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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13282 ***
+
+                           The Island of Faith
+
+                         By MARGARET E. SANGSTER
+
+                                  1921
+
+
+
+
+To M's M and Chance
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+      I. INTRODUCING--THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE
+
+     II. THE QUARREL
+
+    III. CONCERNING IDEALS
+
+     IV. THE PARK
+
+      V. ROSE-MARIE COMES TO THE RESCUE
+
+     VI. "THERE'S NO PLACE--"
+
+    VII. A LILY IN THE SLUMS
+
+   VIII. ANOTHER QUARREL
+
+     IX. AND ANOTHER
+
+      X. MRS. VOLSKY PROMISES TO TRY
+
+     XI. BENNIE COMES TO THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE
+
+    XII. AN ISLAND
+
+   XIII. ELLA MAKES A DECISION
+
+    XIV. PA STEPS ASIDE
+
+     XV. A SOLUTION
+
+    XVI. ENTER--JIM
+
+   XVII. AN ANSWER
+
+  XVIII. AND A MIRACLE
+
+    XIX. AND THE HAPPY ENDING
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+INTRODUCING--THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE
+
+
+There is a certain section of New York that is bounded upon the north by
+Fourteenth Street, upon the south by Delancy. Folk who dwell in it seldom
+stray farther west than the Bowery, rarely cross the river that flows
+sluggishly on its eastern border. They live their lives out, with
+something that might be termed a feverish stolidity, in the dim crowded
+flats, and upon the thronged streets.
+
+To the people who have homes on Central Park West, to the frail winged
+moths who flutter up and down Broadway, this section does not exist. Its
+poor are not the picturesque poor of the city's Latin quarter, its
+criminals seldom win to the notoriety of a front page and inch-high
+headlines; it almost never produces a genius for the world to smile
+upon--its talent does not often break away from the undefined, but none
+the less certain, limits of the district.
+
+It is curious that this part of town is seldom featured in song or story,
+for it is certainly neither dull nor unproductive of plot. The tenements
+that loom, canyon-like, upon every side are filled to overflowing with
+human drama; and the stilted little parks are so teeming with romances,
+of a summer night, that only the book of the ages would be big enough to
+hold them--were they written out! Life beats, like some great wave, up
+the dim alleyways--it breaks, in a shattered tide, against rock-like
+doorways. The music of a street band, strangely sweet despite its
+shrillness, rises triumphantly above the tumult of pavement vendors, the
+crying of babies, the shouting of small boys, and the monotonous voices
+of the womenfolk.
+
+In almost the exact center of this district is the Settlement House--a
+brown building that is tall and curiously friendly. Between a great
+hive-like dwelling place and a noisy dance-hall it stands valiantly, like
+the soldier of God that it is! And through its wide-open doorway come and
+go the girls who will gladly squander a week's wage for a bit of satin or
+a velvet hat; the shabby, dull-eyed women who, two years before, were
+care-free girls themselves; the dreamers--and the ones who have never
+learned to dream. For there is something about the Settlement House--and
+about the tiny group of earnest people who are the heart of the
+Settlement House--that is like a warm hand, stretched out in welcome to
+the poor and the needy, to the halt in body and the maimed in soul, and
+to the casual passer-by.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE QUARREL
+
+
+"They're like animals," said the Young Doctor in the tone of one who
+states an indisputable fact. "Only worse!" he added.
+
+Rose-Marie laid down the bit of roll that she had been buttering and
+turned reproachful eyes upon the Young Doctor.
+
+"Oh, but they're not," she cried; "you don't understand, or you wouldn't
+talk that way. You don't understand!"
+
+Quite after the maddening fashion of men the doctor did not answer until
+he had consumed, and appreciatively, the last of the roll he was eating.
+And then--
+
+"I've been here quite as long as you have, Miss Thompson," he remarked, a
+shade too gently.
+
+The Superintendent raised tired eyes from her plate. She was little and
+slim and gray, this Superintendent; it seemed almost as though the slums
+had drained from her the life and colour.
+
+"When you've been working in this section for twenty years," she said
+slowly, "you'll realize that nobody can ever understand. You'll realize
+that we all have animal traits--to a certain extent. And you'll realize
+that quarrelling isn't ever worth while."
+
+"But"--Rose-Marie was inclined to argue the point--"but Dr. Blanchard
+talks as if the people down here are scarcely human! And it's not right
+to feel so about one's fellow-men. Dr. Blanchard acts as if the people
+down here haven't _souls_!"
+
+The Young Doctor helped himself nonchalantly to a second roll.
+
+"There's a certain sort of a little bug that lives in the water," he
+said, "and it drifts around aimlessly until it finds another little bug
+that it holds on to. And then another little bug takes hold, and
+another, and another. And pretty soon there are hundreds of little bugs,
+and then there are thousands, and then there are millions, and then
+billions, and then--"
+
+The Superintendent interrupted wearily.
+
+"I'd stop at the billions, if I were you," she said, "particularly as
+they haven't any special bearing on the subject."
+
+"Oh, but they _have_" said the doctor, "for, after a while, the billions
+and _trillions_ of little bugs, clinging together, make an island. They
+haven't souls, perhaps," he darted a triumphant glance at Rose-Marie,
+"but they make an island just the same!"
+
+He paused for a moment, as if waiting for some sort of comment. When it
+did not come, he spoke again.
+
+"The people of the slums," he said, "the people who drift into, and out
+of, and around this Settlement House, are not very unlike the little
+bugs. And, after all, _they do help to make the city_!"
+
+There was a quaver in Rose-Marie's voice, and a hurt look in her eyes, as
+she answered.
+
+"Yes, they are like the little bugs," she said, "in the blind way that
+they hold together! But please, Dr. Blanchard, don't say they are
+soulless. Don't--"
+
+All at once the Young Doctor's hand was banging upon the table. All at
+once his voice was vehemently raised.
+
+"It's the difference in our point of view, Miss Thompson," he told
+Rose-Marie, "and I'm afraid that I'm right and that you're--not right.
+You've come from a pretty little country town where every one was fairly
+comfortable and fairly prosperous. You've always been a part of a
+community where people went to church and prayer-meeting and
+Sunday-school. Your neighbours loved each other, and played Pollyanna
+when things went wrong. And you wore white frocks and blue sashes
+whenever there was a lawn party or a sociable." He paused, perhaps for
+breath, and then--"I'm different," he said; "I struggled for my
+education; it was always the survival of the fittest with me. I worked my
+way through medical school. I had my hospital experience in Bellevue and
+on the Island--most of my patients were the lowest of the low. I've tried
+to cure diseased bodies--but I've left diseased minds alone. Diseased
+minds have been out of my line. Perhaps that's why I've come through with
+an ideal of life that's slightly different from your sunshine and apple
+blossoms theory!"
+
+"Oh," Rose-Marie was half sobbing, "oh, you're so hard!"
+
+The Young Doctor faced her suddenly and squarely. "Why did you come
+here," he cried, "to the slums? Why did you come to work in a Settlement
+House? What qualifications have you to be a social service worker, you
+child? What do you know of the meaning of service, of life?"
+
+Rose-Marie's voice was earnest, though shaken.
+
+"I came," she answered, "because I love people and want to help them. I
+came because I want to teach them to think beautiful thoughts, to have
+beautiful ideals. I came because I want to show them the God that I
+know--and try to serve--" she faltered.
+
+The Young Doctor laughed--but not pleasantly.
+
+"And I," he said, "came to make their bodies as healthy as possible. I
+came because curing sick bodies was my job--_not because I loved people
+or had any particular faith in them_. Prescribing to criminals and
+near-criminals isn't a reassuring work; it doesn't give one faith in
+human nature or in human souls!"
+
+The Superintendent had been forgotten. But her tired voice rose suddenly
+across the barrier of speech that had grown high and icy between the
+Young Doctor and Rose-Marie.
+
+"You both came," she said, and she spoke in the tone of a mother of
+chickens who has found two young and precocious ducklings in her brood,
+"you both came to help people--of that I'm sure!"
+
+Rose-Marie started up, suddenly, from the table.
+
+"I came," she said, as she moved toward the door that led to the hall,
+"to make people better."
+
+"And I," said the Young Doctor, moving away from the table toward the
+opposite side of the room and another door, "I came to make them
+healthier!" With his hand on the knob of the door he spoke to the
+Superintendent.
+
+"I'll not be back for supper," he said shortly, "I'll be too busy.
+Giovanni Celleni is out of jail again, and he's thrown his wife down a
+flight of stairs. She'll probably not live. And while Minnie Cohen was
+at the vaudeville show last night--developing her soul, perhaps--her
+youngest baby fell against the stove. Well, it'll be better for the
+baby if it does die! And there are others--" The door slammed upon his
+angry back.
+
+Rose-Marie's face was white as she leaned against the dark wainscoting.
+
+"Minnie Cohen brought the baby in last week," she shuddered, "such a dear
+baby! And Mrs. Celleni--she tried so hard! Oh, it's not right--" She was
+crying, rather wildly, as she went out of the room.
+
+The Superintendent, left alone at the table, rang for the stolid maid.
+Her voice was carefully calm as she gave orders for the evening meal. If
+she was thinking of Giovanni Celleni, his brute face filled with
+semi-madness; if she was thinking of a burned baby, sobbing alone in a
+darkened tenement while its mother breathlessly watched the gay colours
+and shifting scenes of a make-believe life, her expression did not
+mirror her thought. Only once she spoke, as she was folding her napkin,
+and then--
+
+"They're both very young," she murmured, a shade regretfully. Perhaps she
+was remembering the enthusiasm--and the intolerance--of her own youth.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+CONCERNING IDEALS
+
+
+"Sunshine and apple blossoms!" Rose-Marie, hurrying along the hall to her
+own room, repeated the Young Doctor's words and sobbed afresh as she
+repeated them. She tried to tell herself that nothing he could think
+mattered much to her, but there was a certain element of truth in
+everything that he had said. It was a fact that her life had been an
+unclouded, peaceful one--her days had followed each other as regularly,
+as innocuously, as blue china beads, strung upon a white cord, follow
+each other.
+
+Of course, she told herself, she had never known a mother; and her father
+had died when she was a tiny girl. But she was forced to admit--as she
+had been forced to admit many times--that she did not particularly feel
+the lack of parents. Her two aunts, that she had always lived with, had
+been everything to her--they had indulged her, had made her pretty
+frocks, had never tried, in any way, to block the reachings of her
+personality. When she had decided suddenly, fired by the convincing
+address of a visiting city missionary, to leave the small town of her
+birth, they had put no obstacle in her path.
+
+"If you feel that you must go," they had told her, "you must. Maybe it is
+the work that the Lord has chosen for you. We have all faith in you,
+Rose-Marie!"
+
+And Rose-Marie, splendid in her youth and assurance, had never known that
+their pillows were damp that night--and for many another night--with the
+tears that they were too brave to let her see.
+
+They had packed her trunk, folding the white dress and the blue
+sash--Rose-Marie wondered how the Young Doctor had known about the dress
+and sash--in tissue paper. They had created a blue serge frock for work,
+and a staunch little blue coat, and a blue tam-o'-shanter. Rose-Marie
+would have been aghast to know how childish she looked in that
+tam-o'-shanter! Her every-day shoes had been resoled; her white ruffled
+petticoats had been lengthened. And then she had been launched, like a
+slim little boat, upon the turbulent sea of the city!
+
+Looking back, through a mist of angry tears, Rose-Marie felt her first
+moment of homesickness for the friendly little town with its wide,
+tree-shaded streets, its lawn parties, and its neighbours; cities, she
+had discovered, discourage the art of neighbouring! She felt a pang of
+emptiness--she wanted her aunts with their soft, interested eyes, and
+their tender hands.
+
+At first the city had thrilled her. But now that she had been in the
+Settlement House a month, the thrill was beginning to die away. The great
+buildings were still unbelievably high, the crowds of people were still a
+strange and mysterious throng, the streets were as colourful as ever--but
+life, nevertheless, was beginning to settle into ordinary channels.
+
+She had thought, at the beginning of her stay there, that the Settlement
+House was a hotbed of romance. Every ring of the doorbell had tingled
+through her; every step in the hall had made her heart leap, with a
+strange quickening movement, into her throat--every shabby man had been
+to her a possible tragedy, every threadbare woman had been a case for
+charity. She had fluttered from reception-hall to reading-room, and back
+again--she had been alert, breathless, eager.
+
+But, with the assignment of regular duties, some of the adventure had
+been drained from life. For her these consisted of teaching a club of
+girls to sew, of instructing a group of mothers in the art of making
+cakes and pies and salads, and of hearing a half hundred little children
+repeat their A B Cs. Only the difference in setting, only the twang of
+foreign tongues, only the strange precociousness of the children, made
+life at all different from the life at home. She told herself, fiercely,
+that she might be a teacher in a district school--a country school--for
+all the good she was accomplishing.
+
+She had offered, so many times, to do visiting in the tenements--to call
+upon families of the folk who would not come to the Settlement House.
+But the Superintendent had met her, always, with a denial that was
+wearily firm.
+
+"I have a staff of women--older women from outside--who do the visiting,"
+she had said. "I'm afraid" she was eyeing Rose-Marie in the blue coat and
+the blue tam-o'-shanter, "I'm afraid that you'd scarcely be--convincing.
+And," she had added, "Dr. Blanchard takes care of all the detail in that
+department of our work!"
+
+Dr. Blanchard ... Rose-Marie felt the tears coming afresh at the thought
+of him! She remembered how she had written home enthusiastic,
+schoolgirlish letters about the handsome man who sat across the dining
+table from her. It had seemed exciting, romantic, that only the three of
+them really should live in the great brownstone house--the Young Doctor,
+the Superintendent--who made a perfect chaperon--and herself. It had
+seemed, somehow, almost providential that they should be thrown together.
+Yes, Rose-Marie remembered how she had been attracted to Dr. Blanchard at
+the very first--how she had found nothing wanting in his wiry strength,
+his broad shoulders, his dark, direct eyes.
+
+But she had not been in the Settlement House long before she began to
+feel the clash of their natures. When she started to church service, on
+her first Sunday in New York, she surprised a smile of something that
+might have been cynical mirth upon his lean, square-jawed face. And when
+she spoke of the daily prayers that she and her aunts had so beautifully
+believed in, back in the little town, he laughed at her--not unkindly,
+but with the sympathetic superiority that one feels for a too trusting
+child. Rose-Marie, thinking it over, knew that she would rather meet
+direct unkindness than that bland superiority!
+
+And so--though there had never been an open quarrel until the one at the
+luncheon table--Rose-Marie had learned to look to the Superintendent for
+encouragement, rather than to the Young Doctor. And she had frigidly
+declined his small courtesies--a visit to the movies, a walk in the park,
+a 'bus ride up Fifth Avenue.
+
+"I never went to the movies at home," she had told him. Or, "I'm too
+busy, just now, to take a walk." Or, "I can't go with you to-day. I've
+letters to write."
+
+"It's a shame," she confided, on occasion, to the Superintendent, "that
+Dr. Blanchard never goes to church. It's a shame that he has had so
+little religious life. I gave him a book to read the other day--the
+letters of an American Missionary in China--and he laughed and told me
+that he couldn't waste his time. What do you think of that! But later,"
+Rose-Marie's voice sank to a horrified whisper, "later, I saw him reading
+a cheap novel--he had time for a cheap novel!"
+
+The Superintendent looked down into Rose-Marie's earnest little face.
+
+"My dear," she said gently, stifling a desire to laugh, "my dear, he's a
+very busy man. He gives a great deal of himself to the people here in the
+slums. The novel, to him, was just a mental relaxation."
+
+But to the Young Doctor, later, the Superintendent spoke differently.
+
+"Billy Blanchard," she said, and she only called him Billy Blanchard when
+she wanted to scold him, "I've known you for a long time. And I'm sure
+that there's no harm in you. Of course," she sighed, "I wish that you
+could feel a little more in sympathy with the spiritual side of our work.
+But I've argued with you, more than once, on that point!"
+
+The doctor, who was packing medicines into his bag, looked up.
+
+"You know, you old dear," he told her, "that I'm hopeless. I haven't had
+an easy row to hoe, not ever; you wouldn't be religious yourself if you
+were in my shoes! There--don't look so shocked--you've been a mother to
+me in your funny, fussy way, since I came to this place! That's the main
+reason, I guess, that I stick here, as I do, when I could make a lot more
+money somewhere else!" He reached up to pat her thin hand, and then, "But
+why are you worrying, just now, about my soul?" he questioned.
+
+The Superintendent sighed again.
+
+"It's the little Thompson girl," she answered; "she's so anxious to
+convert people, and she's so sincere,--so very sincere. I can't help
+feeling that you are a thorn in her flesh, Billy. She says that you won't
+read her missionary books--"
+
+The Young Doctor interrupted.
+
+"She's such a pretty girl," he said quite fiercely. "Why on earth didn't
+she stay at home, where she belonged! Why on earth did she pick out this
+sort of work?"
+
+The Superintendent answered.
+
+"One never knows," she said, "why girls pick out certain kinds of work.
+I've had the strangest cases come to my office--of homely girls who
+wanted to be artists' models, and anemic girls who wanted to be physical
+directors, and flighty girls who wanted to go to Bible School, and quiet
+girls who were all set for a career on the stage. Rose-Marie Thompson is
+the sort of a girl who was cut out to be a home-maker, to give happiness
+to some nice, clean boy, to have a nursery full of rosy-cheeked babies.
+And yet here she is, filled with a desire to rescue people, to snatch
+brands from the burning. Here she is in the slums when she'd be
+dramatically right in an apple orchard--at the time of year when the
+trees are covered with pink and white blossoms."
+
+The Young Doctor laughed. He so well understood the Superintendent--so
+enjoyed her point of view.
+
+"Yes," he agreed, "she'd be perfect there in an organdy frock with
+the sun slanting across her face. But--well, she's just like other
+girls. Tell a pretty girl that she's clever, they say, and tell a
+clever girl that she's a raving, tearing beauty. That's the way for a
+man to be popular!"
+
+The Superintendent laughed quietly with him. It was a moment before she
+grew sober again.
+
+"I wonder," she said at last, "why you have never tried to be popular
+with girls. You could so easily be popular. You're young and--don't try
+to hush me up--good-looking. And yet--well, you're such an antagonistic
+person. From the very first you've laughed at Rose-Marie--and she was
+quite ready to adore you when she arrived. How do I know? Oh, I could
+tell! Take the child seriously, Billy Blanchard, before she actually
+begins to dislike you!"
+
+The Young Doctor put several bottles of violently coloured pills into his
+bag before he spoke.
+
+"She dislikes me already," he said. "She's such a cool little person.
+What are you trying to do, anyway? Are you trying to matchmake; to
+stir up a love affair between the both of us--" suddenly he was
+laughing again.
+
+"I'm too busy to have a romance, you old dear," he told the
+Superintendent, "far too busy. I'm as likely to fall in love, just now,
+as you are!"
+
+The woman's face was averted as she answered. But her low voice
+was steady.
+
+"When I was your age, Billy," she said gently, "I _was_ in love.
+That's why, perhaps, I came here. That's why, perhaps, I stayed. No,
+he didn't die--he married another girl. And dreams are hard things to
+forget. That's why I left the country. Maybe that's why the little
+Thompson girl--"
+
+But the Young Doctor was shaking his head.
+
+"She hasn't had any love affair," he told the Superintendent. "She's too
+young and full of ideals to have anything so ordinary as a romance.
+Everybody," his laugh was not too pleasant, "can have a romance! And few
+people can be so filled with ideals as Miss Thompson. Oh, it's her ideals
+that I can't stand! It's her impractical way of gazing at life through
+pink-coloured glasses. She'll never be of any real use here in the slums.
+I'm only afraid that she'll come to some harm because she's so trusting
+and over-sincere. I'd hate to see her placed in direct contact with some
+of the young men that I work with, for instance. You haven't--" All at
+once his voice took on a new note. "You haven't let her be with any of
+the boys' classes, have you? Her ideals might not stand the strain!"
+
+The Superintendent answered.
+
+"Ideals don't hurt any one," she said, and her voice was almost as fierce
+as the doctor's. "No, I haven't given her a bit of work with the boys.
+She's too young and too untouched and, as you say, too pretty. I'm
+letting her spend her time with the mothers, and the young girls, and the
+little tots--not even allowing her to go out alone, if I can help it.
+Such innocence--" The Superintendent broke off suddenly in the middle of
+the sentence. And she sighed again.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE PARK
+
+
+Crying helps, sometimes. When Rose-Marie, alone in her room, finally
+dried away the tears that were the direct result of her quarrel with Dr.
+Blanchard, there was a new resolve in her eyes--a look that had not been
+there when she went, an hour before, to the luncheon table. It was the
+look of one who has resolutions that cannot be shattered--dreams that are
+unbreakable. She glanced at her wrist watch and there was a shade of
+defiance in the very way she raised the arm that wore it.
+
+"They make a baby of me here," she told herself, "they treat me like a
+silly child. It's a wonder that they don't send a nurse-maid with me to
+my classes. It's a wonder"--she was growing vehement--"that they give me
+credit for enough sense to wear rubbers when it's raining! I," again she
+glanced at the watch, "I haven't a single thing to do until four
+o'clock--and it's only just a little after two. I'm going out--_now_. I'm
+going into the streets, or into a tenement, or into a--a _dive_, if
+necessary! I'm going to show them"--the plural pronoun, strangely,
+referred to a certain young man--"that I can help somebody! I'm going to
+show them--"
+
+She was struggling eagerly into her coat; eagerly she pulled her
+tam-o'-shanter over the curls that, even in the city slums, were full of
+sunshine. With her hands thrust staunchly into her pockets, she went out;
+out into the jungle of streets that met, as in the center of a labyrinth,
+in front of the Settlement House.
+
+Always, when she had gone out alone, she had sought a small park not far
+from her new home. It was a comfortingly green little oasis in the desert
+of stone and brick--a little oasis that reminded one of the country. She
+turned toward it now, quite blindly, for the streets confused her--they
+always did. As the crowds closed around her she hurried vaguely, as a
+swimmer hurries just before he loses his head and goes down. She caught
+her breath as she went, for the crowds always made her feel
+submerged--quite as the swimmer feels just before the final plunge. She
+entered the park--it was scarcely more than a square of grass--with a
+very definite feeling of relief, almost of rescue.
+
+As usual, the park was crowded. But park crowds are different from street
+crowds--they are crowds at rest, rather than hurrying, restless throngs.
+Rose-Marie sank upon an iron bench and with wide, childishly distended
+eyes surveyed the people that surged in upon her.
+
+There was a woman with a hideous black wig--the badge of revered Jewish
+motherhood--pressed down over the front of her silvered hair. Rose-Marie,
+a short time ago, would have guessed her age at seventy--now she told
+herself that the woman was probably forty. There was a slim,
+cigarette-smoking youth with pale, shifty eyes. There was an old, old
+man--white-bearded like one of the patriarchs--and there was a
+dark-browed girl who held a drowsy baby to her breast. All of these and
+many more--Italians, Slavs, Russians, Hungarians and an occasional
+Chinaman--passed her by. It seemed to the girl that this section was a
+veritable melting pot of the races--and that every example of every race
+was true to type. She had seen any number of young men with shifty
+eyes--she had seen many old men with white beards. She knew that other
+black-wigged women lived in every tenement; that other dark-browed girls
+were, at that same moment, rocking other babies. She fell to wondering,
+whimsically, whether God had fashioned the people of the slums after some
+half-dozen set patterns--almost as the cutter, in many an alley
+sweatshop, fashions the frocks of a season.
+
+A sharp cry broke in upon her wonderings. It was the cry of an animal in
+utter pain--in blind, unreasoning agony. Rose-Marie was on her feet at
+the first moment that it cut, quiveringly, through the air. With eyes
+distended she whirled about to face a small boy who knelt upon the ground
+behind her bench.
+
+To Rose-Marie the details of the small boy's appearance came back, later,
+with an amazing clarity. Later she could have described his dark, sullen
+eyes, his mouth with its curiously grim quirk at one corner, his shock of
+black hair and his ragged coat. But at the moment she had the ability to
+see only one thing--the scrawny gray kitten that the boy had tied to the
+iron leg of the bench; the shrinking kitten that the boy was torturing
+with a cold, relentless cruelty.
+
+It shrieked again--with an almost human cry--as she started around the
+bench toward it. And the wild throbbing of her heart told her that she
+was witnessing, for the first time, a phase of human nature of which she
+had never dreamed.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+ROSE-MARIE COMES TO THE RESCUE
+
+
+Rose-Marie's hand upon the small boy's coat collar was not gentle. With
+surprising strength, for she was small and slight, she jerked him aside.
+
+"You wicked child!" she exclaimed, and the Young Doctor would have
+chuckled to hear her tone. "You wicked child, what are you doing?"
+
+Without waiting for an answer she knelt beside the pitiful little animal
+that was tied to the bench, and with trembling fingers unloosed the cord
+that held it, noting as she did so how its bones showed, even through its
+coat of fur. When it was at liberty she gathered it close to her breast
+and turned to face the boy.
+
+He had not tried to run away. Even with the anger surging through her,
+Rose-Marie admitted that the child was not--in one sense--a coward. He
+had waited, brazenly perhaps, to hear what she had to say. With blazing
+eyes she said it:
+
+"Why," she questioned, and the anger that made her eyes blaze also put a
+tremor into her voice, "why were you deliberately hurting this kitten?
+Don't you know that kittens can feel pain just as much as you can feel
+pain? Don't you know that it is wicked to make anything suffer? Why were
+you so wicked?"
+
+The boy looked up at her with sullen, dark eyes. The grim twist at one
+corner of his mouth became more pronounced.
+
+"Aw," he said gruffly, "why don't yer mind yer own business?"
+
+If Rose-Marie's hands had been free, she would have taken the boy
+suddenly and firmly by both shoulders. She felt an overwhelming desire to
+shake him--to shake him until his teeth chattered. But both of her hands
+were busy, soothing the gray kitten that shivered against her breast.
+
+"I am minding my own business," she told the boy. "It's my business to
+give help where it's needed, and this kitten," she cuddled it closer,
+"certainly needed help! Haven't you ever been told that you should be
+kind? Like," she faltered, "like Jesus was kind? He wouldn't have hurt
+anything. He loved animals--and He loved boys, too. Why don't you try to
+be the sort of a boy He could love? Why do you try to be bad--to do
+wrong things?"
+
+The eyes of the child were even more sullen--the twist of his mouth was
+even more grim as he listened to Rose-Marie. But when she had finished
+speaking, he answered her--and still he did not try to run away.
+
+"Wot," he questioned, almost in the words of the Young Doctor, "wot do
+you know about things that's right an' things that's wrong? It ain't bad
+t' hurt animals--not if they're little enough so as they ain't able t'
+hurt you!"
+
+Rose-Marie sat down, very suddenly, upon the bench. In all of her
+life--her sheltered, glad life--she had never heard such a brutal creed
+spoken, and from the lips of a child! Her eyes, searching his face, saw
+that he was not trying to be funny, or saucy, or smart. Curiously enough
+she noted that he was quite sincere--that, to him, the torturing of a
+kitten was only a part of the day with its various struggles and
+amusements. When she spoke again her tone was gentle--as gentle as the
+tone with which the other slum children, who came to the Settlement
+House, were familiar.
+
+"Whoever told you," she questioned, "that it's not wrong to hurt an
+animal, so long as it can't fight back?"
+
+The boy eyed her strangely. Rose-Marie could almost detect a gleam of
+latent interest in his dark eyes. And then, as if he had gained a sort of
+confidence in her, he answered.
+
+"Nobody never told me," he said gruffly. "But I _know_."
+
+The kitten against Rose-Marie's breast cried piteously. Perhaps it was
+the hopelessness of the cry that made her want so desperately to make the
+boy understand. Conquering the loathing she had felt toward him she
+managed the ghost of a smile.
