And Christie echoed the cry too deeply to be able to smile over it.
Victoria had laid her plans carefully. She arranged to spend more time with Hazel than she had, pleading a headache as an excuse from going out for a ride in the hot sun and sending Mrs. Winship in her place more than once. She found that Hazel had no intention of opening her heart to her, so she determined to make a move herself.
Hazel had been very quiet for a long time. Victoria thought she was asleep until at last she noticed a little quiver of her lip and the tiniest glisten of a tear rolling down the thin white cheek.
As though she didn’t see, she got up and moved around the room a moment and then in a cheery tone began to tell her story.
“Hazel, dear, I’m going to tell you where I went last Sunday. It was so interesting! I wandered off alone out into the country and eventually heard some singing in a little log cabin by the road. I slipped into the yard behind some crape myrtle bushes all in lovely bloom, where I was hidden.
“Through a crack between the logs, I could see three rows of black children and some older people, too. And at the organ—there was a nice organ standing against the wall—sat Mr. Mortimer, that young man we met in the parlor the other evening, Mrs. Boston Mortimer’s nephew, you know. Some other young men were there, too, and they were all singing.
“After the singing there was a prayer. One of the young men prayed. It was all about being forgiven for mistakes and sins and not being worth Christ’s saving. It was a beautiful prayer! And, Hazel, it was Christie Bailey who prayed!”
Chapter 11
A Daring Maneuver
Hazel caught her breath when she heard of Christie’s prayer, and a bright flush glowed on her cheek.
“Then he taught the lesson,” Victoria continued, “and he did it well. Those little children never stirred—they were so interested. Just as they were singing the closing hymn, I left in a hurry so they wouldn’t see me.”
Victoria had timed her story from the window. She knew the carriage had returned and that Mother Winship would soon appear at the doorway. Hazel would have no chance to speak until she thought about the Sunday school a little while. The footsteps were coming along the hall now, and she could hear Ruth calling to Hazel’s brother.
She had one more thing to say. Stepping over close to the couch, she whispered in Hazel’s ear: “Hazel, I don’t believe he’s deceived you about everything. I believe you’ve done him a great deal of good. Don’t fret about it, dear.”
Hazel was brighter that evening, and Victoria often caught her looking thoughtfully at her. The next day when they were left alone she said, “Tell me what sort of lesson they had at the Sunday school, Vic, dear.”
Victoria launched into a full account of the chalkboard lesson and the odd-shaped little cards, which she couldn’t quite see through the crack, that were passed around at the close, and treasured, she could see. Then cautiously she told of the interview with Mr. Mortimer and his account of Christie’s throwing the bottles out the door. The story lost none of its color from Victoria’s repetition of it. When she finished, Hazel’s eyes were bright, and she was sitting up and smiling.
“Wasn’t that splendid, Vic?” she said and then, remembering, sank back thoughtfully upon the couch.
Victoria was glad the others came in just then and she could slip away. She had said all she wished to say at present and would let things rest now until Saturday evening when Christie came.
Victoria had arranged with Mrs. Winship to stay upstairs and have dinner with Hazel on Saturday evening while the family with Ruth Summers went down to the dining room. She also arranged with the head waiter to send up Hazel’s dinner early. And so with much maneuvering the coast was clear at seven, Hazel’s dinner and her own disposed of, and the family just gone down to the dining room, where they would be safe for at least an hour.
It was no part of Victoria’s plan that Mother Winship or Tom or the judge should come in at an inopportune moment and complicate matters until Hazel had had everything fully explained to her. After that, Victoria felt that she would wash her hands of the whole thing.
Mother Winship had just rustled down the hall, and Victoria, who was standing by the hall door waiting until she was gone, walked over to where Hazel sat in a big soft chair by an open fire of pine knots.
“Hazel,” she said in her matter-of-fact, everyday tone, “Christie Bailey has come to find out if he may see you for a few minutes. He wants to say a few words of explanation to you. He’s really suffered very much, and perhaps you’ll feel less humiliated by this whole thing if you let him explain. Do you feel able to see him now?”
Hazel looked up, a bright flush on her cheeks.
Victoria did not betray by so much as the flicker of an eyelash that she was anxious about the outcome of this simple proposal. Hazel’s clear eyes searched her face, and she bore the scrutiny well.
Then Hazel sighed a troubled little breath and said, “Yes, I’ll see him, Vic. I feel quite strong tonight, and—I guess it will be better, after all, for me to see him.”
Then Victoria felt sure it was a relief for him to come and that Hazel had been longing for it for several days.
Christie walked in solemnly with the tread of one who entered a sacred place and yet with the quiet dignity of a “gentleman unafraid.” Indeed, so far had the object of his visit dominated him that he forgot to shrink from contact with the fashionable world from which he had been so entirely shut away for so long.
He was going to see Hazel. It was the opportunity of his life. As to what came after, it didn’t matter, now that the great privilege of entering her presence had been accorded him. He hadn’t permitted himself to believe she would see him even after he sent up his card, as directed, to Miss Landis.
