Ransom (18 page)

“Poor little girl. I oughtn't to give way. Yes, I feel almost sure we'll get Rannie back. We've got to believe it! The police are very sure. They think since this demand for ransom has been received, there is a lot of hope. Now, good-bye, little girl, I've got to go and see what can be done toward getting some ransom money ready. If I can get credit or loans—if we could just get Rannie back—why, I'm sure I could pay it all back. Cheer up, little girl. We'll keep hoping. We ought to be thankful you found young Harper. He's being a great help just now. I don't know what I'd do without him.”

“Oh, I'm glad,” said Christobel. “I've wondered whether you'd forgotten all about them. I don't suppose he's said anything about their house to you has he? I hope they won't lose it. He says his father has been sick several years.”

“Their house? Oh, I told McCann to get in touch with their agent and arrange to take over if the owners would sell, and to refinance it, giving them more time. I'm sure he did it. McCann always does things at once, and he would have let me know if there was any hitch. I talked to him just awhile before we found Rannie was missing. However, I'm glad you reminded me. I'll check on that and see if it was done.”

Three minutes after her father left, Philip Harper came in. There was something brisk and hopeful about him, and Christobel felt cheered just by the very sight of him. He asked one or two questions about what had been happening since he was at the house last and then lingered, watching her intently. Suddenly he said, “I've been wanting to tell you—I don't know whether you believe in prayer or not, but my mother and I have been praying very earnestly that your brother will come safely back to you, and something happened today that has given me more faith than ever that our prayer is to be answered. Do you mind if I tell you a little thing that has happened in our own home? It seems very wonderful to me.”

“Oh, I'd love to know,” said Christobel hungrily, eager for anything that gave a shadow of hope for her brother.

“Well, you see, we've been pretty hard hit during this depression,” said the young man, speaking in a low, rapid tone. “And we got behind in the payments on our house. You see, since Father was hurt, there has been only June and me to earn anything, and sometimes one or the other of us didn't have work. But we managed to keep up the payments until about four months ago, when we began to get behind again. The firm I was with had to close out their business, and that left me stranded. I just couldn't seem to find a job anywhere. And that very day your father's firm wrote to me about coming to his office, I had about given up. Mother and I had gone into the sitting room and shut everybody else out and knelt down to pray about it. It just seemed as though nobody but God could help, and after hunting a job so long without results, it was hard to have faith that even God could do anything, with the state this country is in now—only of course we knew He could.”

Christobel listened with rising color, feeling almost guilty that she should hear this intimate story of the prayer to which she had been an unintentional listener, but he was hurrying rapidly on.

“You see, I was pretty well all in, and my faith was at a low ebb. I had staked my faith on an answer to that prayer, and if it didn't come pretty soon, I couldn't see anything ahead of us but utter ruin. But that was what made it so very wonderful. Just that night, within a very few hours from the time Mother and I had prayed and put it up to the Lord how desperate we were, the letter came offering me a job!
Offering
me a job, mind you, not my having to go out hunting and finding one at last, but it came to me of itself. And then, this afternoon, while I was praying in the few minutes I always take, it came to me that I ought to be doing something about our house, and I couldn't take the time because I was really needed here while your father was away. And so I just put it up to God again and asked Him to look after your brother. And what do you think? Before I left the house the former agent called and gave us papers and told us the house had been taken over by a new owner and refinanced, and the payments made much easier. Why, it was just a miracle! Nothing less. And he said it would be all right if we waited another month before beginning the new payments. I can't get over the wonder of it. I never heard anything like it in business ways before. It was just God's doing, that was all!” Christobel beamed a smile at him.

“I'm glad!” she said and then with a sad wistfulness, “I wish I knew God. I would like to ask Him about Rannie.”

She turned away with a quivering lip and her eyes brimming over with tears.

“Let's go and ask Him now,” said Phil earnestly. “He knows you, even if you don't know Him.”