+
+"I wish," she said, and the smile became firmer, brighter, as she said
+it, "I wish that you'd sit down, here, beside me. I want to tell you
+about the animals that I've had for pets--and about how they loved me. I
+had a white dog once; his name was Dick. He used to go to the store for
+me, he used to carry my bundles home in his mouth--and he did tricks--"
+
+The boy had seated himself, gingerly, on the bench. He interrupted her,
+and his voice was eager.
+
+"Did yer have t' beat him," he questioned, "t' make him do the tricks?
+Did he bleed when yer beat him?"
+
+Again Rose-Marie gasped. She leaned forward until her face was on a level
+with the boy's face.
+
+"Why," she asked him, "do you think that the only way to teach an animal
+is to teach him by cruelty? I taught my dog tricks by being kind and
+sweet to him. Why do you talk of beatings--I couldn't hurt anything, even
+if I disliked it, until it _bled_!"
+
+The small boy drew back from Rose-Marie. His expression was vaguely
+puzzled--it seemed almost as if he did not comprehend what her
+words meant.
+
+"My pa beats me," he said suddenly, "always he beats me--when he's
+drunk! An' sometimes he beats me when he ain't. He beats Ma, too, an'
+he uster beat Jim, 'n' Ella. He don't dare beat Jim now, though"--this
+proudly--"Jim's as big as he is now, an' Ella--nobody'd dast lay a
+hand on Ella ..." almost as suddenly as he had started to talk, the
+boy stopped.
+
+For the moment the episode of the kitten was a forgotten thing. There was
+only pity, only a blank sort of horror, on Rose-Marie's face.
+
+"Doesn't your father love you--any of you?" she asked.
+
+"Naw." The boy's mouth was a straight line--a straight and very bitter
+line, for such a young mouth. "Naw, he only loves his booze. He hits me
+all th' time--an' he's four times as big as me! An' so I hit whoever's
+smaller'n I am. An' even if they cry I don't care. I hate things that's
+little--that can't take care o' themselves. Everything had oughter be
+able t' take care of itself!"
+
+"Haven't you"--again Rose-Marie asked a question--"haven't you ever loved
+anything that was smaller than you are? Haven't you ever had a pet?
+Haven't you ever felt that you must protect and take care of some one--or
+something? Haven't you?"
+
+All at once the boy was smiling, and the smile lit up his small, dark
+face as a candle, slowly flickering, brings cheer and brightness to a
+dull, lonely room.
+
+"I love Lily," he told her. "I wouldn't let nobody touch Lily! If Pa so
+much as spoke mean to her--I'd kill him. I'd kill him with a knife!"
+
+Rose-Marie shuddered inwardly at the thought. But her voice was very even
+as she spoke.
+
+"Who is Lily?" she asked.
+
+The boy had slid down along the bench. He was so close to her that his
+shabby coat sleeve touched her blue one.
+
+"Lily's my kid sister," he said, and, miracle of miracles, his voice held
+a note of tenderness. "Say--Miss, I'm sorry I hurt th' cat."
+
+With a sudden feeling of warmth Rose-Marie moved just a fraction of an
+inch closer to the boy. She knew, somehow, that his small, curiously
+abject apology was in a way related to the "kid sister"; she knew, almost
+instinctively, that this Lily who could make a smile come to the dark
+little face, who could make a tenderness dwell in those hard young eyes,
+was the only avenue by which she could reach this strange child. She
+spoke to him suddenly, impulsively.
+
+"I'd like to see your Lily; I'd like to see her, awfully," she told
+him. "Will you bring her some time to call on me? I live at the
+Settlement House."
+
+A subtle change had come over the child's face. He slid, hurriedly, from
+the bench.
+
+"Oh," he said, "yer one o' them! You sing hymns 'n' pray 'n' tell folks
+t' take baths. I know. Well, I can't bring Lily t' see you--not ever!"
+
+Rose-Marie had also risen to her feet.
+
+"Then," she said eagerly, "let me come and see Lily. Where do you live?"
+
+The boy's eyes had fallen. It was plain that he did not want to
+answer--that he was experiencing the almost inarticulate embarrassment of
+childhood.
+
+"We live," he told her at last, "in that house over there." His pointing
+finger indicated the largest and grimiest of the tenements that loomed,
+dark and high, above the squalor of a side street. "But you wouldn't
+wanter come--there!"
+
+Rose-Marie caught her breath sharply. She was remembering how the
+Superintendent had forbidden her to do visiting, how the Young Doctor
+had laughed at her desire to be of service. She knew what they would say
+if she told them that she was going into a tenement to see a strange
+child named Lily. Perhaps that was why her voice had an excited ring as
+she answered.
+
+"Yes, I would come there!" she told the boy. "Tell me what floor you live
+on, and what your name is, and when it would be best for me to come?"
+
+"My name's Bennie Volsky," the boy said slowly. "We're up five flights,
+in th' back. D'yer really mean that you'll come--an' see Lily?"
+
+Rose-Marie nodded soberly. How could the child know that her heart was
+all athrob with the call of a great adventure?
+
+"Yes, I mean it," she told him. "When shall I come?"
+
+The boy's grubby hand shot out and rested upon her sleeve.
+
+"Come to-morrow afternoon," he told her. "Say, yer all right!" He turned,
+swiftly, and ran through the crowd, and in a moment had disappeared like
+a small drab-coloured city chameleon.
+
+Rose-Marie, standing by the bench, watched the place where he had
+disappeared. And then, all at once, she turned swiftly--just as
+swiftly as the boy had--and started back across the park toward the
+Settlement House.
+
+"I won't tell them!" she was saying over and over in her heart, as she
+went, "I won't tell them! They wouldn't let me go, if I did.... I won't
+tell them!"
+
+The kitten was still held tight in her arms. It rested, quite
+contentedly, against her blue coat. Perhaps it knew that there was a
+warm, friendly place--even for little frightened animals--in the
+Settlement House.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+"THERE'S NO PLACE--"
+
+
+When Rose-Marie paused in front of the tenement, at three o'clock on the
+following afternoon, she felt like a naughty little girl who is playing
+truant from school. When she remembered the way that she had avoided the
+Superintendent's almost direct questions, she blushed with an inward
+sense of shame. But when she thought of the Young Doctor's offer to go
+with her--"wherever she was going"--she threw back her head with a
+defiant little gesture. She knew well that the Young Doctor was sorry for
+yesterday's quarrel--she knew that a night beside the dying Mrs. Celleni,
+and the wails of the Cohen baby, had temporarily softened his viewpoint
+upon life. And yet--he had said that they were soulless--these people
+that she had come to help! He would have condemned Bennie Volsky from the
+first--but she had detected the glimmerings of something fine in the
+child! No--despite his more tolerant attitude--she knew that, underneath,
+his convictions were unchanged. She was glad that she had gone out upon
+her adventure alone.
+
+With a heart that throbbed in quick staccato beats, she mounted the steps
+of the tenement. Little dark-eyed children moved away from her,
+apparently on every side, but somehow she scarcely noticed them. The
+doorway yawned, like an open mouth, in front of her--and she could think
+of nothing else. As she went over the dark threshold she remembered
+stories that she had read about people who go in at tenement doorways and
+are never seen again. Every one has read such stories in the daily
+newspapers--and perhaps some of them are true!
+
+A faint light flickered in through the doorway. It made the ascent of the
+first flight of creaking stairs quite easy. At least Rose-Marie could
+step aside from the piles of rubbish and avoid the rickety places. She
+wondered, as she went up, her fingers gingerly touching the dirty
+hand-rail, how people could exist under such wretched conditions.
+
+The second flight was harder to manage. The light from the narrow doorway
+was shut off, and there were no windows. There might have been gas jets
+upon every landing--Rose-Marie supposed that there were--but it was
+mid-afternoon, and they had not yet been lighted. She groped her way up
+the second flight, and the third, feeling carefully along each step with
+her foot before she put her weight upon it.
+
+On the fourth flight she paused for a moment to catch her breath. But she
+realized, as she paused, that even breathing had to be done under
+difficulties in this place. There was no ventilation of any sort, so far
+as she could tell--all about her floated the odours of boiled cabbage,
+and fried onions, and garlic. And there were other odours, too; the
+indescribable smells of soiled clothing and soap-suds and greasy dishes.
+
+But in Rose-Marie's mind, the odours--poignant though they were--took
+second place to the sounds. Never, she told herself, had she imagined
+that so many different sorts of noises could exist in the same place at
+one and the same time. There were the cries and sobs of little children,
+the moans of sickness, the thuds of falling furniture and the crashes of
+breaking crockery. There were yells of rage, and--worst of all--bursts of
+appalling profanity. Rose-Marie, standing there in the darkness of the
+fourth flight, heard words that she had never expected to hear--phrases
+of which she had never dreamed. She shuddered as she started up the fifth
+flight, and when, at last, she stood in front of the Volsky flat, she
+experienced almost a feeling of relief. At least she would be shut off,
+in a moment, from those alien and terrible sounds--at least, in a moment,
+she would be in a _home_.
+
+To most of us--particularly if we have grown up in an atmosphere such as
+had always sheltered Rose-Marie--the very sound of the word "home" brings
+a certain sense of warmth and comfort. Home stands for shelter and
+protection and love. "Be it ever so humble," the old song tells us, "be
+it ever so humble ..."
+
+And Rose-Marie, knocking timidly upon the Volsky door, expected to find a
+home. She expected it to be humble in the truest sense of the word--to be
+ragged and poverty-stricken and mean. And yet she could not feel that it
+would be utterly divorced from the ideals she had always built around her
+conception of the word. She expected it to be a home because a family
+lived there together--a mother, and a father, and children.
+
+In answer to her knock the door swung open--a little way. The glow of a
+dingy lamp fell about her, through the opening--she felt suddenly as if
+she had been swept, willy-nilly, before the footlights of some hostile
+stage. For a moment she stood blinking. And as she stood there, quite
+unable to see, she heard the voice of Bennie Volsky, speaking in a
+hoarse whisper.
+
+"It's you, Miss!" said the voice, and it was as full of intense
+wonderment as a voice could be. "I never thought that you'd come--I
+didn't think you was on th' level. So many folks say they'll do things--"
+he broke off, and then--"Walk in, quiet," he told her slowly. "Don't make
+any noise, if yer can help it! Pa's come home, all lit up. An' he's
+asleep, in th' corner! There'll be--" he broke off--"There'll be th'
+dickens t' pay, if Pa wakes up! But walk in, still-like. An' yer can see
+Ma an' all, an'--_Lily_!"
+
+Rose-Marie, whose eyes had now become accustomed to the dim light,
+stepped past the boy and into the room. Her hand, in passing, touched his
+arm lightly, for she knew that he was labouring under intense excitement.
+She stepped into the room, on mousy-quiet feet--and then, with a quick
+gasp, drew back again.
+
+Never, in her wildest dreams of poverty, had Rose-Marie supposed that
+squalor, such as she saw in the Volsky home, could exist. Never had she
+supposed that a family could live in such cramped, airless quarters.
+Never had she thought that filth, such as she saw in the room, was
+possible. It all seemed, somehow, an unbelievably bad dream--a dream in
+which she was appearing, with startling realism. Her comfortable picture
+of a home was vanishing--vanishing as suddenly and completely as a soap
+bubble vanishes, if pricked by a pin.
+
+"Why--why, Bennie!" she began. But the child was not listening. He had
+darted from her side and was dragging forward, by one listless,
+work-coarsened hand, a pallid, drooping woman.
+
+"Dis is my ma," he told Rose-Marie. "She didn't know yer was comin'. I
+didn't tell her!"
+
+It seemed to Rose-Marie that there was a scared sort of appeal in the
+woman's eyes as they travelled, slowly, over her face. But there was
+not even appeal in the tone of her voice--it was all a drab,
+colourless monotone.
+
+"Whatcha come here fer?" she questioned. "Pa, he's home. If he should ter
+wake up--" She left the sentence unfinished.
+
+Almost instinctively the eyes of Rose-Marie travelled past the figure
+of Mrs. Volsky. There was nothing in that figure to hold her gaze--it
+was so vague, so like a shadow of something that had been. She saw the
+few broken chairs, the half-filled wash tub, the dish-pan with its
+freight of soiled cups and plates. She saw the gas stove, with its
+battered coffee-pot, and a mattress or two piled high with dingy
+bedding. And, in one corner, she saw--with a new sense of horror--the
+reclining figure of Pa.
+
+Pa was sleeping. Sleeping heavily, with his mouth open and his tousled
+head slipping to one side. One great hairy hand was clenched about an
+empty bottle--one huge foot, stockingless and half out of its shoe, was
+dragging limply off the heap of blankets that was his bed. A stubble of
+beard made his already dark face even more sinister, his tousled hair
+looked as if it had never known the refining influences of a comb or
+brush. As Rose-Marie stared at him, half fascinated, he turned--with a
+spasmodic, drunken movement--and flung one heavy arm above his head.
+
+The room was not a large one. But, at that moment, it seemed appallingly
+spacious to Rose-Marie. She turned, almost with a feeling of affection,
+toward Bennie. At least she had seen him before. And, as if he
+interpreted her feeling, Bennie spoke.
+
+"We got two other rooms," he told her, "one that Ella an' Lily sleep in,
+an' one that Jim pays fer, his own self. Ma an' Pa an' me--we sleep
+_here_! Say, don't you be too scared o' Pa--he'll stay asleep fer a long
+time, now. He won't wake up unless he's shook. Will he, Ma?"
+
+Mrs. Volsky nodded her head with a worn out, apathetic movement.
+Noiselessly, but with the appearance of a certain terrible effort under
+the shell of quiet, she moved away across the room toward the stove.
+
+"She's goin' t' warm up th' coffee," Bennie said. "She'll give you some,
+in a minute, if yer want it!"
+
+Rose-Marie was about to speak, about to assure Bennie that she didn't
+want any of the coffee, when steps sounded on the stairs. They were
+hurried steps; steps suggesting to the listener that five flights were
+nothing, after all! Rose-Marie found herself turning as a hand fell
+heavily upon a door-knob, and the door swung in.
+
+A young man stood jauntily upon the threshold. Rose-Marie's first
+impression of him was one of extreme, almost offensive neatness--of sleek
+hair, that looked like patent leather, and of highly polished brown
+shoes. She saw that his blue and white striped collar was speckless, that
+his blue tie was obviously new, that his trousers were creased to an
+almost dangerous edge. But it was the face of the young man from which
+Rose-Marie shrank back--a clever, sharp face with narrow, horribly
+speculative eyes and a thin-lipped red mouth. It was a handsome face,
+yes, but--
+
+The voice of Bennie broke, suddenly, across her speculations.
+"Jim," he said.
+
+Still jauntily--Rose-Marie realized that jauntiness was his keynote--the
+young man entered the room. His sharp eyes travelled with lightning-like
+rapidity over the place, resting a moment on the sleeping figure of Pa
+before they hurried past him to Rose-Marie. He surveyed her coolly,
+taking in every feature, every fold of her garments, with a studied
+boldness that was somehow offensive.
+
+"Who's she?" he questioned abruptly, of any one who cared to answer, and
+one manicured finger pointed in her direction. "Where'd she come from?"
+
+Bennie was the one who spoke. Rather gallantly he stepped in front of
+Rose-Marie.
+
+"She's a friend of mine," he said; "she lives by th' Settlement House.
+She come up here t' see me, 'n' Ma, 'n' Lily. You leave her be--y'
+understand?"
+
+The young man laughed, and his laugh was curiously hard and dry.
+
+"Oh, sure!" he told Bennie. "I'll leave her be! What," he turned to
+Rose-Marie with an insolent smile, "what's yer name?"
+
+Rose-Marie met his insolent gaze with a calm expression. No one would
+have guessed that she was trembling inwardly.
+
+"My name," she told him, "is Rose-Marie Thompson. I live in the
+Settlement House, and I came to see your sister."
+
+"Well," the young man's insolent gaze was still studying Rose-Marie,
+"well, she'll be up soon. I passed 'er on th' stairs. But," he laughed
+again, "why didn't yer come t' see me--huh?"
+
+Rose-Marie, having no answer, turned expectantly toward the door. If this
+Jim had passed his sister on the stairs, she couldn't be very far away.
+As if in reply to her supposition, the door swung open again and a tall,
+dark-eyed girl came into the room. Rose-Marie saw with her first swift
+glance that the red upon the girl's cheeks was too high to be quite
+natural--that the scarlet of her lips was over-vivid. And yet, despite
+the patently artificial colouring, she realized that the girl was
+beautiful with a high strung, almost thoroughbred beauty. She wondered
+how this beauty had been born of the dim woman who seemed so colourless
+and the sodden brute who lay snoring in the comer.
+
+Her train of thought was broken, suddenly. For the young man was
+speaking. Rose-Marie disliked, somehow, the very tone of his voice.
+
+"Here's a girl t' see you, Ella," he said. "She's from th' Settlement
+House--she says! Maybe she wants," sarcastically, "that you should join a
+Bible Class!"
+
+The girl's eyes were flashing with a dangerously hard light. She turned
+angrily to Rose-Marie. But before she could say anything, the child,
+Bennie, had interposed.
+
+"She didn't come t' see _you_" he told his older sister--"she don't want
+t' see you--like those other wimmen did. She come t' see _Lily_--"
+
+He paused and Rose-Marie, who had gathered that social service workers
+were not welcome visitors, went on breathlessly, from where he left off.
+
+"I _am_ from the Settlement House," she told Ella, "and I'd like awfully
+to have you join our classes. But that wasn't why I came here. Bennie
+told me that he had a dear little sister. And I came to see her."
+
+A change swept miraculously over Ella's cold face. Rose-Marie could see,
+all at once, that she and her young brother were strikingly alike--that
+Jim was the different one in this family.
+
+"I'll get Lily," Ella said simply, and there was a warmth, a tenderness
+in her dark eyes that had been so hard. "I didn't understand," she added,
+as she went quickly past Rose-Marie and into the small inner room that
+Bennie had said his sisters shared. In a moment she came out leading a
+small girl by the hand.
+
+"This is Lily!" she said softly.
+
+Even in that dingy place--perhaps accentuated by the very dinginess of
+it--Lily's blond loveliness struck Rose-Marie with a sense of shock. The
+child might have been a flower--the very flower whose name she
+bore--growing upon an ash heap. Her beauty made the rest of the room fade
+into dim outlines--made Jim and Ella and Bennie seem heavy, and somehow
+overfed. Even Pa, snoring lustily, became almost a shadow. Rose-Marie
+stepped toward the child impulsively, with outflung arms.
+
+"Oh, you dear!" she said shakily, "you dear!"
+
+Nobody spoke. Only Ella, with gentle hands, pushed her little sister
+forward. The child's great blue eyes looked past Rose-Marie, and a vague
+smile quivered on her lips.
+
+"Oh, you dear!" Rose-Marie exclaimed again, and went down on her knees on
+the dirty floor--real women will always kneel before a beautiful child.
+
+Lily might have been four years old. Her hair, drawn back from her white
+little face, was the colour of pale gold, and her lips were faintly
+coral. But it was her deep eyes, with their vague expression, that
+clutched, somehow, at Rose-Marie's heart.
+
+"Tell me that you're going to like me, Lily!" she almost implored. "I
+love little girls."
+
+The child did not answer--indeed, she did not seem to hear. But one thin
+little hand, creeping out, touched Rose-Marie's face with a gesture that
+was singularly appealing, singularly full of affection. When the fingers
+touched her cheek, Rose-Marie felt a sudden suspicion, a sudden dread.
+She noticed, all at once, that no one was speaking--that the room was
+quite still, except for the beastial grunts of the sleeping Pa.
+
+"Why," she asked, quite without meaning to, "why doesn't she answer me?
+She isn't afraid of me, is she? Why doesn't she say something?"
+
+It was, curiously enough, Mrs. Volsky who answered. Even her voice--that
+was usually so dull and monotonous--held a certain tremor.
+
+"Lily," she said slowly, "can't spick--'r hear.... An' she's--blind!"
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+A LILY IN THE SLUMS
+
+
+Rose-Marie started back from the child with a sickening sense of shock.
+All at once she realized the reason why Bennie's eyes grew tender at the
+mention of his little sister--why Ella forgot anger and suspicion when
+Lily came into the room. She understood why Mrs. Volsky's dull voice held
+love and sorrow. And yet, as she looked at the small girl, it seemed
+almost incredible that she should be so afflicted. Deaf and dumb and
+blind! Never to hear the voices of those who loved her, never to see the
+beautiful things of life, never--even--to speak! Rose-Marie choked back a
+sob, and glanced across the child's cloud of pale golden hair at Ella. As
+their eyes met she knew that they were, in some strange way, friends.
+
+With a sudden, overwhelming pity, her arms reached out again to Lily. As
+she gathered the child close she was surprised at the slenderness of the
+tiny figure, at the neatness of the faded gingham frock that blended in
+tone with the great, sightless eyes. All at once she remembered what
+Bennie had said to her, the day before, in the park.
+
+"I love Lily," he had told her, "I wouldn't let nobody hurt Lily! If any
+one--even Pa, so much as spoke mean to her--I'd kill him...."
+
+Glancing about the room, at the faces of the others, she sensed a silent
+echo of Bennie's words. Mrs. Volsky, who would keep neither her flat nor
+herself neat, quite evidently saw to it that Lily's little dress was
+spotless. Ella, whose temper would flare up at the slightest word, cared
+for the child with the tender efficiency of a professional nurse;
+Bennie's face, as he looked at his tiny sister, had taken on a cherubic
+softness. And Jim ... Rose-Marie glanced at Jim and was startled out of
+her reflections. For Jim was not looking at Lily. His gaze was fixed upon
+her own face with an intensity that frightened her. With a sudden impulse
+she spoke directly to him.
+
+"You must be very kind to this little sister of yours," she told him.
+"She needs every bit of love and affection and consideration that her
+family can give her!"
+
+Jim, his gaze still upon her face, shrugged his shoulders. But before
+he could answer Ella had come a step closer to Rose-Marie. Her eyes
+were flashing.
+
+"Jim," she said, "ain't got any love or kindness or consideration in him!
+Jim thinks that Lily ain't got any more feelin's than a puppy dog--'cause
+she can't answer back. Oh," in response to the question in Rose-Marie's
+face, "oh, he'd never put a finger on her--not that! But he don't speak
+kind to her, like we do. It's enough fer him that she can't hear th'
+words he lays his tongue to. Even Pa--"
+
+Suddenly, as if in answer to his spoken name, there came a scuffling
+sound from the corner where Pa was sleeping. All at once the empty bottle
+dropped from the unclenched hand, the mouth fell open in a prodigious
+yawn, the eyes became wide, burned-out wells of drunkenness. And as she
+watched, Rose-Marie saw the room cleared in an amazing fashion. She heard
+Mrs. Volsky's terrified whisper, "He's wakin' up!" She heard Jim's harsh
+laugh; she saw Ella, with a fiercely maternal sweep of her strong arms,
+gather the little Lily close to her breast and dart toward the inner
+room. And then, as she stood dazedly watching the mountain of sodden
+flesh that was Pa rear itself to a sitting posture, and then to a
+standing one, she felt a hot little hand touch her own.
+
+"We better clear out," said the voice of Bennie. "We better clear out
+pretty quick! Pa's awful bad, sometimes, when he's just wakin' up!"
+
+With a quickness not unlike the bump at the end of a
+falling-through-space dream, Rose-Marie felt herself drawn from the
+room--heard the door close with a slam behind her. And then she was
+hurrying after the shadowy form of Bennie, down the five rickety flights
+of stairs--past the same varied odours and the same appalling sounds that
+she had noticed on the way up!
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+ANOTHER QUARREL
+
+
+When Rose-Marie came out into the sunlight of the street she glanced at
+her watch and saw, with an almost overwhelming surprise, that it was only
+four o'clock. It was just an hour since she had entered the cavern-like
+doorway of the tenement. But in that hour she had come, for the first
+time, against life in the rough. She had seen degeneracy, and poverty,
+and--she was thinking of the expression in Jim's eyes--a menace that she
+did not at all understand. She had seen the waste of broken middle age
+and the pity of blighted childhood. She had seen fear and, if she had
+stayed a few moments longer, she would have seen downright brutality. Her
+hand, reaching out, clutched Bennie's hand.
+
+"Dear," she said--and realized, from the startled expression of his eyes,
+that he had not often been called "Dear,"--"is it always like that, in
+your home?"
+
+Bennie looked up into her eyes. He seemed, somehow, younger than he had
+appeared the day before, younger and softer.
+
+"Yes, Miss," he told her, "it's always like that, except when it's
+worse!"
+
+"And," Rose-Marie was still asking questions, "do your older sister and
+brother just drift in, at any time, like that? And is your father home in
+the middle of the day? Don't any of them work?"
+
+Bennie's barriers of shyness had been burned away by the warmth of her
+friendship. He was in a mood to tell anything.
+
+"Pa, he works sometimes," he said. "An' Ella--she uster work till she had
+a fight with her boss last week. An' now she says she ain't gotta work no
+more 'cause there's a feller as will give her everythin' she wants, if
+she says th' word! An' Jim--I ain't never seen him do nothin', but he
+always has a awful lot o' money. He must do his workin' at night--after
+I'm asleep!"
+
+Rose-Marie, her mind working rapidly, realized that Bennie had given
+revelations of which he did not even dream. Pa--his condition was what
+she had supposed it to be--but Ella was drifting toward danger-shoals
+that she had never imagined! Well she knew the conditions under which a
+girl of Ella's financial status stops working--she had heard many such
+cases discussed, with an amazing frankness, during her short stay at the
+Settlement House. And Jim--Jim with his sleek, patent-leather hair, and
+his rat-like face--Jim did his work at night! Rose-Marie could not
+suppress the shudder that ran over her. Quickly she changed the subject
+to the one bright spot in the Volsky family--to Lily.
+
+"Your little sister," she asked Bennie, "has she always been as she is
+now? Wasn't there ever a time when she could hear, or speak, or see?"
+
+Bennie winked back a suspicion of tears before he answered. Rose-Marie,
+who found herself almost forgetting the episode of the kitten, liked him
+better for the tears. "Yes, Miss," he told her, "she was born all
+healthy, Ma says. But she had a sickness--when she was a baby. An' she
+ain't been right since!"
+
+They walked the rest of the way in silence--a silence of untold depth.
+But it was that silent walk, Rose-Marie felt afterward, that cemented the
+strange affection that had sprung suddenly into flower between them. As
+they said good-bye, in front of the brownstone stoop of the Settlement
+House, there was none of the usual restraint that exists between a child
+and a grown-up. And when Rose-Marie asked Bennie, quite as a matter of
+course, to come to some of their boys' clubs he assented in a manner as
+casual as her own.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As she sat down to dinner, that night, Rose-Marie was beaming with
+happiness and the pride of achievement. The Superintendent, tired after
+the day's work, noticed her radiance with a wearily sympathetic
+smile--the Young Doctor, coming in briskly from his round of calls, was
+aware of her pink cheeks and her sparkling eyes. All at once he realized
+that Rose-Marie was a distinct addition to the humdrum life of the place;
+that she was like a sweet old-fashioned garden set down in the gardenless
+slums. He started to say something of the sort before he remembered that
+a quarrel lay, starkly, between them.
+
+Rose-Marie, herself, could scarcely have told why she was so bubbling
+over with gladness. When she left the tenement home of the Volskys she
+had been exceedingly depressed, when she parted from Bennie at the
+Settlement House steps she had been ready to cry. But the hours between
+that parting and dinnertime had brought her a sort of assurance, a sort
+of joyous bravery. She felt that at last she had found her true vocation,
+her real place in the sun. The Volsky family presented to her a very
+genuine challenge.
+
+She glanced, covertly, at the Young Doctor. He was eating soup, and no
+man is at his best while eating soup. And yet as she watched him, she
+considered very seriously whether she should tell him of her adventure.
+His skill might, perhaps, find some way out for Lily, who had not been
+born a mute, who had come into the world with seeing eyes. Bennie had
+told her that the child's condition was the result of an illness. Perhaps
+the Young Doctor might be able to effect at least a partial cure. Perhaps
+it was selfish of her--utterly, absurdly selfish, to keep the situation
+to herself.
