The Story of a Whim Read online

  Christie’s action that first Sunday afternoon made a difference between him and the rest. They recognized it, admired it in him and, therefore, lifted him up. What was there for Christie but to try to act his part?

  Before the end of another week, a package of books and papers and Sunday school cards and helps arrived from the North, such as would have delighted the heart of the most advanced Sunday school teacher of the day. What those girls could not think of, the head of the large religious bookstore they went to thought of for them. And Christie had food for thought and action during many long, lonely evenings.

  And always these evenings ended in his kneeling in the dark, where he imagined the light of Christ’s halo in the picture could send its glow upon him, and saying out loud in a clear voice, “My Father.” Outside in the night was heard only the wailing of the tall pines as they waved weird fingers dripping with gray moss, or the plaintive call of the titlark.

  With the package, a letter for Christie came, too. He put it in his breast pocket with eager anticipation and hustled that pony home at a most unmerciful trot; at least, so thought the pony.

  When Hazel Winship read that second letter out loud to the other girls, she didn’t read all of it. The pages containing the sketches she passed around freely, and they read and laughed over the Sunday school and talked enthusiastically of its future. But the pages that told of the Sabbath evening vision and of Christie’s feeling toward the picture Hazel kept to herself.

  She felt instinctively that Christie would rather not have it shown. It seemed so sacred to her and so wonderful. Her heart went out to the other soul seeking its Father.

  When they left her room that night, she locked the door and knelt a long time praying, praying for the soul of Christie Bailey. Something in the longing of that letter from the South reproached her, that she, with all her enlightenment, was not appreciating to its full the love and care of her heavenly Father. And so Christie unknowingly helped Hazel Winship nearer to her Master.

  And then Hazel wrote the letter, in spite of a Greek thesis, “the” thesis in fact, that was waiting and calling to her with urgency—the letter that Christie carried home in his breast pocket.

  He didn’t wait to eat his supper, though he gave the pony his. Indeed, it wasn’t a very attractive function at its best.

  Christie was really handsome that night, with the lamplight bringing out all the copper tints and garnet shadows in his hair. His finely cut lips curved in a pleasant smile of anticipation. He didn’t realize before how much he wanted to hear from Hazel Winship again.

  His heart was thumping as he tore open the delicately perfumed envelope and took out the many closely written pages of the letter—and his heart rejoiced that it was long and closely written. He resolved to read it slowly and make it last a good while.

  My dear, dear Christie, it began, your second letter has come, and first I want to tell you that I love you.

  Christie gasped and dropped the sheets upon the table, his arms and face on them. His heart was throbbing painfully, and his breath felt like great sobs.

  When he raised his eyes eventually, as he was acquiring a habit of doing, to the picture, they were full of tears. They fell and blurred the delicate writing of the pages on the table, and the Christ knew and pitied him and seemed almost to smile.

  No one had ever told Christie Bailey of loving him, not since his mother those long years ago held him to her breast and whispered to God to make her little Chris a good man.

  He grew up without expecting love. He scarcely thought he knew the meaning of the word. He scorned it in the only sense he ever heard it spoken of. And now, in all his loneliness, when he had almost ceased to care what the world gave him, to have this free, sweet love of a pure-hearted girl rushed upon him without stint and without cause overpowered him.

  Of course he knew it wasn’t his, this love she gave so freely and so frankly. It was meant for a person who never existed, a nice, homely old maid, whose throne in Hazel’s imagination was located in his cabin for some strange, wonderful reason. Yet it was his, too, his to enjoy, for it certainly belonged to no one else. He was robbing no one else to let his hungry heart be filled a little while with the fullness of it.

  One resolve he made instantly, without hesitation, and that was that he would be worthy of such love if so be it lay in him to be. He would cherish it as a tender flower that was meant for another but fell instead into his rough keeping; and no thought or word or action of his should ever stain it.

  Then with true knighthood in his heart to help him onward he raised his head and read on, a great joy upon him that almost engulfed him.

  And I believe you love me a little, too.

  Christie caught his breath again. He saw it was true, although he hadn’t known it before.

  Shall I tell you why I think so? Because you’ve written me this little piece out of your heart-life, this story of your vision of Jesus Christ, for I believe it was such.

  I haven’t read that part of your letter to the other girls. I couldn’t. It seemed sacred. While I know they would have sympathized and understood, I felt perhaps you wrote it just to me, and I would keep it sacred for you.

  And so I’m sending you this letter just to speak of that to you. I’ll write in my other letter with the rest of the girls, about the Sunday school and how glad we are, and about the pictures and how fine they are—and you’ll understand. But this letter is about your own self.

  I’ve stopped most urgent work upon my thesis to write this, too, so you may know how important I consider you, Christie. I couldn’t sleep last night, for praying about you.

  It was a wonderful revelation to Christie, the longing of another soul that his might be saved. To the lonely young fellow, accustomed to thinking that not another one in the world cared for him, it seemed almost unbelievable.

  He forgot for the time that she considered him another girl like her. He forgot everything except her pleading that he would give himself to Jesus. She wrote of Jesus Christ as one would write of a much-loved friend, met often face-to-face, consulted about everything in life and trusted beyond all others.

  A few weeks ago this would indeed have been wonderful to the young man, but that it could have any relation to him—impossible! Now, with the remembrance of his dream and the joy his heart had felt from the presence of a picture in his room, it seemed it might be true that Christ would love even him, and with so great a love.

