The Story of a Whim (10 page)

"But she wouldn't forget. You know Hazel.
And, besides, the doctor says it might be death to her to go back into the cold now in the present state of her health. No, Ruth, something else has got to be done."

"What can be done, Victoria? You always talk as if you could do anything if you only set about it."

"I'm not sure but I could," said Victoria, laughing. "Wait and see. This thing has got to be reduced to plain, commonplace terms, and have all the heroics and tragics taken out of it. I may need your help; so hold yourself in readiness."

After that Victoria went to her room, whence she emerged about an hour later, and took her way by back halls and by-paths, and finally unseen, down the road.

She was not quite sure of her way, but by retracing her steps occasionally she brought up in front of Christie's cabin just as Aunt Tildy was settling her spectacles for the opening hymn.

She
reconnoitered a few minutes till the singing was well under way, and then slipped noiselessly through the sand to the side of the house, where after a few experiments she discovered a crevice through which she could get a limited view of the Sunday school.

A smile of satisfaction hovered about her lips. At least, the Sunday school was a fact. So
much she learned from her trip. Then she settled herself to listen.

Christie was praying.

It was the first time Christie's voice had been heard by anyone but his Master in prayer. It had happened simply enough. Uncle Moses had been sent away to the village for a doctor for a sick child, and there was no one else to pray. To Christie it was not such a trial as it would have been a year ago. He had talked with his heavenly Father many times since that first cry in the night. But he was not an orator. His words were simple.

"Jesus Christ, we make so many mistakes, and we sin so often. Forgive us. We are not worth saving, but we thank Thee that Thou dost love us, even though
all the world turn against us, and though we hate our own selves."

Victoria found her eyes filling with tears.
If Hazel could but hear that prayer!

During the singing of the next hymn the organist came within range of the watcher's eye, and she noted with surprise the young man to whom she had been introduced in the hotel parlor a few evenings before, Mr. Mortimer. He was a cousin of those Mortimers from Boston who roomed next to Ruth. He would be at the hotel again. He would be another link in the evidence. For Victoria had set out to sift the character of Christie Bailey through and through.

She was chained to the spot by her interest during the blackboard lesson, which by shifting her position a trifle she could see as well as hear; but during the singing of the closing hymn she left in a panic, and when the dusky crowd flowed out into the road she was well on her way toward home, and no one save the yellow-footed chickens that had ducked about her feet were the wiser.

Victoria did not immediately make known to Ruth the events of the afternoon. She had other evidence to gather before she presented it before the court. She wanted to be altogether sure of Christie before she put her finger in the pie at all. Therefore she was on the lookout for young Mr. Mortimer.

She had hoped he would visit his aunt Sunday
evening, but if he did he was not in evidence. All day Monday she haunted the piazzas and entrances, but he did not come until Tuesday evening.

Victoria in the m
eanwhile had made herself agreeable to Mrs. Mortimer, and it did not take her long to monopolize the young man when he finally came. Indeed, he had been attracted to her from the first.

They were soon seated comfortably in two large p
iazza chairs, watching the moonrise out of the little lake and frame itself in wreaths of long gray moss which reached out lace-like fingers and seemed to try to snare it; but always it slipped through until it sailed high above, serene. So great a moon, and so different from a Northern moon!

Victoria had done justice to the scene with a fine supply of adjectives, and then addressed herself to her self-set task.

"Mr. Mortimer, I wonder if you know a man by the name of Bailey down here, Christie Bailey. Tell me about him, please. Who is he, and how did he come by such a queer name? Is it a diminutive of Christopher?"

She settled her fluffy draperies about her in the moonlight, and fastened her fine eyes on Mortimer interestedly; and he felt he had a pleasant task before him to speak of his friend to this charming girl.

"Certainly, I know Chris well. He's one of the best fellows in the world. Yes, his name is an odd one, a family name, I believe, his mother's family name, I think he told me once. No, no Christopher about it, just plain Christie. But how in the world do you happen to know anything about him? He told me once he hadn't a friend left in the North."

Victoria
was prepared for this.

"O, I heard someone talking about a Sunday school he had started, and I am interested in Sunday
schools myself. Did he come down here as a sort of missionary, do you know?"

She asked the question innocently enough, and Mortimer waxed earnest in his story.