+
+The Superintendent's voice broke, sharply, into her reverie. It was a
+pleasant voice, and yet Rose-Marie found herself resenting its
+questioning tone.
+
+"Did you have a pleasant afternoon, dear?" the Superintendent was asking.
+"I noticed that you were out for a long while, alone!"
+
+"Why, yes," Rose-Marie faltered, as she spoke, and, to her annoyance, she
+could feel the red wave of a blush creeping up over her face (Rose-Marie
+had never learned to control her blushes). "Why, yes, I had a very
+delightful afternoon!"
+
+The Young Doctor, glancing up from his soup, felt a sudden desire to
+tease. Rose-Marie, with her cheeks all flushed, made a startlingly
+colourful, extremely young picture.
+
+"You're blushing!" he told her accusingly. "You're blushing!"
+
+Rose-Marie, feeling the blushes creep still higher, knew a rude impulse
+to slap the Young Doctor. All of her desire to confide in him died away,
+as suddenly as it had been born. He was the man who had said that the
+people who lived in poverty are soulless. He would scoff at the Volskys,
+and at her desire to help them. Worse than that--he might keep her from
+seeing the Volskys again. And, in keeping her from seeing them, he would
+also keep her from making Bennie into a real, wholesome boy--he would
+keep her from showing Ella the dangers of the precipice that she was
+skirting. Of course, he might help Lily. But, Rose-Marie told herself
+that perhaps even Lily--golden-haired, angelic little Lily--might seem
+soulless to him.
+
+"I'm not blushing, Dr. Blanchard," she said shortly, and could have
+bitten her tongue for saying it.
+
+The Young Doctor laughed with a boyish vigour.
+
+"I thought," he said annoyingly, "that you were a Christian, Miss
+Rose-Marie Thompson!"
+
+Rose-Marie felt a tide of quite definite anger rising in her heart.
+
+"I am a Christian!" she retorted.
+
+"Then," the Young Doctor was still laughing, "then you must never, never
+tell untruths. You are blushing!"
+
+The Superintendent interrupted. It had been her role, lately, to
+interrupt quarrels between the two who sat on either side of her table.
+
+"Don't tease, Billy Blanchard!" she said, sternly. "If Rose-Marie went
+anywhere this afternoon, she certainly had a right to. And she also has a
+right to blush. I'm glad, in these sophisticated days, to see a girl who
+can blush!"
+
+The Young Doctor was leaning back in his chair, surveying the pair of
+them with unconcealed amusement.
+
+"How you women do stick together!" he said. "Talk about men being
+clannish! I believe," he chuckled, "from the way Miss Thompson is
+blushing, that she's got a very best beau! I believe that she was out
+with him, this afternoon!"
+
+Rose-Marie, who had always been taught that deceit is wicked, felt a
+sudden, unexplainable urge to be wicked! She told herself that she hated
+Dr. Blanchard--she told herself that he was the most unsympathetic of
+men! His eyes, fixed mirthfully upon her, brought words--that she
+scarcely meant to say--to her lips.
+
+"Well," she answered slowly and distinctly, "what if I was?"
+
+There was silence for a moment. And then--with something of an
+effort--the Superintendent spoke.
+
+"I told you," she said, "not to bother Rose-Marie, Doctor. If Rose-Marie
+was out with a young man I'm sure that she had every right to be.
+Rose-Marie"--was it possible that her eyes were fixed a shade inquiringly
+upon the blushing girl--"would have nothing to do with any one who had
+not been approved by her aunts. And she realizes that she is, in a way,
+under my care--that I am more or less responsible for her safety and
+welfare. Rose-Marie is trustworthy, absolutely trustworthy. And she is
+old enough to take care of herself. You must not bother her, Billy
+Blanchard!"
+
+It was a long speech for the Superintendent, and it was a kindly one. It
+was also a speech to invite confidences. But--strangely
+enough--Rose-Marie could not help feeling that there was a question half
+concealed in the kindliness of it. She could not help feeling that the
+Superintendent was just a trifle worried over the prospect of an unknown
+young man.
+
+It was her time, then, to admit that there was nobody, really--that she
+had gone out on an adventure by herself, that there had been no "beau."
+But the consciousness of the Young Doctor's eyes, fixed upon her face,
+prohibited all speech. She could not tell him about the Volskys--neither
+could she admit that no young man was interested in her. Every girl wants
+to seem popular in the eyes of some member of the opposite sex--even
+though that member may be an unpleasant person--whom she dislikes. And
+so, with a feeling of utter meanness in her soul--with a real weight of
+deceit upon her heart--she smiled into the Superintendent's anxious face.
+
+"I do appreciate the way you feel about me," she said softly, "I do,
+indeed! You may be sure that I won't do anything that either you, or my
+aunts, would disapprove of!"
+
+After all, she assured herself a trifle uncomfortably, she had in no way
+told a direct falsehood. They had assumed too much and she had not
+corrected their assumptions. She said fiercely, in her heart, that she
+was not to blame if they insisted upon taking things for granted!
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+AND ANOTHER
+
+
+As the days crept into weeks, Rose-Marie no longer felt the dull unrest
+of inaction. She was busy at the Settlement House--her clubs for mothers
+and young girls, her kindergarten for the little tots, had grown
+amazingly popular. And at the times when she was not busy at the
+Settlement House, she had the Volsky family and their many problems to
+occupy her.
+
+The Volsky family--and their many problems! Rose-Marie would have found
+it hard to tell which problem was the most important! Of course Lily came
+first--her infirmities and her sweetness made her the central figure. But
+the problem of Ella was a more vital one to watch--it was, somehow, more
+immediate. Rose-Marie had found it hard to reach Ella--except when Lily
+was the topic of conversation; except when Lily's welfare was to be
+considered, she stayed silently in the background. But the flashings of
+her great dark eyes, the quiverings of her too scarlet mouth, were
+ominous. Rose-Marie could see that the untidiness of the flat, the
+drunken mutterings of Pa, and her mother's carelessness and dirt had
+strained Ella's resistance to the breaking point. Some day there would be
+a crash and, upon that day Ella would disappear like a gorgeous butterfly
+that drifts across the road, and out of sight. Rose-Marie was hoping to
+push that day into the background--to make it only a dim uncertainty
+rather than the sword of Damocles that it was. But she could only hope.
+
+Bennie, too, was a problem. But it was Bennie who cheered Rose-Marie when
+she felt that her efforts in behalf of Ella were failing. For Bennie's
+brain was the fertile ground in which she could plant ideals, and dreams.
+Bennie was young enough to change, and easily. He got into the way of
+waiting for her, after his school had been dismissed, in the little park.
+And there, seated close together on an iron bench, they would talk; and
+Rose-Marie would tell endless stories. Most of the stories were about
+knights who rode upon gallant quests, and about old-time courtesy, and
+about wonderful animals. But sometimes she told him of her home in the
+country--of apple trees in bloom, and frail arbutus hiding under the
+snow. She told him of coasting parties, and bonfires, and trees to climb.
+And he listened, star-eyed and adoring. They made a pretty picture
+together--the slim, rosy-cheeked girl and the ragged little boy, with the
+pale, city sunshine falling, like a mist, all about them.
+
+Lily and Ella and Bennie--Rose-Marie loved them, all three. But Jim
+Volsky was the unsolvable problem--the one that she tried to push to the
+back of her mind, to avoid. Mrs. Volsky and Pa she gave up as nearly
+hopeless--she kept, as much as possible, out of Pa's way, and Mrs. Volsky
+could only be helped in the attaining of creature comforts--her spirit
+seemed dead! But Jim insisted upon intruding upon her moments in the
+flat; he monopolized conversations, and asked impertinent questions, and
+stared. More than once he had offered to "walk her home" as she was
+leaving; more than once he had thrust himself menacingly across her path.
+But she had managed, neatly, to avoid him.
+
+Rose-Marie was afraid of Jim. She admitted it to herself--she even
+admitted, at times, that the Young Doctor might be of assistance if any
+emergency should arise out of Jim's sleek persistence. She had noticed,
+from the first, that the doctor was an impressive man among men--she had
+seen the encouraging swell of muscles through the warm tweed of his coat
+sleeve. But to have asked his help in the controlling of Jim would have
+been an admission of deceit, of weakness, of failure! To prove her own
+theory that the people were real, underneath--to prove that they had some
+sort of a code, and worth-while impulses--she had to make the reformation
+of the Volsky family her own, individual task.
+
+Yes--Rose-Marie was busy. Almost she hated to give up moments of her time
+to the letters she had to write home--to the sewing that she had to do.
+She made few friends among the teachers and visitors who thronged the
+Settlement House by day--she was far too tired, when night came, to meet
+with the Young Doctor and the Superintendent in the cosy little
+living-room. But often when her activities lasted well along into the
+evening, often when her clubs gave sociables or entertainments, she was
+forced to welcome the Young Doctor (the Superintendent was always
+welcome); to make room for him beside her own place.
+
+It was during one of these entertainments--her Girls' Sewing Society was
+giving a party--that she and the Young Doctor had their first real talk.
+Before the quarrel at the luncheon table they had had little time
+together; since the quarrel the Young Doctor had seldom been able to
+corner Rose-Marie. But at the entertainment they were placed, by the hand
+of circumstance, upon a wooden settee in the back of the room. And there,
+for the better part of two hours--while Katie Syrop declaimed poetry and
+Helen Merskovsky played upon the piano, and others recited long and
+monotonous dialogues--they were forced to stay.
+
+The Young Doctor was in a chastened mood. He applauded heartily whenever
+a part of the program came to a close; the comments that he made behind
+his hand were neither sarcastic nor condescending. He praised the work
+that Rose-Marie had done and then, while she was glowing--almost against
+her will--from the warmth of that praise, he ventured a remark that had
+nothing to do with the work.
+
+"When I see you," he told her very seriously, "when I see you, sitting
+here in one of our gray coloured meeting rooms, I can't help thinking how
+appropriate your name is. Rose-Marie--there's a flower, isn't there,
+that's named Rosemary? I like flowery names!"
+
+Rose-Marie laughed, as lightly as she could, to cover a strange feeling
+of embarrassment.
+
+"Most people don't like them," she said--"flowery names, I mean. I don't
+myself. I like names like Jane, and Anne, and Nancy. I like names like
+Phyllis and Sarah. I've always felt that my first name didn't fit my last
+one. Thompson," she was warming to her subject, "is such a matter-of-fact
+name. There's no romance in it. But Rose-Marie--"
+
+The Young Doctor interrupted.
+
+"But Rose-Marie," he finished for her, "is teeming with romance! It
+suggests vague perfumes, and twilight in the country, and gay little
+lights shining through the dusk. It suggests poetry."
+
+Rose-Marie had folded her hands, softly, in her lap. Her eyes were bent
+upon them.
+
+"My mother," she said, and her voice was quiet and tender, "loved poetry.
+I've heard how she used to read it every afternoon, in her garden. She
+loved perfumes, too, and twilight in the country. My mother was the sort
+of a woman who would have found the city a bit hard, I think, to live in.
+Beauty meant such a lot--to her. She gave me my name because she thought,
+just as you think, that it had a hint of lovely things in it. And, even
+though I sometimes feel that I'd like a plainer one, I can't be sorry
+that she gave it to me. For it was a part of her--a gift that was built
+out of her imagination," all at once she coughed, perhaps to cover the
+slight tremor in her voice, and then--
+
+"To change the subject," she said, "I'll tell you what Rosemary really
+is. You said that you thought it was a flower. It's more than a flower,"
+she laughed shakily, "it's a sturdy, evergreeny sort of little shrub. It
+has a clean fragrance, a trifle like mint. And it bears small blue
+blossoms. Folk say that it stands for remembrance," suddenly her eyes
+were down, again, upon her clasped hands. "Let's stop talking about
+flowers and the country--and mothers--" she said suddenly. Her voice
+broke upon the last word.
+
+The Young Doctor's understanding glance was on the girl's down-bent face.
+After a moment he spoke.
+
+"Are you ever sorry that you left the home town, Miss Rose-Marie?" he
+questioned.
+
+Rose-Marie looked at him, for a moment, to see whether he was serious.
+And then, as no flicker of mirth stirred his mouth, she answered.
+
+"Sometimes I'm homesick," she said. "Usually after the lights are out, at
+night. But I'm never sorry!"
+
+The Young Doctor was staring off into space--past the raised platform
+where the girls of the club were performing.
+
+"I wonder," he said, after a moment, "I wonder if you can imagine what it
+is to have nothing in the world to be lonesome for, Miss Rose-Marie?"
+
+Rose-Marie felt a quick wave of sympathy toward him.
+
+"My mother and my father are dead, Dr. Blanchard--you know that," she
+told him, "but my aunts have always been splendid," she added honestly,
+"and I have any number of friends! No, I've never felt at all alone!"
+
+The Young Doctor was silent for a moment. And then--
+
+"It isn't an alone feeling that I mean," he told her, "not exactly! It's
+rather an empty feeling! Like hunger, almost. You see my father and
+mother are dead, too. I can't even remember them. And I never had any
+aunts to be splendid to me. My childhood--even my babyhood--was spent in
+an orphan asylum with a firm-fisted matron who punished me; with nobody
+to give me the love I needed. I came out of it a hard man--at fourteen.
+I--" he broke off, suddenly, and then--
+
+"I don't know why I'm telling you all this," he said; "you wouldn't be in
+the least interested in my school days--they were pretty drab! And you
+wouldn't be interested in the scholarship that gave me my profession.
+For," his tone changed slightly, "you aren't even interested in the
+result--not enough to try to understand my point of view, when I attempt
+to tell you, frankly, just what I think of the people down here--barring
+girls like these," he pointed to the stage, "and a few others who are
+working hard to make good! You act, when I say that they're like animals,
+as if I'm giving you a personal insult! You think, when I suggest that
+you don't go, promiscuously, into dirty tenements, that I'm trying to
+curb your ambition--to spoil your chances of doing good! But I'm not,
+really. I'm only endeavouring, for your own protection, to give you the
+benefit of my rather bitter experience. I don't want any one so young,
+and trusting and--yes, beautiful--as you are, to be forced by experience
+into my point of view. We love having you here, at the Settlement House.
+But I almost wish that you'd go home--back to the place and the people
+that you're lonesome for--after the lights are out!"
+
+Rose-Marie, watching the play of expression across his keen dark face,
+was struck, first of all by his sincerity. It was only after a moment
+that she began to feel the old resentment creeping back.
+
+"Then," she said at last, very slowly, "then you think that I'm worthless
+here? It seems to me that I can help the people more, just because I am
+fresh, and untried, and not in the least bitter! It seems to me that by
+direct contact with them I may be able to show them the tender, guiding
+hand of God--as it has always been revealed to me. But you think that I'm
+worthless!"
+
+There was a burst of loud singing from the raised platform. The girls of
+the sewing club loved to sing. But neither Rose-Marie nor the Young
+Doctor was conscious of it.
+
+"No," the Young Doctor answered, also very slowly, "no, I don't think
+that you are worthless--not at all.-But I'm almost inclined to think that
+you're _wasted_. Go home, child, go home to the little town! Go home
+before the beautiful colour has worn off the edge of your dreams!"
+
+Again Rose-Marie felt the swift burst of anger that she had felt upon
+other occasions. Why did he persist in treating her like a child? But her
+voice was steady as she answered.
+
+"Well," she said, "I'm afraid that I'll have to disappoint you! For I
+came here with a definite plan to carry out. And I'm going to stay here
+until I've at least partly made good!"
+
+The Young Doctor was watching her flushed face. He answered almost
+regretfully.
+
+"Then," he said, "I'm glad that you have a sweetheart--you didn't deny
+it, you know, the other night! He'll take you away from the slums, I
+reckon, before very long! He'll take you away before you've been hurt!"
+
+Rose-Marie, looking straight ahead, did not answer. But the weight of
+deceit upon her soul made her feel very wicked.
+
+Yes, the weight of deceit upon her soul made her feel very wicked! But
+later that night, after the club members had gone home, dizzy with many
+honours, it was not the weight of deceit that troubled her. As she crept
+into her narrow little bed she was all at once very sorry for herself;
+and for a vanished dream! Dr. Blanchard could be so nice--when he wanted
+to. He could be so understanding, so sympathetic! There on the bench in
+the rear of the room they had been, for a moment, very close together.
+She had nearly come back, during their few minutes of really intimate
+conversation, to her first glowing impression of him. And then he had
+changed so suddenly--had so abruptly thrust aside the little house of
+friendship that they had begun to build. "If he would only let me," she
+told herself, "I could teach him to like the things I like. If he would
+only understand I could explain just how I feel about people. If he would
+only give me a chance I could keep him from being so lonely."
+
+Rose-Marie had known few men. The boys of her own town she scarcely
+regarded as men--they were old playmates, that was all. No one stood out
+from the other, they were strikingly similar. They had carried her books
+to school, had shared apples with her, had played escort to
+prayer-meetings and to parties. But none of them had ever stirred her
+imagination as the Young Doctor stirred it.
+
+There in the dark Rose-Marie felt herself blushing. Could it be possible
+that she felt an interest in the Young Doctor, an interest that was more
+than a casual interest? Could it be possible that she liked a man who
+showed plainly, upon every possible occasion, that he did not like her?
+Could it be possible that a person who read sensational stories, who did
+not believe in the greatness of human nature, who refused to go to
+church, attracted her?
+
+Of a sudden she had flounced out of bed; had shrugged her slender little
+body into a shapeless wrapper--the parting gift of a girl friend--from
+which her small flushed face seemed to grow like some delicate spring
+blossom. With hurried steps--she might almost have been running away from
+something--she crossed the room to a small table that served as a
+combination dresser and writing desk. Brushing aside her modest toilet
+articles, she reached for a pad of paper and a small business-like
+fountain pen. Her aunts--she wanted them, all at once, and badly. She
+wished that she might talk with them--writing seemed so inadequate.
+
+"My dears," she began, "I miss you very much. Often I'm lonely enough to
+cry. Of course," she added hastily (for they must not worry), "of course,
+every one is nice to me. I like every one, too. That is, except Dr.
+Blanchard. I guess I told you about him; he's the resident physician.
+He's awfully good looking but he's not very pleasant. I never hated any
+one so--" she paused, for a moment, as a round tear splashed
+devastatingly down upon the paper.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+MRS. VOLSKY PROMISES TO TRY
+
+
+As Lily pattered across the room, on her soft, almost noiseless little
+feet, Rose-Marie stopped talking. She had been having one of her rare
+conversations alone with Mrs. Volsky--a conversation that she had almost
+schemed for--and yet she stopped. It struck her suddenly as strange that
+Lily's presence in any place should make such a vast difference--that the
+child should bring with her a healing silence and a curious tenderness.
+She had felt, many times before, a slowing up in conversations--she had
+seen the bitterness drain from Ella's face, the stolidness from Bennie's.
+She had even seen Pa, half intoxicated, turn and go quietly from a room
+that Lily was entering. And now, as she watched, she saw a spark leap
+into the dullness of Mrs. Volsky's eyes.
+
+With a gentle hand she reached out to the child, drew her close. Lily
+nestled against her side with a slight smile upon her faintly coral lips,
+with her blue, vacant gaze fixed upon space--or upon something that they
+could not see! Rose-Marie had often felt that Lily was watching beautiful
+vistas with those sightless eyes of hers; that she was hearing wonderful
+sounds, with her useless little ears--sounds that normal people could not
+hear. But she did not say anything of the sort to Mrs. Volsky--Mrs.
+Volsky would not have been able to understand. Instead she spoke of
+something else that had lain, for a long time, upon her mind.
+
+"Has Lily ever received any medical attention?" she asked abruptly.
+
+Mrs. Volsky's face took on lines of blankness. "What say?" she mouthed
+thickly. "I don' understan'?"
+
+Rose-Marie reconstructed her question.
+
+"Has Lily ever been taken to a doctor?" she asked.
+
+Mrs. Volsky answered more quickly than she usually answered questions.
+
+"When she was first sick, years ago," she told Rose-Marie, "she had a
+doctor then. He say--no help fer her. Las' year Ella, she took Lily by a
+free clinic. But the doctors, there, they say Lily never get no better.
+And if there comes another doctor to our door, now--" she shrugged; and
+her shrug seemed to indicate the uselessness of all doctors.
+
+Rose-Marie, with suddenly misting eyes, lifted Lily to her knee... "The
+only times," she said slowly, "when I feel any doubt in my mind of the
+Divine Plan--are the times when I see little children, who have never
+done anything at all wicked or wrong, bearing pain and suffering and..."
+she broke off.
+
+Mrs. Volsky answered, as she almost always answered, with a
+mechanical question.
+
+"What say?" she murmured dully.
+
+Rose-Marie eyed her over the top of Lily's golden head. After all, she
+told herself, in the case of Mrs. Volsky she could see the point of Dr.
+Blanchard's assertion! She had known many animals who apparently were
+quicker to reason, who apparently had more enthusiasm and ambition, than
+Mrs. Volsky. She looked at the dingy apron, the unkempt hair, the sagging
+flesh upon the gray cheeks. And she was conscious suddenly of a feeling
+of revulsion. She fought it back savagely.
+
+"Christ," she told herself, "never turned away from people because they
+were dirty, or ugly, or stupid. Christ loved everybody--no matter how low
+they were. He would have loved Mrs. Volsky."
+
+It was curious how it gave her strength--that reflection--strength to
+look straight at the woman in front of her, and to smile.
+
+"Why," she asked, and the smile became brighter as she asked it, "why
+don't you try to fix your hair more neatly, Mrs. Volsky? And why don't
+you wear fresh aprons, and keep the flat cleaner? Why don't you try to
+make your children's home more pleasant for them?"
+
+Mrs. Volsky did not resent the suggestion as some other women might have
+done. Mrs. Volsky had reached the point where she no longer resented
+even blows.
+
+"I uster try--onct," she said tonelessly, "but it ain't no good, no more.
+Ella an' Bennie an' Jim don' care. An' Pa--he musses up th' flat whenever
+he comes inter it. An' Lily can't see how it looks. So what's th' use?"
+
+It was a surprisingly long speech for Mrs. Volsky. And some of it showed
+a certain reasoning power. Rose-Marie told herself, in all fairness,
+that if she were Mrs. Volsky--she, too, might be inclined to ask "What's
+th' use?" She leaned forward, searching desperately in her mind for
+something to say.
+
+"Do you like _me_, Mrs. Volsky?" she questioned at last, "Do you like
+me?"
+
+The woman nodded, and again the suggestion of a light flamed up in her
+eyes.
+
+"Sure I like you," she said, "you are good to all of us--_an' to Lily_."
+
+"Then," Rose-Marie's voice was quivering with eagerness, "then won't you
+try--_for my sake_--to make things here," the sweep of her hand included
+every corner of the ugly room, "a little better? I'll help you, very
+gladly. I'll make new aprons for you, and I'll"--her brave resolution
+faltered, but only for a moment--"I'll wash your hair, and take you to
+the free baths with me. And then," she had a sudden inspiration, "then
+Lily will love to touch you, you'll be so nice and clean! Then Lily will
+be glad that she has you for a mother!"
+
+All at once the shell of stupidity had slipped from Mrs. Volsky's bent
+shoulders. All at once she was eager, breathlessly eager.
+
+"Miss," she said, and one thin, dingy hand was laid appealingly upon
+Rose-Marie's dress, "Miss, you can do wit' me as you wish to! If you
+t'ink dat my bein' clean will make Lily glad"--she made a sudden
+impetuous gesture with her hand--"den I will be clean! If you t'ink dat
+she will like better dat I should be her mother," the word, on her lips,
+was surprisingly sweet, "den I will do--_anyt'ing_!" All at once she
+broke into phrases that were foreign to Rose-Marie, phrases spoken
+lovingly in some almost forgotten tongue. And the girl knew that she was
+quite forgotten--that the drab woman was dreaming over some youthful
+hope, was voicing tenderly the promises of a long dead yesterday, and was
+making an impassioned pledge to her small daughter and to the future! The
+words that she spoke might be in the language of another land--but the
+tone was unmistakable, was universal.
+
+Rose-Marie, listening to her, felt a sudden desire to kneel there, on the
+dirty tenement floor, and say a little prayer of thanksgiving. Once again
+she had proved that she was right--and that the Young Doctor was wrong.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+BENNIE COMES TO THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE
+
+
+It was Bennie who came first to the Settlement House. Shyly, almost, he
+slipped through the great doors--as one who seeks something that he does
+not quite understand. As he came, a gray kitten, creeping out from the
+shadows of the hall, rubbed affectionately against his leg. And Bennie,
+half unconsciously--and with absolutely no recognition--stooped to pat
+its head. Rose-Marie would have cried with joy to have seen him do it,
+but Rose-Marie was in another part of the building, teaching tiny
+children to embroider outlines, with gay wool, upon perforated bits of
+cardboard. The Young Doctor, passing by the half-opened door of the
+kindergarten room, saw her there and paused for a moment to enjoy the
+sight. He thought, with a curious tightening of his lips, as he left
+noiselessly, that some day Rose-Marie would be surrounded by her own
+children--far away from the Settlement House. And he was surprised at the
+sick feeling that the thought gave him.
+
+"I've been rather a fool," he told himself savagely, "trying to send her
+away. I've been a fool. But I'd never known anything like her--not in all
+of my life! And it makes me shiver to think of what one meeting with some
+unscrupulous gangster would do to her point of view. It makes me want to
+fight the world when I realize how an unpleasant experience would affect
+her love of people. I'd rather never see her again," he was surprised,
+for a second time, at the pain that the words caused him, "than to have
+her made unhappy. I hope that this man of hers is a regular fellow!"
+
+He passed on down the hall. He walked slowly, the vision of Rose-Marie, a
+dream child held close to her breast, before his eyes. That was why,
+perhaps, he did not see Bennie--why he stumbled against the boy.
+
+"Hello," he said gruffly, for his voice was just a trifle hoarse (voices
+get that way sometimes, when visions _will_ stay in front of one's eyes!)
+"Hello, youngster! Do you want anything? Or are you just looking around?"
+
+Bennie straightened up. The kitten that he had been patting rubbed
+reassuringly against his legs, but Bennie needed more reassurance than
+the affection of a kitten can give. The kindness of Rose-Marie, the
+stories that she had told him, had given him a great deal of confidence.
+But he had not yet learned to stand up, fearlessly, to a big man with a
+gruff voice. It is a step forward to have stopped hurting the smaller
+things. But to accept a pretty lady's assurance that things larger than
+you will be kind--that is almost too much to expect! Bennie answered just
+a shade shrinkingly.
+
+"Th' kids in school," he muttered, "tol' me 'bout a club they come to
+here. It's a sort of a Scout Club. They wears soldier clo's. An' they
+does things fer people. An' I wanter b'long," he gulped, noisily.
+
+The Young Doctor leaned against the wall. He did not realize how tall and
+strong he looked, leaning there, or he could not have smiled so
+whimsically. To him the small dark boy with his earnest face, standing
+beside the gray kitten, was just an interesting, rather lovable joke.
+
+"Which do you want most," he questioned, "to wear soldier clothes, or to
+do things for people?"
+
+Bennie gulped again, and shuffled his feet. His voice came, at last,
+rather thickly.
+
+"I sorter want to do things fer people!" he said.
+
+More than anything else the Young Doctor hated folk, even children, who
+say or do things for effect. And he knew well the lure that soldier
+clothes hold for the small boy.
+
+"Say, youngster," he inquired in a not too gentle voice, "are you
+trying to bluff me? Or do you really mean what you're saying? And if
+you do--why?"
+
+Bennie had never been a quitter. By an effort he steadied his voice.
+
+"I mean," he said, "what I'm a-tellin' yer. I wanter be a good boy. My
+pa, he drinks. He drinks like--" The word he used, in description, was
+not the sort of a word that should have issued from childish lips. "An'
+my big brother--he ain't like Pa, but he's a bum, too! I don't wanter be
+like they are--not if I kin help it! I wanter be th' sort of a guy King
+Arthur was, an' them knights of his'n. I wanter be like that there St.
