Perhaps it is five minutes later that the wife opens the door again.
"John, who do you think has just called?" She receives no answer. "Dear
me!" she says vexedly to herself, "he's worrying at that machine again.
I wish he'd give it up. John!" Still no answer. Mrs. Benham walks into
the room. "John, I wish--" But as she catches sight of her husband's
face, which is pale, and changed by some strong feeling, she forgets
what she was about to say, and exclaims in a troubled tone, "What is it?
What is the matter, John?"
He starts and turns to her. Matter? A half-smile stirs his lips, and he
points to the engine without another word.
Mrs. Benham is frightened. She thinks to herself: "This constant worry
over that thing is turning his head; he will lose his mind. Oh, John!"
she cries, "if you would only come away and rest and give this up, if
only for a little while! I--I--" and poor Mrs. Benham's voice breaks,
and the tears rush to her eyes.
"Martha, Martha, you don't understand. My worry is all over,--all over.
The thing is a success,--a success, Martha, and not a failure!"
"What--why--when I went out--"
"When you went out a while ago, I'd given it up, and I thought I'd say
good-bye to it in a last run, and on that run I heard a new sound. Look
here, Martha, do you see that link in the valve gearing? I thought I had
taken every pains to suspend it properly. Well, it seems I hadn't. I
suspended it in the usual way, and it worked in the usual way; but it
turns out that wasn't the way to work with my new injector, and there is
where the hitch was. Do you remember when I brought my hand down on the
machine when we were talking? I must have displaced this delicate little
bolt or pin that you see here, at that blow, and in that way put the
link--it is what is called a shifting link--into the right position to
work my injector combination. This little change of position makes
everything clear as daylight, and I can put this little beauty into fine
shape now; fasten the bolts and pins permanently instead of temporarily,
for I don't need any more changes. It will do its double work of speed
and fuel-saving every time; for see there!"--and the exultant builder
pointed to some almost infinitesimal figures in two different portions
of the engine. They were the registers that proved the result of this
last triumphant run, and the complete success of his invention.
The tears were still in Mrs. Benham's eyes, but they were tears of joy.
"It seems too good to be true," she faltered.
"And I thought the other thing--the failure--too bad to be true," he
returned. Then smiling a little, "I shall name it 'Hope,'" he said.
"And it is Hope that will make our fortunes, after all; for this will
make a fortune, won't it, John?" inquired Mrs. Benham, looking up into
her husband's face eagerly. But he didn't hear her. His thoughts had
gone back to that valve gearing, and the link that had been so happily
put in place.
She touched his arm, and repeated her question.
"Fortune?" He turned from his loving contemplation of the thing that he
had builded. It seemed almost human to him. "Fortune,--I don't know," he
answered absently.
Mrs. Benham did not repeat her question again. She saw, as she glanced
at her husband's face, that it would be of no use, for she saw that just
for the present he was all absorbed in the delight that had come to him,
in the successful accomplishment of his undertaking. This was joy enough
for him at the moment. He had often said to her when she had advised him
not to tire himself out pottering over things that might not bring him a
penny, that he loved the work for itself, independent of anything else.
And it was the work that he was thinking of now, not the possible
financial results. But by and by--and Mrs. Benham's thoughts went
wandering off into that by and by, when these results would take
tangible form. Her ideas, however, were extremely modest. This fortune
that she had in her mind, that she saw before her at that instant, was
very limited. Harry Richards, an old friend of her husband's, had made a
comfortable little sum out of an improvement upon car-window fastenings,
and it was some such comfortable little sum that Mrs. Benham was
thinking of. A little sum that would be sufficient, perhaps, to pay at
once what mortgage there was still left upon their little home, to buy a
new carpet for the parlor, and the books her husband needed, and to give
Hope all the instruction she wanted upon the violin, from Mr. Kolb, or
any other teacher, at the teacher's price.
Just at this point of her thought, a quick, flying step was heard, and a
quick, humming voice,--a little sweet, thready sound, as near like a
violin tone as the owner could make it,--and the next minute Hope
appeared in the workshop rosy and radiant.
"Mr. Kolb says," she broke out, dropping her humming violin note, "that
I shall make a very good little fiddler some day if I 'haf patience,'"
gayly imitating the old German's pronunciation. "He says--" But
something in her father's absorbed attitude, in her mother's expression,
stopped her. "What is it? what has happened?" she inquired, looking from
one to the other.
