The Little City of Hope Part 3

"And give up the Motor?" Newton had never yet heard him suggest such a thing.

"Yes," Overholt answered in a low tone; and that was all he said.

"Oh, that's ridiculous. You'd just die, that's all!"

Newton stared at the engine that was a failure. It looked as if it ought to work, he thought, with its neat cylinders, its polished levers, its beautifully designed gear. It stood under a big case made of thick gla.s.s plates set in an iron frame with a solid top; a chain ran through two cast-iron wheels overhead to a counterpoise in the corner, by which device it was easily raised and lowered. The Motor was a very expensive affair, and had to be carefully protected from dust and all injury, though it was worth nothing at present except for old bra.s.s and iron, unless the new part could be made.

"Come, my boy, let's think of something more cheerful!" Overholt said, making an effort to rouse himself and concentrated his attention on the paper model. "Christmas is coming in three weeks, you know, and it will come just the same in the little City. I'm sure the people will decorate their houses and the church. Of course we cannot see the insides of the houses, but in Boston they put wreaths in the windows. And we'll have a snowstorm, just as we used to have, and we can clear it away afterwards!

Wasn't there a holly tree somewhere near the College? You haven't put that in yet. You have no idea how cheerful it will look! To-morrow we'll find a very small sprig with berries on it, and plant it just in the right place. I'm sure you remember where it stood."

"Real leaves would be too big," observed the boy. "They wouldn't look right. Of course, one could cut the branches out of tin and paint 'em green with red spots, and stick them into a twig for the trunk. But it's rather hard to do."

"Let's try," said Overholt. "I've got some fine chisels and some very thin bra.s.s, but I don't think I could draw the branches as well as you could."

"Oh, I can draw them something like, if you'll only cut 'em out," the boy answered cheerfully. "Come on, father! Who says we can't make bricks without straw? I'll bet anything we can!"

So they worked together steadily, and for an hour or two the inventor was so busy in cutting out tiny branches of imaginary holly with a very small chisel that he did not look once at the plate gla.s.s from which his engine seemed to be grinning at him, in fiendish delight over his misfortunes. There were times when he was angry with it, outright, as if it knew what he was doing and did not mean to give in to him and let itself be invented.

But now the tune of the lathe and the chisel still ran on in his head, for he had heard it through two whole days and could not get rid of it.

"Bricks without straw, bricks without straw!" repeated the lathe viciously. "Ever so much better than no bricks at all, sh--sh--sh!"

answered the chisel, gibbering and hissing like an idiot.

"You will certainly be lying on straw before long, and then I suppose you'll wish you had something else!" squeaked the little chisel with which he was cutting out holly leaves, as it went through the thin plates into the wood of the bench under each push of his hand.

The things in the workshop all seemed to be talking to him together, and made his head ache.

"I had a letter from your mother to-day," he said, because it was better to hear his own voice say anything than to listen to such depressing imaginary conversations. "I'm sorry to say she sees no chance of getting home before the spring."

"I don't know where you'd put her if she came here," answered the practical Newton. "Your room leaks when it rains, and so does mine. You two would have to sleep in the parlour. I guess it'll be better if she doesn't come now."

"Oh, for her, far better," a.s.sented Overholt. "They've got a beautiful flat in Munich, and everything they can possibly think of. Your mother's only complaint, so far as that goes, is that those girls are completely spoilt by too much luxury!"

"What is luxury, exactly, father?" asked Newton, who always wanted to know things.

"I shall never know myself, and perhaps you never will either!" The wretched inventor tried to laugh. "But that's no answer to your question, is it? I suppose luxury means always having twice as much of everything as you can possibly use, and having it about ten times as fine and expensive as other people can afford."

"I don't see any use in that," said the boy. "Now I know just how much turkey and cranberry sauce and ice-cream I really need, and if I get just a little more than that, it's Christmas. I don't mean much more, but about half a helping. I know all about proverbs. Haven't I copied millions of 'em in learning to write. One reason why it's so slow to learn is that the things you have to write are perfect nonsense. 'Enough is as good as a feast!' All I can say is, the man who made that proverb never had a feast, or he'd have known better! This green paint doesn't dry very quick, father. We'll have to wait till to-morrow before we put in the red spots for the berries. I wish I had some little red beads.

