Hope Benham Part 4

There was a depressed, discouraged note in the husband's voice that his wife at once detected. It was a new note for her to hear in that voice.

She regarded him anxiously a moment, and then, smiling, but with a good deal of real earnestness, said,--

"Don't fret about it, John. Hope, maybe, 'll make all our fortunes yet.

Mr. Kolb told me that she had a wonderful ear for music, and would be a fine performer some day."

"Fortunes! 't isn't money only, Martha; I hate to give up a thing like this. I felt so sure of myself when I started; and--and--it is failure, you see; and failure is harder to bear than the hardest kind of labor.

I've always thought, you know, that I was cut out for this sort of thing,--this inventive business,--but it looks as though I had been more conceited than anything else, doesn't it?"

"No, no; it doesn't, John. Your worst enemy couldn't say that you were conceited. But you've had so little chance, so little time; that's what's the trouble. But you haven't come to the end yet, and I didn't mean that I wanted you to give up trying. I only meant that I wouldn't bother over _that_. You must start something new; that's all I meant, John," cried Mrs. Benham, full of affectionate sympathy and repentance.

"Oh! I understand, Martha; I understand. What you said didn't discourage me. I dare say I shall tinker away at something again by and by; but _this_ thing"--striking the model a little blow with his hand--"is a failure."

At that moment the door-bell rang, and Mrs. Benham hurried away to answer its summons. Left alone, her husband stretched out his hand towards the model, and opened the door of its fire-box. There was still a tiny bed of coals there.

"We'll have a last run," he said, with a half-smile; and opening the steam-valve, he saw the beautiful little model start once more on its way along the rails he had laid for it upon the work-bench that ran around the room. As he had constructed a self-acting pressure that should close the steam-valve at a certain point, the model was under as perfect control from where he stood as if it were of larger proportions, and he were managing and directing it from its engine cab. A look of pride, followed by an expression of sadness, flickered over the builder's face, as he watched it. Where _had_ he failed?

Round and round the course the pretty thing sped, not at any headlong speed, but at the pace that had been set for it, to prove or disprove the effectiveness of the combination. Click, click, how smoothly it ran!

everything apparently perfect, from the wheels to the wire-netted flues.

If only--But what--what is that? and John Benham starts forward with sudden eager attention. His quick ear has caught a slight sound that he had not heard before, so slight that only _his_ ear would have detected it. The machine was on its finis.h.i.+ng round; three seconds more, and the self-acting steam-valve has shut, the engine slows up to a stop, and its builder, with a quickened pulse, bends eagerly forward.

CHAPTER VI.

Perhaps it is five minutes later that the wife opens the door again.

"John, who do you think has just called?" She receives no answer. "Dear me!" she says vexedly to herself, "he's worrying at that machine again.

I wish he'd give it up. John!" Still no answer. Mrs. Benham walks into the room. "John, I wish--" But as she catches sight of her husband's face, which is pale, and changed by some strong feeling, she forgets what she was about to say, and exclaims in a troubled tone, "What is it?

What is the matter, John?"

He starts and turns to her. Matter? A half-smile stirs his lips, and he points to the engine without another word.

Mrs. Benham is frightened. She thinks to herself: "This constant worry over that thing is turning his head; he will lose his mind. Oh, John!"

she cries, "if you would only come away and rest and give this up, if only for a little while! I--I--" and poor Mrs. Benham's voice breaks, and the tears rush to her eyes.

"Martha, Martha, you don't understand. My worry is all over,--all over.

The thing is a success,--a success, Martha, and not a failure!"

"What--why--when I went out--"

"When you went out a while ago, I'd given it up, and I thought I'd say good-bye to it in a last run, and on that run I heard a new sound. Look here, Martha, do you see that link in the valve gearing? I thought I had taken every pains to suspend it properly. Well, it seems I hadn't. I suspended it in the usual way, and it worked in the usual way; but it turns out that wasn't the way to work with my new injector, and there is where the hitch was. Do you remember when I brought my hand down on the machine when we were talking? I must have displaced this delicate little bolt or pin that you see here, at that blow, and in that way put the link--it is what is called a s.h.i.+fting link--into the right position to work my injector combination. This little change of position makes everything clear as daylight, and I can put this little beauty into fine shape now; fasten the bolts and pins permanently instead of temporarily, for I don't need any more changes. It will do its double work of speed and fuel-saving every time; for see there!"--and the exultant builder pointed to some almost infinitesimal figures in two different portions of the engine. They were the registers that proved the result of this last triumphant run, and the complete success of his invention.