+George feller, as killed dragons. I wanter do real things," unconsciously
+he was quoting from the gospel of Rose-Marie, "wi' my life! I wanter be a
+good husban' an' father--"
+
+All at once the Young Doctor was laughing. It was not an unkind
+laugh--it gave Bennie heart to listen to it--but it was exceedingly
+mirthful. Bennie could not know that the idea of himself, as a husband
+and father, was sending this tall man into such spasms of merriment--he
+could not know that it was rather incongruous to picture his small
+grubby form in the shining armour of St. George or of King Arthur. But,
+being glad that the doctor was not angry, he smiled too--his strange,
+twisted little smile.
+
+The Young Doctor stopped laughing almost as quickly as he had begun. With
+something of interest in his face he surveyed the little ragged boy.
+
+"Where," he questioned after a moment, "did you learn all of that stuff
+about knights, and saints, and doing things with your life, and husbands
+and fathers? Who told you about it?"
+
+Bennie hesitated a moment. Perhaps he was wondering who had given this
+stranger a right to pry into his inner shrine. Perhaps he was wondering
+if Rose-Marie would like an outsider to know just what she had told him.
+When he answered, his answer was evasive.
+
+"A lady told me," he said. "A lady."
+
+The Young Doctor was laughing again.
+
+"And I suppose," he remarked, with an effort at solemnity, "that
+gentlemen don't pass ladies' names about between 'em--I suppose that you
+wouldn't tell me who this lady of yours may be, even though I'd like to
+meet her?"
+
+Bennie's lips closed in a hard little line that quirked up at one end. He
+shook his head.
+
+"I'd ruther not," he said very slowly. "Say--Where's th' Scout Club?"
+
+The Young Doctor shook his head.
+
+"It's such a strange, old-fashioned, young person!" he informed the empty
+hallway. And then--"Come with me, youngster," he said kindly, "and we'll
+find this very wonderful club where small boys learn about doing things
+for people--and, incidentally, wear soldier clothes!"
+
+Bennie, following stealthily behind him, felt that he had found another
+friend--something like his lady, only different!
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+AN ISLAND
+
+
+Rose-Marie was exceptionally weary that night. It had been a hard day.
+All three of her classes had met, and--late in the afternoon--she had
+made good her promise to wash Mrs. Volsky's hair. The task had not been a
+joyous one--she felt that she could never wash hair again--not even her
+own soft curls or the fine, snowy locks that crowned her aunts' stately
+heads. Mrs. Volsky had once more relapsed into her shell of silence--she
+had seemed more apathetic, more dull than ever. But Rose-Marie had
+noticed that there were no unwashed dishes lying in the tub--that the
+corners of the room had had some of the grime of months swept out of
+them. When Ella Volsky came suddenly into the flat, with lips compressed,
+and a high colour, Rose-Marie had been glowingly conscious of her start
+of surprise. And when she had said, haltingly, in reference to the
+hair--"I'll dry it for you, Miss Rose-Marie!" Rose-Marie could have wept
+with happiness. It was the first time that she had ever heard Ella offer
+to do anything for her mother.
+
+Jim--coming in as she was about to leave--had added to Rose-Marie's
+weariness. He had been more insistent than usual--he had commented upon
+her rosy cheeks and he had made a laughing reference to her wide eyes.
+And he had asked her, gruffly, why she didn't take up with some feller
+like himself--a good provider, an' all, that'd doll her up the way she'd
+oughter be dolled up? And when Ella had interrupted, her dark eyes
+flashing, he had told her--with a burst of soul-chilling profanity--to
+mind her own business.
+
+And then Pa had come in--apparently more drunk than he had ever been. And
+Rose-Marie had seen his bleary eyes pass, without a flicker of interest,
+over his wife's clean apron and freshly washed hair; had seen him throw
+his coat and his empty bottle into one of the newly dusted corners, had
+seen his collapse into a heap in the center of the room. And, last of
+all, as she had hurried away, with Jim's final insinuation ringing in her
+ears, she had known the fear that all was not well with Bennie--for
+Bennie came in every afternoon before she left. She could not know that
+Bennie, by this time a budding Boy Scout, was learning more lessons of
+the sort that she had taught him.
+
+Yes, she was weary, in every fibre of her being, as she sat down to
+supper that night. She had it quite alone in the dining-room, which, all
+at once, seemed very large--for the Superintendent was sitting,
+somewhere, with a dying woman, and the Young Doctor had been called out
+on an emergency case. And then, still alone, she wandered into the
+library of the Settlement House and picked up a book. She felt, somehow,
+too tired to sleep--too utterly exhausted to lay her head upon her
+pillow. It was in the library that the Superintendent, coming wearily
+back from the watch with death, found her.
+
+"My dear," said the Superintendent, and there was a sound of tears in her
+usually steady voice, "my dear, I'm about all in! Yes, I know it's slang,
+but I can't help it--I feel slangy! Come up to my sitting-room for a few
+minutes and we'll have a cup of hot chocolate!"
+
+Rose-Marie laid down her book with alacrity. She realized, suddenly, that
+she wanted companionship of her own sort--that she longed with all of her
+soul to chat with some one who did not murder the queen's English, that
+she wanted to exchange commonplaces about books, and music, and beautiful
+things--things that the Volskys would not understand.
+
+"I guess," she said, as she followed the Superintendent into the cozy
+sitting-room, "I guess that tiredness is in the air to-day. I'm all in,
+myself. A cup of chocolate and a friendly talk will be a godsend to me,
+this evening!"
+
+The Superintendent was laying aside her coat and her hat. She smoothed
+her hair with a nervous hand, and straightened her linen collar, before
+she sank into an easy chair.
+
+"Child," she said abruptly, "_you_ shouldn't be tired--not ever! You've
+got youth, and all of the world at your feet. You've got beauty, and
+confidence, and faith. And I--well, I'm getting to be an old woman! I
+feel sometimes as if I've been sitting on the window sill, watching life
+go by, for centuries. You mustn't--" She paused, and there was a sudden
+change in her voice, "You're not tiring yourself, Rose-Marie? You're not
+doing more than your strength will permit? If you could have read the
+letter that your aunts sent to me, when you first came to the Settlement
+House! I tell you, child, I've felt my responsibility keenly! I'd no more
+think of letting you brush up against the sort of facts I'm facing, than
+I would--"
+
+Rose-Marie's cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright, as she
+interrupted.
+
+"Somehow," she said, "I can't think that you and my aunts are quite
+right about shielding me--about keeping me from brushing up against life,
+and the real facts of life. It seems to me that there's only one way to
+develop--really. And that way is to learn to accept things as they come;
+to meet situations--no matter how appalling they may be, with one's eyes
+open. If I," she was warming to her subject, "am never to tire myself
+out, working for others, how am I to help them? If I am never to see
+conditions as they are how am I ever to know the sort of a problem that
+we, here at the Settlement House, are fighting? Dr. Blanchard wouldn't
+try to treat a case if he had no knowledge of medicine--he wouldn't try
+to set a broken leg if he had never studied anatomy. You wouldn't be in
+charge, here, if you didn't know the district, if you didn't realize the
+psychological reasons back of the things that the people of the district
+say and do. Without the knowledge that you're trying to keep from me
+you'd be as useless as"--she faltered--"as I am!"
+
+The Superintendent's expression reflected all the tenderness of her
+nature; the mother-instinct, which she had never known, made her smile
+into the girl's serious face.
+
+"My dear," she said, "you must not think that you're useless. You must
+never think that! Look at the success you've had in your club
+work--remember how the children that you teach have come to love you.
+You've done more with them, because of the things that you don't know,
+than I could ever do--despite the hard facts that I've had to brush up
+against. Find content, dear, in being the sweet place in our garden--that
+has so pitifully few flowers. Do not long for the hard, uncomfortable
+places on the other side of the garden wall!"
+
+Despite the Superintendent's expression--despite the gentle tone of her
+voice, Rose-Marie felt a sudden desire to cry out against the irony of it
+all. She was so tired of being classed with the flowers! "They toil not,
+neither do they spin," came back to her, from a certain golden text that
+she had learned, long ago, in Sunday-school. Even at the time it had
+seemed to her as if the flowers enjoyed lives that were a shade too easy!
+At the time it had seemed unfair that they, who were not workers, should
+be beautiful--more beautiful than the ants, for instance, that
+uncomplainingly toiled all day long for their existence.
+
+"I don't want to be a flower," she exclaimed, almost fretfully, "I want
+to be a worth while member of society--that's what I want! What's the use
+of being a decoration in a garden! What's the use of knowing only the
+sunshine? I want to know storms, too, and gales of wind. I want to share
+the tempests that you go through!" She hesitated; and then--"I read a
+book once," she said slowly, "I forget what it was--but I remember, in
+one place, that a woman was being discussed. She was a very beautiful
+elderly woman who, despite her age, had a face as unlined and calm as a
+young girl's face could be. One character in the book commented upon the
+woman's youth and charm, and another character agreed that she _was_
+beautiful and charming, but that she'd be worth more if she had a few
+lines on her face. 'She's never known tears,' the character said, 'she's
+never lived _deeply_ enough to know tears! Her life has been just a
+surface life. If you go down deep enough into the earth you find water,
+always. If you go down deep enough into life you invariably find tears.
+It's one of the unbreakable rules!'" Rose-Marie paused, for a moment, and
+stole a covert glance at the Superintendent's face. "You don't want me to
+be a woman whose life is only a surface life," she pleaded, "and it will
+be just that if you keep me from helping, as I want to help! You don't
+want me to have a perfectly unlined face when I'm eighty years old?"
+
+All at once the Superintendent was laughing. "You child!" she exclaimed
+when the first spasm of mirth had passed, "you blessed child! If you
+could know how ridiculously young you looked, sitting there and talking
+about lined faces--and yourself at eighty. Eighty is a long way off,
+Rose-Marie--for you!"
+
+The girl joined, a trifle shamefacedly, in the older woman's laughter.
+
+"I reckon," she agreed, "that I do take myself too seriously! But--well,
+there are families that I'm just dying to help--families that I've come
+in contact with through the"--again she was forced to a slight
+deceit--"through the Settlement House. I'm sure that I could help them if
+you'd let me visit them, in their own homes. I'm sure that I'd be able to
+reform ever so many people if you'd only let me go out and find them. The
+city missionary who spoke once in our church, back home, told of
+wonderful things that he'd done--of lives that he'd actually made over.
+Of course, I couldn't do the sort of work he did, but I'm sure--if you'd
+only give me a chance--" She paused.
+
+The Superintendent was silent for a moment. And then--
+
+"Maybe you're right, dear," she said, "and maybe you're wrong. Maybe I am
+cramping your ambitions--maybe I am hampering your mental and spiritual
+growth. But then, again, maybe I'm right! And I'm inclined to think that
+I am right. I'm inclined to adhere to my point, that it will be better
+for you to wait, until you're older, before you go into many
+tenements--before you do much reforming outside of the Settlement House.
+When you're older and more experienced I'll be glad to let you do
+anything--"
+
+She was interrupted by a rap upon the door. It was a gentle rap, but it
+was, above all, a masculine one. There was real gladness on her face as
+she rose to answer it.
+
+"I didn't expect Billy Blanchard--he thought he had an all-night case,"
+she told Rose-Marie. "How nice!"
+
+But Rose-Marie was rising to her feet.
+
+"I don't think that I'll stay," she said hurriedly, "I'm too tired, after
+all! I think--"
+
+The Superintendent had paused in her progress to the door. Her voice was
+surprisingly firm, of a sudden; firmer than Rose-Marie had ever heard it.
+
+"No, my dear," said the Superintendent, "you're not too tired! You just
+don't want to be civil to a very fine boy--who has had a harder day than
+either of us. You came to the slums, Rose-Marie, to help people--to show
+that you were a Christian. I think that you can show it, to-night, by
+forgetting a silly quarrel that happened weeks ago--by forgetting the
+words Dr. Blanchard said that he never really meant, inside. If he
+thought that these people weren't worth it, do you suppose he'd stay
+here, at the Settlement House, for a mere pittance? He's had many a
+chance to go to fashionable hospitals, up-town!"
+
+Rose-Marie, bewildered, and not a little ashamed, sank back into her seat
+as the Superintendent swung open the door.
+
+The Young Doctor came in with a springing step, but there were gray lines
+that spoke of extreme fatigue about his mouth, and his eyes were darkly
+circled. His surprise, at the sight of Rose-Marie, was evident--though he
+tried to hide it by the breeziness of his manner.
+
+"You'll be glad to know," he told the Superintendent, "that the stork has
+called on the Stefan family. It's a boy--nine pounds--with lots of dark
+hair. There have been three girls, in the Stefan family," he explained to
+Rose-Marie, "and so they are wild with joy at this latest addition. Papa
+Stefan is strutting about like a proud turkey, with his chest out. And
+Mamma Stefan is trying to sing a lullaby. I feel something like a tool in
+the hand of Providence, to-night!" He threw himself upon the sofa.
+
+There was deep, motherly affection in the Superintendent's face as she
+smiled at him.
+
+"We're all of us mental and physical wrecks this evening, Billy!" she
+said. "I think that I've never been so utterly worn out before. Katie"
+(Katie was the stolid maid) "is making chocolate for us!"
+
+"Chocolate!" The Young Doctor's glance answered the affection that shone
+out of the Superintendent's face--"You _are_ a dear!" He smiled at her,
+and then--all at once--turned swiftly to Rose-Marie.
+
+"Don't let's squabble to-night," he said childishly, "not about anything!
+We're dog-tired, all three of us, and we're not up to even a tiny
+quarrel. I'm willing to admit anything you want me to--even that I'm
+wrong on a lot of subjects. And I want you to admit, yourself, that you'd
+rather be here, with the two of us, than out in some den of
+iniquity--reforming people. Am I right?"
+
+Rose-Marie felt a glow of friendship toward the Young Doctor. Why
+couldn't he always be like this--confiding and boyish and approachable?
+She smiled at him, very sweetly, as she answered.
+
+"You're right," she admitted. "I'm afraid that I haven't the heart to
+think of reforming any one, this evening! I'm just glad--glad from the
+very soul of me--to be here with you all, in the very center of
+this--island!"
+
+The Superintendent's face was puzzled--the Superintendent's eyes were
+vague--as she asked a question.
+
+"You said--_island_?" she questioned.
+
+Rose-Marie laughed with a shade of embarrassment.
+
+"I didn't really mean to say island," she explained, "but--well, you
+remember what Dr. Blanchard told us, once, about the little bugs that
+fastened together--first one and then another until there were billions?
+And how, at last, they made an island?" She paused and, at their nods of
+assent, went on. "Ever since then," she told them slowly, "I've thought
+of us, here at the Settlement House, as the first little bugs--the ones
+that the others must hold to. And I've felt, though many of them don't
+realize it, though we hardly realize it ourselves, that we're building an
+island together--_an island of faith_!"
+
+There was silence for a moment. And then the Young Doctor spoke. His
+voice was a trifle husky.
+
+"You've made me more than a bit ashamed of myself, Miss Rose-Marie," he
+said, "and I want to thank you for putting a real symbolism into my
+chance words. After all"--suddenly he laughed, and then--"after all," he
+said, "I wouldn't be surprised if you are right! I had a curious
+experience, this afternoon, that would go to prove your theory."
+
+The Superintendent was leaning back, shielding her eyes from the light.
+"Tell us about your experience, Billy," she said.
+
+The chocolate had come, and the Young Doctor took an appreciative sip
+before he answered.
+
+"Just as I was going out this afternoon," he said, at last, "I ran into a
+dirty little boy in the hall. He was fondling a kitten--that thin gray
+one that you brought to the Settlement House, Miss Rose-Marie. I asked
+him what he was doing and he told me that he was hunting for a Scout Club
+that he'd heard about. I"--the Young Doctor chuckled--"I engaged him in
+conversation. And he told me that his ambition was to be a combination of
+St. George and King Arthur and all the rest of those fellows. He said
+that, some day, he wanted to be a good husband and father. When I asked
+him where he got his large ambitions he told me that a lady had given
+them to him."
+
+Rose-Marie was leaning forward. "Did he tell you the lady's name?"
+she breathed.
+
+The Young Doctor shook his head.
+
+"Not a thing did he tell me!" he said dramatically. "The lady's name
+seemed to be something in the nature of a sacred trust to him. But his
+big dark eyes were full of the spirit that she'd given him. And his funny
+little crooked mouth was--" He paused, suddenly, his gaze fixed upon
+Rose-Marie. "What's the matter?" he queried. "What's the matter? You look
+as if somebody'd just left you a million dollars!"
+
+Rose-Marie's face was flushed and radiant. Her eyes were deep
+wells of joy.
+
+"I have every reason in the world," she said softly, "to be happy!" And
+she was too absorbed in her own thoughts to realize that a sudden cloud
+had crept across the brightness of the Young Doctor's face.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+ELLA MAKES A DECISION
+
+
+And then the climax of Ella's life--the crash that Rose-Marie had been
+expecting--happened. It happened when Ella came furiously into the Volsky
+flat, early one afternoon, and--ignoring the little Lily, who sat
+placidly on Rose-Marie's lap--hurried silently into her own room. Mrs.
+Volsky, bending over the wash-tubs, straightened up as if she could
+almost feel the electric quality of the air, as Ella passed her, but
+Rose-Marie only held tighter to Lily--as if, somehow, the slim little
+body gave her comfort.
+
+"I wonder what's the matter?" she ventured, after a moment.
+
+Mrs. Volsky, again bending over the wash-tubs, answered.
+
+"Ella, she act so funny, lately," she told Rose-Marie, "an' there is some
+feller; Bennie, he tell me that he have seen her wit' some feller! A rich
+feller, maybe; maybe he puts Ella up to her funny business!"
+
+There were sounds of activity from the inner room, as if clothing was
+being torn down from hooks--as if heavy garments were being flung into
+bags. Rose-Marie listened, apprehensively, to the sounds before she
+spoke again.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better go in and see what's the matter," she suggested.
+
+Mrs. Volsky, looking back over her shoulder, gave a helpless little
+shrug. "If you t'inks best," she said hopelessly. "But Ella--she not
+never want to take any help..."
+
+Only too well Rose-Marie knew what Mrs. Volsky meant by her twisted
+sentence. Only too well she understood that Ella would never allow
+herself to be biased by another's judgment,--that Ella would not allow
+herself to be moved by another's plea. And yet she set Lily gently down
+upon the floor and rose to her feet.
+
+"I'll see what she's doing," she told Mrs. Volsky, and pushed open the
+inner door.
+
+Despite all of the time that she had spent in the Volsky flat,
+Rose-Marie had never been past the front room with its tumbled heaps of
+bedding, and its dirt. She was surprised to see that the inner room,
+shared by Ella and Lily, was exquisitely neat, though tiny. There were
+no windows--the only light came from a rusty gas fixture--but
+Rose-Marie, after months in the slums, was prepared for that. It was the
+geranium, blooming on the shabby table, that caught her eye; it was the
+clean hair-brush, lying on the same table, and the framed picture of a
+Madonna, upon the wall, that attracted her. She spoke of them, first, to
+the girl who knelt on the floor, packing a cheap suit-case--spoke of
+them before she questioned gently:
+
+"You're not going away, are you, Ella?"
+
+Ella glanced up from her packing.
+
+"Yes. I'm going away!" she said, shortly. And then, as if against her
+will, she added:
+
+"I got th' flower an' th' picture for Lily. Oh, sure, I know that she
+can't see 'em! But I sorter feel that she knows they're here!"
+
+Rose-Marie's voice was very soft, as she spoke again.
+
+"I'm glad that you chose the picture you did," she said, "the picture of
+the Christ Child and His Mother!"
+
+Ella wadded a heavy dress into the suit-case.
+
+"I don't hold much with religious pictures," she said, without looking
+up; "religion never did much fer me! I only got it 'cause th' Baby had
+hair like Lily's hair!"
+
+Rose-Marie crouched down, suddenly, upon the floor beside the girl. She
+laid her hand upon the suit-case.
+
+"Where are you going, Ella?" she asked abruptly. "Where are you
+going--and when will you be back?"
+
+Ella's lips drew up into the semblance of a smile--a very bitter one--as
+she answered.
+
+"It's none of yer business where I'm goin'," she said, "an' I may not
+ever come back--see?"
+
+Rose-Marie caught her breath in a kind of sob. It was as she had
+guessed--and feared!
+
+"Ella," she asked slowly, "are you going alone?"
+
+The girl's face coloured swiftly, with a glorious wave of crimson. She
+tossed her head with a defiant movement.
+
+"No, I ain't goin' alone!" she told Rose-Marie. "You kin betcha life I
+ain't goin' alone!"
+
+Rose-Marie--sitting beside her on the floor--asked God, silently, for
+help before she spoke again. She felt suddenly powerless, futile.
+
+"_Why_ are you going, dear?" she questioned, at last.
+
+Ella dropped the shoes that she had been about to tuck into the
+suit-case. Her eyes were grim.
+
+"Because," she said, "I'm tired of all o' this," Her finger pointed in
+the direction of the outer room. "I'm tired o' dirt, and drunken people,
+and Jim's rotten talk. I'm tired o' meals et out o' greasy dishes, an'
+cheap clothes, and jobs that I hate--an' that I can't nohow seem ter
+hold! I'm tired, dog-tired, o' life. All that's ever held me in this
+place is Lily. An' sometimes, when I look at her, I don't think that
+she'd know the difference whether I was here 'r not!"
+
+Rose-Marie was half sobbing in her earnestness.
+
+"Ah, but she would know the difference," she cried. "Lily loves you with
+all of her heart. And your mother is really trying to be neater, to make
+a better home for you! She hasn't a pleasant time of it, either--your
+mother. But she doesn't run away. She stays!"
+
+There was scorn in the laugh that came, all at once, from Ella's twisted
+mouth. Her great eyes were somberly sarcastic.
+
+"Sure, she stays," said Ella, "'cause she ain't got enough gumption ter
+be gettin' out! I know."
+
+In her heart Rose-Marie was inclined to agree with Ella. She knew,
+herself, that Mrs. Volsky would never have the courage to make any sort
+of a definite decision. But she couldn't say so--not while Ella was
+staring at her with that cynical expression.
+
+"I guess," she said bravely, "that we'd better leave your mother out of
+this discussion. After all, it's between you--and your conscience."
+
+"Say," Ella's face was suddenly drawn and ugly, "say, where do you get
+off to pull this conscience stuff? You've always had a nice home, an'
+pretty clothes, an' clean vittles, an'--an' love! I ain't had any of it.
+But," her eyes flamed, "I'm goin' to! Don't you dast ter pull this
+conscience stuff on me--I've heard you profess'nal slummers talk
+before--a lot o' times. What good has a conscience ever done me--huh?"
+
+Rose-Marie had been watching the girl's face. Of a sudden she shot her
+thunderbolt.
+
+"Are you running away to be married, Ella?" she asked.
+
+A second flush ran over Ella's face, and receded slowly--leaving it very
+pale. But her head went up rather gallantly.
+
+"No, I ain't," she retorted. "Marriage," she said the words parrot-like,
+"was made fer th' sort o' folks who can't stick at nothin' unless they're
+tied. I ain't one of those folks!"
+
+Across the nearly forgotten suit-case, Rose-Marie leaned toward Ella
+Volsky. Her eyes were suddenly hot with anger.
+
+"Who gave you that sort of an argument?" she demanded. "Who has been
+filling your head with lies? You never thought of that yourself, Ella--I
+know you never thought of that yourself!"
+
+Ella's eyes met Rose-Marie's angry glance. Her words, when she spoke,
+came rapidly--almost tumbled over each other. It was as if some
+class-resentment, long repressed, were breaking its bounds.
+
+"How d' you know," she demanded passionately, "that I didn't think of
+that myself? How do you know? You're th' only one, I s'pose," her tone
+was suddenly mocking, "that knows how t' think! No"--as Rose-Marie
+started to interrupt--"don't try t' pull any alibi on me! I know th' way
+you Settlement House _ladies_"--she accented the word--"feel about _us_.
+You have clubs for us, an' parties, an' uplift meetin's. You pray fer
+us--an' with us. You tell us who t' marry, an' how t' bring up our
+children, an' what butcher t' buy our meat off of. But when it comes t'
+understandin' us--an' likin' us! Well, you're too good, that's all." She
+paused, staring at Rose-Marie's incredulous face with insolent eyes.
+
+"You're like all th' rest," she went on, after a moment, "just like
+all th' rest. I was beginnin' t' think that you was diff'rent. You've
+been so white about Bennie. An' you washed Ma's hair--I wouldn't 'a'
+done that myself! But now--now it sticks out all over you; th'
+I'm-better-'n-you-are stuff. I never could think of a thing, _I_
+couldn't. But you--you're smart, you are. You could think--"
+
+Rose-Marie's cheeks were flushed with a very real resentment, as she
+interrupted the girl's flow of half-articulate speech.
+
+"Ella," she said, and her words, too, came rapidly, "you know that you're
+not being fair--you know it! I've never held apart from you in any way.
+Oh, I realize that we've been brought up in different--surroundings. And
+it's made us different from each other in the unimportant things. But
+we're both girls, Ella--we're both young and we've both got all of life
+before us. And so, perhaps, we can understand each other"--she was
+fumbling mentally for words, in an effort to make clear her
+meaning--"more than either of us realize. I wasn't, for one moment,
+trying to patronize you when I said what I did. I was only wondering how
+you happened to say something that I wouldn't ever dream of saying--that
+no nice girl, who had a real understanding of life"--she wondered, even
+as she spoke the words, what the Young Doctor would think if he could
+hear them issuing from her lips--"would dream of saying. You're a nice
+girl, Ella--or you wouldn't be in the same family with Bennie and Lily.
+And you're a sensible girl, so you must realize how important and sacred
+marriage is. Who told you that it was a mistake, Ella? Who," her childish
+face was very grave, indeed, "who told you such a terrible thing?"
+
+Ella's eyes were blazing--Rose-Marie almost thought that the girl
+was going to strike her! But the blazing eyes wavered, after a
+moment, and fell.
+
+"My gentleman fren' says marriage is wrong," said Ella. "He knows a lot.
+And he has _so_ much money"--she made a wide gesture with her hands--"I
+can have a nice place ter live, Miss Rose-Marie, an' pretty clothes.
+Lookit Ma; she's married an' she ain't got nothin'! I can have coats an'
+hats an'--"
+
+Rose-Marie touched Ella's hand, timidly, with her cool fingers.
+
+"But you'll have to pay for them, Ella," she said. "Think, dear; will the
+coats and hats be worth the price that you'll have to pay? Will they be
+worth the price of self-respect--will they be worth the price of
+honourable wifehood and--motherhood? Will the pretty clothes, Ella, make
+it easier for you to look into the face of some other woman--who has kept
+straight? Will they?"
+
+Ella raised her eyes and, in their suddenly vague expression, Rose-Marie
+saw a glimmering of the faded, crushed mother. She hurried on.
+
+"What kind of a chap is this gentleman friend," she raged, "to ask so
+much of you, dear? Is there--is there any reason why he can't marry you?
+Is he tied to some one else?"
+
+All at once Ella was sobbing, with gusty, defiant sobs.
+
+"Not as far as I've heard of, there ain't nobody else," she sobbed. "I
+don't know much about him, Miss Rose-Marie. Jim gimme a knockdown ter
+him, one night, in a dance-hall. I thought he was all right--Jim said he
+was ... An' he said he loved me, an'"--wildly--"I love him, too! An' I
+hate it all, here, except Lily--"
+
+Rose-Marie, thinking rapidly, seized her advantage.