Victoria shut the door gently behind him and left them together. She had prepared a chair not far away, where she might sit and guard the door against intrusion. So she sat and listened to the faraway hum of voices in the dining room, the tinkle of silver and glass, and the occasional burst from the orchestra in the balcony above the dining room. But her heart stood still outside the closed door and wondered whether she had done well or ill, and she feared—now that she had done it—all evil things that can pass in review at such a time for judgment on one’s own deeds.
Christie stood still before Hazel. The sight of her so thin and white, changed even from a week ago, startled him—condemned him again, took away his power of speech for the moment.
She was dressed in soft white cashmere, with delicate lace that fell over the little white wrists like petals of a flower. Her silken brown hair made a halo for her face and was drawn simply and carelessly together at the back. Christie had never seen anyone half so lovely. He caught his breath in admiration of her.
For one long minute they looked at each other. Then Hazel, who felt it hers to speak first, since she had silenced him before, said, as a young queen might have said, with just the shadow of a smile flickering over her face, “You may sit down.”
The gracious permission, with a slight indication of the chair facing her own by the fire, broke the spell that bound Christie’s tongue. With a heart beating high over what he came to say, he began.
The words he spoke were not the carefully planned words he had arranged to set before her. They had fled and left his soul bare before her gaze. He had nothing to tell but the story of himself.
“You think I’ve deceived you,” he said, speaking rapidly because his heart was beating in great, quick bounds. “Because I owe to you all the good I have in life, I’ve come to tell you the whole truth about myself. I thank you for giving me a few minutes to speak to you, and I’ll try not to weary you. I’ve been too much trouble to you already.
“I was a little boy when my mother died—” Christie lowered his head as he talked now, and the firelight played fanciful lights and shades with the richness of his hair.
“Nobody loved me that I know of, unless it was my father. If he did, h
e never showed it. He was a silent man and grieved about my mother’s death. I was a homely little fellow, and they’ve always said I had the temper of my hair. My aunt used to say I was hard to manage. I think that was true. I must have had some love in my heart, but nothing but my mother ever brought it out. I went through school at war with all my teachers. I got through because I naturally liked books.
“Father wanted me to be a farmer, but I wanted to go to college. So he gave me a certain sum of money and sent me. I used the money as I pleased, sometimes wisely and sometimes unwisely. When I ran out of money, I earned some more or went without it. Father was not the kind of man to be asked for more. I had a good time in college, though I can’t say I ranked as well as I might have. I studied what I pleased and left other things alone. Father died before I graduated, and the aunt who kept house for him soon followed. When I was through college, I had no one to go to and no one to care where I went.
“Father signed a note for a man a little while before he died, with the usual result of such things, and there was very little remaining for him to leave to me. What there was I took and came to Florida—I had a reckless longing to see a new part of the world and make a spot for myself. I’d never known what home was since I was a little fellow, and I believe I was homesick for a home and something to call my own. Land was cheap, and it was easy to work, I thought, and my head was filled with dreams of my future. But I soon saw that oranges didn’t grow in a day and produce fortunes.
“Life was an awfully empty thing. Sometimes I used to lie awake at night and wonder what death would be, and if it wouldn’t be as well to try it. But something in my mother’s prayer for me when I was almost a baby always kept me from it. She used to pray, ‘God make my little Chris a good man.’
“After a while, I got acquainted with a lot of other fellows in the same fix with me. They were sick of life—at least, the life down here, and hard work and interminable waiting. But they’d found something more pleasant than death to make them forget.
“I went with them and tried their way. They played cards. I played, too. I could play well. We would drink and drink, and play and drink again—”
A little moan escaped from the listener, and Christie looked up to find her eyes filled with tears and her fingers clutching the arms of the chair until the nails were pink against the fingertips with the pressure.
“Oh, I’m doing you more harm!” exclaimed Christie. “I’ll stop!”
“No, no,” said Hazel. “Go on, please.” She turned her face aside to brush away the tears that had gathered.
“I was always ashamed when it was over. It made me hate myself and life all the more. I often used to acknowledge to myself that I was doing about as much as I could to see that my mother’s prayer didn’t get answered. But still I went on just the same way every so often. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do.
“Then the night before Christmas came. It wasn’t anything to me more than any other day. It hadn’t been since I was a baby. Mother used to fill my stocking with little things. I remember it just once.
“But this Christmas I felt particularly down. The orange trees weren’t doing as well as I’d hoped. I was depressed by the horror of the monotony of my life, behind and before. Then your things came, and a new world opened before me.
“I wasn’t very glad of it at first. I’m afraid I resented your kindness a little. Then I began to see they’d brought something homelike with them, and I couldn’t help liking it. But your letter gave me a strange feeling. There seemed to be obligations I couldn’t fulfill. I didn’t like to keep the things, because you wanted a Sunday school. I was much more likely to conduct a saloon or a pool room at that time than a Sunday school.
