The Story of a Whim (5 page)

"How fortunate we used green for that couch-cover! Christie's hair will be lovely against it," murmured Victoria, in a
serious-comic tone, while all the girls set up a shout at Hazel's wild flights of fancy.

'Take Christie Bailey to Europe! O, Hazel!
I'm afraid you will be simply dreadful, now you have succeeded in one wild scheme. You will make us do all sorts of things, and never stop at reason."

Hazel's cheeks flushed. It always hurt
her a little that these girls did not go quite as far in her philanthropic ideas as she did herself. She had quite taken this Christie girl into her heart, and she wanted them all to do the same.

"Well, girls, you must all write to her, anyway, and encourage her. Think
what it would be to be down there, a girl, all alone, and raising oranges. I think she is a hero!"

"O, we'll all write, of course," said Victoria, with mischief in her eye; "but call her a heroine, do, Hazel."

And they all did write, letters full of bright nonsense, and sweet, tender, chatty letters, and letters full of girlish pity, attempts to make life more bearable to the poor girl all alone down in Florida. But a girl who confesses to being homely and red-haired and twenty-eight cannot long hold a prominent place in the life of any but an enthusiast such as Hazel was, and very soon the other five letters dropped off, and Christie Bailey was favored with but one correspondent from that Northern college.

But
to return to Florida. That first Sunday morning after Christmas, everything did not go just as was planned by Christie.

In the first place, he overslept. He had discovered some miserable scales on some of his most cherished trees, and he had had to trudge to town Saturday morning,—th
e man was using the pony ploughing,—and get some whale-oil soap, and then spend the rest of the day until dark spraying his trees. It was no wonder that he was too tired to wake early the next day.

Then, when he finally went out to the pony, he discovered that he was suffering from a badly cut foot, probably the result of the careless hired man and a barbed-wire fence. The swollen foot needed attention.

The pony made comfortable, he reflected on what he would do next. To ride on that pony away anywhere was impossible. To walk he was not inclined. The sun was warm for that time of year, and he still felt stiff from his exertions of the day before. He concluded he would shut up the house, and lie down, and keep still when anyone came to call, and they would think him away.

With this purpose in view he gave the pony and the chickens a liberal supply of food, that he need not come out again till evening, and went into the house; but he had no more than reached there when he heard a loud knocking at the front door, evidently with the butt end of a whip; and before he could decide what to do it was thrown open, and Mortimer
and Armstrong entered, another young Englishman following close behind. Armstrong wore shiny patent-leather shoes, and seemed anxious to make them apparent.

"Good mor
ning, Miss Bailey," he said, affably. "Glad to see you looking so fresh and sweet. We just called round to help you prepare for your little Sunday school."

Christie was angry. He stood still, looking from one to another of his three guests like a wild animal at bay. They knew he was
angry, and that fact contributed not a little to their enjoyment. They meant to carry out the joke to the end.

The third man,
Rushforth by name, stood grinning in the rear of the other two. The joke had been so thoroughly explained to him that he could fully appreciate it. He was not noted for being quick at a joke. Armstrong, however, seemed to have a full sense of the ridiculous.

Firmly and
cheerfully they took their way with Christie; and he, knowing that resistance was futile, sat down upon his couch in glum silence, and let them work their will.

"I stopped on the way over, and reminded our friends in the cabin below that the hour was two-thirty," remarked Mortimer, as he took a large
dinner-bell from his side pocket and rang a note or two. "That’s to let them know the time when we are ready to 'take up.'"

Christie scowled
, and the others laughed uproariously.

"Now, Armstrong, you and I will go out and
reconnoiter for seats, while Rushforth stays here and helps this dear girl dust her parlor ornaments and brickbats. We'll need plenty of seats, for we'll have quite a congregation if all I've asked turn out."

They came back in a few minutes laden with boxes and
boards which they ranged in three rows across the end of the cabin facing the organ.

Christie sat and glared at them.

He was very angry, and was trying to think whether to bear it out and see what they would do next, or run away to the woods. He had little doubt that if he should attempt the latter they would all three follow him, and perhaps bind him to a seat to witness the performances they had planned; for they were evidently "taking it out of him" for having all this luxury and not taking them into the innermost confidences of his heart about it.

He shut his teeth and wondered what Hazel would say if she knew how
outrageously her idea of a Sunday school was going to be burlesqued.

Armstrong tacked up the blackboard, and got out the chalk. Then, discovering the folded doth map of the Holy Land, he tacked that up at the end wall where all could see it. Mortimer mapped out the
program.