+
+"Will going away with him," she asked steadily, "be worth never seeing
+Lily again? For you wouldn't be able to see her again--you wouldn't feel
+able to touch her, you know, if your hands weren't--clean. You bought
+her a religious picture, Ella, and a flower. Why? Because you know, in
+your heart, that she's aware of religion and beauty and sweetness! Going
+away with this man, Ella, will separate you from Lily, just as
+completely as an ocean--flowing between the two of you--would make a
+separation! And all of your life you'll have to know that she's
+suffering somewhere, perhaps; that maybe somebody's hurting her--that
+her dresses are dirty and her hair isn't combed! Every time you hear a
+little child crying you'll think of Lily--who can't cry aloud. Every
+time a pair of blue eyes look into your face you'll think of her
+eyes--that can't see. Will going away with him be worth never knowing,
+Ella, whether she's alive or dead--"
+
+Ella had stopped sobbing, but the acute misery of her face was somehow
+more pitiful than tears. Rose-Marie waited, for a moment, and then--as
+Ella did not speak--she got up from her place beside the suit-case, and
+going to the dividing door, opened it softly.
+
+The room was as she had left it. Mrs. Volsky was still bending above the
+tubs, Lily was standing in almost the same place in which she had been
+left. With hurried steps Rose-Marie crossed the room, and took the
+child's slim, little hand in her own.
+
+"Come with me, honey," she said, almost forgetting that Lily could not
+hear her voice. "Come with me," and she led her gently back to the
+inner room.
+
+Ella was sitting on the floor, her face still wan, her attitude
+unconsciously tragic. But as the child, clinging to Rose-Marie's hand,
+came over to her side, she was suddenly galvanized into action.
+
+"Oh, darlin', darlin'," she sobbed wildly, "Ella was a-goin' ter leave
+you! Ella was a-goin' away. But she isn't now--not now! Darlin'," her
+arms were flung wildly about the little figure, "show, some way, that you
+forgive Ella--who loves you!"
+
+Rose-Marie was crying, quite frankly. All at once she dropped down on the
+floor and put her arms about the two sisters--the big one and the little
+one--and her sobs mingled with Ella's. But, curiously enough, as she
+stood like a little statue between them, a sudden smile swept across the
+face of Lily. She might, almost, have understood.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+PA STEPS ASIDE
+
+
+They wept together for a long time, Ella and Rose-Marie. And as they
+cried something grew out of their common emotion. It was a something that
+they both felt subconsciously--a something warm and friendly. It might
+have been a new bond of affection, a new chain of love. Rose-Marie, as
+she felt it, was able to say to herself--with more of tolerance than she
+had ever known--
+
+"If I had been as tempted and as unhappy as she--well, I might, perhaps,
+have reacted in the same way!"
+
+And Ella, sobbing in the arms of the girl that she had never quite
+understood, was able to tell herself: "She's right--dead right! The
+straight road's the only road...."
+
+It was little Lily who created a diversion. She had been standing, very
+quietly, in the shelter of their arms for some time--she had a way of
+standing with an infinite patience, for hours, in one place. But
+suddenly, as if drawn by some instinct, she dropped down on the floor,
+beside the cheap suit-case, and her small hands, shaking with eagerness,
+started to take out the clothes that had been flung into it.
+
+It was uncanny, almost, to see the child so happily beginning to unpack
+the suit-case. The sight dried Rose-Marie's tears in an almost
+miraculous way.
+
+"Let's put away the things," she suggested shakily, to Ella. "For you
+won't be going now, will you?"
+
+The face that Ella Volsky lifted was a changed face. Her expression was a
+shade more wistful, perhaps, but the somber glow had gone out of her
+eyes, leaving them softer than Rose-Marie had supposed possible.
+
+"No, Miss," she said quietly, "I won't be going--away. You're right, it
+ain't worth the price!" And the incident, from that moment, was closed.
+
+They unpacked the garments--there weren't many of them--quietly. But
+Rose-Marie was very glad, deep in her soul, and she somehow felt that
+Ella's mind was relieved of a tremendous strain. They didn't speak
+again, but there was something in the way Ella's hand touched her
+little sister's sunny hair that was more revealing than words. And
+there was something in the way Rose-Marie's mouth curved blithely up
+that told a whole story of satisfaction and content. It seemed as if
+peace, with her white wings folded and at rest, was hovering, at last,
+above the Volsky flat.
+
+And then, all at once, the momentary lull was over. All at once the calm
+was shattered as a china cup, falling from a careless hand, is broken.
+There was a sudden burst of noise in the front room; of rough words; of a
+woman sobbing. There was the sound of Mrs. Volsky's voice, raised in an
+unwonted cry of anguish, there was a trickle of water slithering down
+upon an uncarpeted floor--as if the wash-tub had been overturned.
+
+It was the final event of an unsettling day--the last straw. Forgetting
+Lily, forgetting the unpacking, Rose-Marie jumped to her feet, ran to the
+door. Ella followed. They stood together on the threshold of the outer
+room, and stared.
+
+The room seemed full of people--shouting, gesticulating people. And in
+the foreground was Jim--as sleek and well groomed as ever. Of all the
+crowd he seemed the only one who was composed. In front of him stood Mrs.
+Volsky--her face drawn and white, her hands clasped in a way that was
+singularly and primitively appealing.
+
+At first Rose-Marie thought that the commotion had to do with Jim. She
+was always half expecting to hear that he had been apprehended in some
+sort of mischief, that he had been accused of some crime. But she
+dismissed the idea quickly--his composure was too real to be born of
+bravado. It was while her brain groped for some new solution that she
+became conscious of Mrs. Volsky's voice.
+
+"Oh, he ain't," the woman was moaning, "say he ain't! My man--he could
+not be so! There ain't no truth in it--there can't be no truth.... Say as
+he ain't been done to so bad! Say it!"
+
+Ella, with a movement that was all at once love-filled, stepped quickly
+to her mother's side. As she faced the crowd--and Jim--her face was also
+drawn; drawn and apprehensive.
+
+"What's up?" she queried tersely of her brother. "What's up?"
+
+The face of Jim was calm and almost smiling as he answered. Behind him
+the shrill voices of the crowd sounded, like a background, to the blunt
+words that he spoke.
+
+"Pa was comin' home drunk," he told Ella, "an' he was ran inter by a
+truck. He was smashed up pretty bad; dead right away, th' cop said. But
+they took him ter a hospital jus' th' same. Wonder why they'd take a
+stiff ter a hospital?"
+
+Mrs. Volsky's usually colourless voice was breaking into loud, almost
+weird lamentation. Ella stood speechless. But Rose-Marie, the horror of
+it all striking to her very soul, spoke.
+
+"It can't be true," she cried, starting forward and--in the excitement of
+the moment--laying her hand upon Jim's perfectly tailored coat sleeve.
+"It can't be true.... It's too terrible!"
+
+Jim's laugh rang out heartlessly, eerily, upon the air.
+
+"It ain't so terrible!" he told Rose-Marie. "Pa--he wasn't no good! He
+wasn't a reg'lar feller--like me." All at once his well-manicured white
+hand crept down over her hand. "_He wasn't a reg'lar feller_," he
+repeated, "_like me_!"
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+A SOLUTION
+
+
+As Rose-Marie left the Volsky flat--Ella had begged her to go; had
+assured her that it would be better to leave Mrs. Volsky to her
+inarticulate grief--her brain was in a whirl. Things had happened, in the
+last few hours, with a kaleidoscopic rapidity--the whirl of events had
+left her mind in a dazed condition. She told herself, over and over, that
+Ella was saved. But she found it hard to believe that Ella would ever
+find happiness, despite her salvation, in the grim tenement that was her
+home. She told herself that Bennie was learning to travel the right
+road--that the Scout Club would be the means of leading him to other
+clubs and that the other clubs would, in time, introduce him to
+Sunday-school and to the church. She told herself that Mrs. Volsky was
+willing to try; very willing to try! But of what avail would be Bennie's
+growing faith and idealism if he had to come, night after night, to the
+home that was responsible for men like Jim--and like Pa?
+
+Pa! Rose-Marie realized with a new sense of shock that Pa was no longer a
+force to reckon with. Pa was dead--had been crushed by a truck. Never
+again would he slouch drunkenly into the flat, never again would he throw
+soiled clothing and broken bottles and heavy shoes into newly tidied
+corners. He was dead and he had--after all--been the one link that tied
+the Volskys to their dingy quarters! With Pa gone the family could seek
+cleaner, sweeter rooms--rooms that would have been barred to the family
+of a drunkard! With Pa gone the air would clear, magically, of some of
+its heaviness.
+
+Rose-Marie, telling herself how much the death of Pa was going to benefit
+the Volsky family, felt all at once heartless. She had been brought up in
+an atmosphere where death carries sorrow with it--deep sorrow and
+sanctity. She remembered the dim parlours of the little town when there
+was a funeral--she remembered the singing of the village choir and the
+voice of the pastor, slightly unsteady, perhaps, but very confident of
+the life hereafter. She remembered the flowers, and the mourners in their
+black gowns, and the pure tears of grief. She had always seen folk meet
+death so--meet it rather beautifully.
+
+But the passing of Pa! She shuddered to think of its cold cruelty--it was
+rather like his life. He had been snuffed out--that was all--snuffed out!
+There would be for him no dim parlour, no singing choir, no pastor with
+an unsteady voice. The black-robed mourners would be absent, and so would
+the flowers. His going would cause not a ripple in the life of the
+community--it would bring with it better opportunities for his family,
+rather than a burden of sorrow!
+
+"I can't grieve for him!" Rose-Marie told herself desperately. "I can't
+grieve for him! It's the only chance he ever gave to his
+children--_dying_! Perhaps, without him, they'll be able to make
+good...."
+
+She was crossing the park--splashed with sunshine, it was. And suddenly
+she remembered the first time that she had met Bennie in the park. It
+seemed centuries away, that first meeting! She remembered how she had
+been afraid, then, of the crowds. Now she walked through them with a
+certain assurance--_she belonged_. She had come a long distance since
+that first meeting with Bennie--a very long distance! She told herself
+that she had proved her ability to cope with circumstance--had proved her
+worth, almost. Why, now, should the Superintendent keep her always in the
+shadow of the Settlement House--why should the Young Doctor laugh at her
+desire to help people? She had something to show them--she could flaunt
+Bennie before their eyes, she could quote the case of Ella; she could
+produce Mrs. Volsky, broken of spirit but ready to do anything that she
+could. And--last but not least--she would show Lily to them, Lily who had
+been hidden away from the eyes of the ones who could help her--Lily who
+so desperately needed help!
+
+All at once Rose-Marie was weary of deceit. She would be glad--ever so
+glad--to tell her story to the Superintendent! She was tired of going out
+furtively of an afternoon to help these folk that she had come to help.
+She wanted to go in an open way--with the stamp of approval upon her. The
+Superintendent had said, once, that she would hardly be convincing to the
+people of the slums. With the Volsky family to show, she could prove that
+she had been convincing, very convincing!
+
+With a singing heart she approached the Settlement House. With a smile on
+her lips she went up the brownstone steps, pushed wide the door--which
+was never locked. And then she hurried, as fast as her feet could hurry,
+to the Superintendent's tiny office.
+
+The Superintendent was in. She answered Rose-Marie's knock with a cheery
+word, but, when the girl entered the room, she saw that the
+Superintendent's kind eyes were troubled.
+
+"What's the matter?" she questioned, forgetting, for a moment, the
+business of which she had been so full. "What's the matter? You look ever
+so worried!"
+
+The Superintendent's tired face broke into a smile.
+
+"Was I looking as woe-begone as that?" she queried. "I didn't realize
+that I was. Nothing serious is the matter, dear--nothing very serious!
+Only Katie's sister in the old country is ill--and Katie is going home to
+stay with her. And it's just about impossible to get a good maid,
+nowadays--it seems as if Katie has been with me for a lifetime. I expect
+that we'll manage, somehow, but I don't just fancy cooking and sweeping,
+and running the Settlement House, too!"
+
+All at once an idea leaped, full-blown, into the brain of Rose-Marie. She
+leaned forward and laid her hand upon the Superintendent's arm.
+
+"I wonder," she asked excitedly, "if you'd consider a woman with a
+family to take Katie's place? The family isn't large--just a small boy
+who goes to school, and a small girl, and an older girl who is working.
+There's a grown son, but he can take care of himself..." the last she
+said almost under her breath. "He can take care of himself. It would be
+better, for them--"
+
+The Superintendent was eyeing Rose-Marie curiously.
+
+"We have plenty of sleeping-rooms on the top floor," she said slowly,
+"and I suppose that the older girl could help a bit, evenings. Why, yes,
+perhaps a family might solve the problem--it's easier to keep a woman
+with children than one who is," she laughed, "heart-whole and fancy free!
+Who are they, dear, and how do you happen to know of them?"
+
+Rose-Marie sat down, suddenly, in a chair beside the Superintendent's
+desk. All at once her knees were shaky--all at once she felt strangely
+apprehensive.
+
+"Once," she began, and her voice quivered slightly, "I met a little boy,
+in the park. He was hurting a kitten. I started to scold him and then
+something made me question him, instead. And I found out that he was
+hurting the kitten because he didn't know any better--think of it,
+_because he didn't know any better_! And so I was interested, ever so
+interested. And I decided it was my duty to know something of him--to
+find out what sort of an environment was responsible for him."
+
+The Superintendent's tired face was alight She leaned forward to ask
+a question.
+
+"How long ago," she questioned, "did you meet this child, in the park?"
+
+Rose-Marie flushed. The time, suddenly, seemed very long to her.
+
+"It was the day that I came home bringing a little gray cat with me," she
+said. "It was the day that I quarreled with Dr. Blanchard at the luncheon
+table. Do you remember?"
+
+The Superintendent smiled reminiscently. "Ah, yes, I remember!" she
+said. And then--"Go on with the story, dear."
+
+Rose-Marie went on.
+
+"I found the place where he lived," she said hurriedly. "Yes--I know that
+you wouldn't have let me go if you'd known about it! That's why I didn't
+tell you. I found the place where he lived; an unspeakable tenement on an
+unspeakable street. And I met, there, his family--a most remarkable
+family! There was a mother, and an older sister, and an older brother,
+and a drunken father, and a little crippled girl...."
+
+And then, shaking inwardly, Rose-Marie told the story of the Volskys. She
+told it well; better than she realized. For the Superintendent's eyes
+never left her face and--at certain parts of the story--the
+Superintendent's cheeks grew girlishly pink. She told of the saving of
+Ella--she told of Bennie, explaining that he was the same child whom the
+Young Doctor had met in the hall. She told of Mrs. Volsky's effort to
+better herself, and of Jim's snake-like smoothness. And then she told of
+Lily--Lily with her almost unearthly beauty and her piteous physical
+condition. As she told of Lily the Superintendent's kind eyes filled with
+tears, and her lips quivered.
+
+"Oh," she breathed, "if only something could be done for her--if only
+something could be done! Billy Blanchard must see her at once--he's done
+marvellous things with the crippled children of the neighbourhood!"
+
+With a feeling of sudden confidence Rose-Marie smiled. She realized that
+she had caught the Superintendent's interest--and her sympathy. It would
+be easier, now, to give the family their chance! Her voice was more calm
+as she went on with the narrative. It was only when she told of the death
+of Pa that her lips trembled.
+
+"You'll think that I'm hard and callous," she said, "taking his death so
+easily. But I can't help feeling that it's for the best. They could never
+have broken away--not with him alive. _You_ would never have taken them
+in--if he had had to be included! You couldn't have done it.... But now,"
+her voice was aquiver with eagerness, "now, say that they may come! Say
+that Mrs. Volsky may take Katie's place. Oh, I know that she isn't very
+neat; that she doesn't cook as we would want her to. But she can learn
+and, free from the influence of her husband and son, I'm sure she'll
+change amazingly. Say that you'll give the family a chance!"
+
+The Superintendent was wavering. "I'm not so sure," she began, and
+hesitated. "I'm not so sure--"
+
+Rose-Marie interrupted. Her voice was very soft.
+
+"It will mean," she said, "that Lily will be here, under the doctor's
+care. It will mean that she will get well--perhaps! For her sake give
+them a chance...."
+
+The Superintendent's eyes were fixed upon space. When she spoke, she
+spoke irrelevantly.
+
+"Then," she said, "that was where you went every afternoon--to the
+tenement. You weren't out with some man, after all?"
+
+Rose-Marie hung her head. "I went to the tenement every afternoon," she
+admitted, "to the _tenement_. Oh, I know that you're angry with me--I
+know it. And I don't in the least blame you. I've been deceitful, I've
+_sneaked_ away when your back was turned, I've practically told lies to
+you! Don't think," her voice was all a-tremble, "don't think that I
+haven't been sorry. I've been tremendously sorry ever so many times. I've
+tried to tell you, too--often. And I've tried to make you think my way.
+Do you remember the talk we had, that night when we were both so tired,
+in your sitting-room--before Dr. Blanchard came? I was trying to scrape
+up the courage to tell you, then, but you so disagreed with me that I
+didn't dare!"
+
+The Superintendent seemed scarcely to be listening. There seemed to be
+something upon her mind.
+
+"Rose-Marie," she said with a mock sternness, "you're evading my
+questions. Answer me, child! Isn't there any one that you--care for?
+Weren't you out with some man?"
+
+Rose-Marie was blushing furiously.
+
+"No," she admitted, "I wasn't out with a man. I never had any sort of a
+sweetheart, not ever! I just let you all think that I was with some one
+because--if I hadn't let you think that way--you might have made me stay
+in. I wouldn't have made a point of deliberately telling you a
+falsehood--but Dr. Blanchard gave me the idea and "--defiantly--"I just
+let him think what he wanted to think!"
+
+The Superintendent was laughing.
+
+"What he _wanted_ to think!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Rose-Marie--you've a lot
+to answer for! What he wanted to think...." Suddenly the laugh died out
+of her voice, all at once she was very serious. "Perhaps," she said
+slowly, "your idea about the Volsky family is a good one. We'll try it
+out, dear! There was a MAN, once, Who said: 'Suffer the little children
+to come--'Why, Rose-Marie, what's the matter?" For Rose-Marie, her face
+hidden in the crook of her elbow, was crying like a very tired child.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+ENTER--JIM
+
+
+It was with a light heart that Rose-Marie started back to the tenement.
+The tears had cleared her soul of the months of evasion that had so
+worried her--she felt suddenly free and young and happy. It was as if a
+rainbow had come up, tenderly, out of a storm-tossed sky; it was as if a
+star was shining, all at once, through the blackness of midnight. She
+felt a glad assurance of the future--a faith in the Hand of God,
+stretched out to His children. "Everything," she sing-songed, joyously,
+to herself, "will come right, now. Everything will come right!"
+
+It was strange how she suddenly loved all of the people, the almost
+mongrel races of people, who thronged the streets! She smiled brightly at
+a mother, pushing a baby-buggy--she thrust a coin into the withered hand
+of an old beggar. On a crowded corner she paused to listen to the vague
+carollings of a barrel organ, to pat the head of a frayed looking little
+monkey that hopped about in time to the music. All at once she wanted to
+know a dozen foreign languages so that she could tell those who passed
+her by that she was their friend--_their friend!_
+
+And yet, despite her sudden feeling of kinship to these people of the
+slums, she did not loiter. For she was the bearer of a message, a message
+of hope! She wished, as she sped through the crowded streets, that her
+feet were winged so that she might hurry the faster! She wanted to see
+the expression of bewilderment on Mrs. Volsky's face, she wanted to see a
+light dawn in Ella's great eyes, she wanted to whisper a message of--of
+life, almost--into Lily's tiny useless ear. And, most of all, she wanted
+to feel Bennie's warm, grubby little fingers touching her hand! Jim--she
+hoped that Jim would be out when she arrived. She did not want to have
+Jim throw cold water upon her plans--which did not include him. Well she
+knew that the arrangement would make no real difference to him--it was
+not love of family that kept him from leaving the dirty, crowded little
+flat. It was the protection of a family, with its pseudo-respectability,
+that he wanted. It was the locked room, which no one would think of
+prying into, that he desired.
+
+She went in through the mouth-like tenement door--it was no longer
+frightful to her--with a feeling of intense emotion. She climbed the
+narrow stairs, all five flights of them, with never a pause for breath.
+And then she was standing, once again, in front of the Volskys' door. She
+knocked, softly.
+
+Everything was apparently very still in the Volsky flat. All up and down
+the hall came the usual sounds of the house; the stairs echoed with
+noise. But behind the closed door silence reigned supreme. As Rose-Marie
+stood there she felt a strange mental chill--the chill of her first
+doubt. Perhaps the Volskys would not want to come with her to the
+Settlement House, perhaps they would resent her attitude--would call it
+interference. Perhaps they would tell her that they were tired of
+her--and of her plans. Perhaps--But the door, swinging open, cut short
+her suppositions.
+
+Jim stood in the doorway. He was in his shirt sleeves but--even divested
+of his coat--he was still too painfully immaculate--too well groomed.
+Rose-Marie, looking at him, felt a sudden primitive desire to see him
+dirty and mussed up. She wished, and the wish surprised her, that she
+might sometime see him with his hair rumpled, his collar torn, his eye
+blackened and--she could hardly suppress a hysterical desire to laugh as
+the thought struck her--his nose bleeding. Somehow his smooth, hard
+neatness was more offensive to her than his mother's dirty apron--than
+his small brother's frankly grimy hands. She spoke to him in a cool
+little voice that belied her inward disturbance.
+
+"Where," she questioned, "are your mother and Ella? I want to see them."
+
+With a movement that was not ungraceful Jim flung wide the door. Indeed,
+Rose-Marie told herself, as she stepped into the Volsky flat, Jim was
+never ungraceful. There was something lithe and cat-like in his slightest
+movement, just as there was something feline in the expression of his
+eyes. Rose-Marie often felt like a small, helpless mouse when Jim was
+staring at her.
+
+"Where are your mother and Ella?" she questioned again as she stepped
+into the room. "I _do_ want to see them!"
+
+Jim was dragging forward a chair. He answered.
+
+"Then yer'd better sit down 'n' make yourself at home," he told her, "fer
+they've gone out. They're down t' th' hospital, now, takin' a last slant
+at Pa. Ma's cryin' to beat th' band--you'd think that she really liked
+_him_! An' Ella's cryin', too--she's fergot how he uster whip her wit' a
+strap when she was a kid! An' they've took Bennie; Bennie ain't cryin'
+but he's a-holdin' to Ma's hand like a baby. Oh," he laughed sneeringly,
+"it's one grand little family group that they make!"
+
+Rose-Marie sat down gingerly upon the edge of the chair. She did not
+relish the prospect of spending any time alone with Jim, but a certain
+feeling of pride kept her from leaving the place. She would not let Jim
+know that she feared him--it would flatter him to think that he had so
+much influence over her. She would stay, even though the staying made her
+uneasy! But she hoped, from the bottom of her heart, that the rest of the
+family would not be long at the hospital.
+
+"When did they go out?" she questioned, trying to make her tone casual.
+"Do you expect them back soon?"
+
+Jim sat down in a chair that was near her own. He leaned forward as
+he answered.
+
+"They haven't been gone so awful long," he told her. "An'--say--what's
+th' difference _when_ they gets back? I never have no chance to talk wit'
+you--not ever! An'," he sighed with mock tragedy, "an' I have so much t'
+say t' yer! You never have a word fer me--think o' that! An' think o' all
+th' time yer waste on Bennie--an' him too young t' know a pretty girl
+when he sees one!"
+
+Rose-Marie flushed and hated herself for doing it. "We'll leave
+personalities out of this!" she said primly.
+
+Jim was laughing, but there was a sinister note in his mirth.
+
+"Not much we won't!" he told her. "I like you--see? You're th' best
+lookin' girl in this neck o' woods--even if you do live at the Settlement
+House! If you'd learn to dress more snappy--t' care more about hats than
+yer do about Bible Classes--you'd make a big hit when yer walked out on
+Delancy Street. There ain't a feller livin' as wouldn't turn t' look at
+yer--not one! Say, kid," he leaned still closer, "I'm strong fer yer when
+yer cheeks get all pink-like. I'm strong fer yer any time a-tall!"
+
+Rose-Marie was more genuinely shocked than she had ever been in her life.
+The flush receded slowly from her face.
+
+"You'd like me to be more interested in clothes than in Bible Classes!"
+she said slowly. "You'd like me to go parading down Delancy Street ..."
+she paused, and then--"You're a fine sort of a man," she said
+bitterly--"a fine sort of a man! Oh, I know. I know the sort of people
+you introduce to Ella--and she's your sister. I've seen the way you look
+at Lily, and she's your sister, too! You wouldn't think of making things
+easier for your mother; and you'd give Bennie a push down--instead of a
+boost _up_! And you scoff at your father--lying dead in his coffin!
+You're a fine sort of a _man_.... I don't believe that you've a shred of
+human affection in your whole make-up!"
+
+Jim had risen slowly to his feet. There was no anger in his face--only a
+huge amusement. Rose-Marie, watching his expression, knew all at once
+that nothing she said would have the slightest effect upon him. His
+sensibilities were too well concealed, beneath a tough veneer of conceit,
+to be wounded. His soul seemed too well hidden to be reached.
+
+"So that's what you think, is it?" he asked, and his voice was almost
+silky, it was so smooth, "so that's what you think! I haven't any 'human
+affection in my make-up,'" he was imitating her angry voice, "I haven't
+any 'human affection'!" he laughed suddenly, and bent with a swift
+movement until his face was on a level with her face. "Lot yer know about
+it!" he told her and his voice thickened, all at once, "lot yer know
+about it! I'm crazy about you, little kid--just crazy! Yer th' only girl
+as I've ever wanted t' tie up to, get that? How'd yer like t' marry me?"
+
+For one sickening moment Rose-Marie thought that she had
+misunderstood. And then she saw his face and knew that he had been
+deadly serious. Her hands fluttered up until they rested, like
+frightened birds, above her heart.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+AN ANSWER
+
+
+There was eagerness--and a hint of something else--in Jim's voice as he
+repeated his question.
+
+"Well," he asked for the second time, "what d' yer say about it--huh?
+How'd yer like ter marry me?"
+
+Rose-Marie's fascinated eyes were on his face. At the first she had
+hardly believed her ears--but her ears had evidently been functioning
+properly. Jim wanted to marry her--to marry _her_! It was a possibility
+that she had never dreamed of--a thought that she had never, for one
+moment, entertained. Jim had always seemed so utterly of another
+world--of another epoch, almost. He spoke a language that was far removed
+from her language, his mind worked differently--even his emotions were
+different from her emotions. He might have been living upon another
+planet--so distant he had always seemed from her. _And yet he had asked
+her to marry him_!
+
+Like every other normal girl, Rose-Marie had thought ahead to the time
+when she would have a home and a husband. She had dreamed of the day when
+her knight would come riding--a visionary, idealized figure, always, but
+a noble one! She had pictured a hearth-fire, and a blue and white kitchen
+with aluminum pans and glass baking dishes. She had even wondered how
+tiny fingers would feel as they curled about her hand--if a wee head
+would be heavy upon her breast.
+
+Of late her dreams, for some reason, had become a little less misty--a
+little more definite. The figure of her knight had been a trifle more
+clear cut--the armour of her imagination had given place to rough tweed
+suits and soft felt hats. And the children had looked at her, from out of
+the shadows, with wide, dark eyes--almost like real children. Her
+thoughts had shaped themselves about a figure that was not the romantic
+creation of girlhood--that was strong and willing and very tender. Dr.
+Blanchard--had he not been mistaken upon so many subjects--would have
+fitted nicely into the picture!
+
+But Jim--of all people, _Jim!_ He was as far removed from the boundaries
+of her dream as the North Pole is removed from the South. His patent
+leather hair--she could not picture it against her arm--his mouth,
+thin-lipped and too red.... She shuddered involuntarily, as she thought
+of it and the man, bending above her, saw the shudder.
+
+"Well," he questioned for the third time, "what about it? I'm a reg'lar
+guy, ain't I? How'd you like to marry me?"
+
+Rose-Marie moistened her lips before she answered. Her voice, when it
+came, was very husky.