They'd stick on the wet paint now, like one o'clock."

There were no red beads, so he rose to go to bed. When he had said good-night and had reached the door, he stopped and looked back again.

"Say, father, haven't you anything you can sell to get some more money for the Motor?"

John Henry shook his weary head and smiled sadly.

"Nothing that would bring nearly enough to pay for the casting," he answered. "Don't worry about it, boy. Leave that to me--I'm used to it.

Go to bed and sleep, and you'll feel like an Air-Motor yourself in the morning!"

"That's the worst of it," returned the boy. "Just to sit there under a gla.s.s case and have you take care of me and do nothing, like a girl.

That's the way I feel sometimes."

He shook his young head quite as gravely as the inventor had shaken his own, and went quietly to bed without saying anything more.

"I don't know what to do, I'm sure," he said to himself as he got into bed, "but I'm sure there's something. Maybe I'll dream it, and then I'll do just the contrary and it'll come all right."

But boys of practical minds and sound bodies do not dream at all, unless it be after a feast, and most of them can stand even that without having nightmare, unless two feasts come near together, like Christmas and a birthday within the week.

A great-uncle of mine was once taken for a clergyman at a public dinner nearly a hundred years ago, and he was asked to say grace; he was a good man, and also practical, and had a splendid appet.i.te, but he was not eloquent, and this is what he said:--

"The Lord give us appet.i.tes to enjoy, and strength to digest ALL the good things set before us. Amen!"

And everybody said "Amen" very cheerfully and fell to.

IV

HOW THERE WAS A FAMINE IN THE CITY

It rained in New York and it "snowed slush" in Connecticut, after its manner, and the world was a very dreary place, especially all around the dilapidated cottage where everything was going to pieces, including John Henry Overholt's last hopes.

If he had been alone in the world he would have taken his small cash balance and his model to the foundry, quite careless as to whether he ever got a meal again until the Motor worked. But there was the boy to be thought of, and desperate as the unhappy inventor was, he would not starve his son as well as himself. He was quite sure of his little balance, though he had never had any head for figures of that sort. It was an easy affair in his eyes to handle the differential calculus, which will do anything, metaphorically speaking, from smashing a rock as flat and thin as a postage stamp, to regulating an astronomical clock; but to understand the complication of a pa.s.s-book and a bank account was a matter of the greatest possible difficulty. Newton would have done it much better, though he could not get to the head of his cla.s.s in arithmetic. That is the difference between being an inventor and having a practical mind. As for Mrs. Overholt, she was perfectly wonderful at keeping accounts; but then she had been taught a great many things, from music and drawing to compound interest and double entry, and she had been taught them all just so far as to be able to do them nicely without understanding at all what she did; which is sound modern education, and no mistake. The object of music is to make a cheerful noise, which can be done very well without pencil and paper and the rules of harmony.

But Overholt could neither make a cheerful noise, nor draw a holly leaf, nor speak French, nor even understand a pa.s.s-book, though he had invented an Air-Motor which would not work, but was a clear evidence of genius. The only business idea he had was to make his little balance last as long as possible, in spite of the terrible temptation to take it and offer it to the founder as a cash advance, if only he might have his piece of casting done. Where the rest of the money would come from he did not know; probably out of the Motor. It looked so easy; but there was the boy, and it might happen that there would be no dinner for several days.

On the first of December he cashed a cheque in the town, as usual; and he paid Barbara's wages and the coal merchant, and the month's bill for kerosene, and the butcher and the grocer, and the baker, and that was practically all; and he went to bed that night feeling that whatever happened there was a whole month before another first came round, and he owed no one anything more for the present, and Newton would not starve, and could have his Christmas turkey, if it was to be the last he ever ate, poor boy.

On the morning of December third it was still snowing slush, though it was more like real snow now, and the air was much colder; and by and by, when Overholt had read a letter that Barbara brought him, he felt so terribly cold all at once that his teeth chattered, and then he was so hot that the perspiration ran down his forehead, and he steadied himself against the heavy gla.s.s case of the Motor a moment and then almost tumbled into a sitting posture on the stool before his work-table, and his head fell forward on his hands, as if he were fainting.

