God is only high power electricity or force, who made the high power or force? One machine can't make another. And a machine that really thinks and plans, is not a machine but a Being."
Walter did not answer. He was brooding. Finally he said: "Do you really believe in miracles and the superhuman and the resurrection and future and—and a Personal Redeemer and all that?"
"Do I?" Bauer did a thing Walter had never seen him do before. He got up and began to walk the floor.
"If I didn't believe in a personal God who loves me and in a Personal Redeemer who saves me and in a future life which is going to develop me, I might as well be just an animal and be done with it. What advantage have we over the animals if there is nothing to it but flesh and blood and eating and drinking and dying?
"But I simply take my stand on what Jesus did and said and was. I don't go back on that to try to philosophise much, though I can give answers all day long for my religious faith. I wouldn't give anything for it if I couldn't reason it out. I've been through all the books—Kant and Hegle and Straus and Feuerbach and Schopenhauer and Schleiermacher and no end. My father was steeped in all the old world philosophies. I don't think they ever helped him any. At least not to make a better man of him. Why, Walter, do you know your father and mother are the products of Christian faith, and there isn't anything finer in all the world. Where would you go to find a human being who was nearer the perfection of all noble, unselfish, beautiful traits of character than your mother, who is the product of a simple Christian faith?
"My father and mother have always sneered at simple faith. They are sceptics. What has their scepticism ever done for them? To-day they are both———" Bauer choked, and after a long pause, during which Walter looked at him sympathetically, he said quietly:
"I had to have something different from their Godless scheme of life or I believe I would have gone mad. And, thank the Father, I found it. If I hadn't I'd been worse than the fastest of the fast set here. I wouldn't have stopped short of the vilest. I would have been a crowned head of beastliness. And nothing saved me from it but Jesus Christ. Could a man have done that? Could anyone have done it who didn't believe in a future and a spiritual life?"
Bauer came back to his chair and sat down. Walter seemed much impressed by what he "said and the way he said it. At last he remarked thoughtfully:
"You never told me anything of this before. I never understood you felt so, or had such a faith."
"No, I've kept my light under a bushel. But man's religion is the most sacred thing about him. Why don't we talk more about it? I don't know unless with me it's been an excess of sensitiveness."
"I understand and thank you, Felix," said Walter after another long silence.
During the days that followed he had many more talks with Bauer, all of which did him vast good. Bauer, once he had opened the door of his soul, threw away all reserve and invited Walter into the very holy of holies.
They also had plenty of argument. But Walter was no match for the German student, who in his long hours of solitary existence, had managed to do an astonishing quantity of reading and posted himself on all sorts of difficult subjects with the German habit of exactness and thoroughness in matters of detail, so that he soon had Walter hopelessly beaten when it came to debate over religion and its office.
Finally Walter began slowly to regain his buoyancy and before the spring vacation he had found a standing place for his faith and a reason for his religion, so much so that he said to Bauer one Sunday evening after they had come up to the room after hearing Mr. Harris at the church: "Felix, I almost believe I could be a preacher. I believe I almost have a message."
Bauer was immensely pleased.
"You are going to come out all right. You couldn't help it with such a mother."
And yet, strange as it may seem, at that very moment Walter's mother was passing through a crisis that was testing her Christian faith even more severely than Walter's had been tested. There could be no doubt at all but that Esther's pure and steadfast soul would win the victory; but oh, the heartache of sorrowing motherhood! Will it ever cease?
Louis Douglas had been for several months a source of anxiety to both Paul and Esther. As winter wore on he complained more and more of school. One evening he broke out in such a torrent of appeal to his father to let him give up his studies that Paul compelled himself to think of the boy as his first duty and reproaching himself that he had paid little heed to him on account of political matters, he listened to Louis that evening and in a pause of his flood of words asked the boy to come into the library and have it out seriously.
