she went to market, and Overholt was not even going to ask the man if
there were any letters for him. But the postman stopped him. There was
one from his wife, and it was registered. He signed the little receipt
for it, the man passed them on his rounds, and they slackened their
pace as Overholt broke the seal.
He uttered a loud exclamation when he had glanced at the contents, and
he stood still in the road. Newton stared at him in surprise.
"A thousand dollars!" he cried, overcome with amazement. "A thousand
dollars! Oh, Helen, Helen--you've saved my life!"
He got to the side of the road and leaned against the fence, clutching
the letter and the draft in his hand, and gazing into his son's face,
half crazy with delight.
"She's saved it all for me, boy. Do you understand? Your mother has
saved all her salary for the Motor, and here it is! Look at it, look at
it! It's success, it's fame, it's fortune for us all! Oh, if she were
only here!"
Newton understood and rejoiced. He forgot his poor little attempt to
help, and his own disappointment, and everything except the present
glorious truth--not unadorned by the pleasant vision of the Christmas
turkey, vast now, and smoking, and flanked by perfect towers of stiff
cranberry jelly, ever so much better than mere liquid cranberry sauce;
in the middle distance, behind the noble dish, a noble pyramid of
ice-cream raised its height, and yellow cream-cakes rose beyond, like
many little suns on the far horizon. In that first moment of delight
there was almost a Christmas tree, and the mother's face beside it; but
that was too much; they faded, and the rest remained, no mean forecast
of a jolly time.
"That's perfectly grand!" Newton cried when he got his breath after his
surprise at the announcement. "Besides, I told you so. What did I say?
She wouldn't let you give up the Motor! I knew she wouldn't! Who's right
now, father? That's something like what I call a mother! But then she
always was!"
He was slightly incoherent, but that did not matter at all. Nothing
mattered. In his young beatific vision he saw the bright wheel going
round and round in a perfect storm of turkeys, and it was all his
mother's doing.
Overholt only half heard, for he had been reading the letter; the letter
of a loving wife who believes in her husband and gives him all she has
for his work, with every hope, every encouragement, and every blessing
and Christmas wish.
"There's no time to be lost!" Overholt said, repeating the words he had
spoken in a very different mood and tone half an hour earlier. "I won't
walk on with you, my boy, for I must go back and get the wooden model
for the foundry. They'll do it for me now, fast enough! And I can pay
what I owe at the bank, and there will be plenty left over for your
Christmas too!"
"Oh, bother my Christmas, father!" answered Newton with a fine
indifference which he did not feel. "The Motor's the thing! I want to
see that wheel go round for a Christmas present!"
"It will! It shall! It must! I promise you that!" The man was almost
beside himself with joy.
No misgiving disturbed him. He had the faith that tosses mountains aside
like pebbles, now that the means were in his hand. He had the little
fulcrum for his lever, which was all Archimedes required to move the
world. He had in him the certainty of being right that has sent millions
of men to glory or destruction.
That day was one of the happiest in all his life, either before or,
afterwards. He could have believed that he had fallen asleep at the
moment when he had quite broken down, and that a hundred years of change
had glided by, like a watch in the night, when he opened his wife's
letter and wakened in a blaze of joy and hope and glorious activity.
Nothing he could remember of that kind could compare with his pride and
honourable satisfaction when he walked into the bank two hours
afterwards, with his head high, and said he should be glad to take up
the note he had signed yesterday and have the balance of the cheque
placed to his credit; and few surprises which the partner who had
obliged him could recollect, had equalled that worthy gentleman's
amazement when the debt was paid so soon.
"If you had only told me that you would be in funds so soon, Mr.
Overholt," he said, "I should not have thought of troubling you. Here is
your note. Will you kindly look at it and tear it up?"
"I did not know," answered Overholt, doing as he was told.