+
+"Why, Jim," she said faintly, "what an idea! How did you ever come to
+think of it?"
+
+The man's face was flushed. His words tumbled, quickly, from his
+unsteady mouth.
+
+"I'm crazy about yer, kid," he said, "crazy about yer! Don't think that
+bein' married t' me will mean as you'll have ter live in a dump like
+this-there"--the sweep of his arm was expressive--"fer yer won't! You'll
+have th' grandest flat in this city--anywhere yer say'll suit me! Yer'll
+have hats an' dresses, an' a car--if yer want it. Yer'll have
+everything--if yer'll marry me! What d' yer say?"
+
+Rose-Marie's face was a study of mixed emotions--consternation struggling
+with incredulity for first place. The man saw the unbelief; for he
+hurried on before she could speak.
+
+"Yer think that I'm like my pa was"--he told her--"livin' on measly
+wages! Well, I ain't. Some nights I make a pile that runs inter
+thousands--an' it'll be all fer yer! All fer yer!"
+
+Of a sudden, Rose-Marie spoke. She was scarcely tactful.
+
+"How do you make all of this money, Jim?" she questioned; "do you come by
+it honestly?"
+
+A dark wave of colour spread over the man's face--dyeing it to an
+ugly crimson.
+
+"What's it matter how I get it," he snarled, "long's I get it! What
+business is it of yers how I come by my coin? I ain't stagin' a
+investergation. And"--his face softened suddenly, "an' yer wouldn't
+understand, anyhow! Yer only a girl--a little kid! What's it matter how I
+gets th' roll--long as I'm willin' ter spend it on m' sweetie? What's it
+matter?" He made a movement as if to take her into his arms--"_What's it
+matter_?" he questioned again.
+
+Like a flash Rose-Marie was upon her feet. With a swing of her body she
+had evaded his arms. Her face was white and drawn, but her mind was
+exceptionally active--more active than it had ever been in all of her
+life. She knew that Jim was in a difficult mood--that a word, one way or
+the other, would make him as easy to manage as a kitten or as relentless
+as a panther, stalking his prey. She knew that it was in her power to say
+the word that would calm him until the return of his mother and his
+sister. And yet she found it well-nigh impossible to say that word.
+
+"I'm tired of deceit," she told herself, as she stepped back in the
+direction of the door. "I'll not say anything to him that isn't true! ...
+Nothing can happen to me, anyway," she assured herself. "This is the
+twentieth century, and I'm Rose-Marie Thompson. This is a civilized
+country--nothing can hurt me! I'm not afraid--not while God is taking
+care of me!"
+
+Jim had straightened up. He seemed, suddenly, to tower.
+
+"Well," he growled, "how about it? When'll we be married?"
+
+Rose-Marie raised her head gallantly.
+
+"We won't ever be married, Jim Volsky!" she told him, and even to her own
+surprise there was not the suggestion of a quaver in her voice. "We won't
+ever be married. I'm surprised at you for suggesting it!"
+
+The man stared at her, a moment, and his eyes showed clearly that he did
+not quite understand.
+
+"Yer mean," he stammered at last, "that yer t'rowing me down?"
+
+Rose-Marie's head was still gallantly lifted.
+
+"I mean," she said, "that I won't marry you! Please--we'll let the matter
+drop, at once!"
+
+The man came a step nearer. The bewilderment was dying from his face.
+
+"Not much, we won't let the matter drop!" he snarled. "What's yer reason
+fer turnin' me down--huh?"
+
+It was then that Rose-Marie made her mistake. It was then that she ceased
+to be tactful. But suddenly she was tired, desperately tired, of Jim's
+persistence. Suddenly she was too tired even to be afraid. The lift of
+her chin was very proud--proud with some ingrained pride of race, as she
+answered. Behind her stood a long line of ancestors with gentle blood,
+ancestors who had known the meaning of chivalry.
+
+Coolly she surveyed him. Dispassionately she noticed the lack of breeding
+in his face, the marks of early dissipation, the lines that sin had
+etched. And as she looked she laughed with just the suggestion of
+hauteur. For the first time in her life Rose-Marie was experiencing a
+touch of snobbishness, of class distinction.
+
+"We won't discuss my reason," she told him slowly; "it should be quite
+evident to _any one_!"
+
+Not many weeks before, Rose-Marie had told the Young Doctor--in the
+presence of the Superintendent--that she loved the people of the slums.
+She had been so sure of herself then--so certain that she spoke the
+truth. More recently she had assured the Superintendent that she could
+cope with any situation. And that very afternoon she had told Ella that
+they were alike, were just young girls--both of them--with all of life in
+front of them, with the same hopes and the same fears and the same
+ambitions.
+
+She had believed the statement that she had made, so emphatically, to the
+Young Doctor--she had believed it very strongly. She had been utterly
+sure of herself when she begged the Superintendent to let her know more
+of life. And, during her talk with Ella, she had felt a real kinship to
+the whole of the Volsky family! But now that she had come face to face
+with a crisis--now that she was meeting her big test--she knew that her
+strong beliefs were weakening and that she was no longer at all sure of
+herself! And as for being kin to the Volskys--the idea was quite
+unthinkable.
+
+Always, Rose-Marie had imagined that a proposal of marriage would be
+the greatest compliment that a man could pay a girl. But the proposal
+of the man in front of her did not seem in the least complimentary.
+She realized--with the only feeling of irony she had ever known, that
+this proposal was her very first. And she was looking upon it as an
+insult. With a tiny curl of her lips she raised her eyes until they
+met Jim's eyes.
+
+"It should be quite evident," she repeated, "to any one!"
+
+Jim Volsky's face had turned to a dark mottled red. His slim, well
+manicured hands were clenched at his sides.
+
+"Y' mean," he questioned, and his voice had an ugly ring, "y' mean I
+ain't good enough fer yer?"
+
+All at once the snobbishness had slipped, like a worn coat, from the
+shoulders of the girl. She was Rose-Marie Thompson again--Settlement
+worker. She was no better, despite the ancestors with gentle blood,
+than the man in front of her--just more fortunate. She realized that
+she had been not only unkind, but foolish. She tried, hurriedly--and
+with a great scare looking out of her wide eyes--to repair the mistake
+that she had made.
+
+"I don't mean that I am better than you, Jim," she said softly, "not in
+the matter of family. We are all the children of God--we are all brothers
+and sisters in His sight."
+
+Jim Volsky interrupted. He came nearer to Rose-Marie--so near that only a
+few inches of floor space lay between them.
+
+"Don't yer go sayin' over Sunday-school lessons at me," he snarled. "I
+know what yer meant. Yer think I ain't good enough--t' marry yer.
+Well"--he laughed shortly, "well, maybe I ain't good enough--t' marry
+yer! But I guess I'm good enough t' kiss yer--" All at once his hands
+shot out, closed with the strength of a vise upon her arms, just above
+her elbows. "I guess I'm good enough t' kiss yer!" he repeated
+gloatingly.
+
+Rose-Marie felt cold fear creeping through her veins. There was
+something clammy in Jim's touch, something more than menacing in his
+eyes. She knew that her strength was nothing to be pitted against
+his--she knew that in any sort of a struggle she would be easily
+subdued. And yet she knew that she would rather die than feel his lips
+upon hers. She felt an intense loathing for him--the loathing that some
+women feel for toads and lizards.
+
+"Jim," she said slowly and distinctly, "let go of me _this instant_!"
+
+The man was bending closer. A thick lock of his heavy hair had shaken
+down over his forehead, giving him a strangely piratical look.
+
+"Not much I won't," he told her. "_So I ain't good enough_--"
+
+All at once Rose-Marie felt the blindness of rage--unreasoning, deadly
+anger. Only two things she knew--that she hated Jim and that she would
+not let him kiss her. She spoke sudden defiant words that surprised
+even herself.
+
+"No," she told him, and her voice was hysterically high, "no, you're not
+good enough! You're not good enough for _any_ decent girl! You're
+bad--too bad to lay your fingers upon me. You're--you're unclean! Let go
+of me or I'll"--her courage was oozing rapidly away, "or I'll _scream_!"
+
+Jim Volsky's too red lips were on a level with her own. His voice came
+thickly. "Scream, if you want to, little kid!" he said. "Scream t' beat
+th' band! There ain't no one t' hear yer. Ma an' Ella an' Bennie are at
+the hospital--givin' Pa th' once over. An' th' folks in this house are
+used t' yellin'. They'd oughter be! Scream if yer want to--but I'm
+a-goin' ter have my kiss!"
+
+Rose-Marie could feel the warmth of his breath upon her face. Knowing the
+futility--the uselessness of it--she began to struggle. Desperately she
+tried to twist her arms from the slim, brutal hands that held them--but
+the hands did not loosen their hold. She told herself, as she struggled,
+that Jim had spoken the truth--that a scream, more or less, was an
+every-day occurrence in the tenement.
+
+All at once she realized, with a dazed, sinking feeling, that the Young
+Doctor had had some foundation of truth in certain of his statements.
+Some of the slum people were like animals--very like animals! Jim was all
+animal as he bent above her--easily holding her with his hands. Nothing
+that she said could reach him--nothing. She realized why the Young Doctor
+had wanted her to leave the Settlement House before any of her dreams had
+been shattered, before her faith in mankind had been abused! She realized
+why, at times, he had hurt her, and with the realization came the
+knowledge that she wanted him, desperately, at that minute--that he, out
+of all the people in the world, was the one that her heart was calling to
+in her time of need. She wanted his strength, his protection.
+
+Once before, earlier in the afternoon, she had realized that there was
+much of the cat in Jim. Now she realized it again, with a new sense of
+fear and dislike. For Jim was not claiming the kiss that he wanted, in a
+straight-forward way--he was holding her gloatingly, as a cat tortures a
+mouse. He was letting her know, without words, that she was utterly
+helpless--that he could kiss her when he wanted to, and not until he
+wanted to. There was something horribly playful in his attitude. She
+struggled again--but more weakly, her strength was going. If there were
+only somebody to help--somebody!
+
+And then, all at once, she remembered--with a blinding sense of
+relief--what she had been forgetting. She remembered that there was
+Somebody--a Somebody Who is always ready to help--a Somebody who watches
+over the fate of every little sparrow.
+
+"If you hurt me," she said desperately, to Jim, "God will know! Let go of
+me--or I'll--"
+
+Jim interrupted.
+
+"Yer'll scream!" he chuckled, and there was cruel mirth in the chuckle.
+"Yer'll scream, an' God will take care o' yer! Well--scream! I don't
+believe as God can help yer. God ain't never been in this tenement--as
+far as I know!"
+
+Despite her weight of fear and loathing, Rose-Marie was suddenly sorry
+for Jim. There was something pitiful--something of which he did not
+realize the pathos--in his speech. God had never been in the
+tenement--_God had never been in the tenement_! All at once she realized
+that Jim's wickedness, that Jim's point of view, was not wholly his
+fault. Jim had not been brought up, as she had, in the clean
+out-of-doors; he--like many another slum child--had grown to manhood
+without his proper heritage of fresh air and sunshine. One could not
+entirely blame him for thinking of his home--the only home that he had
+ever known--as a Godless place. She stopped struggling and her voice was
+suddenly calm and sweet as she answered Jim's statement.
+
+"God," she said slowly, "_is_ in this tenement. God is everywhere,
+Jim--everywhere! If I call on Him, He will help me!"
+
+All at once Jim had swung her away from him, until he was holding her at
+arm's length. He looked at her, from between narrowed lids, and there was
+bitter sarcasm in his eyes.
+
+"Call on Him, then," he taunted, "call on Him! Lotta good it'll do yer!"
+The very tone of his voice was a sacrilege, as he said it.
+
+Rose-Marie's eyes were blurred with tears as she spoke her answer to his
+challenge. She was remembering the prayers that she had said back
+home--in the little town. She was remembering how her aunts had taught
+her, when she was a wee girl, to talk with God--to call upon Him in times
+of deep perplexity. She had called upon Him, often, but she had never
+really needed Him as she did now. "Help me, God!" she said softly, "_Help
+me, God_!"
+
+The Volsky flat was still, for a moment. And then, with surprising
+quickness, the door to the inner room swung open. Jim, who was
+standing with his back to the door, did not see the tiny,
+golden-haired figure that stood in the opening, but Rose-Marie caught
+her breath in a kind of a sob.
+
+"I had forgotten Lily--" she murmured, almost to herself.
+
+Jim, hearing her words, glanced quickly back over his shoulder. And then
+he laughed, and there was an added brutality in the tone of his laughter.
+
+"Oh--Lily!" he laughed. "Lily! She won't help yer--not much! I was sort
+of expectin' this God that yer talk about--" The laughter died out of his
+face and he jerked her suddenly close--so close that she lay trembling in
+his arms. "Lily can't hear," he exulted, "'r see, 'r speak. _I'll take my
+kiss--now_!"
+
+It was then that Rose-Marie, forgetting herself in the panic of the
+moment, screamed. She screamed lustily, twisting her face away from his
+lips. And as she screamed Lily, as silently as a little wraith, started
+across the room. She might almost have heard, so straight she came. She
+might almost have known what was happening, so directly she ran to the
+spot where Rose-Marie was struggling in the arms of Jim. All at once her
+thin little hands had fastened themselves upon the man's trouser leg, all
+at once she was pulling at him, with every bit of her feeble strength.
+
+Rose-Marie, still struggling, felt an added weight of apprehension. Not
+only her own safety was at stake--Lily, who was so weak, was in danger of
+being hurt. She jerked back, with another cry.
+
+"Oh, God help me!" she cried, "God help _us_!"
+
+Silently, but with a curious persistence, the child clung to the man's
+trouser leg. With an oath he looked back again over his shoulder.
+
+"Leave go of me," he mouthed. "Leave go o' me--y' little brat! 'r I'll--"
+
+And "Let go of him, Lily," sobbed Rose-Marie, forgetting that the child
+could not hear. "Let go of him, or he'll hurt you!"
+
+The child lifted her sightless blue eyes wistfully to the faces above
+her--the faces that she could not see. And she clung the closer.
+
+Jim was swearing, steadily--swearing with a dogged, horrible regularity.
+Of a sudden he raised his heavy foot and kicked viciously at the child
+who clung so tenaciously to his other leg. Rose-Marie, powerless to help,
+closed her eyes--and opened them again almost spasmodically.
+
+"You brute," she screamed, "_you utter brute_!"
+
+Lily, who had never, in all of her broken little life, felt an unkind
+touch, wavered, as the man's boot touched her slight body. Her sightless
+eyes clouded, all at once, with tears. And then, with a sudden piercing
+shriek, she crumpled up--in a white little heap--upon the floor.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+AND A MIRACLE
+
+
+For a moment Rose-Marie was stunned by the child's unexpected cry. She
+hung speechless, filled with wonderment, in Jim's arms. And then, with a
+wrench, she was free--was running across the floor to the little huddled
+bundle that was Lily.
+
+"You beast," she flung back, over her shoulder, as she ran. "You beast!
+You've killed her!"
+
+Jim did not attempt to follow--or to answer. He had wheeled about, and
+his face was very pale.
+
+"God!" he said, in a tense whisper, "_God_!" It was the first time that
+the word, upon his lips, was neither mocking nor profane.
+
+Rose-Marie, with tender hands, gathered the child up from the hard floor.
+She was not thinking of the miracle that had taken place--she was not
+thinking of the sound that had come, so unexpectedly, from dumb lips. She
+only knew that the child was unconscious, perhaps dying. Her trembling
+fingers felt of the slim wrist; felt almost with apprehension. She was
+surprised to feel that the pulse was still beating, though faintly.
+
+"Get somebody," she said, tersely, to Jim. "Get somebody who
+knows--something!"
+
+Jim's face was still the colour of ashes. He did not stir--did not seem
+to have the power to stir.
+
+"Did yer hear her?" he mouthed thickly. "She _yelled_. I heard her. Did
+yer hear--"
+
+Rose-Marie was holding Lily close to her breast. Her stern young eyes
+looked across the drooping golden head into the scared face of the man.
+
+"It was God, speaking through her," she said. "It was God. And you--you
+had denied Him--_you beast_!"
+
+All at once Jim was down upon the floor beside her. The mask of passion
+had slipped from his face--his shoulders seemed suddenly more narrow--his
+cruel hands almost futile. Rose-Marie wondered, subconsciously, how she
+had ever feared him.
+
+"She yelled," he reiterated, "_did yer hear her--_"
+
+Rose-Marie clutched the child tighter in her arms.
+
+"Get some one, at once," she ordered, "if you don't want her to die--if
+you don't want to be a murderer!"
+
+But Jim had not heard her voice. He was sobbing, gustily.
+
+"I'm t'rough," he was sobbing, "t'rough! Oh--God, fergive--"
+
+It was then that the door opened. And Rose-Marie, raising eyes abrim with
+relief, saw that Ella and Mrs. Volsky and Bennie stood upon the
+threshold.
+
+"What's a-matter?" questioned Mrs. Volsky--her voice sodden with grief.
+"What's been a-happenin'?" But Ella ran across the space between them,
+and knelt in front of Rose-Marie.
+
+"Give 'er t' me!" she breathed fiercely; "she's my sister. Give
+'er t' me!"
+
+Silently Rose-Marie handed over the light little figure. But as Ella
+pillowed the dishevelled head upon her shoulder, she spoke directly
+to Bennie.
+
+"Run to the Settlement House, as fast as ever you can!" she told him.
+"And bring Dr. Blanchard back with you. Hurry, dear--it may mean Lily's
+life!" And Bennie, with his grimy face tear-streaked, was out of the door
+and clattering down the stairs before she had finished.
+
+Ella, her mouth agonized and drawn, was the first to speak after Bennie
+left the room. When she did speak she asked a question.
+
+"Who done this t' her?" she questioned. "_Who done it_?"
+
+Rose-Marie hesitated. She could feel the eyes of Mrs. Volsky, dumb with
+suffering, upon her--she could feel Jim's rat-like gaze fixed, with a
+certain appeal, on her face. At last she spoke.
+
+"Jim will tell you!" she said.
+
+If she had expected the man to evade the issue--if she had expected a
+downright falsehood from him--she was surprised. For Jim's head came up,
+suddenly, and his eyes met the burning dark ones of his sister.
+
+"I done it," he said, simply, and he scrambled up from the floor, as he
+spoke. "I kicked her. She come in when I was tryin' t' kiss"--his finger
+indicated Rose-Marie, "_her_. Lily got in th' way. So I kicked out
+hard--then--she," he gulped back a shudder, "she _yelled_!"
+
+Ella was suddenly galvanized into action. She was on her feet, with one
+lithe, pantherlike movement--the child held tight in her arms.
+
+"Yer kicked her," she said softly--and the gentleness of her voice was
+ominous. "Yer kicked her! An' she yelled--" For the first time the full
+significance of it struck her. "_She yelled_?" she questioned, whirling
+to Rose-Marie; "yer don't mean as she made a _sound_?"
+
+Rose-Marie nodded dumbly. It was Jim's voice that went on with the story.
+
+"She ain't dead," he told Ella, piteously. "She ain't dead. An'--I
+promise yer true--I'll never do such a thing again. I promise yer true!"
+
+Ella took a step toward him. Her face was suddenly lined, and old. "If
+she dies," she told him, "_if she dies_..." she hesitated, and
+then--"Much yer promises mean," she shrilled, "much yer promises--"
+
+Rose-Marie had been watching Jim's face. Almost without meaning to she
+interrupted Ella's flow of speech.
+
+"I think that he means what he says," she told Ella slowly. "I think that
+he means ... what he says."
+
+For she had seen the birth of something--_that might have been soul_--in
+Jim's haggard eyes.
+
+The child in Ella's arms stirred, weakly, and was still again. But the
+movement, slight as it was, made the girl forget her brother. Her dark
+head bent above the fair one.
+
+"Honey," she whispered, "yer goin' ter get well fer Ella--ain't yer? Yer
+goin' ter get well--"
+
+The door swung open with a startling suddenness, and Rose-Marie sprang
+forward, her hands outstretched. Framed in the battered wood stood
+Bennie--the tears streaking his face--and behind him was the Young
+Doctor. So tall he seemed, so capable, so strong, standing there, that
+Rose-Marie felt as if her troubles had been lifted, magically, from her
+shoulders. All at once she ceased to be afraid--ceased to question the
+ways of the Almighty. All at once she felt that Lily would get
+better--that the Volskys would be saved to a better life. And all at
+once she knew something else. And the consciousness of it looked from
+her wide eyes.
+
+"You!" she breathed. "_You_!"
+
+And, though she had sent for him, herself, she felt a glad sort of
+surprise surging through her heart.
+
+The Young Doctor's glance, in her direction, was eloquent. But as his
+eyes saw the child in Ella's arms his expression became impersonal,
+again, concentrated, and alert. With one stride he reached Ella's side,
+and took the tiny figure from her arms.
+
+"What's the matter here?" he questioned sharply.
+
+Rose-Marie was not conscious of the words that she used as she described
+Lily's accident. She glossed over Jim's part in it as lightly as
+possible; she told, as quickly as she could, the history of the child.
+And as she told it, the doctor's lean capable hands were passing, with
+practiced skill, over the little relaxed body. When she told of the
+child's deaf and dumb condition she was conscious of his absolute
+attention--though he did not for a moment stop his work--when she spoke
+of the scream she saw his start of surprise. But his only words were in
+the nature of commands. "Bring water"--he ordered, "clean water, in a
+basin. A _clean_ basin. Bring a sponge"--he corrected himself--"a clean
+rag will do--only it must be _clean_"--this to Mrs. Volsky, "you
+_understand?_ Where," his eyes were on Ella's face, "can we lay the
+child? Is there a _clean_ bed, anywhere?"
+
+Ella was shaking with nervousness as she opened the door of the inner
+room that she and Lily shared. Mrs. Volsky, carrying the basin of water,
+was sobbing. Jim, standing in the center of the room, was like a
+statue--only his haunted eyes were alive. The Young Doctor, glancing from
+face to face, spoke suddenly to Rose-Marie.
+
+"I hate to ask you," he said simply, "but you seem to be the only one who
+hasn't gone to pieces. Will you come in here with me?"
+
+Rose-Marie nodded, and she spoke, very softly. "Then you think that I'll
+be able--to help?" she questioned.
+
+The Young Doctor was remembering--or forgetting--many things.
+
+"I know that you will!" he said, and he spoke as softly as she had done.
+"I know that you will!"
+
+They went, together, with Lily, into the inner room. And as the Young
+Doctor closed the door, Rose-Marie knew a very real throb of triumph. For
+he had admitted that her help was to be desired--that she could really do
+something!
+
+But, the moment that the door closed, she forgot her feeling of victory,
+for, of a sudden, she saw Dr. Blanchard in a new light. She saw him lay
+the little figure upon the bed--she saw him pull off his coat. And then,
+while she held the basin of water, she saw him get to work. And as she
+watched him her last feeling of doubt was swept away.
+
+"He may say that he's not interested in people," she told herself
+joyously, "but he is. He may think that he doesn't care for religion--but
+he does. There's love of people in every move of his hands! There's
+something religious in the very way his fingers touch Lily!"
+
+Yes, she was seeing the Young Doctor in a new light. As she watched him
+she knew that he had quite forgotten her presence--had quite forgotten
+the little quarrels that had all but ruined their chance at friendship.
+She knew that his mind was only on the child who lay so still under his
+hands--she knew that all the intensity of his nature was concentrated
+upon Lily. As she watched him, deftly obeying His simple directions, she
+gloried in his skill--in his surety.
+
+And then, at last, Lily opened her eyes. She might have been waking from
+a deep slumber as she opened them--she might have been dreaming a
+pleasant dream as she smiled faintly. Rose-Marie had a sudden feeling--a
+feeling that she had experienced before--that the child was seeing
+visions, with her great sightless eyes, that other, normal folk could not
+see. All at once a great dread clutched at her soul.
+
+"She's not dying--?" she whispered, gaspingly. "Her smile is so
+very--wonderful. She's not dying?"
+
+The Young Doctor turned swiftly from the bed. All at once he looked like
+a knight to Rose-Marie--an armourless, modern knight who fought an
+endless fight against the dragons of disease and pain.
+
+"Bless your heart, no!" he answered. "She isn't dying! We'll bring her
+around in a few minutes. And now"--a great tenderness shone out of his
+eyes, "tell me all about it. You were very sketchy," his gesture
+indicated the other room, "out there! How did the child really get
+hurt--and how did you come to be here? How--Why, Rose-Marie....
+_Sweetheart_!"
+
+For Rose-Marie had fainted very quietly--and for the first time in all of
+her strong young life.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+AND THE HAPPY ENDING
+
+
+They were sitting together at the luncheon table--the Superintendent,
+Rose-Marie, and the Young Doctor. The noontime sunshine slanted across
+the table--dancing on the silver, touching softly Rose-Marie's curls,
+finding an answering sparkle in the Young Doctor's smile. And
+silence--the warm silence of happiness--lay over them all.
+
+It was the Young Doctor who spoke first.
+
+"Just about a month ago, it was," he said reflectively, "that I saw Lily
+for the first time. And now"--he paused teasingly--"and now--"
+
+Rose-Marie laid down the bit of roll that she was buttering. Her face was
+glowing with eagerness.
+
+"They've come to some decision," she whispered, in a question that was
+little more than a breath of sound, "the doctors at the hospital have
+come to some decision?"
+
+The Superintendent was leaning forward and her kind soul shone out of her
+tired eyes. "Tell us at once, Billy Blanchard!" she ordered, "_At once_!"
+
+Quite after the maddening fashion of men the Young Doctor did not
+answer--not until he had consumed, and appreciatively, the bit of roll
+that he had been buttering. And then--"The other doctors agree with my
+diagnosis," he told them simply. "It's an extraordinary case, they say;
+but a not incurable one. The shock--when Jim kicked her--was a blessing
+in disguise. Not, of course, that I'd prescribe kicks for crippled
+children! But"--the term that he used was long and technical--"but such
+things have happened. Not often, of course. The doctors agree with me
+that, if her voice comes back--as I believe it will--there may be a very
+real hope for her hearing. And her eyes "--his voice was suddenly
+tender--"well--thousands of slum kiddies are blind--and thousands of them
+have been cured. If Lily is, some day, a normal child--if she can some
+day speak and see, and hear, it will be--"
+
+The Superintendent's voice was soft--
+
+"It is already a miracle!" she said simply. "It is already a miracle.
+Look at Jim--working for a small salary, _and liking it_! Look at
+Bennie--he was the head of his class in school, this month, he told me.
+And Ella--"
+
+The Young Doctor interrupted.
+
+"Ella and her mother went to church with us last Sunday," he said.
+"Rose-Marie and I were starting out, together, and they asked if they
+might go along. I tell you"--his eyes were looking deep, _deep_, into the
+eyes of Rose-Marie and he spoke directly to her, "I tell you, dear--I've
+learned a great many lessons in the last few weeks. Jim isn't the only
+one--or Bennie. Lily isn't the only nearly incurable case that has found
+new strength...."
+
+Rose-Marie was blushing. The Superintendent, watching the waves of colour
+sweep over her face, spoke suddenly--reminiscently.
+
+"Child," she said--and laughter, tremulous laughter, was in her voice,
+"your face is ever so _pink_! I believe," she was quoting, "'that you
+have a best beau'!"
+
+The Young Doctor was laughing, too. Strangely enough his laughter had
+just the suggestion of a tremor in it.
+
+"I'll say that she has!" he replied, and his words, though slangy, were
+very tender. "I'll say that she has!" And then--"Are _we_ going back to
+the little town, Rose-Marie," he questioned. "Are _we_ going back to the
+little town to be married?"
+
+The blush had died from Rose-Marie's face, leaving it just faintly
+flushed. The eyes that she raised to the Young Doctor's eyes were like
+warm stars.
