Hope Benham Part 9

CHAPTER X.

It was the next morning just after breakfast that Miss Marr, coming out of her little parlor, met Hope in the hall, and said to her,--

"I'm afraid you did not sleep well, my dear; you look heavy-eyed."

"No, I didn't sleep very well," answered Hope, coloring slightly.

"Did Miss Dering keep you awake?"

"Y--es, I suppose so--but--it wasn't so bad as I expected."

Miss Marr laughed. "Oh! it was not so bad as you expected. She wears better on further acquaintance. I'm glad to hear that, but I am afraid she's a great chatterer. However, her room will be in order to-night, so you won't be together again."

Hope drew a deep breath of satisfaction, and her face showed unmistakable signs of relief. Miss Marr took note of these signs, and thought,--

"It is not like Hope to take prejudices against people. I wonder what it is that she finds so unbearable in this girl. It might help me a good deal if I knew."

A few guarded questions at once revealed Miss Marr's state of mind to Hope, and she immediately hastened to say,--

"I'm afraid I've given you a wrong impression; it is only a personal feeling with me, Miss Marr. I--I met this girl, Dorothea,--they called her 'Dolly' then,--five years ago, when I was only ten years old. She has forgotten me, but I never forgot her, for she spoke so rudely, so unkindly to me at the time, that I can't get over it. That's all. I dare say the other girls will like her, and I--I've nothing else against her."

Miss Marr touched Hope's cheek with her finger,--a caressing way she had at times, and said gently,--

"Thank you, Hope, for being so honest; I can always trust you."

Hope had been with Miss Marr for the past year, and had won her confidence and love by the fine sweet strain of her character.

"She's such an upright, sympathetic little soul, I can trust her with anything," the Frenchwoman had said to her friends.

It was one of these friends,--the wife of a scientific man,--that the Benhams had become acquainted with in Paris, who had suggested Hope as a pupil to Miss Marr, and told her something of John Benham's career.

"Such an interesting man," the friend had said, in summing up her account of him,--"what we call a self-made man, because he has had to cultivate his tastes by books and private study unhelped by the schools; but G.o.d-made after the finest pattern if ever a man was, and with a nice sensible wife and this dearest little daughter, whom they have so wisely determined to send home to their own country to complete her education."

Angelique Marr recalled these words as she looked at Hope. It was just at that moment that a door farther down the corridor was energetically flung open, and Miss Dorothea Dering appeared with her arms full of books. Hope started, and was turning away in the other direction, when Dolly called out,--

"Oh! Miss--Miss--er--er--Benham, wait a minute; I want to ask you something."

Hope waited, putting a detaining hand at the same time upon Miss Marr, who made a movement to step back into her parlor.

"I wanted to ask you," said Dolly, as she hurried up, "if you would let me practise with you sometimes. You play a great deal higher kind of music than I do, but I _can_ play better things, and I've got a lovely violin duet that I want awfully to practise with somebody; and if you only _would_!" with an appealing glance at Hope.

There was a slight pause, in which Miss Marr regarded Hope with a little curiosity. Hope Benham's violin-playing was known throughout the school as something out of the common, and the best of the piano pupils felt that they were hardly up to playing her accompaniments; and here was this new-comer proposing a violin duet with her! What would be Hope's answer to this proposition? There was only the slightest possible pause; then came this answer,--

"My violin practice is very rigidly confined to the studies that my teacher gives me, and he is very unwilling that I should play anything else."

"Oh, music-teachers are always that way! _I_ don't mind 'em," cried Dolly, airily; "and anyway, you can try some things with me in off times, can't she, Miss Marr?"

"Oh, I never encourage pupils to disobey a teacher," answered Miss Marr, a little amused at Dolly's density in appealing thus to her.

"Of course not. I forgot; you don't seem like a teacher or anything of that sort yourself to me; you seem somehow like one of us," said Dolly.

Then turning again to Hope, with a confident nod,--

"You just ask your teacher if you can't play with me at off times, won't you?"

Hope murmured something vague in the way of reply, but Dolly had no doubt that her proposition would be carried into effect in due season.

In the mean time, as it had not yet been decided about her own violin lessons, she determined to practise what she could by herself, and at odd intervals after this there was heard issuing from her room a variety of shrill sc.r.a.pings, at which the girls would shrug their shoulders, and shake their heads at one another. One day Kate Van der Berg accosted Hope with this question,--

"When do you begin practising that duet with Miss Dering?"

"Oh, how did you hear about that?"

"Not from you, Miss Closemouth."

"But Miss Marr, I know, didn't speak of it."

"No, Miss Dorothea Dering herself told us that when things were all settled, the cla.s.ses arranged, etc., you were going to practise a violin duet with her."

"She spoke to Miss Marr and to me about it," answered Hope, evasively.

"Oh, she spoke to Miss Marr and you about it, and Miss Marr and you didn't say 'Yes,' and you thought that would be enough of an answer; and it would, ordinarily, but it won't in this case, you'll see, my dear.

Miss Dorothea Dering is used to having her own way, and, Hope, I'm of the opinion she'll have it now."

Hope straightened her slim figure, and that little pucker came into her forehead that Kate Van der Berg knew so well, whereat Kate laughed, and said gayly,--

"How ungrateful you are, Hope!"

"Ungrateful! how am I ungrateful?"

"Not to embrace your opportunities and respond to such overtures. Hope, what is it that you dislike about Dorothea Dering? I saw from the first that you had taken a dislike to her."

Hope flushed uncomfortably.

"And she seems to admire you immensely. What is it? What have you seen in her? what do you know about her?"

"I don't know anything about her for anybody else, only I--It is entirely my feeling; it needn't prejudice anybody else," cried Hope, dismayed.

Kate Van der Berg was a warm-hearted, demonstrative girl, and at the trouble in Hope's voice and in her face she flung her arms around her, and said,--

"There, there, never mind about her or what I said. It's all right; or _you_ are all right, whatever she may be."

Hope put her cheek down upon Kate's shoulder for a moment; then suddenly lifting her head, she burst out,--

"No, no, you mustn't think as you do, that there's anything very bad that I'm holding back. I mustn't let you think so; it would be wicked in me. It is only just about myself,--something that she said to me long ago,--five years ago. She's forgotten it; she's forgotten me. I only met her for a few minutes, two or three times."

"The disagreeable thing! I shall hate her!" Kate cried impulsively.

"No, no, don't say so. I dare say you would have liked her if I--if I could have kept what I felt to myself, and I thought I did, I thought I did. Oh, dear!" and Hope stopped abruptly, as she realized that her own excitement was making matters worse.