The Story of a Whim (8 page)

And
the college student found time amid her essays and her sororities to answer them promptly.

Her companions wondered why she wasted so much valuable time on that poor "cracker" girl, as they sometimes spoke of Christie, and how she could have patience to write so long letters; but their curiosity did not go so far as to wonder what she found to say; else they might have noticed that less and less often did Hazel offer to read aloud her letters from the Southland.
But they were busy, and only occasionally inquired about Christie now, or sent a message.

Hazel herself sometimes wondered why this stranger girl had taken so deep a hold upon her; but the days went by and the letters came frequently, and she never found her
self willing to put one by unanswered. There was always some question that needed answering, some point on which her young convert to Jesus Christ needed enlightenment.

Then, too, she found herself growing nearer to Jesus because of this friendship with one who was just learning to trust Him in so childlike and earnest a way.

"Do you know," she said confidingly to Ruth Summers one day, "I cannot make myself see Christie Bailey as homely? It doesn't seem possible to me. I think she is mistaken. I know I shall find something handsome about her when I see her, which I shall some day."

And
Ruth smiled mockingly. "O Hazel, Hazel, it will be better, then, for you never to see poor Christie, I am sure; for you will surely find your ideal different from the reality."

But
Hazel's eyes grew dreamy, and she shook her head.

"No, Ruth, I'm sure, sure. A girl
couldn't have all the beautiful thoughts Christie has, and not be fine in expression. There will be some beauty in her, I am sure. Her eyes, now, I know are magnificent. I wish she would send me a picture; but she won't have one taken, though I've coaxed and coaxed."

In his own
heart-life Christie was changing day by day. The picture of Christ was his constant companion. At first shyly and then openly he grew to make a confidant of it. He studied the lines of the face, and fitted them to the lines of the life depicted in the New Testament, and without his knowing it his own face was changing. The lines of recklessness and hardness about his mouth were gone. The dullness of discontent was gone from his eyes. They could light now from within in a flash with a joy that no discouragement could quite quench.

By common c
onsent Christie's companions respected his new way of life, and perhaps after the first few weeks if he had shown a disposition to go back to the old way of doing might have even attempted to keep him to his new course.

They
every one knew that their way was a bad way. Each man was glad at heart when Christie made an innovation. They came to the Sunday school and helped, controlling their laughter admirably whenever Uncle Moses gave occasion; and they listened to Christie's lessons, which, to say the least, were original, with a courteous deference, mingled with a kind of pride that one of their number could do this.

They also refrained from urging him to go with them on any more
revellings. Always he was asked, but in a tone that he came to feel meant that they did not expect him to accept, and would perhaps have been disappointed if he had done so.

Once, when Christie, unthinkingly, half-assented to go on an all-day's ride with some of them, Mortimer put his hand kindly on Christie's shoulder, and said in a tone Christie had never heard him use before: "I wouldn't, Chris. It might be a bore."

Christie turned, and looked earnestly into his eyes for a minute, and then said, "Thank you, Mort!"

As he stood watching them ride away, a sudden instinct made him reach his hand to Mortimer, and say, "Stay with me this time, old fellow"; but the other shook his head, smiling some
what sadly, Christie thought, and said as he rode off after the others, "Too late, Chris; it isn't any use."

Christie thought about it a good deal that day as he went about his grove without his customary whistle, and at night, before he began his
evening's reading and writing, he knelt and breathed his first prayer for the soul of another.

The winter blossomed into spring, and the soft wind blew the breath of yellow
Jessamine and bay blossoms from the swamps. Christie's wire fence bloomed out into a mass of Cherokee roses, and among the glossy orange-leaves there gleamed many a white, starry blossom, earnest of the golden fruit to come.

Christie with throbbing heart and shining eyes picked his first orange-blossoms, a goodly handful, and, packing them after the most approved methods for long journeys, sent them to Hazel
Winship.

Never any or
anges, be they numbered by thousands of boxes, could give him the pleasure that those first white waxen blossoms gave as he laid his face gently among them and breathed a blessing on the one to whom they went, before he packed them tenderly in their box.