"No, indeed! No missionary about Christie. Why, Miss Landis, a year ago Christie was one of the toughest fellows in Florida. He could play a fine hand at cards, and could drink as much whiskey as the next one; and there wasn't one of us with a readier tongue when it was loosened up with plenty of drinks—"

"I hope you're not one of that kind?" said Victoria, earnestly, looking at the fine, restless eyes and handsome profile outlined in the moonlight.

A shade of sadness crossed his face. No one had spoken to him like that in many a long day. He turned and looked into her eyes earnestly.

"It's kind of you to care, Miss Landis. Perhaps if I had met someone like you a few years ago, I should have been a better fellow." Then he sighed and went on:

"A strange change came over Christie about a year ago. Someone sent him an organ and some fixings for his room, supposing he was a girl—from his name, I believe. They got hold of his name at the freight-station where his goods were shipped. They must have been an uncommon sort of people to send so much to a stranger. There was a fine picture, too, which he keeps on his wall, some religious work of a great artist, I think. He treasures it above his orange-grove, I believe.

"Well, those things made the most
marvelous change in that man. You wouldn't have known him. Some of us fellows went to see him soon after it happened, and we thought it would be a joke to carry out the suggestion that had come with the organ that Christie start a Sunday school; so we went and invited neighbors from all round and went up there Sunday, and fixed seats all over his cabin.

"He was as mad as could be, but he couldn't help himself; so, instead of knocking us all out and sending the audience home, he just pitched in and had a Sunday school. He
wouldn't allow any laughing, either. We fellows had taken lunch and a case of bottles over to make the day a success; and, when Armstrong—he's the second son of an Earl—came in with the case of liquor, Chris rose in his might. Perhaps you don't know Christie has red hair. Well, he has a temper just like it,—and he suddenly rose up and fairly blazed at us, eyes and hair and face. He looked like a strong avenging angel. I declare, he was magnificent. We never knew he had it in him before.

"Well, from that day forth he took hold of that Sunday school, and he changed all his ways. He
didn't go to any more 'gatherings of the clan as we called them. We were all so proud of him we wouldn't have let him if he had tried.

"The fellows, some of them, come to the Sunday school and help every Sunday—sing, you know, and play. We all stand by him.
He's good as gold. There's not many could live alone in a Florida orange-grove from one year's end to another and keep themselves from evil the way Christie Bailey has. Wouldn't you like to see the Sunday school sometime? I'll get Chris to let me bring you if you say so."

Victoria smilingly said she would enjoy it; and then, her interest in Christie Bailey satisfied, she turned her attention to the young man before her.

"You didn't answer my question a while ago, about yourself." There was pleading in Victoria's voice, and the young man before her was visibly embarrassed. The tones grew more earnest. The moon looked down upon the two sitting there quietly. The voices of the night were all about them, but they heard not. Victoria had found a mission of her own while trying to straighten out another's.

But
the next morning early Victoria laid out her campaign. She took Ruth out for a walk, and on the way she told her what she intended to do.

"And you propose to go to Christie Bailey's house this morning, Victoria, without telling Hazel any
thing about it? Indeed, Vic, I'm not going to do any such thing. What would Mrs. Winship say?"

"Mrs.
Winship will say nothing about it, for she will never know anything about it. Besides, I don't care what she says so long as we straighten things out for Hazel. Don't you see Hazel must be made to understand that she hasn't failed, after all, that the young man was in earnest, and really meant to be a Christian, and that the only thing he failed in was in not having courage to speak out and tell her she had made a mistake? He didn't intend any harm, and after it had gone on for a while of course it was all the harder to tell. Now, Ruth, there's no use in your saying you won't go; for I've got to have a chaperone, you know; I couldn't go alone, and I shall go with or without you; so you may as well come."

Reluctantly Ruth went,
half fearful of the result of this daring girl's plan, and only half understanding what it was she meant to do.

Christie came to the door when they knocked. He looked eagerly beyond them into the sunshine, hunting for another face, but none appeared. Vi
ctoria's eyes were dancing.

"She isn't here," sh
e said mockingly, rightly interpreting his searching gaze. "So you'd better ask us in, or you won't find out what we came for. It is very warm out here in the sun."

Christie smiled a sad smile, and asked them in. He could not conjecture what they had come for. He stood gravely waiting for them to speak.

"Now, sir," said Victoria with decision, "I want you to understand that you have been the cause of a great deal of suffering and disappointment."

