Almost at the very moment that Mr. Dering was asking Dolly what was the
matter, John Benham, speeding along in his cab, was mentally asking the
same question in regard to Hope; for, as he caught that glimpse of her
as the train stopped, he saw at once that something was amiss. There was
a strained, excited look about her eyes, and a hot, uncomfortable color
in her cheeks. Had any one been troubling her? His own color rose at the
thought. Why had he allowed her to take such a position? But, thank
Heaven, this was the last night. Two hours after this he put the
question to Hope in words. What was the matter?
Hope had not meant to tell. She would be brave and keep her annoyance to
herself. But the suddenness of the question broke down her defences, and
she burst into tears.
"My dear, my dear, what is it? Who is it that has been troubling you?
There, there!" taking her in his arms, "have your cry out, then tell
father all about it."
Hope was to the full as honest and truthful as Dolly, and her story was
as exact; but she did not, for she could not, do full justice to Dolly,
from the fact that she had not caught the faintest idea of that good
impulse that she herself had nipped in the bud; and without this impulse
Dolly's share in the story looked pretty black, and John Benham, as he
listened to it, did not laugh, as Mr. Dering had done. It was not
amusing to him to hear how his sweet little daughter had been hurt by
all that impertinent questioning. He saw better than Hope that the
impertinence was not malice, and that the ignorance it proceeded from
was that old ignorance that comes from the selfishness that is born of
long-continued prosperity. In trying to convey something of this to
Hope, and to show her that she must not let her mind get poisoned by
dwelling too much upon the matter, he said,--
"Try to put it out of your mind by thinking of something else."
Hope lifted her head, and a faint smile irradiated her face.
"I'll push it out with the good little fiddle," she answered.
"That's my brave little woman!"
That very night Hope carried her resolve into action by going over to
see Mr. Kolb to arrange for the purchase of the violin. She had told him
at the first, of the shop where she had seen the instrument that had
taken her fancy, and of her flower-selling plan to buy it.
"Yes, yes; it was a very good shop," he had told her, and the plan was a
very good plan, and some day he would go with her to look at the little
fiddle.
He was quite astonished, however, when, on Saturday night, she ran in to
tell him that her plan had succeeded so well that she wanted him to go
with her on Monday afternoon to buy the little fiddle.
"What! you haf all the money?" he asked incredulously.
"Yes; I earned all but two dollars, and that my father gave me."
The old German threw out his hands with a gesture of surprise. "Ah! you
little American maedchen," he cried, "you do anything!"
But when, on Monday afternoon, the two set out on their errand, Hope
began to have a misgiving. Perhaps she had made a mistake. Perhaps,
after all, it wasn't a good little fiddle, and she looked anxiously at
Mr. Kolb when he entered the shop with her, and took the instrument in
his hands, for Mr. Kolb would know all about it. And Mr. Kolb _did_ know
all about it. He knew at the first sight of it; and when he lifted the
bow and drew it across the strings, his eyes were smiling with
approbation.
[Illustration: "HE LIFTED THE BOW AND DREW IT ACROSS THE STRINGS"]
"A good fiddle! ach! it is a peautiful little fiddle!" he exclaimed, as
he ceased playing. Then he complimented Hope by saying: "You haf the
musical eye, as well as ear, Maedchen, to put your heart on this little
fiddle, and we shall haf so good a time, you and I, learning to play
it."
That night, just after supper, Hope took her first lesson. As she tucked
the little fiddle under her chin, and drew the bow uncertainly and
awkwardly across the strings, her heart beat, and her eyes filled with
joyous tears. The little fiddle for the time quite pushed Dolly Dering
and everything connected with her out of her mind.
While she was thus happily occupied, her father was busily engaged with
what looked like a toy engine. He was tinkering over one of those ideas
of his, that Mr. Dering had spoken of. This particular idea was
something connected with the speed of the locomotive and the economy of
fuel at one and the same time. Two years before, certain improvements in
this direction had been made, but they were not fully successful,
because they did not combine harmoniously,--what was gained in one
direction being partially lost in another. John Benham's idea was to
invent something that should combine so harmoniously that a high rate of
speed could be attainable with a minimum of fuel.
When he first started to work out this idea, he was quite confident that
he could carry it through to success; but he had been at it now for
months, and the harmonious combination still evaded him. What was it?
What had he missed? Over and over again he would ask himself this
question, and over and over again he would add here or take away there,
and all without achieving the result he desired. So many failures had at
length beaten down his courageous confidence not a little, and he had
begun to think that he must be on the wrong track altogether, and might
as well give up the whole thing.