The letter said that his account was overdrawn to the extent of three hundred and fifty-two dollars and thirteen cents, including the cheque he had drawn on the thirty-first, and would he please make a deposit at his earliest convenience?

It had been just a little mistake in arithmetic, that was all. He had started with the wrong balance in his note-book, and what he thought was credit was debit, but the bank where he had kept all the money that had been put up for the Motor, had wished to be friendly and good-natured to the great inventor and had not returned his cheques with N.G. on them; and if his attention had already been called to his deficit, he must have forgotten to open the letter. Like all men who are much talked of in the newspapers, though they may be as poor as Job's turkey, he received a great many circulars addressed by typewriter, and the only letters he really cared for were from his wife, so that when he was very hard at work or much preoccupied the others acc.u.mulated somewhere in the workshop, and were often forgotten.

What was perfectly clear this morning was that starvation was sitting on the doorstep and that he had no moral right whatever to the dinner Barbara was already beginning to cook, nor to another to-morrow, nor to any more; for he was a proud man, and ashamed of debt, though he mixed up debit and credit so disgracefully.

He sat there half an hour, as he had let himself fall forward, only moving a little, so that his forehead rested on his arm instead of his hands, because that was a little more comfortable, and just then he did not want to see anything, least of all the Motor. When he rose at last the sleeve of his coat was all wet with the perspiration from his forehead. He left the workshop, half shutting his eyes in order not to see the Motor; he was sure the thing was grinning at him behind the plate gla.s.s. It had two round bra.s.s valves near the top that looked like yellow eyeb.a.l.l.s, and a lever at the bottom with double arms and a cross-bar, which made him think of an iron jaw when he was in one of his fits of nervous depression.

But John Henry Overholt was a man, and an honest one. He went straight to the writing-table in the next room and sat down, and though his hand shook, he wrote a clear and manly letter to the President of the College where he had taught so well, stating his exact position, acknowledging the failure of his invention, and asking help to find immediate employment as a teacher, even in the humblest capacity which would afford bread for his boy and himself. Presidents and princ.i.p.als of colleges are in constant communication with other similar inst.i.tutions, and generally know of vacant positions.

When he had written his letter and read it over carefully, Overholt looked at his timetable, got his hat, coat, and umbrella, and trudged off through the slushy snow to the station, on his way to New York.

It was raining there, but it was not dismal; hurry, confusion, and noise can never be that. He had not been in the city since the day when he made his last attempt to raise money, and in his present state the contrast was overwhelming. The shopkeepers would have told him that it was a dull day for business, and that the rain was costing them hundreds of dollars every hour, because there are a vast number of people who buy things within the month before Christmas, if it is convenient and the weather is fine, but will not take the trouble if the weather is bad; and afterwards they are so glad to have saved their money that they buy nothing of that sort till the following year. For Christmas shopping is largely a matter of temptation on the one side and of weakness on the other, and you cannot tempt a man to buy your wares if he will not even go out and look at your shop window. At Christmas time every shopkeeper turns into a Serpent, with a big S and a supply of apples varying, with his capital, from a paper-bagful to a whole orchard, and though the ladies are the more easily tempted, nine generous men out of ten show no more sense just at that time than Eve herself did. The very air has temptation in it when they see the windows full of pretty things and think of their wives and their children and their old friends. Even misers relax a little then, and a famous statesman, who was somewhat close-fisted in his day, is reported to have given his young coloured servant twenty-five cents on Christmas Eve, telling him to go out to Mount Auburn Cemetery and see where the great men of New England lie buried. And the man, I believe, went there; but he was an African, and the spirit of Christmas was not in his race, for if it had moved him he would have wasted that money on cream-cakes and cookies, reflecting that the buried worthies of Ma.s.sachusetts could not tell tales on him.

Overholt went down town to the bank where he kept his account and explained his little mistake very humbly, and asked for time to pay up.

The teller looked at him as if he were an escaped lunatic, but on account of his great reputation as an inventor he was shown to the desk of one of the partners, which stood in a corner of the vast place, where one could converse confidentially if one did not speak above a whisper; but the stenographer girl could hear even whispering distinctly, and perhaps she sometimes took down what she heard, if the partner made a signal to her by carelessly rolling his pencil across his table.