It is a curious fact that the little note lay in a locked drawer of the
partner's magnificent table, instead of being put away in the safe with
other and larger notes, where it belonged. It may seem still stranger
that, on the books, Overholt's account showed that it had been balanced
by a deposit exactly equal to the deficit, made by the partner himself,
instead of by crediting the amount of the note. But Overholt never knew
this, for a pass-book had always been a mystery to him, and made his
head ache. The banker had thought of his face some time after he had
gone out with his battered umbrella and his shabby shoulders rounded as
under a burden, and somehow the Christmas spirit must have come in
quietly and touched the rich man too, though even the stenographer did
not see what happened. For he had once been in terrible straits himself,
a quarter of a century ago, and some one had helped him just in time,
and he knew what it meant to slink out of a big bank, in shabby clothes,
his back bowed under the heavy weight of debt and failure.
Overholt never knew; but he expressed his warm thanks for what now
seemed a small favour, and with his wooden model of the casting, done up
in brown paper, under his arm, he went off to the foundry in Long
Island.
Much careful work had been done for him there, and the people were
willing to oblige him, and promised that the piece should certainly be
ready before Christmas Day, and as much earlier as possible, and should
be made with the greatest exactness which the most precise machinery and
the most careful work could ensure.
This being settled, Overholt returned to New York and went to two or
three places in the Bowery, well known to him, where he bought certain
fine tools and pieces of the most perfectly turned steel spring, and
several other small objects, which he needed for the construction of the
new tangent-balance he had to make for the reversed curve. Finally, he
bought a silver watch like the one Newton had sold, and a new pair of
skates, presents which the boy certainly deserved, and which would make
a very good show at Christmas, when they were to be produced. He felt as
if he had come into a large fortune.
Moreover, when he got out of the train at his own station he went into
the town, and ordered beforehand the good things for the feast, though
there were three weeks still, and he wanted to pay for them in advance,
because he felt inside of himself that no one could be quite sure of
what might happen in twenty-one days; but the dealers flatly refused to
take his money, though they told him what the things would cost. Then
Overholt did almost the only prudent thing he had done in his life, for
he took the necessary money and five dollars more and sealed it up in an
envelope, which he put away in a safe place. The only difficulty would
lie in remembering where the place was, so he told Newton about it, and
the boy wrote it down on a piece of paper which he pinned up in his own
room, where he could see it. There was nothing like making sure of that
turkey, he thought. And I may as well say at once that in this matter,
at least, no untoward accident occurred, and the money was actually
there at the appointed time. What happened was something quite
different, and much more unexpected, not to say extraordinary and even
amazing; and in spite of all that, it will not take very long to tell.
Meanwhile, before it happened, Overholt and the boy were perfectly
happy. All day long the inventor worked at the tangent-balance, till he
had brought it to such perfection that it would be affected by a
variation of one-tenth of one second in the aggregate speed of ten
revolutions, and an increase or decrease of a tenth of a grain in the
weight of the volume of the compressed air. It was so sensitive that
John Henry and Newton trod cautiously on the floor of the workshop so as
not to set it vibrating under the glass clock-shade, where it was kept
safe from dust and dampness.
After it had been placed there to wait for the casting, the inventor
took the engine to pieces and made the small changes that would be
necessary before finally putting it together again, which would probably
occupy two days.
Meanwhile the little City of Hope grew rapidly, and was becoming an
important centre of civilisation and commerce, though it was only made
of paper and chips, and bits of matchboxes and odds and ends cleverly
put together with glue and painted; except the people in the street. For
it was inhabited now, and though the men and women did not move about,
they looked as if they might, if they were only bigger. Overholt had
seen the population in the window of a German toy-shop one day when he
was in New York to get a new crocusing wheel for polishing some of the
small parts of the engine. They were the smallest doll-people he had
ever seen, and were packed by dozens and dozens in Nuremberg toy-boxes,
and cost very little, so he bought a quantity of them. At first Newton
rather resented them, just because they were only toys, but his father
explained to him that models of human figures were almost necessary to
models of buildings, to give an idea of the population, and that when
architects make coloured sketches of projected houses, they generally
draw in one or two people for that reason; and this was perfectly
satisfactory to the boy, and saved his dignity from the slight it would
have suffered if he had been actually seen amusing himself with mere
playthings.
