Ransom (13 page)

“Yes,” answered her father, with almost a ring of eagerness in his own voice. And he fished a key from his pocket. “I thought if we should happen to get over this way, we might look around and see if everything is in good condition. I suppose it will look terribly dirty and dusty. I haven't sent anybody to clean in some time.”

Christobel could hardly wait for her father to unlock the door. She laid a hand lovingly on the railing of the old porch with its paint all checkered and ready to crumble. It was like a dream being here.

Rannie was standing halfway up the walk, looking around and trying to find himself back in years that were past and he thought forgotten. Now, as he stood on the actual spot again, vague pictures floated before his mind. He could see his young, sweet mother standing in that front door in a blue dress, smiling at him as he came up the walk, showing her an all-day sucker he had just bought with a penny at the corner store. A mist floated before his eyes, and he turned away quickly and looked down the street to hide his emotion.

Mr. Kershaw threw open the door wide and Christobel stepped in almost reverently and looked around.

“Oh, Daddy! Isn't it dear?” she said as she looked from one well-remembered chair to another. Even dusty as they were, it all looked precious to her.

“You like it, child?” said her father in amazement. “I was afraid it would depress you.”

“Oh, it's home, Father!” said Christobel, her voice full of happy tears. “I've longed for it sometimes at school, when I was lonely.”

Her father put a quick arm about her and drew her to him, kissing her tenderly.

“Poor dear little girlie,” he breathed softly, and Christobel reached her arms about his neck and gave him a real kiss, such as she had been too shy for before.

“Oh, Father! I'd give anything if we could live here!” she said earnestly. “I'd just love it!”

“What, here? You mean live here all the time, child?”

Her father was silent a moment, looking thoughtfully about.

“But there is no neighborhood, and no house from which to bring you out into society.”

Christobel was silent a moment, still leaning against her father's shoulder. Then she lifted her head and looked straight into his eyes, speaking gravely. “Would Mother, my own mother, have cared about that sort of thing?”

He did not answer for a moment, then he said, just as gravely, “No, I suppose not.”

“Did my mother ever come out?”

“No.”

“Then I don't want to,” she said firmly. “I'd much,
much
rather not, if you don't mind, Father. I would like to be like my mother.”

He drew her quickly to him again, speaking earnestly. “You wouldn't be like anybody better,” he said.

“Then when may we live here?”

“I'll think about it,” he promised. “We must be very sure before we make so drastic a change in environment. You know we have no idea what kind of people live about here now. It might be most unpleasant.”

“I wouldn't care,” said Christobel insistently. “We'd have each other.”

“Well, we'll see,” he said slowly, thoughtfully. “It might be a good thing—in more ways than one,” he mused.

Hand in hand they went through the rooms, speaking gently of her mother, of her little girlhood, and Christobel was very happy. It seemed to her that she had not been so happy since before her mother died.

“There used to be curtains!” mused the girl as she stood looking out one of the dusty windows.

“Yes, it seems to me I gave orders to have them washed and packed away.”

“I would like to clean it all up and make it look as it used to look,” said the girl. “And there is a fireplace. It would be wonderful to have a fire and sit around it, the way we used to do. I remember hanging up my stocking on Christmas by that fire. And there were people who used to live across the road. Father, wasn't it in that house that those children lived? There was a boy, Phil Harper, and his little sister, June. She was about Rannie's age. See. There is a little girl going in over there now. She might be a younger sister. Do you mind, Father, if I just run over and find out if they live there now? I won't be a minute.”

“Oh, it's likely they've moved away by this time. Harper, yes, that was the name. I remember he was a fine young man—when I was young.” The father sighed. “Yes, run along if you want to, but don't stay. It's getting late, and I've got an appointment, you know.”

“I won't be a second.” And Christobel ran ahead of her father down the stairs and down the sidewalk, toward the house across the way.