  The pleading took hold upon him. Jesus was real to this one girl; He might become real to him.

  The thought of that girlish figure kneeling beside her bed in the solemn night hours praying for him was almost more than he could bear. It filled him with awe and a great joy. He drew his breath and didn’t try to keep the tears from flowing. It seemed that the fountains of the years were broken up in him, and he was weeping out his cry for the lonely, unloved childhood he had lost and the bitter years of mistakes that followed.

  It appeared that the Bible had a great part to play in this new life put before him. Verses he recognized from scripture abounded in the letter; he didn’t recall hearing them before, but they came to him with a rich sweetness as though spoken just for him.

  Did the Bible contain all that? And why hadn’t he known it before? He went to other books for respite from his loneliness. Why had he never known that here was deeper comfort than all else could give?

  Think of it, Christie, the letter read. Jesus Christ would have come to this earth and lived and died to save you if you were the only one out of the whole earth that was going to accept Him.

  He turned his longing eyes to the picture. Was that true? And the eyes seemed to answer, “Yes, Christie, I would.”

  Before he turned out his light that night, he took the Bible from the organ and, opening at random, read, “For I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.” And a light of belief spread over his face. He couldn’t sleep for many hours, for thinking of it
all.

  There was no question in his mind of whether he would or not. He felt he was the Lord’s in spite of everything else. The loving-kindness that had drawn him was too great for any human resistance.

  Then with the realization of the loving-kindness came self-reproach for his so long denial and worse than indifference. He didn’t understand the meaning of repentance and faith, but he was learning them in his life.

  Christie was never the same after that night. Something changed in him. It may have been growing all those days since the things first came, but that letter from Hazel Winship marked a decided epoch in his life. All his manhood rose to meet the sweetness of the girl’s unasked prayer for him.

  It didn’t matter that she didn’t think of him as a man. She prayed, and the prayer reached up to heaven and back to him again.

  The only touch of sadness about it was that he could never see her and thank her face-to-face for the good she did for him. He thought of her as some far-away angel who stopped on earth for a little while, and in some of his reveries he dreamed that perhaps in heaven, where all things were made right, he should know her. For the present it was enough that he had her kind friendship and her companionship in writing.

  Not for words now would he reveal his identity. And the thought that this might be wrong did not enter his mind. What harm could it possibly do? And what infinite good to him! And perhaps through him to a few of those little black children. He let this thought come timidly to the front.

  This was the beginning of the friendship that made life a new thing to Christie Bailey. He wrote long letters, telling the thoughts of his inmost heart as he had never told them to anyone on earth, as he could never have told them to one he hoped to meet sometime, as he would have told them to God.

  And the college student found time amid her essays and her activities 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 such long letters. But their curiosity didn’t go so far as to wonder what she found to say; otherwise they might have noticed that Hazel offered less often to read out loud her letters from the South. 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 herself willing to put one by unanswered. Some question always 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 such a childlike and earnest way.

  “Do you know,” she confided to Ruth Summers one day, “I can’t make myself see Christie Bailey as homely? It doesn’t seem possible to me. I think she’s mistaken. I know I’ll find something handsome about her when I see her, which I shall someday.”

  And Ruth smiled mockingly. “Oh, Hazel, Hazel, it will be better then for you never to see poor Christie, I’m sure; for you’ll surely find your ideal different from the reality.”

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

  “No, Ruth, I’m sure. A girl couldn’t have all the beautiful thoughts Christie has and not be fine in expression. There’ll be some beauty in her, I’m sure. Her eyes, now, I know are magnificent. I wish she’d send me a picture. But she won’t have one taken, though I’ve coaxed and coaxed.”

  Chapter 8

  Sad News from the North

  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 made 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 around 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 quench.

  By common consent, Christie’s companions respected his new way of life. And perhaps after the first few weeks if he’d shown a disposition to return to the old way of doing they might have even attempted to keep him to his new course.

  They knew 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 prayed. 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 flings. Always he was asked, but in a tone he came to feel meant they didn’t expect him to accept and would perhaps have been disappointed if he had.

  Once when Christie, not thinking, almost assented to go on an all-day 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, 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 somewhat 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 many a white, starry blossom gleamed, earnest of the golden fruit to come.

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

  Never any oranges, 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 sentences in her letters his heart fairly stood still with longing that she might know who he was and yet say them to him. Then he would crush this wish down, 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 to her, another thought sent her way.

  Then he remembered the joy she’d 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 most of that first summer after her graduation visiting among her college friends at various summer resorts at the seaside or on a mountaintop. But she didn’t 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 a porch or a lawn, or sitting in a hammock.

  Christie, you’re my safety valve, she wrote once. I think you take the place of a diary for me. 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 wrote her she’d worry, and there isn’t any need, but I couldn’t assure her. So you see, I have to bother you. For instance, there’s 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.

  During the reading o
f that letter 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’d done wasn’t 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 suggested this when she first tried to help Christie Christward. They kept it up, praying for this one and that one and for the Sunday school.

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

  The summer deepened into autumn. The oranges, a generous 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 becoming hopeful about how much he would get for his fruit, a sadness came 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 didn’t seem to be much—a little indisposition, a headache and loss of appetite. She wrote Christie she didn’t feel well and couldn’t write a long letter.

  Then a silence of unusual length came, followed by a letter from Ruth Summers, at whose home Hazel was 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 didn’t answer 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 anxiety over the sick one or being busy about other things, or perhaps from indifference—he couldn’t tell—no answer came for weeks.

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