Overholt was divinely happy in anticipation of the final success that
was so near, and in the daily work that was making it more and more a
certainty, as he thought; and then, when the day was over, he was just
as happy with the little City, which was being decorated for Christmas,
with wreaths in the windows of the houses, and a great many more
holly-trees than had at first been thought of, and numberless little
Christmas booths round the common, like those in Avenue A, south of
Tompkins Square, in New York, which make you fancy you are in Munich or
Prague if you go and see them at the right hour on Christmas Eve.
Before long Overholt received a short note from the President of his old
College, simply saying that the latter knew of no opening at present,
but would bear him in mind. But that did not matter now.
So the two spent their time very pleasantly during the next weeks; but
though Overholt was so hopeful and delighted with his work, he knew that
he was becoming nervous and overwrought by the great anticipation, and
that he could not stand such a strain very long.
Then, two days before Christmas, he received a note saying that the new
piece was finished and had been sent to him by express. That was almost
too much happiness to bear, and when he found the heavy case at the
station the next morning, and got it put on a cart, his heart was doing
queer things, and he was as white as a sheet.
VIII
HOW THE WHEELS WENT ROUND AT LAST
The hush of Christmas Eve lay upon the tumble-down cottage, and on the
soft fresh snow outside, and the lamps were burning quietly in the
workshop, where father and son were sitting before the finished Motor.
The little City was there too, but not between them now, though Newton
had taken off its brown paper cover in honour of the great event which
was about to take place.
In order to be doubly sure of the result, and dreading even the
possibility of a little disappointment, Overholt had decided that he
would subject the only chemical substance which the machine consumed to
a final form of refinement by heat, melting, boiling and cooling it, all
of which would require an hour or more before it was quite ready. He
felt like a man who is going to risk his life over a precipice, trusting
to a single rope for safety; that one rope must not be even a little
chafed; if possible each strand must be perfect in itself, and all the
strands must be laid up without a fault. Of the rest, of the machine
itself, Overholt felt absolutely sure; yet although a slight impurity in
the chemical could certainly not hinder the whole from working, it might
interfere with the precision of the revolutions, or even cause the
engine to stop after a few hours instead of going on indefinitely, as
long as the supply of the substance produced the alternate disturbance
of equilibrium which was the main principle on which the machine
depended.
That sweetly prophetic evening silence, before the great feast of Good
Will, does not come over everything each year, even in a lonely cottage
in an abandoned farm in Connecticut, than which you cannot possibly
imagine anything more silent or more remote from the noise of the world.
Sometimes it rains in torrents just on that night, sometimes it blows a
raging gale that twists the leafless birches and elms and hickory trees
like dry grass and bends the dark firs and spruces as if they were
feathers, and you can hardly be heard unless you shout, for the howling
and screaming and whistling of the blast.
But now and then, once in four or five years perhaps, the feathery snow
lies a foot deep, fresh-fallen, on the still country-side and in the
woods; and the waxing moon sheds her large light on all, and Nature
holds her breath to wait for the happy day, and tries to sleep but
cannot, from sheer happiness and peace. Indoors the fire is glowing on
the wide hearth, a great bed of coals that will last all night, because
it is not bitter weather, but only clear and cold and still, as it
should be; or if there is only a poor stove, like Overholt's, the wide
door is open, and a comfortable and cheery red light shines out from
within upon the battered iron plate and the wooden floor beyond; and the
older people sit round it, not saying much, but thinking with their
hearts rather than with their heads; but small boys and girls know that
interesting things have been happening in the kitchen all the afternoon,
and are rather glad that the supper was not very good, because there
will be the more room for good things to-morrow; and the grown-ups and
the children have made up any little differences of opinion they may
have had before supper-time, because Good Will must reign, and reign
alone, like Alexander; so that there is nothing at all to regret, and
nothing hurts anybody any more, and they are all happy in just wishing
for King Christmas to open the door softly and make them all great
people in his kingdom. But if it is the right sort of house, he is
already looking in through the window, to be sure that every one is all
ready for him, and that nothing has been forgotten.