But Rannie was standing in one of the upper rooms looking in hungrily at a little crib drawn close to a great wide bed, and there were tears dropping down his face.

Christobel met the little girl coming out of the house again as she went up the steps of the neighbor's house. It was an old, redbrick house, and the paint on the brown door was badly caked and peeled. The porch floor looked as if it had seen wear, and everything outside had a dejected look, but there were crisp muslin curtains at the windows just as there used to be when Christobel was a little girl and played jacks with little Phil Harper on the stone doorstep.

“Do people by the name of Harper live here?” questioned Christobel of the little girl.

“Oh, yes,” said the child, smiling. “I'm Hazel Harper.”

Christobel caught her breath happily.

“Oh, I'm glad,” she said. “Are they at home? Is your mother at home?”

“Oh yes, Mother's here,” said Hazel, “and Father's here. He's always here now, you know, since he hurt his back and can't work anymore. And Phil has just come in. But my sister June is at the office where she works. She's the only one of the family that has a job. Won't you come in?” And she drew back and held the door open politely.

Christobel stepped in.

“Just wait here a minute,” said Hazel. “I'll call Mother. We keep that parlor door locked on the other side because it makes a banging sound and bothers Father all the way upstairs. He suffers a great deal, and we like to spare him.”

Christobel stood waiting in the dim little hallway and suddenly became aware of a voice speaking earnestly. It was a woman's voice, and there was a note in it that she remembered, a sweet motherly croon; but it was pleading now, and there were tears in her voice.

“Oh, our Father!” the woman was saying. “You care for the sparrows. We know Thou art going to care for us. We're down to the last dollar, Heavenly Father, and the mortgage interest is due next week. Take over our burdens and undertake for us. The man said we'd have to give up the house if we couldn't pay this time, and my poor John is lying there, worrying. Help him to trust Thee, Father. Give us all more faith. And if it be Thy dear will, give my Philip a job. He's been a good boy to us all, and he loves Thee, dear Lord. And now we are going to thank and praise Thee for what Thou art going to do for us. Lord, give us faith to praise Thee even though we cannot see the way ahead, and now listen to my boy, too, as he claims Thy promise that where two of Thine own shall ask, it shall be done for them.”

Then a young, strong, earnest voice took up the petition. “Oh, God our Father, if there is anything in me to hinder giving what I ask, show me what it is. Cleanse me, and give me more faith. Thou knowest that I want Thy will to be done in me at any cost, Lord, but oh, my Father God, if it be possible, don't let my dear family have to suffer. We know that Thou hearest when Thy children cry to Thee. Hear now, Lord, according to Thy promise, for we ask in the name of Thy Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.”

The voice trailed off into silence, and then something like a sob seemed to be suppressed, and there was a soft stirring of garments, and suddenly Christobel realized that she had been listening to private prayer, and she must not be found there where they would know she had been listening. Oh, she ought to have gone before!

Swiftly, firmly, she grasped the doorknob, turned it silently, stepped outside, closed it behind her, and fled on the tips of her toes so that she would not be heard.

Rannie was at the wheel already, and her father was standing by the car door. She slid breathlessly into the backseat, her father stepping in beside her, and Rannie started up the car. Peering back through the window, she saw the door across the way open and someone come out and look down the street, and then as Rannie wheeled into the next street, she sat back with a deep breath and realized that her eyes were full of tears.

“Well,” said her father, looking at her curiously, “you didn't find anyone you knew, did you? I thought all the old families would have moved away.”

“Yes, I found them,” said Christobel softly. “That is, they are there. But Father, I didn't wait to speak to them. They were praying. Father, they were praying for a job for Phil! I came away quietly so they wouldn't know I heard.”

Mr. Kershaw questioned her and she told him the whole story, the quiver in her voice and the tears coming to her eyes again at the thought of the two earnest voices.

