Hope Benham Part 25

"Help her--how?"

"Well, I--I feel as if I may have been too hard on her. I have cherished my feeling of dislike constantly, and have done her an injury all round--with you, and the other girls by the way I have held off from her. She feels that the girls don't like her, and thinks that _you_ were the first to dislike her, and that it was you who had influenced me. I told her what a mistake that was,--that it was _I_ who had influenced you--by my manner at the start; and then, then I recalled myself to her mind. I told her what she had forgotten,--that I was the little girl she had met five years ago,--the little girl she had had a quarrel with at the Brookside station, and that I had always remembered what she had said to me there,--always remembered and resented it, and that it was that that had affected my manner towards her, had made me stiff and offish to her."

"Oh, Hope, do, do tell me about that time! I've never liked before to urge you to tell me the whole story, but I wish now that you _would_ tell me."

There was a moment of hesitation,--just a moment; then with a little rising of color, a little tremulousness of voice, Hope said,--

"Kate, do you remember that piece of music that I brought back from Boston,--that 'Idyl of the Spring' that Mr. Kolb had composed for me to play at our coming May festival?"

"That piece dedicated to you, and so oddly named 'Mayflowers: Ten Cents a Bunch'?"

"Yes, and do you remember, when you asked me how he came to give it such an odd t.i.tle, that I told you he had known a little girl once that he was very fond of, who had sold mayflowers at ten cents a bunch?"

"Yes."

"Well, _I_ was that little girl."

"You! you! When--where--how did you come to sell them?"

"I'll tell you;" and then, for the second time that night, Hope told her story of that 'poor time,' as Dorothea had blunderingly called it,--that dear time, as she herself rightly and happily called it,--when she lived with her father and mother in the little cottage at Riverview, and carried out her joyous plan of earning that wonderful twenty-five dollars to buy the good little fiddle. As she told the story now, as she went back to the details of her plan, with Kate for audience, and described the little fiddle in the shop-window as she had first seen it, and the sinking of her heart as she was told the price, and then the happy relief of her inspiration when she heard the boy on the street call out "Ten cents a bunch," she began to lose her shyness in the warmth of her recollection,--to lose her shyness and to forget her shrinking from a possible auditor who _wouldn't understand_. Wouldn't understand! As she neared the end, as she came to her meeting with Dorothea in the Brookside station, and said, "It was there that I first met Dorothea," Kate burst in,--

"And she insulted you, she insulted you in her ignorance and stupidity!

I can see it all,--all. She couldn't comprehend such a dear darling brave little thing as you. She took you for an ordinary little street huckster,--the horrid thick-headed, thick-skinned creature,--and sneered and jeered at you, and very likely called you names, or did other dreadful things."

"Oh, no, no, Kate! she wasn't malicious. She didn't _mean_ to hurt me; but she was ignorant of any way of living but her own way, and she thought that anybody who sold things on the street must be one of those very poor people who lived anyhow, like the people at the North End, and so she asked me questions,--questions that hurt me, because they showed that she thought I was so different from herself. No, it wasn't malice that made her ask these questions, it was simply ignorance; and I--I told her so at last."

"You did? Hurrah! Tell me--tell me exactly what you said," cried Kate, laughing delightedly.

"Well, I said exactly that,--that she must be very ignorant or she would know more about the difference in people, that she would _see_ the difference; and then I told her that my father was an engineer on the road, and that we had a nice home and plenty to eat and to drink and to wear, and books and magazines and papers, and then she asked me what I sold flowers on the street for, if we were as nice as that, and I told her that I wanted to buy something for myself that my father couldn't afford to buy for me; and then I remember"--and a little dimpling smile came over Hope's face here--"I asked her, 'Don't you ever want anything that your father doesn't feel as if he could buy for you just when you want him to?' and she was so irritated at my accusing her of being ignorant that she answered, 'Well, if I did, I shouldn't be let to go out on the street and peddle flowers to earn the money.'"

"The hateful, impudent--"

"But wait, wait! I was as bad as she was here, because I answered back, 'And _I_ shouldn't be _allowed_ to say "let to go," like ignorant North Enders.'"