Now, although Overholt's cottage was a miserable place for a professor
who had lived very comfortably and well in a College town, and although
the thirteen-year-old boy could remember several pretty trees, lighted
up with coloured candles and gleaming with tinsel and gilt apples, they
both felt that this was going to be the greatest Christmas in their
lives, because the motionless Motor was going to move, and that would
mean everything--most of all to both of them, the end of the mother's
exile, and her speedy home-coming. Therefore neither said anything for a
long time while the chemical stuff was slowly warming itself and
getting ready, inside a big iron pot, of which the cover was screwed on
with a high-temperature thermometer sealed in it, and which stood on the
top of the stove where Overholt could watch the scale.
He would really have preferred to be alone for the first trial, but it
was utterly impossible to think of sending the boy to bed. He was sure
of success, it is true, yet he would far rather have been left to
himself till that success was no longer in the future, but present; then
at last, even if Newton had been asleep, he would have waked him and
brought him downstairs again to see his triumph. The lad's presence made
him nervous, and suggested a failure which was all but impossible. More
than once he was on the point of trying to explain this to Newton, but
when he glanced at the young face he could not find it in his heart to
speak. If he only asked the boy, as a kindness, to go into the next room
for five minutes while the machine was being started, he knew what would
happen. Newton would go quietly, without a word, and wait till he was
called; but half his Christmas would be spoilt by the disappointment he
would try hard to hide. Had they not suffered together, and had not the
boy sacrificed the best of his small possessions, dearly treasured, to
help in their joint distress? It would be nothing short of brutal to
deprive him of the first moment of triumphant surprise, that was going
to mean so much hereafter. Yet the inventor would have given anything to
be alone. He was overwrought by the long strain that had so often seemed
unbearable, and when the liquid that was heating had reached the right
temperature and the iron pot had to be taken off the stove, his hands
shook so that he nearly dropped it; but Newton did not see that.
"It's wonderful how everything has come out just right!" the boy
exclaimed as he looked at the machine. "Out of your three wishes you'll
get two, father, for the wheel will go round and I'm going to have a
regular old patent, double-barrelled Christmas with a gilt edge!" His
similes were mixed, but effective in their way. "And you'll probably get
the other wish in half a shake now, for mother'll come right home, won't
she?"
"If the trial succeeds," Overholt said, still instinctively seeking to
forestall a disappointment he did not expect. "Nothing is a fact until
it has happened, you know!"
"Well," said Newton, "if I had anything to bet with, and somebody to bet
against, I'd bet, that's all. But I haven't. It's a pity too, now that
everything's coming out right. Do you remember how we were trying to
make bricks without straw less than a month ago, father? It didn't look
just then as if we were going to have a roaring old Christmas this year,
did it?"
He chattered on happily, looking at the Motor all the time, and Overholt
tried to smile and answered him with a word or two now and then, though
he was becoming more and more nervous as the minutes passed and the
supreme moment came nearer. In his own mind he was going over the simple
operations he had to perform to start the engine; yet easy as they were
he was afraid that he might make some fatal mistake. He did not let
himself think of failure; he did not dare to wonder how he should tell
his wife if anything went wrong and all her hard-saved earnings were
lost in the general ruin that must follow if the thing would not move.
There was next to nothing left of what she had sent, now that
everything was paid for; it would support him and the boy for a month,
if so long, but certainly no more.
He was ready at last, but, strange to say, he would gladly have put off
the great moment for half an hour now that there was no reason for
waiting another moment. He sat down again in his chair and folded his
hands.
"Aren't you going to begin, father?" asked Newton. "What are you waiting
for?"
Overholt pulled himself together, rose with a pale face, and laid his
shaking hands on the heavy plate-glass case. It moved upwards by its
chain and counterpoise, almost at a touch, till it was near the low
ceiling, quite clear of the machine.
He was very slow in doing what was still necessary, and the boy watched
him in breathless suspense, for he had seen other trials that had
failed--more than two or three, perhaps half a dozen. Every one who has
lived with an inventor, even a boy, has learned to expect disappointment
as inevitable; only the seeker himself is confident up to a certain
point, and then his own hand trembles, when the moment of trial is
come.