“So, John Harper is disabled,” said his old neighbor. “That's hard luck. I used to think he was a rising man. I never expected to find him still in the same house. No money, no job! Well, say now, we might answer that prayer, anyway, mightn't we? I've been on the point of firing my office boy for a week. He's something worthless. If this young Harper is any good at all, he would be better than the fellow I have now. Rand, suppose you drive past that house again and let's get the number. I suppose to be any good as an answer to that prayer it ought to arrive mighty soon. I'll send a note from the firm by special messenger.”

“Oh, Father! That would be wonderful!” said Christobel with shining eyes. “But—won't they know I listened?”

“Oh, no. I'll fix that. I'll write the note on firm paper impersonally, just say we've heard he's unemployed, and if he is interested in working for us will he call and see me at the office Monday. And by the way, I wonder who holds that mortgage. I'll have our lawyer look that up and see what we can do about easing that up for them.”

“Oh, how splendid!” said Christobel. “You're just the most wonderful father in the world.”

Christobel shrunk back out of sight as they turned back into Seneca Street, but she need not have troubled. There was no one on the Harper porch. Mrs. Harper had shut the door and gone back to her duties and her cares, concluding that the visitor had only been a passing stranger, inquiring the way somewhere.

“Now, Rand,” said his father as they drew near their home, “you just let Chrissie and me out at the house and drive right on for Maggie. I'll have to be ready for that man who is coming, and I want to take time to call up my office secretary and let him know I have sent for this Harper boy and that he is to hire him if he comes and not let him know I have personally anything to do with it. That will settle the boy's mind about a job and start him in at something even though I don't have time to see him myself on Monday. Be careful when you cross that intersection by that second traffic light, boy. There is such congestion at this hour.”

“There's that man again!” said Christobel suddenly as they drew up at the house.

“What man?” asked her father, eyeing the shabby-looking individual who stood leaning against a mailbox on the corner.

“Why, that man. I've seen him several times over there!” said Christobel.

“Oh, I guess he's just waiting for somebody,” said her father reassuringly. “Come, Son, hurry up and get Maggie.”

So Rannie drove off, and Christobel went in with her father, entering the big marble mansion for the first time without an inward shudder. Somehow the sight of the dear old home in its dusty simplicity, with its lingering sweet memories, had exorcised the shadow of pall that hung over Charmian's house. As she took of her pretty new hat and coat, Christobel smiled at herself in the long silk-draped mirror of her dressing table. What a lot of lovely things had happened that afternoon. New clothes, lovely ones, dear old Maggie coming, the visit to home, the possibility that they might go there to live.
Oh, if Father could only be persuaded!
And now this lovely thing that he was going to do to answer those pitiful trusting prayers. Perhaps there was a real God, and He had fixed it so she would hear that prayer and send help. Who knew? The teachers at school and all the girls said they didn't believe in God. Christobel had never thought much about God. Only, in the secret of her own chamber at night, when the light was out and her roommate asleep, she had often slipped out upon the cold floor and knelt beside her bed to whisper that old prayer her mother had taught her and her little brother. It had become to her a kind of charm, nothing more, to keep her soul from an inward unrest and longing.

She suddenly wondered if it had ever been answered, and if there was someone who had kept her soul. Else, where would she have been?

The man came to see Mr. Kershaw very soon after Christobel came downstairs again, but she had the satisfaction of reading the exceedingly businesslike note that was written on firm paper and seeing it dispatched by special messenger in uniform to Seneca Street. She stood at the window looking out and thinking what would happen when it reached the little brick house and was read.

And then suddenly she knew that the Harpers would go into the shabby little parlor again and kneel down and tell God how glad they were. Wasn't that wonderful. The idea of thanking God for what He was going to do! She had never heard of anything like that before.

She was thinking about it when the car came back and Randall helped Maggie out and brought in her suitcase.

“Don't carry that up,” he said pleasantly to the nurse who had already won his heart over again. “I'll take care of it after I put the car in the garage. I won't be gone a minute.”