“Then I hung that picture up. You know what effect it had on me. I’ve told you about my strange dream or vision or whatever it was. Yes, it was all true. I never deceived you about that or anything else except that I didn’t tell you I wasn’t what you supposed. I thought it might embarrass you if I did so at first, and then it seemed only a joke to answer you as if I were a girl. I never dreamed it would go beyond that first letter when I wrote thanking you.”
His honest eyes were on her face, and Hazel couldn’t doubt him.
“And then, when the writing went on, and the time came when I should have told you, something else held me back. Forgive me for speaking of it, but I’m trying to be perfectly true tonight. You remember in that second letter that you wrote me, where you told me that you were praying for me, and—you—” Christie caught his breath and murmured the words low and reverently, “You said you loved me—”
“Oh!” gasped Hazel, clasping her hands over her face, while the blood rushed up to her temples.
Chapter 12
The Whim Completes Its Justification
Forgive me!” he pleaded. “It doesn’t need to hurt you. I knew that love wasn’t really mine. You gave it to the girl you thought I was. I knew without ever seeing you that you would sooner have cut out your tongue than write anything like that to a strange man. I should have seen at once that I was stealing something that didn’t belong to me in taking that love.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have put it from me even if I’d seen it. For that love was very dear to me. Remember I was never loved in my whole life by anyone but a mother who had been gone for so many years! Remember there was no one else to claim that love from you.
“And remember I thought you’d never need to know. I never dreamed you’d try to search me out. Your friendship was too dear for me to try. And, too, I knew you would consider me far beneath you. I could never hope to have you for the most distant friend, even if you knew all about me from childhood.
“My hope for your help and comfort and friendship was in letting you imagine me as a lonely old maid. Remember you said it yourself. I simply didn’t tell you what I was.
“But I don’t take one bit of blame from myself. I see now that I ought to have been a good enough man to tell you at once. I should have missed a great deal, perhaps, as human vision sees it, have missed even heaven itself, unless the very giving up of heaven for right had gained heaven for me.
“I can see it was all wrong. The Father even then spoke to my heart. He would have found me in some other way, perhaps. It would have been your doing all the same, and I’d have had the joy of thanking you even so for my salvation. But I didn’t, and now my punishment is that I have brought this suffering and disappointment and chagrin upon you. And if I could I’d wipe out of my life the joy that has come to me through companionship with you by letters, if by so doing I might save you from this problem.
“I have one more thing to tell you. Remember that only once, in so many words, have I dared to tell you this in writing, and then only in a hidden way, because I thought if you knew all about me you wouldn’t want me to say it. But now I must say it. My punishment is very great, not only that you suffer, but that I’ve deserved your scorn—for I love you! I love you with every bit of unused love from my childhood days, along with all the love a man’s heart has to give. I’ve loved you ever since the night I read from your letter that you loved me—a poor, forlorn, homely girl as you thought—and that you thought I loved you, too. I knew at once that it was so.
“I want you to know that ever since that night I determined to be a person worthy of loving you. I never dared put it ‘worthy of your love,’ because I knew that could never be for me. But I’ve tried to make myself a man you wouldn’t be ashamed to have love you, even though you could never think of loving in return. And I’ve fallen short in your eyes, I know. But in what you didn’t know of my life I’ve been true.
“Can you, knowing all this, forgive me? Then I’ll go out and try to live my life as you and God would have me do, and remember the joy that wasn’t mine. But you gave me one joy that you can’t take away. Jesus Christ is my Friend.
“Now I’ve said all there is to say, and I must go away and let you rest. Can you find it in your heart to say you forgive m
e?”
Christie rested his elbow on the arm of her chair and dropped his head on his hand, while the firelight flickered and glowed among the waves of ruddy hair again. He had said all there was to say, and he felt he had no hope. Now he must go out. The strength seemed suddenly to have left him.
It was very still in the room for a moment. They could hear each other breathe. At last Hazel’s hand reached timidly out toward him and rested like a rose leaf among the dark curls.
It was his benediction, he thought, his dream come true. It was her forgiveness. He held his breath and didn’t stir.
And then, more timidly still, Hazel herself slipped softly from her chair to her knees before him. The other hand shyly stole to his shoulder, and she whispered, “Christie, forgive me. I—love you.”
Then Hazel’s courage gave way, and she hid her blushing face against his sleeve.
Christie’s heart leaped up in all its manhood. He rose and drew her to her feet tenderly and folded his arms around her as one might enfold an angel come for shelter. Then he bent his tall head over until his face touched her lily face, and he felt that all his desolation was healed.
At that instant, steps were heard along the hall, lingering noisily around the door. A hand rattled the doorknob, while Victoria’s voice, unnecessarily loud from Ruth’s point of view, called: “Is that you, Ruth? Are the others through dinner yet? Would you mind stepping back to the office and getting the evening paper for me? I want to look at something.”
Then the door opened, and Victoria came smiling in. “Time’s up,” she said playfully. “The invalid mustn’t talk another word tonight.”
Indeed, Victoria was most relieved that the time was up. She looked anxiously from Hazel to Christie to see whether she had done more harm than good. But Hazel leaned back smiling and flushed in her chair, and Christie, standing tall and serious, with an inspired look on his face, reassured her.