The tears were still in Mrs. Benham's eyes, but they were tears of joy.

"It seems too good to be true," she faltered.

"And I thought the other thing--the failure--too bad to be true," he returned. Then smiling a little, "I shall name it 'Hope,'" he said.

"And it is Hope that will make our fortunes, after all; for this will make a fortune, won't it, John?" inquired Mrs. Benham, looking up into her husband's face eagerly. But he didn't hear her. His thoughts had gone back to that valve gearing, and the link that had been so happily put in place.

She touched his arm, and repeated her question.

"Fortune?" He turned from his loving contemplation of the thing that he had builded. It seemed almost human to him. "Fortune,--I don't know," he answered absently.

Mrs. Benham did not repeat her question again. She saw, as she glanced at her husband's face, that it would be of no use, for she saw that just for the present he was all absorbed in the delight that had come to him, in the successful accomplishment of his undertaking. This was joy enough for him at the moment. He had often said to her when she had advised him not to tire himself out pottering over things that might not bring him a penny, that he loved the work for itself, independent of anything else.

And it was the work that he was thinking of now, not the possible financial results. But by and by--and Mrs. Benham's thoughts went wandering off into that by and by, when these results would take tangible form. Her ideas, however, were extremely modest. This fortune that she had in her mind, that she saw before her at that instant, was very limited. Harry Richards, an old friend of her husband's, had made a comfortable little sum out of an improvement upon car-window fastenings, and it was some such comfortable little sum that Mrs. Benham was thinking of. A little sum that would be sufficient, perhaps, to pay at once what mortgage there was still left upon their little home, to buy a new carpet for the parlor, and the books her husband needed, and to give Hope all the instruction she wanted upon the violin, from Mr. Kolb, or any other teacher, at the teacher's price.

Just at this point of her thought, a quick, flying step was heard, and a quick, humming voice,--a little sweet, thready sound, as near like a violin tone as the owner could make it,--and the next minute Hope appeared in the workshop rosy and radiant.

"Mr. Kolb says," she broke out, dropping her humming violin note, "that I shall make a very good little fiddler some day if I 'haf patience,'"

gayly imitating the old German's p.r.o.nunciation. "He says--" But something in her father's absorbed att.i.tude, in her mother's expression, stopped her. "What is it? what has happened?" she inquired, looking from one to the other.

"Your father has got the little engine all right."

"It does just what he wanted it to do?" asked Hope, eagerly.

"Yes, just what he wanted it to do."

Hope danced about the room, humming her little thready violin note. Her father, roused from his reverie, looked up at her, and smiled.

"Well, Hope, the little fiddle was a success, eh?"

"And the little engine too;" and the girl danced up to her father, humming her note of gladness.

"Yes, the little engine too."

Mrs. Benham, looking across the work-bench at her husband and daughter, nodded and laughed at them.

"You're just alike,--you two," she said. "There's nothing now but the little engine and the little fiddle. But how does it happen, Hope, that Mr. Kolb could give you such a long lesson? Didn't he go in to play at the concert to-night?"

"No; he has a cold, and his nephew, Karl, is to take his place. It is Karl, you know, who teaches at the Conservatory; and Mr. Kolb says that some time, when he gets too old and rheumatic to go out in the evening, he may give up orchestra-playing altogether, and take to teaching like Karl."

"Well, he'll have to get more profitable pupils than Hope Benham in that case," said Mrs. Benham, laughingly.

"Mother, do you think--is it taking too much--from--"

"No, no, Hope," interrupted her mother. "I don't think anything of the kind. Mr. Kolb meant what he said when he told you he'd like to give you lessons. Don't you fret about that; father will pay him some time."

"Perhaps _I'll_ pay him when--" But Mrs. Benham did not stop to hear the end of her daughter's sentence. A patter of rain-drops caught her ear, and she hurried away to close the upper windows. Hope turned to her father with her new idea; she was aglow with it.

"Farver," she began, using her old baby p.r.o.nunciation, as she was in the habit of doing now and then,--"Farver, Mr. Kolb says if I practise hard, I may get to play the little fiddle at a concert some day, and earn money, and then--then, I shall pay Mr. Kolb for teaching me, farver."

"Oh! that is your plan? Hope, the little fiddle has done a good work already. It has pushed all that bad time out of your mind, hasn't it?"

"Yes, yes, it has pushed it away--away--oh! ever so much further; but, farver," and Hope put her head down on her father's shoulder, "I--I--don't ever want to see that girl again."

"Yes, father knows;" and drawing her closer to him, John Benham stroked his daughter's sleek brown head with a soft caressing touch.