"Now,
Rushforth, you pass the books and the lesson leaves, and I'll stay at the organ and preside. Miss Christie's a little shy about speaking out today, you see, and we'll have to help her along before we put her in the superintendent's place. Christie, you can make some pictures on the blackboard. Anything’ll do. This is near Christmas—you can make Santa Claus coming down the chimney if you like. I'll run the music, and we'll have quite a time of it. We'll able to tell the fellows all about it down at the lake next week, and I shouldn’t wonder if we’d have a delegation over from Mulberry Creek next Sunday to hear Elder Bailey speak—I beg pardon; I mean Miss Bailey. You must excuse me, dear; on account of your freckles I sometimes take you for a man.

Mortimer spread open a Bible that had come with the singing books, and actually found the place in the lesson leaf, and made them listen while he read, and declared that Christie ought to give a talk on the lesson.
And thus they carried on their banter the whole morning long.

Christie sat glowering in the corner.

He could not make up his mind what to do. For some strange reason he did not want a Sunday school caricatured in his house and with that picture looking down upon it all, and yet he did not know why he didn’t want it. He had never been squeamish before about such things. The fellows would not understand it, and he did not understand it himself. But it went against the grain.

Now as it came on about
dinner-time he thought they would perhaps go if he offered no refreshments; but no; they seemed to have no such idea. Instead, they sent Armstrong outside to the their light wagon they had tied at the tree by the roadside, and he came back laden with a large basket which they proceeded to unpack.

There were canned
meats and jellies and pickles and baked beans and all sorts of canned goods that have to be substituted for the genuine article in Florida, where fresh meat and vegetable are not always to be had.

Armstrong went out again, and this time came back with a large case of bottles.

He set it down with a thump on the floor just opposite the picture, while he shut the door. The clink of the bottles bespoke a hilarious hour, and carried memories of many a time of feasting in which Christie had participated before.

His face crimsoned as if some honored friend
had suddenly been brought to look upon the worst of his hard, careless life, and he suddenly rose with determination. Here was something which he could not stand.

He drank sometimes
, it is true. The fellows all knew it. But both he and they knew that the worst things they had ever done in their lives had been done and said under the influence of liquor. They all had memories of wild debauches of several days' duration, when they had been off together and had not restrained themselves. Each one knew his own heart's shame after such a spree as this. Each knew the other's shame. They never spoke about it, but it was one of the bonds that bound them together, these drunken riots of theirs, when they put their senses at the service of cards and wine, and never stopped until the liquor had given out. At such times each knew that he would have sold his soul for one more penny to stake at the game, or one more drink, had the devil been about in human form to bid for it.

They were none of them drunkards, few of them even constant drinkers, partly because they had little money to spend in such a habit. They all had strong bodies able to endure much, and their life out-of-doors did not tend to create unnatural cravings of appetite. Rather had they forced themselves into these revelries as a means of amusing themselves in a land where there was little but work to fill up the long months and years of waiting.

This case of liquor was not the first that had been in Christie's cabin. He had never felt before that it was out of place in entering there; but now the picture hung there, and the case of liquor, representing the denial of God, seemed to Christie a direct insult to the One whose presence had in a mysterious way crept into the cabin with the picture.

Also
he saw at a flash what the fellows were planning to do. They knew his weakness. They remembered how skilled his tongue was in turning phrases when loosened by intoxicants. They were planning to get him drunk—perhaps had even drugged some of the bottles slightly—and then to make him talk, and even pray, it might be!

At another
time this might have seemed funny to him. He had not realized before how far he had been going in the way from truth and righteousness. But now his whole soul rose up in loathing of himself, his ways, and his companions.

A sentence of his mother's prayer for him when he was but a little child that had not been in his mind for years now came as dear as if a voice had spoken it in his ear, "God make my little Chris a good man!"

And this was how it had been answered. Poor mother!

What Hazel
Winship would think of the scene also flashed into his mind. He strode across that room in his angry strength before his astonished companions could stop him; and, taking that case of liquor in his muscular arms, he dashed it far out the open door across the road and into the woods. Then he turned back to the three amazed men.

"You won't have any of that stuff in here!" he said firmly. "If you're bound to have a Sunday school, a Sunday school we'll have; but we won't have any drunken men at it. Perhaps you enjoy mixing things up that way, but I'm not quite a devil yet."

They had not known there was such strength in him. He looked fairly splendid as he stood there in the might of right, his deep eyes glowing darker brown and every mahogany curl a-tremble with determination.

"Aw!
Certainly! Beg pardon!" said Armstrong, settling his eyeglasses that he might observe his former friend more closely. "I meant no harm, I'm sure." Armstrong was always polite. If an earthquake had thrown him to the ground, he would have arisen and said, "Aw! I beg pardon!"

