Hope Benham Part 3

It happened that John Benham had exchanged his hours of work for that day with a fellow engineer on the 5.30 train that came out from Boston.

Dolly, watching the train as it came to a stop at the Brookside station, saw something that interested her greatly. It was an exchange of glances between that "ugly, impudent, hateful thing" and the engineer, as he stood in his cab.

"So that is her father, is it,--that s.m.u.tty workman! She'd better set herself up and talk about her nice home!" was Dolly's inward comment out of the wrath that was raging within her.

"What is the matter with Dolly?" asked Mr. Dering, fifteen minutes later, as Dolly, red and pouting, and with a fierce little frown wrinkling her forehead, sat in unusual silence beside him on the front seat of the carriage. Matter? and Dolly, finding her tongue, poured forth the story of her grievance. With all her faults, Dolly was not deceitful or untruthful; and the story she told was remarkably exact, neither glossing over her own words, nor her humiliating defeat through Hope's cleverness of speech.

Mr. Dering seemed to find the whole story very amusing, and at the end of it laughingly remarked: "I don't think you had the best of it, Dolly."

Her mother, from the back seat, was mortified and shocked that Dolly should have been so vulgar as to quarrel on the street.

"But Dolly began it by asking such questions," spoke up Mary Dering.

"Dolly is such a rattler. I'm sure that flower-girl would never have spoken to her first."

Then Mrs. Dering wanted to know what Mary knew about "that flower-girl,"

and Mary described Hope as she had seen her.

"She said her father was an engineer on this road, did she?" asked Mr.

Dering, turning to Dolly.

"Yes, papa."

"It must be John Benham. He is one of the best engineers on this road,"--Mr. Dering was one of the Directors of the road,--"yes, it must be Benham. I should think he might have just such a child as that."

"Why, papa?" asked Mary Dering, leaning forward.

"Well, because he's a proud sort of fellow, rather short of speech; doesn't give or take any familiar words. But he's an excellent engineer, excellent, and is full of intelligent ideas. He saved the road from quite a loss last year by a suggestion of his. He's always tinkering, I've been told, on one or another of these ideas,--has quite an inventive faculty, I believe; and some of these days I suppose he hopes, as so many of these fellows do, to make a fortune out of some invention.

Hey, what do you say to that, Dolly?" turning from this graver talk, and pulling one of Dolly's black locks. "What do you say to your impudent little girl turning into a millionaire's daughter one of these days?"

"I'd say 'Ten cents a bunch' to her!" cried Dolly, vindictively.

Mr. Dering flung back his head, and laughed.

"Do you _really_ think he may make a fortune in that way?" asked Mary, interestedly.

"Well, no; really I don't, Mary," her father replied. "Such things don't happen very frequently. Most skilled mechanics, like Benham, make inventive experiments in their peculiar line, but it's only one in a thousand who is a genius at that sort of thing, and produces anything remarkable or valuable enough to bring them a fortune. Benham is a clever, industrious fellow, but he isn't a genius; so we won't make a hero for a story out of him, my dear." And Mr. Dering nodded with a smile at Mary,--a smile that brought a blush to Mary's cheek, for she knew that papa was making fun of what he called her sentimentality.

CHAPTER V.

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 Sat.u.r.day 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 madchen," 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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, Madchen, 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 sc.r.a.ping 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, sc.r.a.pe, sc.r.a.pe, 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."