The legislature was in session and Douglas was overwhelmed with committee work, with shaping up bills, and winning converts to his ideas of reform. He had anticipated opposition and difficulties of various sorts, but the actual thing that confronted him was so much greater than he had supposed possible that he almost let go at one time, in disgust, and vowed he would never enter politics again. Next day he was back in the game to stay. But from the beginning to the end of the legislative session he was blocked in nearly every effort he made for clean, honest reform of old, corrupt and selfish party devices. In his soul he knew, and those who knew him knew, that he was heart and soul for the good of the people. The measures he wanted put into law had no possible self-seeking in them. He was clean and upright in every detail of his private and public life, yet he faced every day facts like these:
The other paper in Milton contained columns of abuse, of misrepresentation and of downright charges of self-seeking against him. Man after man in the party that had asked him to run for Senator came to him to beg him to desist from his fight on corporations that broke the laws and charged the people prohibitive prices for the necessities of life. Party worshippers like the Hon. Mr. Maxwell besieged the committee room pleading for harmony, meaning by "harmony," a slavish compromise with the greed and influence of money and power that might help the party if they were let alone. Letters flooded him from all parts of the state begging him or threatening him to leave well alone. Some of the very men who had during the election campaign promised to stay with him and help push his bills, lied outright, broke their promises and called him a deserter and a party traitor. Old friends who had stood by him for years, left him and in some cases became his bitterest enemies. Bill after bill framed with only one great-hearted purpose to benefit all the people went through the grinding process of detraction, of vilification, of amendment and final defeat. A little handful of members rallied around him. But the greed forces of the entire state were on the other side. The selfish corporations, the highwaymen of commerce, the whiskey powers fighting for their lives to maintain the license system of the state, the gang of thugs that lived on the gambling house and the barter in human blood in the sale of virtue and the degradation of boys and girls, all fought him. The newspapers that print liquor and other questionable advertisements, the microscopic men who made a living by appointment to little political dirty jobs, the horde of hungry office seekers who didn't know "America" from the latest vaudeville rag-time, the plunderers of the treasury who live without any visible means of support except what they boldly stole from contracts on public works, the princely robbers who are the crowned heads of special privilege, whose wives and daughters figure in the society columns as leaders in those useful callings of bridge whist and select receptions, the great and ignorant mob of pygmies who never had the capacity for a political idea bigger than their own diminutive measurement, the newspaper and magazine hacks who live on abuse of everybody who has a high ideal, all joined in the whoop and chase after Douglas of the fourth district, branded him as a fakir, an idiot, a senseless dreamer, an egotist, a demagogue, a party traitor, a knocker, and every other objectionable kind of disturber of the peace, meaning by "peace," the peace of those who are let alone by reformers to rob the state, degrade politics, enthrone injustice, keep the party in power and reelect themselves.
And this is the kind of thing the preacher urges his high-spirited young men to confront if they go into public careers. Do you think American politics could be made more attractive to the strong men of this nation if some of the abuse and personal sewer methods were eliminated? Do you think all this gutter spattering is necessary to reach conclusions and arrive at a final better condition for the nation's life? Do you think that even if discussion and defence of opinion are necessary in the settlement of great public affairs, it is also in order to question a man's purity of purpose, his patriotism and his personal devotion to a great ideal?
Paul's whole nature was stirred by what he was going through and his absorption in the matters nearest his heart was so complete that it was with no ordinary shock he came to realise that his own son was in a critical condition. As a father he reproached himself for neglecting the boy under the plea of trying to reform the state. And when he began to question Louis that night he rapidly noted the lad's physical condition and took account of his manner which, the more he studied it, was not at all reassuring.
"Tell me, now, Louis, what you want. Begin at the beginning and hide nothing."
Louis looked sullenly at his father.
"You haven't time to listen to me. You never have."
"Yes, I have. I'll take it." Paul felt more self-reproach every minute he eyed Louis. And as he looked at him he could not help thinking of how much the boy resembled in many ways Esther's brother Louis, who used to give him such concern.
"Well, father, I want to quit High School. I don't like it. I hate it."
"Why? Tell me honestly now. I can't help you unless you give me the real facts."
"I don't like the teachers. They nag me. I hate them."
"Hate them? You mean all of your teachers?"
"Well, most of them. They criticise me and make fun of me. Miss Barrows showed what I wrote about tuberculosis to every other teacher in the school."
"Go on," said Paul, after a pause.
"I can't get the English. I don't understand the long definitions. I am not cut out for a scholar."
"Have you tried?"
"Yes, I have. But the harder I try, the worse it is."
"What lessons are you carrying?"
"English, algebra, physics, manual training, German and chemistry."
"Tell me now," said Paul good-naturedly, "which one of all these studies you hate the least."
Louis laughed. "I don't like any studies."
"But which one would you choose first if you couldn't help yourself?"
"Manual training."
"What do you do in that?"
"Oh, I plane and saw and glue up boards and make things."
"What things?"
Louis hesitated. "You'll laugh."
"No, I won't." Paul felt more like crying than laughing as Louis eyed him doubtfully.
"Great God!" he felt like saying to himself. "Here I have been so busy with everybody else's affairs that my own son is afraid of me."
"Well, I finished a writing desk the other day. I was going to give it to mother for her birthday. I brought it home last night."
"A writing desk! Let me see it."
"It's in my room," Louis said with some hesitation.
"I want to see it," said Paul. He rose to go up stairs and had got as far as the hall when the telephone rang.
"Go on. I'll come as soon as I answer this," Paul said, and Louis hurried up stairs as if he wanted to get there some time before his father.
The man at the other end of the telephone wire was an angry committeeman at the State House.
"I say," he exclaimed in a strident voice that clanged into the receiver like a personal insult. "When are you coming down? We've been waiting here over an hour."
Paul made a lightning decision and answered. "I can't come down to-night. I have a very important engagement elsewhere."
"Elsewhere!" snorted the irate committeeman. "Why, you made this a personal meeting. You've got to come down. I can't hold Rogers to our plan if you don't come. And Alvard is on the fence. We lack just enough to make a majority. This is your pet measure. Are you going back on it?"
"I can't come down to-night. Put it through among you. If you really mean business you don't need me. Stand by the bill at all costs."
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 itscoup 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.