Christie was deriving daily joy now from Hazel
Winship's friendship. Sometimes when he remembered the tender little sentences in her letters his heart fairly stood still with longing that she might know who he was and yet be ready to say them to him. Then he would crush this wish down, and grind his heel upon it, and tell his better self that only on condition of never thinking such a thought again would he allow another letter written her, another thought sent toward her.

Then would he remember the joy she had already brought into his life, and go smiling about his work, singing,

"He holds the key of all unknown, And I am glad."

Hazel
Winship spent that first summer after her graduation, most of it, visiting among her college friends at various summer resorts at seaside or on mountaintop. But she did not forget to cheer Christie's lonely summer days—more lonely now because some of his friends had gone North for a while—with bits of letters written from shady nooks on porch or lawn, or sitting in a hammock.

"Christie, you are my safety-valve," she wrote once. "I think you take the place with me of a diary. Most girls use a diary for that. If I was at home with mother, I might use her sometimes; but there are a good many things that if I should write her she would worry, and there really
isn't any need, but I could not make her sure. So you see I have to bother you. For instance, there is a young man here—" Christie drew his brows together fiercely. This was a new aspect.

There were other young men, then. Of course—and he drew a deep sigh.

It was during the reading of that letter that Christie began to wish there were some way for him to make his real self known to Hazel Winship. He began to see some reasons why what he had done was not just all right.

But
there was a satisfaction in being the safety-valve, and there was delight in their trysting-hour when they met before the throne of God. Hazel had suggested this when she first began to try to help Christie Christward; and they had kept it up, praying for this one and that one and for the Sunday school.

Once Christie had dared to think what
joy it would be to kneel beside her and hear her voice praying for him. Would he ever hear her voice? The thought had almost taken his breath away. He had not dared to think of it again.

The summer deepened into autumn
; and the oranges, a goodly number for the first crop, green disks unseen amid their background of green leaves, blushed golden day by day. And then, just as Christie was beginning to be hopeful about how much he would get for his fruit, there came a sadness into his life that shadowed all the sunshine, and made the price of oranges a very small affair. For Hazel Winship fell ill.

At
first it did not seem to be much—a little indisposition, a headache and loss of appetite. She wrote Christie she did not feel well and could not write a long letter.

Then
there came a silence of unusual length, followed by a letter from Ruth Summers, at whose home Hazel had been staying when taken ill. It was brief and hurried, and carried with it a hint of anxiety, which, as the days of silence grew into weeks, made Christie's heart heavy.

"Hazel is very ill indeed," she wrote, "but she has worried so that I promised to write and tell you why she had not answered your letter."

The poor fellow comforted himself day after day with the thought that she had thought of him in all her pain and suffering.

He wrote to Ruth Summers, asking for news of his dear friend;
but, whether from the anxiety over the sick one, or from being busy about other things, or it may be from indifference,—he could not tell,—there came no answer for weeks.

During this sad
time he ceased to whistle. There grew a sadness in his eyes that told of hidden pain, and his cheery ways with the Sunday school were gone.

One day when his heart had been particularly heavy, and he had found the Sabbath-school lesson almost
an impossibility, the little dusky girl who had spoken to him before touched him gently on the arm.

"
Mistah Christie feel bad? Is somebody you all love, sick?"

Almost the tears filled Christie's eyes as he looked at her in surprise, and nodded his head.

"You’m 'fraid they die?"

Again
Christie nodded. He could not speak; something was choking him. The sympathetic voice of the little girl was breaking down his self-control.

The little black
fingers touched his hand sorrowfully, and there was in her eyes a longing to comfort, as she lifted them first to her beloved superintendent's face and then to the picture above them.

"But you all's
fathah's not dead," she pleaded, shyly.

Christie caught
her meaning in a flash, and marveled afterwards that a child should have gone so directly to the point, where he, so many years beyond her, had missed it. He had not learned yet how God has revealed the wise things of this world unto the babes.

"No, Sylvie," he said quickly, grasping the timid little fingers; "my Father is not dead. I will take my trouble to Him. Thank you."