Christie's face took on at once a look of haggard misery as he listened anxiously, not taking his eyes from the speaker's face. Victoria was enjoying her task immensely. The young man looked handsomer with that abject expression on. It would do him no harm to suffer a little longer. Anyway, he deserved it, she thought.

"You were aware, I think, from a letter Miss Summers wrote you, that Miss Winship had been very ill indeed before she came down here—that she almost died."

Here Ruth nodded her head severely. She felt like meting out judgment to this false-hearted young man.

"You do not know perhaps that the long walk she took from your house last week, after the startling revelation she received here, was enough to have killed her in her weak state of health."

Christie's white, anxious face gave Victoria a flitting twinge of conscience as she began to realize that possibly the young man had suffered enough already without anything added by her, but she wen
t on with her prepared program.

"You probably do not know that, after she had controlled
herself the other day when she was riding horseback until she had passed you by, she was utterly overcome by the humiliation of the sight of you, and slipped from her horse in the road, unconscious, since which time she has been hovering between life and death—"

Victoria had carefully weighed that sentence, and decided that, while it might be a trifle overdrawn, the circumstances nevertheless justified the statement, for truly they had held grave fears for Hazel's life several times during the last two or three days.

But a groan escaped the young man's white lips, and Victoria, springing to her feet, realized that his punishment had been enough. She went toward him involuntarily, a glance of pity in her face.

"Don't look like that!" she said. "I think she will get well; but I think, as you're to blame for a good deal of the trouble, it is time you offered to do something."

"What could I do?" said Christie in hoarse eagerness.

"Well, I think perhaps if you were to explain to her how it all happened it might change the situation somewhat."

"She has forbidden me to say a word," answered Christie in white misery.

"O, she has, has she?" said Victoria, surveying him with dissatisfaction. "Well, you ought to have done it anyway
! You should have insisted! That’s a man's part. She's got to know the truth somehow, and get some of the tragic taken out of this affair, or she will suffer for it, that’s all; and there's no one to explain but you. You see it isn't the pleasantest thing to find one has written all sorts of confidences to a strange young man. Hazel is blaming herself as any common flirt might do if she had a conscience. But that, of course, though extremely humiliating to her pride, isn't the worst. She feels terribly about your having deceived her and pretending that you were a Christian, and she all the time praying out her life for you, while you were having a good joke out of it. It has hurt her self-respect a good deal, but it has hurt her religion more."

Christie raised his head in protest, but Victoria went on.

"Wait a minute, please. I want to tell you that I believe she is mistaken. I don't believe you were playing a part in telling her you had become a Christian, were you? Or that you were making fun of her enthusiasm and trying to see how far she would go, just for fun?"

"I have never written anything in joke to Miss
Winship. I honor and respect her beyond anyone else on earth. I have never deceived her in anything except that I did not tell her who I was. I thought there was no harm in it when I did it, but now I see it was a terrible mistake. And I feel that I owe my salvation to Miss Winship. She introduced me to Jesus Christ. I am trying to make Him my guide."

The young man raised his head, and turned his eyes with acknowledgment toward the pictured Christ as he made his declaration of faith. Victoria and Ruth were awed into admiration.

"I almost expected to see a halo spring up behind his aureole of copper hair," said Victoria to Ruth on the way home.

Victoria had arranged to send him word when he could see Hazel, and the two girls went away, leaving Christie in a state of conflicting emotions. He could do nothing. He sat and thought and thought, going over all his acquaintance with Hazel, singling out what he had told her of his own feelings toward Christ.
And she had thought he had done it all in joke! He began to see how hideous had been his action in her eyes. Knowing her pure, lovely soul as he did through her letters, he felt keenly for her. How could he blame her for her saintly condemning of him? And it was that day that he found in the breast pocket of his old working-coat the photograph of Hazel so much prized and so sadly missed since the day of her visit. He had supposed Victoria took it, but now he recalled her words about it as she ran after Hazel; and, smiling into the sweet, girlish face, he wondered whether she would ever forgive him.

The next day there came a note from Victoria, saying he might call at seven o'clock on Saturday evening, and Hazel would likely be able to see him a few minutes. A postscript in the writer's original style added: "And I hope you'll have sense enough to know what to say! If you don't, I'm sure I can't do anything more for you."