Overholt poured the chemical into the chamber at the base, screwed down
the air-tight plug, and opened the communication between the reservoir
and the machine. Then he took out his watch and waited four minutes,
that being twice the time he had ascertained to be necessary for a
sufficient quantity of the liquid to penetrate into the distributors
beyond. He next worked the hand air-pump, keeping his eye on the vacuum
gauge, and lastly, as soon as the needle marked the greatest exhaustion
he knew to be obtainable, he moved the starting lever to the proper
position, and then stepped back to watch the result.
For a moment, in the joy of anticipation, a strange light illuminated
his face, his lips parted as in a foretasted wonder, and he forgot even
to drop the hand he had just withdrawn. The boy held his breath
unconsciously till he was nearly dizzy.
Then a despairing cry burst from the wretched man's lips, he threw up
his hands as if he had been shot through the heart, and stumbled
backwards.
The Motor stood still, motionless as ever, and gleaming under the
brightly shining lamps.
"Oh, Helen! God forgive me!"
With the words he fell heavily to the floor, and lay there, a nerveless,
breathless heap. Newton was kneeling beside him in an instant.
"Father!" cried the boy in agony, bending over the still white face.
"Father! Speak to me! You can't be dead--you can't--"
In his mortal terror the lad held each breath till it seemed as if his
head must burst, then breathed once and shut his lips again with all his
strength. Some instinct made him lay his ear to the man's chest to
listen for the beatings of his heart, but he could hear nothing.
Half-suffocated with sudden mingled grief and fright, he straightened
himself on his knees and looked up at the cursed machine that had
wrought such awful destruction.
Then he in turn uttered a cry, but it was low and full of wonder, long
drawn out and trembling as the call of a frightened young wild animal.
The thing was moving, steadily, noiselessly moving in the bright light;
the double levers worked like iron jaws opening and shutting regularly,
the little valve-rods rose and sank, and the heavy wheel whirled round
and round. The boy was paralysed with amazement, and for ten seconds he
forgot that he was kneeling beside his father's fallen body on the
floor; then he felt it against him and it was no longer quite still.
Overholt groaned and turned upon his side as his senses slowly came back
and his agony tortured him to life again. Instantly the boy bent over
him.
"Father! It's going! Wake up, father! The wheel's going round at last!"
IX
HOW THE KING OF HEARTS MADE A FEAST IN THE CITY OF HOPE
When Overholt understood what he heard, he opened his eyes and looked up
into his son's face, moving his head mournfully from side to side as it
lay on the boards. But suddenly he caught sight of the engine. He gasped
for breath, his jaw dropped, and his eyes were starting from their
sockets as he struggled to get up with the boy's help.
His voice came with a sort of rasping scream that did not sound human,
and then broke into wild laughter, interrupted by broken words.
"Mad!" he cried. "I knew it--it had to come--my boy--help me to get away
from that thing--I'm raving mad--I see it moving--"
"But it really is moving, father! Wake up! Look at it! The wheel is
going round and round!"
Then Overholt was silent, sitting up on the floor and leaning against
his arm. Slowly he realised that he was in his senses, and that the
dream of long years had come true. Not a sound broke the stillness, so
perfect was the machinery, except a kind of very soft hum made by the
heavy fly-wheel revolving in the air.
"Are you sure, boy? Aren't we dreaming?" he asked in a low tone.
"It's going like clock-work, as sure as you're born," the lad answered.
"I think your falling down shook it up and started it. That was all it
wanted."
The inventor got up slowly, first upon his knees, at last to his feet,
never once taking his eyes from the beautiful engine. He went close to
it, and put out his hand, till he felt the air thrown off by the wheel,
and he gently touched the smooth, swift-turning rim with one finger,
incredulous still.
"There's no doubt about it," he said at last, yielding to the evidence
of touch and sight. "It works, and it works to perfection. If it
doesn't stop soon, it will go on for twenty-four hours!"
Almost as much overcome by joy as he had been by despair, he let himself
sink into his seat.
"Get me that tea-bottle," he said unsteadily. "Quick! I feel as if I
were going to faint again!"