The smile that broke over the little girl's face as she said goodnight was the first ray of the light that began to shine over Christie Bailey's soul as he realized that God was not dead and God was his Father.

When they were all gone, he locked his doors, and knelt before his heavenly Father, pouring out his anguish, praying for his friend and for himself, yielding up his will, and feeling the return of peace, and surety that God doeth all things well. Again as he slept he saw the vision of the Christ bending over him in benediction, and when he
woke he found himself singing softly,

"He holds the key to all unknown,
And I am glad."

He wondered whether it was just a happening— and then knew that it was not—that Ruth Summer's second letter reached him that day, saying that Hazel was at last past all danger and had spoken about Christie Bailey, and so she, Ruth, had hastened to send the message on, hoping the far-away friend would forgive her for the delay in answering.

After that Christie believed with his whole soul in prayer.

He set himself the pleasant task of writing to Hazel all he had felt and experienced during her illness and long silence. When she grew well enough to write him again, he might send it. He was not sure.

One paragraph he allowed himself, in which to pour out the pent-up feelings of his heart. But even in this he weighed every word. He began to long to be perfectly true before her, and to wish there were a way to tell her all the truth about himself without losing her friendship. This was the paragraph.

"I did not know until you were silent how much of my life was bound up with yours. I can never tell you how much I love you, but I can tell God about it, the God you taught me to love."

The very next day there came a note from Ruth Summers saying that Hazel was longing to hear from Florida again and that she was now permitted to read her own letters. Then with joy he took his letter to the office, and not long after received a little note in Hazel's own familiar hand, closing with the words: "Who knows? Perhaps you will be able to tell me all about it someday, after all." And Christie, when he read it, held his hand on his heart to still the tumult of pain and joy.

"Have you written to Christie Bailey that you are coming?" said Victoria Landis, turning her eyes from the window of the drawing-room car, where she was studying the changing landscape, so new and strange to her Northern eyes.

"No," said Hazel, leaning back among her pillows; "I thought it would be more fun to surprise her. Besides, I want to see things just exactly as they are, as she has described them to me, you know. I don't want her to go and get fussed up to meet me. She wouldn't be natural at all if she did. I'm positive she's shy, and I must take her unawares. After I have put my arms around her neck in regular girl fashion and kissed her she will realize that it is just I, the one she has written to for a year, and everything will be all right; but if she has a long time to think about it, and conjure up all sorts of nonsense about her dress and mine, and the differences in our stations, she wouldn't be at all the same Christie. I love her just as she is, and that’s the way I mean to see her first."

"I am afraid, Ha
zel, you'll be dreadfully disappointed," said Ruth Summers. "Things on paper are never exactly like the real things. Now look out that window. Is this the land of flowers? Look at all that blackened ground where it's been burnt over, and see those ridiculous green tufts sticking up every little way, varied by a stiff green palm-leaf, as if children had stuck crazy old fans in a play garden. You know the real is never as good as the ideal, Hazel."

"It's a great deal better," said Hazel positively. "Those green tufts, as you call them, are young pines. Some day
they'll be magnificent. Those little fans are miniature palms. That's the way they grow down here. Christie has told me all about it. It looks exactly to a dot as I expected, and I'm sure Christie will be even better."

The two travelling companions looked lovingly at her,
and remembered how near they had come to losing their friend only a little while before, and said no more to dampen her high spirits. This trip was for Hazel, to bring back the roses to her cheeks; and father, mother, brother, and friends were determined to do all they could to make it a success.

It was the morning after they arrived at the hotel that Hazel asked to
be taken at once to see Christie. She wanted to go alone; but, as that was not to be thought of in her convalescent state, she consented to take Ruth and Victoria with her.

"You'll go out in the orange-grove and visit with the chickens while I have a little heart-to-heart talk with Christie, won't you, you dears?" she said, as she gracefully gave up her idea of going alone.

The old man who drove the carriage that took them there was exceedingly talkative. Yes, he knew Christie Bailey; most everybody did. They imparted to him the fact that this visit was to be a surprise party, and arranged with him to leave them for an hour while he went on another errand and returned for them. These matters planned, they settled down to gleeful talk.