"Oh, Hope, Hope, this is beautiful, beautiful!" and Kate began to dance wildly around the room, thrumming an imaginary pair of castanets as she danced.

"I don't think it was very beautiful," protested Hope; "but you can see by this speech that I was as bad as she after I got my temper up."

"Bad! it was beautiful, beautiful,--just the best thing I ever heard.

Bad! well, I should say not."

"But _she_ didn't _mean_ to hurt me, to begin with, and I--I _meant_ to hurt her in everything I said. Remember that."

"You meant to enlighten her, and I fancy you did, and you certainly got the better of her."

"Yes, and her father told her so, she said, when I recalled the 'scrimmage,' as she termed it, to her mind; and yet in spite of that she didn't lay up anything against me. She had forgotten my face, and was fast forgetting the whole affair when I brought things back to her. She had never had a bit of grudge against me, and she only laughed when she recalled some of the things I had said. I'm glad now to tell you the whole story, for you must see by what I have told you, that she isn't in the least malicious, and you must see, too, that she is really much better natured than we have thought her, not to have laid up anything; yes, much better natured than I am."

"Well, she was the attacking party. You were only on the defensive, and you knocked her down with the truth. Of course you would remember the kind of things she said to you more than she would remember your replies; and then you are much finer and more sensitive than she, anyway. But I will allow that she has turned out better in the end than I would have expected. That telling you what her father said wasn't bad.

But, Hope dear, sensitive as you are, how could you recall yourself and that old time to her?"

"I told you how I came to do it; it was because she had got it into her head that it was you who had made me stiff and offish, and I had to tell her then just how it was."

"Oh, yes; and you sacrificed yourself in that way for me. You hated to tell her, Hope, I know you did,--you are such a sensitive, shrinking creature."

"Yes, that is just my fault,--a cowardly shrinking, that makes me keep silent sometimes when I ought to speak. Oh, Kate, Kate, I dare say now, this minute, you are thinking how strange it is,--my not having spoken to you before, of all this old life of mine, when I lived so differently from the way I live now. I dare say you think I--I was ashamed to talk about it, because my father was a working-man, a poor locomotive engineer. Oh, I shall never forget how I felt that day last term when you talked about the people who kept still and never spoke of their humble beginnings; and when you brought up the Stephensons and said, 'Do you think _they'd_ keep still, because they were ashamed of their humble beginnings, after they had worked out of them and become prosperous?'

and then when you went on and declared how you hated the cowardice of those people who didn't dare to speak of these things, and what _you_ would do under such circ.u.mstances, I felt that _I_ was the most miserable coward, and that you would despise me forever if you knew what I was keeping to myself. But I knew--I knew all the time, that I wasn't ashamed of _anything_,--of the little home without a servant or of the engine-cab and my dear, dear father. I knew I was proud of him and what he had done, and yet I knew that I couldn't bear to think of telling all these things to girls who had never known what it was to live as we had.

I felt that you wouldn't, that you couldn't understand; that you would take it all something as Dorothea had, years ago, though you wouldn't _say_ a word of how you felt, but you would look it. You would stare at me with wonder and curiosity,--that you--you--"

"Oh, Hope, Hope, my dear, I do understand it all--all--everything. I _know_ that you couldn't be ashamed of that old time, and I understand just how you felt about us, how and why you shrank from telling us. One such experience as that with Dorothea was enough to make you shrink from all girls like us. You were a dear delicate little child, and you had never known that there was such ignorance as Dorothea's, and that you _could_ be so misunderstood, and it has made a great bruise on you that you have never got over. Oh, Hope, this is all Dorothea's doing. She _meant_ no harm, but she has done the harm nevertheless, for she has taken away your belief and trust and confidence. To think that you couldn't trust _me_, after all you've known of me, to understand just a difference in the way of living! Why, the life you've just told me of--that little home where you were so close to each other, where you lived so near to all your father's hopes and plans--seems to me beautiful, something to be envied. And to think _you_ should think I shouldn't understand, shouldn't appreciate it--should look at it with--with such eyes as--as Dorothea's! Oh, Hope! Hope! doesn't this prove what harm Dorothea has done you?"