But
Christie was master in his own house. The others exclaimed a little, and tried to joke him upon his newly acquired temperance principles; but he would not open his lips further on the subject, and they ate their canned meats and jellies and bread moistened only by water from Christie's pump in the yard.

They had scarcely
finished when the first installment of the Sunday school arrived in faded but freshly starched calicoes laundered especially for the occasion. They pattered to the door barefooted, dean, and shining, followed by some of their elders, who lingered smiling and shy at the gateway, uncertain whether to credit the invitation to "Mr. Christie's" cabin. Mr. Christie had never been so hospitable before. But the children, spying the rudely improvised benches, crept in, and the others followed.

Christie stood scowling in the back end of the cabin. Sunday school was on his hands. He could not help it any more than he could help the coming of the organ and the picture. It was a part of his new possessions.

He felt determined that it should not be a farce. How he was going to prevent it he did not know, but he meant to do it.

He looked up at the picture again. It seemed to give him strength. Of
course it was but fancy that it had seemed to smile approval after he had flung that liquor out the door; but in spite of his own reason he could not but feel that the Man of the picture was enduring insult here in his house, and that he must fight for His sake.

Added to that was Hazel
Winship's faith in him and her desire for a Sunday school. His honor was at stake. He would never have gone out and gathered up a Sunday school to nurse into life, even for Hazel Winship. Neither would he have consented to help in one if his permission had been asked; but now, when it was, as it were, thrust upon him, like a little foundling child all smiling and innocent of possible danger to it, what could he do but help it out?

They
were all seated now, and a hush of expe¬tancy pervaded the room.

The three conspirators over by the organ were consulting and laughing in low tones.

Christie knew that the time had come for action. He raised his eyes to the picture once more. To his fancy the eyes seemed to smile assurance to him as he went forward to the organ.

Christie quietly to
ok up a singing-book, and, opening at random, said, "Let us sing number one hundred and thirty-four." He was surprised when they began to sing to find it was the same song that Mortimer had sung first on Christmas morning.

His three friends turned in astonishment toward him. They began to think he was entering into the joke like his own old self, but
instead there was a grave, earnest look on his face they had never seen there before.

Mortimer put his fingers on the keys, and began at once. Christie seemed to have taken the play out of their hands and turned the tables upon them. They began to wonder what he would do next. This was fine acting on his part, they felt, for him to take the predicament in which they had placed him and work it out in earnest.

The song was almost finished, and still Christie did not know what to do next.

He announced another hymn at random, and watched old Aunt
Tildy settle her steel-bowed spectacles over her nose and fumble among the numbers. The Sunday school was entering into the music with zest. The male trio who led were singing with might and main, but with an amused smile on their faces as if they expected developments soon.

Just
then an aged black man came hobbling in. His hair and whiskers were white, and his worn Prince Albert coat ill fitted his bent figure; but there was a clerical manner which clung to the old coat and gave Christie hope. When the song was finished, he raised his eyes without any hesitation and spoke clearly.

"Uncle Moses," he said, "we want to begin right, and you know all about Sunday schools; can't you give us a start?"

Uncle Moses slowly took off his spectacles, and put them carefully away in his pocket while he cleared his throat.

"I
ain't much on speechifyin', Mistah Bailey," said he; "but I kin pray. 'Kase you see when I's talkin' to God den I ain't thinkin' of my own sinful, stumblin' speech."

The choir did not attempt to restrain their
risibles, but Christie was all gravity.

"That's it, Uncle.
That's what we need. You pray." It came to him to wonder for an instant whether Hazel Winship was praying for her Sunday school then, too.

All during the prayer Christie wondered at
himself. He conducting a religious service in his own house and asking somebody to pray! And yet, as the trembling, pathetic sentences rolled out, he felt glad that homage was being rendered to the Presence that seemed to have been in the room ever since the picture came.

"O our Father in heaven, we is all
poh sinnahs!" said Uncle Moses, earnestly, and Christie felt it was true, himself among the number. It was the first prayer that the young man ever remembered to have felt all the way through. "We is all sick and miserable with the disease of sin. We's got it bad, Lord"—here Christie felt the seat behind him shake. Mortimer was behaving very badly. "But, Lord," went on the quavering old voice, "we know dere's a remedy. Away down in Palestine, in de Holy Land, in an Irish shanty, was where de fust medicine-shop of de world was set up, an' we been gettin' de good ob it eber sence. O Lord, we praise thee to-day for de little chile dat lay in dat manger a long time ago, dat brung de fust chance of healing to us poh sinners—"