"Your father has got the little engine all right."
"It does just what he wanted it to do?" asked Hope, eagerly.
"Yes, just what he wanted it to do."
Hope danced about the room, humming her little thready violin note. Her
father, roused from his reverie, looked up at her, and smiled.
"Well, Hope, the little fiddle was a success, eh?"
"And the little engine too;" and the girl danced up to her father,
humming her note of gladness.
"Yes, the little engine too."
Mrs. Benham, looking across the work-bench at her husband and daughter,
nodded and laughed at them.
"You're just alike,--you two," she said. "There's nothing now but the
little engine and the little fiddle. But how does it happen, Hope, that
Mr. Kolb could give you such a long lesson? Didn't he go in to play at
the concert to-night?"
"No; he has a cold, and his nephew, Karl, is to take his place. It is
Karl, you know, who teaches at the Conservatory; and Mr. Kolb says that
some time, when he gets too old and rheumatic to go out in the evening,
he may give up orchestra-playing altogether, and take to teaching like
Karl."
"Well, he'll have to get more profitable pupils than Hope Benham in that
case," said Mrs. Benham, laughingly.
"Mother, do you think--is it taking too much--from--"
"No, no, Hope," interrupted her mother. "I don't think anything of the
kind. Mr. Kolb meant what he said when he told you he'd like to give you
lessons. Don't you fret about that; father will pay him some time."
"Perhaps _I'll_ pay him when--" But Mrs. Benham did not stop to hear the
end of her daughter's sentence. A patter of rain-drops caught her ear,
and she hurried away to close the upper windows. Hope turned to her
father with her new idea; she was aglow with it.
"Farver," she began, using her old baby pronunciation, as she was in the
habit of doing now and then,--"Farver, Mr. Kolb says if I practise hard,
I may get to play the little fiddle at a concert some day, and earn
money, and then--then, I shall pay Mr. Kolb for teaching me, farver."
"Oh! that is your plan? Hope, the little fiddle has done a good work
already. It has pushed all that bad time out of your mind, hasn't it?"
"Yes, yes, it has pushed it away--away--oh! ever so much further; but,
farver," and Hope put her head down on her father's shoulder,
"I--I--don't ever want to see that girl again."
"Yes, father knows;" and drawing her closer to him, John Benham stroked
his daughter's sleek brown head with a soft caressing touch.
And father _did_ know. He knew that the little daughter was having her
first experience of the world, and the way it made its separations, its
class distinctions between rich and poor and high and low. He was not
envious or jealous or bitter, but he was very observant and thoughtful,
and he could not help seeing how ignorantly made were some of these
distinctions, and how unchristian. He knew that his little Hope was
intelligent and refined,--the fit companion for any refined child,
however placed in the world; and he knew that he himself was a fit
companion for intelligent, thoughtful men, however placed,--for, though
obliged to be a hard worker since he came a boy of fifteen from his
father's farm, he had found time to think and read and study, and he was
conscious that he had read and studied and thought to some purpose, and
that his thought was worth something; yet because of this way that the
world had of separating people without regard to their real natures or
their real tastes, but solely in regard to the accidents of poverty or
family influence, he was debarred from acquaintanceship on true, equal
terms with many who would naturally have been his companions and
friends, and whose companionship would have been of service to him, as
his would have been of service to them, from the different knowledge
that had come to each, from their different experiences. And here was
Hope--he looked down at her as his thoughts came to this point--here was
Hope, his cherished little daughter, so fine, so sweet. Was that girl of
the world's so-called higher class, whose blunt speech had hurt so
deeply,--was _she_ a fit companion for his little daughter?
He bent down and put his lips to the sleek brown head, as he asked this
question. Then he saw that the child was asleep; but his movement roused
her, and, stirring uneasily, she murmured in her dreams, "Ten cents a
bunch!" then, half awakening, cried, "Farver, farver, I don't ever want
to see that girl again."
"No, no, you sha'n't. It's all over, dear. We're not going to have any
more of that 'Ten cents a bunch!'--never any more of it," he repeated
consolingly, but with an emphasis of indignation and self-reproach.
But he was mistaken. Neither he nor Hope had heard the last of that "Ten
cents a bunch!"