“But I have no right,” she said. “I haven't prayed to Him, since, oh, a long time ago. A little while after my mother died. Things all went wrong, and I prayed and prayed they would come right, but they didn't, and Rannie and I had to go away to school, and when I got there I stopped praying. My roommate didn't pray, and she laughed at me for doing it, and I soon stopped. I thought it didn't do any good. I thought that God didn't care about me anymore. I wasn't even sure there was a God. Most of the people at school said there wasn't, only just a Force.”

“Well, there is a God,” said Phil convincingly. “He loves you and longs to have you trust Him.”

“How do you know that? He answered you, but He might not love me.”

“I know because He says He does. Listen. ‘For God so loved
the world
,'—doesn't that include you?—'that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' Doesn't that sound as if God loved you?”

“I suppose it does. But—what would I have to do?”

“Just believe,” answered Phil gently. “Believe that His Son took your sins on Himself when He died on the cross. The moment you accept Him as your Savior, you become a child of God and have a right to come to Him and ask for the things you need.”

“I've always sort of believed there was a God,” mused Christobel with a faraway gaze. “Mother, of course, used to tell Rannie and me about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins, but I never paid much attention.”

“Well, this is an
active
belief. It is deliberately choosing to accept the gift of salvation that He bought for you with His life. Are you willing to believe that way?”

“Why, anybody would be willing to accept a gift, of course,” said Christobel, puzzled.

“No. Some people want to live their lives without God. They will not believe. They want to trust in themselves, or in riches, or in people—anything but to take the great gift God has given them.”

“Oh, I would take it and be so glad,” said the girl, lifting sweet earnest eyes to his face. “Just how do you do it? I would like to do it now.”

A great light came into the boy's face.

“Come,” he said, placing a hand on her arm. “Let's go into that little room and tell Him so. We shall not be interrupted there.”

He drew the silvery curtains behind them, and they walked the length of the great modern room and into Charmian's smaller white velvet shrine, sheathed in white frost of lace.

Christobel tossed the pagan silk doll from her cushion and there they knelt together, hand in hand, though they were not perhaps aware of that, and talked quite simply with the Heavenly Father.

“Heavenly Father,” spoke the youth, “Christobel wants to accept Jesus Christ as her own personal Savior. Thou hast said the only way to be saved is to believe that Jesus died in our place for the death we deserved. Now hear her according to Thy promise.”

Phil hesitated, feeling the quickened pressure of the girl's hand in his, then heard her voice, clear and sweet as a child's. “Oh God, I know I'm a sinner, but I do believe, and I want to be Thy child.” It was all as quiet and simple as that, but when they rose to their feet, there was a depth of gladness in Phil's eyes.

“Do you suppose He really heard us? Am I His child now? I don't feel any different, Phil,” said Christobel wonderingly.

“We aren't saved by feeling, Christobel, and I'm mighty glad of it, because sometimes I don't
feel
anything about it. We are saved because He says we are if we believe. That's the test of whether we really believe, if we are willing to take Him at His word, without any feeling.” He reached his hand into his pocket, brought out a little book, and thumbed through the worn pages.

“Read that, Chris,” he said and pointed to a verse.

“ ‘But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.' All right,” said Christobel trustingly, “I believe that. So I'm really a child of God!” Her eyes shone. “Now I want to ask Him about Rannie.”

Then down went the two heads again, and Christobel's petition was like that of a trusting child that left the precious brother in the safe keeping of a true and trusted Friend.

Maggie came trotting on her faithful old feet to hunt for her nursling, wanting to cheer the sad, sweet face. Her own was red with anxiety, and her Scotch blue eyes bluer than ever, blurred with tears.

She heard low voices and pulled up a bit of the big silver drapery. Peering in across the great dim room, she saw the two heads against the white frostwork of the window, bowed side by side in prayer. She noted the two hands clasped together, she heard the bairn praying for her brother, and, dropping the silver curtain, suddenly turned her back, ducked her face into her gingham apron, and sobbed noiselessly, her faithful shoulders shaking for a moment. Then she raised her head and whispered under her breath, “Bless the bairnies!” and trotted away to her kitchen again to try and get something to tempt the numbed appetites.