He was thinking this very strongly that Monday night when he sat in his
workshop,--a long, low room he had arranged for himself at the end of
the house. The night was warm for the season, and through the open
doorway he could hear the quavering, uncertain scraping of the little
fiddle.
"Dear little soul!" he thought; "I hope this good time is paying her for
that bad time of hers."
If he could only have known how thoroughly it was "paying her,"--that at
that moment the bad time was pushed completely out of mind by the good
time! He hoped that she was comforted; that was the most that he
expected. For himself, nothing had put the story she had told him out of
his mind; and while he sat there adjusting and readjusting the little
model, it was half mechanically,--his thought being more occupied with
his child's painful little experience, and all that it suggested to him.
He was not a bitter or a violent man. He did not think that the poor
were always in the right, and the rich always in the wrong in their
relations with each other, as a good many working-people do. No; he was
too intelligent for that. But what he did think, what he _knew_ was,
that the rich were not hampered and hindered by the daily struggle for
existence, for the means to procure food and clothing and shelter from
week to week. He knew that his own abilities were hindered and hampered
by the necessity that compelled him to work almost incessantly for the
necessaries of life. If he could have had only a little of the leisure
of the rich, a little of their money, he could have had constantly at
his hand, not merely the books that he needed, and the time to study
them, but various other ways and opportunities would have been open to
him to follow out his strong taste for mechanical construction. As it
was, he had been obliged to grope along slowly, working at odd times
after his labor of the day, and generally at some disadvantage, either
in the lack of proper tools, or needed books of reference directly at
his hand. All these thoughts bore down upon him that night with greater
force than usual, because of Hope's story; for here it was again in
another direction, that difference between the rich and the poor. And
while he thought these thoughts, scrape, scrape, went Hope's bow across
the strings.
"Do you hear that, John?" asked Mrs. Benham as she came into the
workshop.
"Yes, I've been listening to it for some time." There was an absent
expression in John Benham's eyes, as he glanced up. His wife noticed it.
"You look tired, John. I wouldn't bother over that"--with a nod at the
engine model--"any more."
"No; I've about made up my mind to give it up. I don't seem to be on the
right track with it, anyhow."
There was a depressed, discouraged note in the husband's voice that his
wife at once detected. It was a new note for her to hear in that voice.
She regarded him anxiously a moment, and then, smiling, but with a good
deal of real earnestness, said,--
"Don't fret about it, John. Hope, maybe, 'll make all our fortunes yet.
Mr. Kolb told me that she had a wonderful ear for music, and would be a
fine performer some day."
"Fortunes! 't isn't money only, Martha; I hate to give up a thing like
this. I felt so sure of myself when I started; and--and--it is failure,
you see; and failure is harder to bear than the hardest kind of labor.
I've always thought, you know, that I was cut out for this sort of
thing,--this inventive business,--but it looks as though I had been more
conceited than anything else, doesn't it?"
"No, no; it doesn't, John. Your worst enemy couldn't say that you were
conceited. But you've had so little chance, so little time; that's
what's the trouble. But you haven't come to the end yet, and I didn't
mean that I wanted you to give up trying. I only meant that I wouldn't
bother over _that_. You must start something new; that's all I meant,
John," cried Mrs. Benham, full of affectionate sympathy and repentance.
"Oh! I understand, Martha; I understand. What you said didn't discourage
me. I dare say I shall tinker away at something again by and by; but
_this_ thing"--striking the model a little blow with his hand--"is a
failure."
At that moment the door-bell rang, and Mrs. Benham hurried away to
answer its summons. Left alone, her husband stretched out his hand
towards the model, and opened the door of its fire-box. There was still
a tiny bed of coals there.
"We'll have a last run," he said, with a half-smile; and opening the
steam-valve, he saw the beautiful little model start once more on its
way along the rails he had laid for it upon the work-bench that ran
around the room. As he had constructed a self-acting pressure that
should close the steam-valve at a certain point, the model was under as
perfect control from where he stood as if it were of larger proportions,
and he were managing and directing it from its engine cab. A look of
pride, followed by an expression of sadness, flickered over the
builder's face, as he watched it. Where _had_ he failed?
Round and round the course the pretty thing sped, not at any headlong
speed, but at the pace that had been set for it, to prove or disprove
the effectiveness of the combination. Click, click, how smoothly it ran!
everything apparently perfect, from the wheels to the wire-netted flues.
If only--But what--what is that? and John Benham starts forward with
sudden eager attention. His quick ear has caught a slight sound that he
had not heard before, so slight that only _his_ ear would have detected
it. The machine was on its finishing round; three seconds more, and the
self-acting steam-valve has shut, the engine slows up to a stop, and its
builder, with a quickened pulse, bends eagerly forward.