"And if it does, Kate, and I don't deny that it does, I say again that she didn't _mean_ to do any harm,--I see that now as clear as can be,--and that ought to make all the difference; and then when I think what _I_ have done--"

"You! what have you done but to forgive her ninety-and-nine times?"

"Oh, no, no, Kate, I've--I've dis--no, I've _hated_ her all these years, and this hate has affected my manner towards her so much that it influenced you and all the other girls against her; and as she has been harmed through that, I don't see but that I ought to cry quits."

"Yes, five months against five years. Do you call that quits?"

"Yes, and maybe more than quits, because I've made enemies for her, or at least influenced people against her, while she had no feeling to prejudice people against me. She has liked me all this time that we've been here at school together, spite of my being so stiff; and when she came to find out who I was,--the little girl who got the best of her in that childish quarrel, she hadn't the least ill will towards me. Quits?

Yes, I say it's more than quits for me. Oh, Kate, I can't tell you everything she said to me just now, but she did show herself generous and grateful; and even when I confessed that it was I who had prejudiced you, even then she had no ill will. Yes, yes, I agree that I was harmed and hurt by what happened five years ago; but, Kate, I've been thinking very fast and very hard for the last hour or two, and I've come to believe that if I had known nothing of Dorothea before she came here--if I and you had started without any prejudice, things might have been different, we might have been easier and pleasanter with her, and that might have brought her out in pleasanter ways. But instead of that, we picked up every little thing, and, well, she _was_ cold-shouldered awfully by all of us at times; and we can't tell--we don't know what we might have done, if we had tried to make her _one of us_ more. We might have kept her from doing such foolish reckless things as she has; and so, as I think that I am to blame for the beginning of this prejudice that has hurt her, I think that I may have been the means of doing her greater harm than she has ever done me; for think, _think_, Kate, _what_ harm it must be to a girl to have Raymond Armitage able to boast about her accepting his attentions, and for your brother and Peter Van Loon, and n.o.body knows who else, getting such a cheap opinion of her through these things."

"Yes, I see. But what do you propose to do about it?"

"Well, I think--I ought to do or try to do what I can now, to help her _not_ to hurt herself any more by these pranks."

"How are you going to work to make her over like this?"

"I--I don't expect to make her over, Kate, but I think she may get a different idea of having a good time if we are very friendly to her, and bring her into _our_ good times, and she sees that the girls, and the boys too, that she really wants to a.s.sociate with, really and truly look down on these pranks that she has thought were only 'good fun,'--look down upon them and think them vulgar."

"And you want me to help in this missionary work?" asked Kate, half laughing.

"Yes, I--I want you to be nice to her, Kate. When you meet her to-morrow morning, now, I want you to give her something more than a stiff nod; I want you to smile a little,--not too much, or she'll think I've been talking to you about her."

"A little, but not too much," laughed Kate, "Oh, Hope, Hope, you dear delightful darling you, this is too funny, too funny!"

"But won't you try--won't you try, Kate, to--"

"To smile upon her a little but not too much? Yes, yes, I'll try, I'll try," still laughing.

"And, Kate dear," suddenly enfolding the laughing girl in a close embrace, "will you try to do something else for me,--will you try to forgive me for--for being so stupid as not to trust you to--to understand? Will you try to forgive me, and to--to love me as well--as you did before?"

"Try to forgive you--to love you as well as I did before," cried Kate, pressing Hope's cheek against her own. "I've nothing to forgive; and as for loving you as well as I did before, I love you better, if that were possible, for before, though I thought I knew you pretty well, I didn't know how more than generous you could be. Love you? I love and admire you beyond anybody; I--"

"Girls, girls, it's after talking hours," whispered Anna Fleming, as she pushed open the door. "I've just come from your room, Hope, where I've been with Myra, and the lights are all being turned down in the halls, and so we _must_ say good-night and scatter to bed."

"Oh, yes, I ought not to have stayed so long," whispered back Hope, apologetically. "Good-night!" and "Good-night!" "Good-night" responded Anna and Kate in chorus; but Kate managed to add slyly in a lower whisper to Hope,--

"I'll smile upon her a little, but not too much, Hope dear."