+
+"No," she told him, "we're not! I've thought it all out. We're going to
+be married here--here in the Settlement House. I'll write for my aunts to
+come on--and for my old pastor! I couldn't be married without my
+aunts.... And my pastor; he christened me, and he welcomed me into the
+church, and"--all at once she started up from the table, "I'm going
+up-stairs to write, now," she managed. "I want to tell them that we're
+going to start our home here"--her voice broke, "here, on our own
+Island...." Like a flash she was out of the door.
+
+The Young Doctor was on his feet. Luncheon was quite forgotten.
+
+"I think," he said softly, and his face was like a light, "I think that
+I'll go with her--and help her with the letter!" The door closed,
+sharply, upon his hurrying back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Superintendent, left alone at the table, rang for the maid. Her voice
+was carefully calm as she ordered the evening meal. But her eyes were
+just a bit misty as she looked into the maid's dull face.
+
+"Mrs. Volsky," she said suddenly, "love must have its way! And love is--"
+
+The maid looked at her blankly. Obviously she did not understand. But,
+seeing her neat apron, her clean hands, her carefully combed hair, one
+could forgive her vague expression.
+
+"What say?" she questioned.
+
+The Superintendent laughed wearily, "Anyway," she remarked, "Ella likes
+her work, doesn't she? And Jim? And Bennie is going to be a great man,
+some day--isn't he? And Lily may be made well--quite well! You should be
+a glad woman, Mrs. Volsky!"
+
+Pride flamed up, suddenly, in the maid's face--blotting out the dullness.
+
+"God," she said simply and--marvel of marvels--her usually toneless
+voice was athrob with love--"God is good!" She went out, with a tray
+full of dishes.
+
+Her chin in the palm of her hand, the Superintendent stared off into
+space. If she was thinking of a little blond child--lying in a hospital
+bed--if she was thinking of a man with sleek hair, trying to make a new
+start--if she was thinking of a girl with dark, flashing eyes, and a
+small, grubby-fingered boy, her expression did not mirror her thought.
+Only once she spoke, as she was folding her napkin. And then--
+
+"They're both very young," she murmured, a shade wistfully. Perhaps she
+was remembering the springtime of her own youth.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Island of Faith, by Margaret E. Sangster
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13282 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #13282 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13282)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Island of Faith, by Margaret E. Sangster
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Island of Faith
+
+Author: Margaret E. Sangster
+
+Release Date: August 25, 2004 [EBook #13282]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ISLAND OF FAITH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           The Island of Faith
+
+                         By MARGARET E. SANGSTER
+
+                                  1921
+
+
+
+
+To M's M and Chance
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+      I. INTRODUCING--THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE
+
+     II. THE QUARREL
+
+    III. CONCERNING IDEALS
+
+     IV. THE PARK
+
+      V. ROSE-MARIE COMES TO THE RESCUE
+
+     VI. "THERE'S NO PLACE--"
+
+    VII. A LILY IN THE SLUMS
+
+   VIII. ANOTHER QUARREL
+
+     IX. AND ANOTHER
+
+      X. MRS. VOLSKY PROMISES TO TRY
+
+     XI. BENNIE COMES TO THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE
+
+    XII. AN ISLAND
+
+   XIII. ELLA MAKES A DECISION
+
+    XIV. PA STEPS ASIDE
+
+     XV. A SOLUTION
+
+    XVI. ENTER--JIM
+
+   XVII. AN ANSWER
+
+  XVIII. AND A MIRACLE
+
+    XIX. AND THE HAPPY ENDING
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+INTRODUCING--THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE
+
+
+There is a certain section of New York that is bounded upon the north by
+Fourteenth Street, upon the south by Delancy. Folk who dwell in it seldom
+stray farther west than the Bowery, rarely cross the river that flows
+sluggishly on its eastern border. They live their lives out, with
+something that might be termed a feverish stolidity, in the dim crowded
+flats, and upon the thronged streets.
+
+To the people who have homes on Central Park West, to the frail winged
+moths who flutter up and down Broadway, this section does not exist. Its
+poor are not the picturesque poor of the city's Latin quarter, its
+criminals seldom win to the notoriety of a front page and inch-high
+headlines; it almost never produces a genius for the world to smile
+upon--its talent does not often break away from the undefined, but none
+the less certain, limits of the district.
+
+It is curious that this part of town is seldom featured in song or story,
+for it is certainly neither dull nor unproductive of plot. The tenements
+that loom, canyon-like, upon every side are filled to overflowing with
+human drama; and the stilted little parks are so teeming with romances,
+of a summer night, that only the book of the ages would be big enough to
+hold them--were they written out! Life beats, like some great wave, up
+the dim alleyways--it breaks, in a shattered tide, against rock-like
+doorways. The music of a street band, strangely sweet despite its
+shrillness, rises triumphantly above the tumult of pavement vendors, the
+crying of babies, the shouting of small boys, and the monotonous voices
+of the womenfolk.
+
+In almost the exact center of this district is the Settlement House--a
+brown building that is tall and curiously friendly. Between a great
+hive-like dwelling place and a noisy dance-hall it stands valiantly, like
+the soldier of God that it is! And through its wide-open doorway come and
+go the girls who will gladly squander a week's wage for a bit of satin or
+a velvet hat; the shabby, dull-eyed women who, two years before, were
+care-free girls themselves; the dreamers--and the ones who have never
+learned to dream. For there is something about the Settlement House--and
+about the tiny group of earnest people who are the heart of the
+Settlement House--that is like a warm hand, stretched out in welcome to
+the poor and the needy, to the halt in body and the maimed in soul, and
+to the casual passer-by.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE QUARREL
+
+
+"They're like animals," said the Young Doctor in the tone of one who
+states an indisputable fact. "Only worse!" he added.
+
+Rose-Marie laid down the bit of roll that she had been buttering and
+turned reproachful eyes upon the Young Doctor.
+
+"Oh, but they're not," she cried; "you don't understand, or you wouldn't
+talk that way. You don't understand!"
+
+Quite after the maddening fashion of men the doctor did not answer until
+he had consumed, and appreciatively, the last of the roll he was eating.
+And then--
+
+"I've been here quite as long as you have, Miss Thompson," he remarked, a
+shade too gently.
+
+The Superintendent raised tired eyes from her plate. She was little and
+slim and gray, this Superintendent; it seemed almost as though the slums
+had drained from her the life and colour.
+
+"When you've been working in this section for twenty years," she said
+slowly, "you'll realize that nobody can ever understand. You'll realize
+that we all have animal traits--to a certain extent. And you'll realize
+that quarrelling isn't ever worth while."
+
+"But"--Rose-Marie was inclined to argue the point--"but Dr. Blanchard
+talks as if the people down here are scarcely human! And it's not right
+to feel so about one's fellow-men. Dr. Blanchard acts as if the people
+down here haven't _souls_!"
+
+The Young Doctor helped himself nonchalantly to a second roll.
+
+"There's a certain sort of a little bug that lives in the water," he
+said, "and it drifts around aimlessly until it finds another little bug
+that it holds on to. And then another little bug takes hold, and
+another, and another. And pretty soon there are hundreds of little bugs,
+and then there are thousands, and then there are millions, and then
+billions, and then--"
+
+The Superintendent interrupted wearily.
+
+"I'd stop at the billions, if I were you," she said, "particularly as
+they haven't any special bearing on the subject."
+
+"Oh, but they _have_" said the doctor, "for, after a while, the billions
+and _trillions_ of little bugs, clinging together, make an island. They
+haven't souls, perhaps," he darted a triumphant glance at Rose-Marie,
+"but they make an island just the same!"
+
+He paused for a moment, as if waiting for some sort of comment. When it
+did not come, he spoke again.
+
+"The people of the slums," he said, "the people who drift into, and out
+of, and around this Settlement House, are not very unlike the little
+bugs. And, after all, _they do help to make the city_!"
+
+There was a quaver in Rose-Marie's voice, and a hurt look in her eyes, as
+she answered.
+
+"Yes, they are like the little bugs," she said, "in the blind way that
+they hold together! But please, Dr. Blanchard, don't say they are
+soulless. Don't--"
+
+All at once the Young Doctor's hand was banging upon the table. All at
+once his voice was vehemently raised.
+
+"It's the difference in our point of view, Miss Thompson," he told
+Rose-Marie, "and I'm afraid that I'm right and that you're--not right.
+You've come from a pretty little country town where every one was fairly
+comfortable and fairly prosperous. You've always been a part of a
+community where people went to church and prayer-meeting and
+Sunday-school. Your neighbours loved each other, and played Pollyanna
+when things went wrong. And you wore white frocks and blue sashes
+whenever there was a lawn party or a sociable." He paused, perhaps for
+breath, and then--"I'm different," he said; "I struggled for my
+education; it was always the survival of the fittest with me. I worked my
+way through medical school. I had my hospital experience in Bellevue and
+on the Island--most of my patients were the lowest of the low. I've tried
+to cure diseased bodies--but I've left diseased minds alone. Diseased
+minds have been out of my line. Perhaps that's why I've come through with
+an ideal of life that's slightly different from your sunshine and apple
+blossoms theory!"
+
+"Oh," Rose-Marie was half sobbing, "oh, you're so hard!"
+
+The Young Doctor faced her suddenly and squarely. "Why did you come
+here," he cried, "to the slums? Why did you come to work in a Settlement
+House? What qualifications have you to be a social service worker, you
+child? What do you know of the meaning of service, of life?"
+
+Rose-Marie's voice was earnest, though shaken.
+
+"I came," she answered, "because I love people and want to help them. I
+came because I want to teach them to think beautiful thoughts, to have
+beautiful ideals. I came because I want to show them the God that I
+know--and try to serve--" she faltered.
+
+The Young Doctor laughed--but not pleasantly.
+
+"And I," he said, "came to make their bodies as healthy as possible. I
+came because curing sick bodies was my job--_not because I loved people
+or had any particular faith in them_. Prescribing to criminals and
+near-criminals isn't a reassuring work; it doesn't give one faith in
+human nature or in human souls!"
+
+The Superintendent had been forgotten. But her tired voice rose suddenly
+across the barrier of speech that had grown high and icy between the
+Young Doctor and Rose-Marie.
+
+"You both came," she said, and she spoke in the tone of a mother of
+chickens who has found two young and precocious ducklings in her brood,
+"you both came to help people--of that I'm sure!"
+
+Rose-Marie started up, suddenly, from the table.
+
+"I came," she said, as she moved toward the door that led to the hall,
+"to make people better."
+
+"And I," said the Young Doctor, moving away from the table toward the
+opposite side of the room and another door, "I came to make them
+healthier!" With his hand on the knob of the door he spoke to the
+Superintendent.
+
+"I'll not be back for supper," he said shortly, "I'll be too busy.
+Giovanni Celleni is out of jail again, and he's thrown his wife down a
+flight of stairs. She'll probably not live. And while Minnie Cohen was
+at the vaudeville show last night--developing her soul, perhaps--her
+youngest baby fell against the stove. Well, it'll be better for the
+baby if it does die! And there are others--" The door slammed upon his
+angry back.
+
+Rose-Marie's face was white as she leaned against the dark wainscoting.
+
+"Minnie Cohen brought the baby in last week," she shuddered, "such a dear
+baby! And Mrs. Celleni--she tried so hard! Oh, it's not right--" She was
+crying, rather wildly, as she went out of the room.
+
+The Superintendent, left alone at the table, rang for the stolid maid.
+Her voice was carefully calm as she gave orders for the evening meal. If
+she was thinking of Giovanni Celleni, his brute face filled with
+semi-madness; if she was thinking of a burned baby, sobbing alone in a
+darkened tenement while its mother breathlessly watched the gay colours
+and shifting scenes of a make-believe life, her expression did not
+mirror her thought. Only once she spoke, as she was folding her napkin,
+and then--
+
+"They're both very young," she murmured, a shade regretfully. Perhaps she
+was remembering the enthusiasm--and the intolerance--of her own youth.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+CONCERNING IDEALS
+
+
+"Sunshine and apple blossoms!" Rose-Marie, hurrying along the hall to her
+own room, repeated the Young Doctor's words and sobbed afresh as she
+repeated them. She tried to tell herself that nothing he could think
+mattered much to her, but there was a certain element of truth in
+everything that he had said. It was a fact that her life had been an
+unclouded, peaceful one--her days had followed each other as regularly,
+as innocuously, as blue china beads, strung upon a white cord, follow
+each other.
+
+Of course, she told herself, she had never known a mother; and her father
+had died when she was a tiny girl. But she was forced to admit--as she
+had been forced to admit many times--that she did not particularly feel
+the lack of parents. Her two aunts, that she had always lived with, had
+been everything to her--they had indulged her, had made her pretty
+frocks, had never tried, in any way, to block the reachings of her
+personality. When she had decided suddenly, fired by the convincing
+address of a visiting city missionary, to leave the small town of her
+birth, they had put no obstacle in her path.
+
+"If you feel that you must go," they had told her, "you must. Maybe it is
+the work that the Lord has chosen for you. We have all faith in you,
+Rose-Marie!"
+
+And Rose-Marie, splendid in her youth and assurance, had never known that
+their pillows were damp that night--and for many another night--with the
+tears that they were too brave to let her see.
+
+They had packed her trunk, folding the white dress and the blue
+sash--Rose-Marie wondered how the Young Doctor had known about the dress
+and sash--in tissue paper. They had created a blue serge frock for work,
+and a staunch little blue coat, and a blue tam-o'-shanter. Rose-Marie
+would have been aghast to know how childish she looked in that
+tam-o'-shanter! Her every-day shoes had been resoled; her white ruffled
+petticoats had been lengthened. And then she had been launched, like a
+slim little boat, upon the turbulent sea of the city!
+
+Looking back, through a mist of angry tears, Rose-Marie felt her first
+moment of homesickness for the friendly little town with its wide,
+tree-shaded streets, its lawn parties, and its neighbours; cities, she
+had discovered, discourage the art of neighbouring! She felt a pang of
+emptiness--she wanted her aunts with their soft, interested eyes, and
+their tender hands.
+
+At first the city had thrilled her. But now that she had been in the
+Settlement House a month, the thrill was beginning to die away. The great
+buildings were still unbelievably high, the crowds of people were still a
+strange and mysterious throng, the streets were as colourful as ever--but
+life, nevertheless, was beginning to settle into ordinary channels.
+
+She had thought, at the beginning of her stay there, that the Settlement
+House was a hotbed of romance. Every ring of the doorbell had tingled
+through her; every step in the hall had made her heart leap, with a
+strange quickening movement, into her throat--every shabby man had been
+to her a possible tragedy, every threadbare woman had been a case for
+charity. She had fluttered from reception-hall to reading-room, and back
+again--she had been alert, breathless, eager.
+
+But, with the assignment of regular duties, some of the adventure had
+been drained from life. For her these consisted of teaching a club of
+girls to sew, of instructing a group of mothers in the art of making
+cakes and pies and salads, and of hearing a half hundred little children
+repeat their A B Cs. Only the difference in setting, only the twang of
+foreign tongues, only the strange precociousness of the children, made
+life at all different from the life at home. She told herself, fiercely,
+that she might be a teacher in a district school--a country school--for
+all the good she was accomplishing.
+
+She had offered, so many times, to do visiting in the tenements--to call
+upon families of the folk who would not come to the Settlement House.
+But the Superintendent had met her, always, with a denial that was
+wearily firm.
+
+"I have a staff of women--older women from outside--who do the visiting,"
+she had said. "I'm afraid" she was eyeing Rose-Marie in the blue coat and
+the blue tam-o'-shanter, "I'm afraid that you'd scarcely be--convincing.
+And," she had added, "Dr. Blanchard takes care of all the detail in that
+department of our work!"
+
+Dr. Blanchard ... Rose-Marie felt the tears coming afresh at the thought
+of him! She remembered how she had written home enthusiastic,
+schoolgirlish letters about the handsome man who sat across the dining
+table from her. It had seemed exciting, romantic, that only the three of
+them really should live in the great brownstone house--the Young Doctor,
+the Superintendent--who made a perfect chaperon--and herself. It had
+seemed, somehow, almost providential that they should be thrown together.
+Yes, Rose-Marie remembered how she had been attracted to Dr. Blanchard at
+the very first--how she had found nothing wanting in his wiry strength,
+his broad shoulders, his dark, direct eyes.
+
+But she had not been in the Settlement House long before she began to
+feel the clash of their natures. When she started to church service, on
+her first Sunday in New York, she surprised a smile of something that
+might have been cynical mirth upon his lean, square-jawed face. And when
+she spoke of the daily prayers that she and her aunts had so beautifully
+believed in, back in the little town, he laughed at her--not unkindly,
+but with the sympathetic superiority that one feels for a too trusting
+child. Rose-Marie, thinking it over, knew that she would rather meet
+direct unkindness than that bland superiority!
+
+And so--though there had never been an open quarrel until the one at the
+luncheon table--Rose-Marie had learned to look to the Superintendent for
+encouragement, rather than to the Young Doctor. And she had frigidly
+declined his small courtesies--a visit to the movies, a walk in the park,
+a 'bus ride up Fifth Avenue.
+
+"I never went to the movies at home," she had told him. Or, "I'm too
+busy, just now, to take a walk." Or, "I can't go with you to-day. I've
+letters to write."
+
+"It's a shame," she confided, on occasion, to the Superintendent, "that
+Dr. Blanchard never goes to church. It's a shame that he has had so
+little religious life. I gave him a book to read the other day--the
+letters of an American Missionary in China--and he laughed and told me
+that he couldn't waste his time. What do you think of that! But later,"
+Rose-Marie's voice sank to a horrified whisper, "later, I saw him reading
+a cheap novel--he had time for a cheap novel!"
+
+The Superintendent looked down into Rose-Marie's earnest little face.
+
+"My dear," she said gently, stifling a desire to laugh, "my dear, he's a
+very busy man. He gives a great deal of himself to the people here in the
+slums. The novel, to him, was just a mental relaxation."
+
+But to the Young Doctor, later, the Superintendent spoke differently.
+
+"Billy Blanchard," she said, and she only called him Billy Blanchard when
+she wanted to scold him, "I've known you for a long time. And I'm sure
+that there's no harm in you. Of course," she sighed, "I wish that you
+could feel a little more in sympathy with the spiritual side of our work.
+But I've argued with you, more than once, on that point!"
+
+The doctor, who was packing medicines into his bag, looked up.
+
+"You know, you old dear," he told her, "that I'm hopeless. I haven't had
+an easy row to hoe, not ever; you wouldn't be religious yourself if you
+were in my shoes! There--don't look so shocked--you've been a mother to
+me in your funny, fussy way, since I came to this place! That's the main
+reason, I guess, that I stick here, as I do, when I could make a lot more
+money somewhere else!" He reached up to pat her thin hand, and then, "But
+why are you worrying, just now, about my soul?" he questioned.
+
+The Superintendent sighed again.
+
+"It's the little Thompson girl," she answered; "she's so anxious to
+convert people, and she's so sincere,--so very sincere. I can't help
+feeling that you are a thorn in her flesh, Billy. She says that you won't
+read her missionary books--"
+
+The Young Doctor interrupted.
+
+"She's such a pretty girl," he said quite fiercely. "Why on earth didn't
+she stay at home, where she belonged! Why on earth did she pick out this
+sort of work?"
+
+The Superintendent answered.
+
+"One never knows," she said, "why girls pick out certain kinds of work.
+I've had the strangest cases come to my office--of homely girls who
+wanted to be artists' models, and anemic girls who wanted to be physical
+directors, and flighty girls who wanted to go to Bible School, and quiet
+girls who were all set for a career on the stage. Rose-Marie Thompson is
+the sort of a girl who was cut out to be a home-maker, to give happiness
+to some nice, clean boy, to have a nursery full of rosy-cheeked babies.
+And yet here she is, filled with a desire to rescue people, to snatch
+brands from the burning. Here she is in the slums when she'd be
+dramatically right in an apple orchard--at the time of year when the
+trees are covered with pink and white blossoms."
+
+The Young Doctor laughed. He so well understood the Superintendent--so
+enjoyed her point of view.
+
+"Yes," he agreed, "she'd be perfect there in an organdy frock with
+the sun slanting across her face. But--well, she's just like other
+girls. Tell a pretty girl that she's clever, they say, and tell a
+clever girl that she's a raving, tearing beauty. That's the way for a
+man to be popular!"
+
+The Superintendent laughed quietly with him. It was a moment before she
+grew sober again.
+
+"I wonder," she said at last, "why you have never tried to be popular
+with girls. You could so easily be popular. You're young and--don't try
+to hush me up--good-looking. And yet--well, you're such an antagonistic
+person. From the very first you've laughed at Rose-Marie--and she was
+quite ready to adore you when she arrived. How do I know? Oh, I could
+tell! Take the child seriously, Billy Blanchard, before she actually
+begins to dislike you!"
+
+The Young Doctor put several bottles of violently coloured pills into his
+bag before he spoke.
+
+"She dislikes me already," he said. "She's such a cool little person.
+What are you trying to do, anyway? Are you trying to matchmake; to
+stir up a love affair between the both of us--" suddenly he was
+laughing again.
+
+"I'm too busy to have a romance, you old dear," he told the
+Superintendent, "far too busy. I'm as likely to fall in love, just now,
+as you are!"
+
+The woman's face was averted as she answered. But her low voice
+was steady.
+
+"When I was your age, Billy," she said gently, "I _was_ in love.
+That's why, perhaps, I came here. That's why, perhaps, I stayed. No,
+he didn't die--he married another girl. And dreams are hard things to
+forget. That's why I left the country. Maybe that's why the little
+Thompson girl--"
+
+But the Young Doctor was shaking his head.
+
+"She hasn't had any love affair," he told the Superintendent. "She's too
+young and full of ideals to have anything so ordinary as a romance.
+Everybody," his laugh was not too pleasant, "can have a romance! And few
+people can be so filled with ideals as Miss Thompson. Oh, it's her ideals
+that I can't stand! It's her impractical way of gazing at life through
+pink-coloured glasses. She'll never be of any real use here in the slums.
+I'm only afraid that she'll come to some harm because she's so trusting
+and over-sincere. I'd hate to see her placed in direct contact with some
+of the young men that I work with, for instance. You haven't--" All at
+once his voice took on a new note. "You haven't let her be with any of
+the boys' classes, have you? Her ideals might not stand the strain!"
+
+The Superintendent answered.
+
+"Ideals don't hurt any one," she said, and her voice was almost as fierce
+as the doctor's. "No, I haven't given her a bit of work with the boys.
+She's too young and too untouched and, as you say, too pretty. I'm
+letting her spend her time with the mothers, and the young girls, and the
+little tots--not even allowing her to go out alone, if I can help it.
+Such innocence--" The Superintendent broke off suddenly in the middle of
+the sentence. And she sighed again.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE PARK
+
+
+Crying helps, sometimes. When Rose-Marie, alone in her room, finally
+dried away the tears that were the direct result of her quarrel with Dr.
+Blanchard, there was a new resolve in her eyes--a look that had not been
+there when she went, an hour before, to the luncheon table. It was the
+look of one who has resolutions that cannot be shattered--dreams that are
+unbreakable. She glanced at her wrist watch and there was a shade of
+defiance in the very way she raised the arm that wore it.
+
+"They make a baby of me here," she told herself, "they treat me like a
+silly child. It's a wonder that they don't send a nurse-maid with me to
+my classes. It's a wonder"--she was growing vehement--"that they give me
+credit for enough sense to wear rubbers when it's raining! I," again she
+glanced at the watch, "I haven't a single thing to do until four
+o'clock--and it's only just a little after two. I'm going out--_now_. I'm
+going into the streets, or into a tenement, or into a--a _dive_, if
+necessary! I'm going to show them"--the plural pronoun, strangely,
+referred to a certain young man--"that I can help somebody! I'm going to
+show them--"
+
+She was struggling eagerly into her coat; eagerly she pulled her
+tam-o'-shanter over the curls that, even in the city slums, were full of
+sunshine. With her hands thrust staunchly into her pockets, she went out;
+out into the jungle of streets that met, as in the center of a labyrinth,
+in front of the Settlement House.
+
+Always, when she had gone out alone, she had sought a small park not far
+from her new home. It was a comfortingly green little oasis in the desert
+of stone and brick--a little oasis that reminded one of the country. She
+turned toward it now, quite blindly, for the streets confused her--they
+always did. As the crowds closed around her she hurried vaguely, as a
+swimmer hurries just before he loses his head and goes down. She caught
+her breath as she went, for the crowds always made her feel
+submerged--quite as the swimmer feels just before the final plunge. She
+entered the park--it was scarcely more than a square of grass--with a
+very definite feeling of relief, almost of rescue.
+
+As usual, the park was crowded. But park crowds are different from street
+crowds--they are crowds at rest, rather than hurrying, restless throngs.
+Rose-Marie sank upon an iron bench and with wide, childishly distended
+eyes surveyed the people that surged in upon her.
+
+There was a woman with a hideous black wig--the badge of revered Jewish
+motherhood--pressed down over the front of her silvered hair. Rose-Marie,
+a short time ago, would have guessed her age at seventy--now she told
+herself that the woman was probably forty. There was a slim,
+cigarette-smoking youth with pale, shifty eyes. There was an old, old
+man--white-bearded like one of the patriarchs--and there was a
+dark-browed girl who held a drowsy baby to her breast. All of these and
+many more--Italians, Slavs, Russians, Hungarians and an occasional
+Chinaman--passed her by. It seemed to the girl that this section was a
+veritable melting pot of the races--and that every example of every race
+was true to type. She had seen any number of young men with shifty
+eyes--she had seen many old men with white beards. She knew that other
+black-wigged women lived in every tenement; that other dark-browed girls
+were, at that same moment, rocking other babies. She fell to wondering,
+whimsically, whether God had fashioned the people of the slums after some
+half-dozen set patterns--almost as the cutter, in many an alley
+sweatshop, fashions the frocks of a season.
+
+A sharp cry broke in upon her wonderings. It was the cry of an animal in
+utter pain--in blind, unreasoning agony. Rose-Marie was on her feet at
+the first moment that it cut, quiveringly, through the air. With eyes
+distended she whirled about to face a small boy who knelt upon the ground
+behind her bench.
+
+To Rose-Marie the details of the small boy's appearance came back, later,
+with an amazing clarity. Later she could have described his dark, sullen
+eyes, his mouth with its curiously grim quirk at one corner, his shock of
+black hair and his ragged coat. But at the moment she had the ability to
+see only one thing--the scrawny gray kitten that the boy had tied to the
+iron leg of the bench; the shrinking kitten that the boy was torturing
+with a cold, relentless cruelty.
+
+It shrieked again--with an almost human cry--as she started around the
+bench toward it. And the wild throbbing of her heart told her that she
+was witnessing, for the first time, a phase of human nature of which she
+had never dreamed.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+ROSE-MARIE COMES TO THE RESCUE
+
+
+Rose-Marie's hand upon the small boy's coat collar was not gentle. With
+surprising strength, for she was small and slight, she jerked him aside.
+
+"You wicked child!" she exclaimed, and the Young Doctor would have
+chuckled to hear her tone. "You wicked child, what are you doing?"
+
+Without waiting for an answer she knelt beside the pitiful little animal
+that was tied to the bench, and with trembling fingers unloosed the cord
+that held it, noting as she did so how its bones showed, even through its
+coat of fur. When it was at liberty she gathered it close to her breast
+and turned to face the boy.
+
+He had not tried to run away. Even with the anger surging through her,
+Rose-Marie admitted that the child was not--in one sense--a coward. He
+had waited, brazenly perhaps, to hear what she had to say. With blazing
+eyes she said it:
+
+"Why," she questioned, and the anger that made her eyes blaze also put a
+tremor into her voice, "why were you deliberately hurting this kitten?
+Don't you know that kittens can feel pain just as much as you can feel
+pain? Don't you know that it is wicked to make anything suffer? Why were
+you so wicked?"
+
+The boy looked up at her with sullen, dark eyes. The grim twist at one
+corner of his mouth became more pronounced.
+
+"Aw," he said gruffly, "why don't yer mind yer own business?"