When Philip had gone, Christobel sought Maggie in the kitchen. There was a peace upon Christobel's brow that had not been there an hour before, and the heavy burden seemed gone.

“Yer luikin' better, me bairnie,” said the servant.

Christobel looked up with an unexpected smile.

“I've just found Jesus, Maggie, and He's taken the trembling away. I'm sure He's going to take care of Rannie, and maybe bring him back to us.”

“I'm sure He will,” spluttered Maggie, quite choked up with tears and brushing her hand quickly over her eyes. “Yer mommie believed, Miss Chrissie. Her last words was, ‘I'm trustin' Jesus!' Just like that! An' then she smiled and closed her eyes and was gone!”

“Oh, Maggie! Did she say that? I'm so glad you told me. If I had known that, I would have tried praying before. I didn't know she believed.”

“Oh, sure, she was a fine Christian, just an angel lady she was. Why, don't ye remember how she taught ye to say yer prayers? I mind oncet when Rannie, just a wee mannie, wouldn't say his ‘Now I lay me,' an' yer mommie, she looked sair grieved, an' she tuk him in her arms an' talked sweetlike to him. Oh, yer mommie was one in a thousand!”

“I'm glad to know,” said Christobel, taking a deep breath. “I feel as though it is going to help.”

She stood for a moment looking out the kitchen window thoughtfully and then turned back to Maggie.

“But Maggie, I came out to ask you if you would mind going up with me while I put away Charmian's things. I think Father would be glad to have that done and over.”

“Sure, me bairnie,” said Maggie, giving a final polish to her flaming face with her drenched apron. “Sure I'll help ye if ye think yer equal to it today?” She gave the girl a scrutinizing look.

“Yes, Maggie, I've been kind of dreading it. I would rather feel that they were gone.”

So together they went up to the locked room and began to set it in order.

It was Maggie who spread a sheet on the silk coverlet of the bed and began to fold garments and put them into piles upon it.

Christobel forced herself to go among the dresses, picking out things she thought perhaps Charmian's mother could use. There were several street suits and smart silk frocks in dark colors. One could scarcely fancy the frumpy little mother of Charmian in anything so sophisticated, but perhaps they would give her pleasure.

Maggie folded everything neatly, advising and suggesting with wisely elderly hints.

“I'm sure I don't know what we'll do with these evening dresses,” said Christobel, looking at the armful of tulle and taffeta.

“You'll not be wantin' to use thae yersel' sometime?” asked the nurse speculatively.

“Oh, no!” said Christobel with a little shiver. “I would rather not. Besides, I'm not going into society. Father said I needn't. Mother didn't.”

“Right you are, me lambie!” said the nurse. “There's many dangers out in the world taday. Yer safer in than out. This world's gangin' all ugly! Well, why not sell thae clothes then? I know a lady sells in one o' these secondhand shops. They pay wonderful prices fer dresses that's only ben wore a few times. Some o' thae dresses look like they'd scarcely ben wore at all. We'll look out some suit boxes an' fold them fine. Then I'll send fer my friend, an' yer poppie'll be surprised ta see how mooch they'll bring. Good money. I mind once I went with her to the shop an' I see nice ladies buyin' at big prices.”

So they worked, sorting and folding and packing, until Charmian's wardrobe was in neat piles ready for immediate disposal. Plenty for Charmian's mother, a lot to be sold, and a goodly assortment to be given away, Maggie affirming that she knew a few people where they would do good.

“And the jewels we'll ask yer poppie aboot,” said Maggie, as she finished with quick hand and discerning eye, separating the common strings of beads and costume jewelry from the real stones and jewels.

“He may like to sind a jeweler here ta look 'em over an' appraise 'em. They'll bring a-plenty if I'm not mistaken.”