+
+If Rose-Marie's hands had been free, she would have taken the boy
+suddenly and firmly by both shoulders. She felt an overwhelming desire to
+shake him--to shake him until his teeth chattered. But both of her hands
+were busy, soothing the gray kitten that shivered against her breast.
+
+"I am minding my own business," she told the boy. "It's my business to
+give help where it's needed, and this kitten," she cuddled it closer,
+"certainly needed help! Haven't you ever been told that you should be
+kind? Like," she faltered, "like Jesus was kind? He wouldn't have hurt
+anything. He loved animals--and He loved boys, too. Why don't you try to
+be the sort of a boy He could love? Why do you try to be bad--to do
+wrong things?"
+
+The eyes of the child were even more sullen--the twist of his mouth was
+even more grim as he listened to Rose-Marie. But when she had finished
+speaking, he answered her--and still he did not try to run away.
+
+"Wot," he questioned, almost in the words of the Young Doctor, "wot do
+you know about things that's right an' things that's wrong? It ain't bad
+t' hurt animals--not if they're little enough so as they ain't able t'
+hurt you!"
+
+Rose-Marie sat down, very suddenly, upon the bench. In all of her
+life--her sheltered, glad life--she had never heard such a brutal creed
+spoken, and from the lips of a child! Her eyes, searching his face, saw
+that he was not trying to be funny, or saucy, or smart. Curiously enough
+she noted that he was quite sincere--that, to him, the torturing of a
+kitten was only a part of the day with its various struggles and
+amusements. When she spoke again her tone was gentle--as gentle as the
+tone with which the other slum children, who came to the Settlement
+House, were familiar.
+
+"Whoever told you," she questioned, "that it's not wrong to hurt an
+animal, so long as it can't fight back?"
+
+The boy eyed her strangely. Rose-Marie could almost detect a gleam of
+latent interest in his dark eyes. And then, as if he had gained a sort of
+confidence in her, he answered.
+
+"Nobody never told me," he said gruffly. "But I _know_."
+
+The kitten against Rose-Marie's breast cried piteously. Perhaps it was
+the hopelessness of the cry that made her want so desperately to make the
+boy understand. Conquering the loathing she had felt toward him she
+managed the ghost of a smile.
+
+"I wish," she said, and the smile became firmer, brighter, as she said
+it, "I wish that you'd sit down, here, beside me. I want to tell you
+about the animals that I've had for pets--and about how they loved me. I
+had a white dog once; his name was Dick. He used to go to the store for
+me, he used to carry my bundles home in his mouth--and he did tricks--"
+
+The boy had seated himself, gingerly, on the bench. He interrupted her,
+and his voice was eager.
+
+"Did yer have t' beat him," he questioned, "t' make him do the tricks?
+Did he bleed when yer beat him?"
+
+Again Rose-Marie gasped. She leaned forward until her face was on a level
+with the boy's face.
+
+"Why," she asked him, "do you think that the only way to teach an animal
+is to teach him by cruelty? I taught my dog tricks by being kind and
+sweet to him. Why do you talk of beatings--I couldn't hurt anything, even
+if I disliked it, until it _bled_!"
+
+The small boy drew back from Rose-Marie. His expression was vaguely
+puzzled--it seemed almost as if he did not comprehend what her
+words meant.
+
+"My pa beats me," he said suddenly, "always he beats me--when he's
+drunk! An' sometimes he beats me when he ain't. He beats Ma, too, an'
+he uster beat Jim, 'n' Ella. He don't dare beat Jim now, though"--this
+proudly--"Jim's as big as he is now, an' Ella--nobody'd dast lay a
+hand on Ella ..." almost as suddenly as he had started to talk, the
+boy stopped.
+
+For the moment the episode of the kitten was a forgotten thing. There was
+only pity, only a blank sort of horror, on Rose-Marie's face.
+
+"Doesn't your father love you--any of you?" she asked.
+
+"Naw." The boy's mouth was a straight line--a straight and very bitter
+line, for such a young mouth. "Naw, he only loves his booze. He hits me
+all th' time--an' he's four times as big as me! An' so I hit whoever's
+smaller'n I am. An' even if they cry I don't care. I hate things that's
+little--that can't take care o' themselves. Everything had oughter be
+able t' take care of itself!"
+
+"Haven't you"--again Rose-Marie asked a question--"haven't you ever loved
+anything that was smaller than you are? Haven't you ever had a pet?
+Haven't you ever felt that you must protect and take care of some one--or
+something? Haven't you?"
+
+All at once the boy was smiling, and the smile lit up his small, dark
+face as a candle, slowly flickering, brings cheer and brightness to a
+dull, lonely room.
+
+"I love Lily," he told her. "I wouldn't let nobody touch Lily! If Pa so
+much as spoke mean to her--I'd kill him. I'd kill him with a knife!"
+
+Rose-Marie shuddered inwardly at the thought. But her voice was very even
+as she spoke.
+
+"Who is Lily?" she asked.
+
+The boy had slid down along the bench. He was so close to her that his
+shabby coat sleeve touched her blue one.
+
+"Lily's my kid sister," he said, and, miracle of miracles, his voice held
+a note of tenderness. "Say--Miss, I'm sorry I hurt th' cat."
+
+With a sudden feeling of warmth Rose-Marie moved just a fraction of an
+inch closer to the boy. She knew, somehow, that his small, curiously
+abject apology was in a way related to the "kid sister"; she knew, almost
+instinctively, that this Lily who could make a smile come to the dark
+little face, who could make a tenderness dwell in those hard young eyes,
+was the only avenue by which she could reach this strange child. She
+spoke to him suddenly, impulsively.
+
+"I'd like to see your Lily; I'd like to see her, awfully," she told
+him. "Will you bring her some time to call on me? I live at the
+Settlement House."
+
+A subtle change had come over the child's face. He slid, hurriedly, from
+the bench.
+
+"Oh," he said, "yer one o' them! You sing hymns 'n' pray 'n' tell folks
+t' take baths. I know. Well, I can't bring Lily t' see you--not ever!"
+
+Rose-Marie had also risen to her feet.
+
+"Then," she said eagerly, "let me come and see Lily. Where do you live?"
+
+The boy's eyes had fallen. It was plain that he did not want to
+answer--that he was experiencing the almost inarticulate embarrassment of
+childhood.
+
+"We live," he told her at last, "in that house over there." His pointing
+finger indicated the largest and grimiest of the tenements that loomed,
+dark and high, above the squalor of a side street. "But you wouldn't
+wanter come--there!"
+
+Rose-Marie caught her breath sharply. She was remembering how the
+Superintendent had forbidden her to do visiting, how the Young Doctor
+had laughed at her desire to be of service. She knew what they would say
+if she told them that she was going into a tenement to see a strange
+child named Lily. Perhaps that was why her voice had an excited ring as
+she answered.
+
+"Yes, I would come there!" she told the boy. "Tell me what floor you live
+on, and what your name is, and when it would be best for me to come?"
+
+"My name's Bennie Volsky," the boy said slowly. "We're up five flights,
+in th' back. D'yer really mean that you'll come--an' see Lily?"
+
+Rose-Marie nodded soberly. How could the child know that her heart was
+all athrob with the call of a great adventure?
+
+"Yes, I mean it," she told him. "When shall I come?"
+
+The boy's grubby hand shot out and rested upon her sleeve.
+
+"Come to-morrow afternoon," he told her. "Say, yer all right!" He turned,
+swiftly, and ran through the crowd, and in a moment had disappeared like
+a small drab-coloured city chameleon.
+
+Rose-Marie, standing by the bench, watched the place where he had
+disappeared. And then, all at once, she turned swiftly--just as
+swiftly as the boy had--and started back across the park toward the
+Settlement House.
+
+"I won't tell them!" she was saying over and over in her heart, as she
+went, "I won't tell them! They wouldn't let me go, if I did.... I won't
+tell them!"
+
+The kitten was still held tight in her arms. It rested, quite
+contentedly, against her blue coat. Perhaps it knew that there was a
+warm, friendly place--even for little frightened animals--in the
+Settlement House.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+"THERE'S NO PLACE--"
+
+
+When Rose-Marie paused in front of the tenement, at three o'clock on the
+following afternoon, she felt like a naughty little girl who is playing
+truant from school. When she remembered the way that she had avoided the
+Superintendent's almost direct questions, she blushed with an inward
+sense of shame. But when she thought of the Young Doctor's offer to go
+with her--"wherever she was going"--she threw back her head with a
+defiant little gesture. She knew well that the Young Doctor was sorry for
+yesterday's quarrel--she knew that a night beside the dying Mrs. Celleni,
+and the wails of the Cohen baby, had temporarily softened his viewpoint
+upon life. And yet--he had said that they were soulless--these people
+that she had come to help! He would have condemned Bennie Volsky from the
+first--but she had detected the glimmerings of something fine in the
+child! No--despite his more tolerant attitude--she knew that, underneath,
+his convictions were unchanged. She was glad that she had gone out upon
+her adventure alone.
+
+With a heart that throbbed in quick staccato beats, she mounted the steps
+of the tenement. Little dark-eyed children moved away from her,
+apparently on every side, but somehow she scarcely noticed them. The
+doorway yawned, like an open mouth, in front of her--and she could think
+of nothing else. As she went over the dark threshold she remembered
+stories that she had read about people who go in at tenement doorways and
+are never seen again. Every one has read such stories in the daily
+newspapers--and perhaps some of them are true!
+
+A faint light flickered in through the doorway. It made the ascent of the
+first flight of creaking stairs quite easy. At least Rose-Marie could
+step aside from the piles of rubbish and avoid the rickety places. She
+wondered, as she went up, her fingers gingerly touching the dirty
+hand-rail, how people could exist under such wretched conditions.
+
+The second flight was harder to manage. The light from the narrow doorway
+was shut off, and there were no windows. There might have been gas jets
+upon every landing--Rose-Marie supposed that there were--but it was
+mid-afternoon, and they had not yet been lighted. She groped her way up
+the second flight, and the third, feeling carefully along each step with
+her foot before she put her weight upon it.
+
+On the fourth flight she paused for a moment to catch her breath. But she
+realized, as she paused, that even breathing had to be done under
+difficulties in this place. There was no ventilation of any sort, so far
+as she could tell--all about her floated the odours of boiled cabbage,
+and fried onions, and garlic. And there were other odours, too; the
+indescribable smells of soiled clothing and soap-suds and greasy dishes.
+
+But in Rose-Marie's mind, the odours--poignant though they were--took
+second place to the sounds. Never, she told herself, had she imagined
+that so many different sorts of noises could exist in the same place at
+one and the same time. There were the cries and sobs of little children,
+the moans of sickness, the thuds of falling furniture and the crashes of
+breaking crockery. There were yells of rage, and--worst of all--bursts of
+appalling profanity. Rose-Marie, standing there in the darkness of the
+fourth flight, heard words that she had never expected to hear--phrases
+of which she had never dreamed. She shuddered as she started up the fifth
+flight, and when, at last, she stood in front of the Volsky flat, she
+experienced almost a feeling of relief. At least she would be shut off,
+in a moment, from those alien and terrible sounds--at least, in a moment,
+she would be in a _home_.
+
+To most of us--particularly if we have grown up in an atmosphere such as
+had always sheltered Rose-Marie--the very sound of the word "home" brings
+a certain sense of warmth and comfort. Home stands for shelter and
+protection and love. "Be it ever so humble," the old song tells us, "be
+it ever so humble ..."
+
+And Rose-Marie, knocking timidly upon the Volsky door, expected to find a
+home. She expected it to be humble in the truest sense of the word--to be
+ragged and poverty-stricken and mean. And yet she could not feel that it
+would be utterly divorced from the ideals she had always built around her
+conception of the word. She expected it to be a home because a family
+lived there together--a mother, and a father, and children.
+
+In answer to her knock the door swung open--a little way. The glow of a
+dingy lamp fell about her, through the opening--she felt suddenly as if
+she had been swept, willy-nilly, before the footlights of some hostile
+stage. For a moment she stood blinking. And as she stood there, quite
+unable to see, she heard the voice of Bennie Volsky, speaking in a
+hoarse whisper.
+
+"It's you, Miss!" said the voice, and it was as full of intense
+wonderment as a voice could be. "I never thought that you'd come--I
+didn't think you was on th' level. So many folks say they'll do things--"
+he broke off, and then--"Walk in, quiet," he told her slowly. "Don't make
+any noise, if yer can help it! Pa's come home, all lit up. An' he's
+asleep, in th' corner! There'll be--" he broke off--"There'll be th'
+dickens t' pay, if Pa wakes up! But walk in, still-like. An' yer can see
+Ma an' all, an'--_Lily_!"
+
+Rose-Marie, whose eyes had now become accustomed to the dim light,
+stepped past the boy and into the room. Her hand, in passing, touched his
+arm lightly, for she knew that he was labouring under intense excitement.
+She stepped into the room, on mousy-quiet feet--and then, with a quick
+gasp, drew back again.
+
+Never, in her wildest dreams of poverty, had Rose-Marie supposed that
+squalor, such as she saw in the Volsky home, could exist. Never had she
+supposed that a family could live in such cramped, airless quarters.
+Never had she thought that filth, such as she saw in the room, was
+possible. It all seemed, somehow, an unbelievably bad dream--a dream in
+which she was appearing, with startling realism. Her comfortable picture
+of a home was vanishing--vanishing as suddenly and completely as a soap
+bubble vanishes, if pricked by a pin.
+
+"Why--why, Bennie!" she began. But the child was not listening. He had
+darted from her side and was dragging forward, by one listless,
+work-coarsened hand, a pallid, drooping woman.
+
+"Dis is my ma," he told Rose-Marie. "She didn't know yer was comin'. I
+didn't tell her!"
+
+It seemed to Rose-Marie that there was a scared sort of appeal in the
+woman's eyes as they travelled, slowly, over her face. But there was
+not even appeal in the tone of her voice--it was all a drab,
+colourless monotone.
+
+"Whatcha come here fer?" she questioned. "Pa, he's home. If he should ter
+wake up--" She left the sentence unfinished.
+
+Almost instinctively the eyes of Rose-Marie travelled past the figure
+of Mrs. Volsky. There was nothing in that figure to hold her gaze--it
+was so vague, so like a shadow of something that had been. She saw the
+few broken chairs, the half-filled wash tub, the dish-pan with its
+freight of soiled cups and plates. She saw the gas stove, with its
+battered coffee-pot, and a mattress or two piled high with dingy
+bedding. And, in one corner, she saw--with a new sense of horror--the
+reclining figure of Pa.
+
+Pa was sleeping. Sleeping heavily, with his mouth open and his tousled
+head slipping to one side. One great hairy hand was clenched about an
+empty bottle--one huge foot, stockingless and half out of its shoe, was
+dragging limply off the heap of blankets that was his bed. A stubble of
+beard made his already dark face even more sinister, his tousled hair
+looked as if it had never known the refining influences of a comb or
+brush. As Rose-Marie stared at him, half fascinated, he turned--with a
+spasmodic, drunken movement--and flung one heavy arm above his head.
+
+The room was not a large one. But, at that moment, it seemed appallingly
+spacious to Rose-Marie. She turned, almost with a feeling of affection,
+toward Bennie. At least she had seen him before. And, as if he
+interpreted her feeling, Bennie spoke.
+
+"We got two other rooms," he told her, "one that Ella an' Lily sleep in,
+an' one that Jim pays fer, his own self. Ma an' Pa an' me--we sleep
+_here_! Say, don't you be too scared o' Pa--he'll stay asleep fer a long
+time, now. He won't wake up unless he's shook. Will he, Ma?"
+
+Mrs. Volsky nodded her head with a worn out, apathetic movement.
+Noiselessly, but with the appearance of a certain terrible effort under
+the shell of quiet, she moved away across the room toward the stove.
+
+"She's goin' t' warm up th' coffee," Bennie said. "She'll give you some,
+in a minute, if yer want it!"
+
+Rose-Marie was about to speak, about to assure Bennie that she didn't
+want any of the coffee, when steps sounded on the stairs. They were
+hurried steps; steps suggesting to the listener that five flights were
+nothing, after all! Rose-Marie found herself turning as a hand fell
+heavily upon a door-knob, and the door swung in.
+
+A young man stood jauntily upon the threshold. Rose-Marie's first
+impression of him was one of extreme, almost offensive neatness--of sleek
+hair, that looked like patent leather, and of highly polished brown
+shoes. She saw that his blue and white striped collar was speckless, that
+his blue tie was obviously new, that his trousers were creased to an
+almost dangerous edge. But it was the face of the young man from which
+Rose-Marie shrank back--a clever, sharp face with narrow, horribly
+speculative eyes and a thin-lipped red mouth. It was a handsome face,
+yes, but--
+
+The voice of Bennie broke, suddenly, across her speculations.
+"Jim," he said.
+
+Still jauntily--Rose-Marie realized that jauntiness was his keynote--the
+young man entered the room. His sharp eyes travelled with lightning-like
+rapidity over the place, resting a moment on the sleeping figure of Pa
+before they hurried past him to Rose-Marie. He surveyed her coolly,
+taking in every feature, every fold of her garments, with a studied
+boldness that was somehow offensive.
+
+"Who's she?" he questioned abruptly, of any one who cared to answer, and
+one manicured finger pointed in her direction. "Where'd she come from?"
+
+Bennie was the one who spoke. Rather gallantly he stepped in front of
+Rose-Marie.
+
+"She's a friend of mine," he said; "she lives by th' Settlement House.
+She come up here t' see me, 'n' Ma, 'n' Lily. You leave her be--y'
+understand?"
+
+The young man laughed, and his laugh was curiously hard and dry.
+
+"Oh, sure!" he told Bennie. "I'll leave her be! What," he turned to
+Rose-Marie with an insolent smile, "what's yer name?"
+
+Rose-Marie met his insolent gaze with a calm expression. No one would
+have guessed that she was trembling inwardly.
+
+"My name," she told him, "is Rose-Marie Thompson. I live in the
+Settlement House, and I came to see your sister."
+
+"Well," the young man's insolent gaze was still studying Rose-Marie,
+"well, she'll be up soon. I passed 'er on th' stairs. But," he laughed
+again, "why didn't yer come t' see me--huh?"
+
+Rose-Marie, having no answer, turned expectantly toward the door. If this
+Jim had passed his sister on the stairs, she couldn't be very far away.
+As if in reply to her supposition, the door swung open again and a tall,
+dark-eyed girl came into the room. Rose-Marie saw with her first swift
+glance that the red upon the girl's cheeks was too high to be quite
+natural--that the scarlet of her lips was over-vivid. And yet, despite
+the patently artificial colouring, she realized that the girl was
+beautiful with a high strung, almost thoroughbred beauty. She wondered
+how this beauty had been born of the dim woman who seemed so colourless
+and the sodden brute who lay snoring in the comer.
+
+Her train of thought was broken, suddenly. For the young man was
+speaking. Rose-Marie disliked, somehow, the very tone of his voice.
+
+"Here's a girl t' see you, Ella," he said. "She's from th' Settlement
+House--she says! Maybe she wants," sarcastically, "that you should join a
+Bible Class!"
+
+The girl's eyes were flashing with a dangerously hard light. She turned
+angrily to Rose-Marie. But before she could say anything, the child,
+Bennie, had interposed.
+
+"She didn't come t' see _you_" he told his older sister--"she don't want
+t' see you--like those other wimmen did. She come t' see _Lily_--"
+
+He paused and Rose-Marie, who had gathered that social service workers
+were not welcome visitors, went on breathlessly, from where he left off.
+
+"I _am_ from the Settlement House," she told Ella, "and I'd like awfully
+to have you join our classes. But that wasn't why I came here. Bennie
+told me that he had a dear little sister. And I came to see her."
+
+A change swept miraculously over Ella's cold face. Rose-Marie could see,
+all at once, that she and her young brother were strikingly alike--that
+Jim was the different one in this family.
+
+"I'll get Lily," Ella said simply, and there was a warmth, a tenderness
+in her dark eyes that had been so hard. "I didn't understand," she added,
+as she went quickly past Rose-Marie and into the small inner room that
+Bennie had said his sisters shared. In a moment she came out leading a
+small girl by the hand.
+
+"This is Lily!" she said softly.
+
+Even in that dingy place--perhaps accentuated by the very dinginess of
+it--Lily's blond loveliness struck Rose-Marie with a sense of shock. The
+child might have been a flower--the very flower whose name she
+bore--growing upon an ash heap. Her beauty made the rest of the room fade
+into dim outlines--made Jim and Ella and Bennie seem heavy, and somehow
+overfed. Even Pa, snoring lustily, became almost a shadow. Rose-Marie
+stepped toward the child impulsively, with outflung arms.
+
+"Oh, you dear!" she said shakily, "you dear!"
+
+Nobody spoke. Only Ella, with gentle hands, pushed her little sister
+forward. The child's great blue eyes looked past Rose-Marie, and a vague
+smile quivered on her lips.
+
+"Oh, you dear!" Rose-Marie exclaimed again, and went down on her knees on
+the dirty floor--real women will always kneel before a beautiful child.
+
+Lily might have been four years old. Her hair, drawn back from her white
+little face, was the colour of pale gold, and her lips were faintly
+coral. But it was her deep eyes, with their vague expression, that
+clutched, somehow, at Rose-Marie's heart.
+
+"Tell me that you're going to like me, Lily!" she almost implored. "I
+love little girls."
+
+The child did not answer--indeed, she did not seem to hear. But one thin
+little hand, creeping out, touched Rose-Marie's face with a gesture that
+was singularly appealing, singularly full of affection. When the fingers
+touched her cheek, Rose-Marie felt a sudden suspicion, a sudden dread.
+She noticed, all at once, that no one was speaking--that the room was
+quite still, except for the beastial grunts of the sleeping Pa.
+
+"Why," she asked, quite without meaning to, "why doesn't she answer me?
+She isn't afraid of me, is she? Why doesn't she say something?"
+
+It was, curiously enough, Mrs. Volsky who answered. Even her voice--that
+was usually so dull and monotonous--held a certain tremor.
+
+"Lily," she said slowly, "can't spick--'r hear.... An' she's--blind!"
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+A LILY IN THE SLUMS
+
+
+Rose-Marie started back from the child with a sickening sense of shock.
+All at once she realized the reason why Bennie's eyes grew tender at the
+mention of his little sister--why Ella forgot anger and suspicion when
+Lily came into the room. She understood why Mrs. Volsky's dull voice held
+love and sorrow. And yet, as she looked at the small girl, it seemed
+almost incredible that she should be so afflicted. Deaf and dumb and
+blind! Never to hear the voices of those who loved her, never to see the
+beautiful things of life, never--even--to speak! Rose-Marie choked back a
+sob, and glanced across the child's cloud of pale golden hair at Ella. As
+their eyes met she knew that they were, in some strange way, friends.
+
+With a sudden, overwhelming pity, her arms reached out again to Lily. As
+she gathered the child close she was surprised at the slenderness of the
+tiny figure, at the neatness of the faded gingham frock that blended in
+tone with the great, sightless eyes. All at once she remembered what
+Bennie had said to her, the day before, in the park.
+
+"I love Lily," he had told her, "I wouldn't let nobody hurt Lily! If any
+one--even Pa, so much as spoke mean to her--I'd kill him...."
+
+Glancing about the room, at the faces of the others, she sensed a silent
+echo of Bennie's words. Mrs. Volsky, who would keep neither her flat nor
+herself neat, quite evidently saw to it that Lily's little dress was
+spotless. Ella, whose temper would flare up at the slightest word, cared
+for the child with the tender efficiency of a professional nurse;
+Bennie's face, as he looked at his tiny sister, had taken on a cherubic
+softness. And Jim ... Rose-Marie glanced at Jim and was startled out of
+her reflections. For Jim was not looking at Lily. His gaze was fixed upon
+her own face with an intensity that frightened her. With a sudden impulse
+she spoke directly to him.
+
+"You must be very kind to this little sister of yours," she told him.
+"She needs every bit of love and affection and consideration that her
+family can give her!"
+
+Jim, his gaze still upon her face, shrugged his shoulders. But before
+he could answer Ella had come a step closer to Rose-Marie. Her eyes
+were flashing.
+
+"Jim," she said, "ain't got any love or kindness or consideration in him!
+Jim thinks that Lily ain't got any more feelin's than a puppy dog--'cause
+she can't answer back. Oh," in response to the question in Rose-Marie's
+face, "oh, he'd never put a finger on her--not that! But he don't speak
+kind to her, like we do. It's enough fer him that she can't hear th'
+words he lays his tongue to. Even Pa--"
+
+Suddenly, as if in answer to his spoken name, there came a scuffling
+sound from the corner where Pa was sleeping. All at once the empty bottle
+dropped from the unclenched hand, the mouth fell open in a prodigious
+yawn, the eyes became wide, burned-out wells of drunkenness. And as she
+watched, Rose-Marie saw the room cleared in an amazing fashion. She heard
+Mrs. Volsky's terrified whisper, "He's wakin' up!" She heard Jim's harsh
+laugh; she saw Ella, with a fiercely maternal sweep of her strong arms,
+gather the little Lily close to her breast and dart toward the inner
+room. And then, as she stood dazedly watching the mountain of sodden
+flesh that was Pa rear itself to a sitting posture, and then to a
+standing one, she felt a hot little hand touch her own.
+
+"We better clear out," said the voice of Bennie. "We better clear out
+pretty quick! Pa's awful bad, sometimes, when he's just wakin' up!"
+
+With a quickness not unlike the bump at the end of a
+falling-through-space dream, Rose-Marie felt herself drawn from the
+room--heard the door close with a slam behind her. And then she was
+hurrying after the shadowy form of Bennie, down the five rickety flights
+of stairs--past the same varied odours and the same appalling sounds that
+she had noticed on the way up!
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+ANOTHER QUARREL
+
+
+When Rose-Marie came out into the sunlight of the street she glanced at
+her watch and saw, with an almost overwhelming surprise, that it was only
+four o'clock. It was just an hour since she had entered the cavern-like
+doorway of the tenement. But in that hour she had come, for the first
+time, against life in the rough. She had seen degeneracy, and poverty,
+and--she was thinking of the expression in Jim's eyes--a menace that she
+did not at all understand. She had seen the waste of broken middle age
+and the pity of blighted childhood. She had seen fear and, if she had
+stayed a few moments longer, she would have seen downright brutality. Her
+hand, reaching out, clutched Bennie's hand.
+
+"Dear," she said--and realized, from the startled expression of his eyes,
+that he had not often been called "Dear,"--"is it always like that, in
+your home?"
+
+Bennie looked up into her eyes. He seemed, somehow, younger than he had
+appeared the day before, younger and softer.
+
+"Yes, Miss," he told her, "it's always like that, except when it's
+worse!"
+
+"And," Rose-Marie was still asking questions, "do your older sister and
+brother just drift in, at any time, like that? And is your father home in
+the middle of the day? Don't any of them work?"
+
+Bennie's barriers of shyness had been burned away by the warmth of her
+friendship. He was in a mood to tell anything.
+
+"Pa, he works sometimes," he said. "An' Ella--she uster work till she had
+a fight with her boss last week. An' now she says she ain't gotta work no
+more 'cause there's a feller as will give her everythin' she wants, if
+she says th' word! An' Jim--I ain't never seen him do nothin', but he
+always has a awful lot o' money. He must do his workin' at night--after
+I'm asleep!"
+
+Rose-Marie, her mind working rapidly, realized that Bennie had given
+revelations of which he did not even dream. Pa--his condition was what
+she had supposed it to be--but Ella was drifting toward danger-shoals
+that she had never imagined! Well she knew the conditions under which a
+girl of Ella's financial status stops working--she had heard many such
+cases discussed, with an amazing frankness, during her short stay at the
+Settlement House. And Jim--Jim with his sleek, patent-leather hair, and
+his rat-like face--Jim did his work at night! Rose-Marie could not
+suppress the shudder that ran over her. Quickly she changed the subject
+to the one bright spot in the Volsky family--to Lily.
+
+"Your little sister," she asked Bennie, "has she always been as she is
+now? Wasn't there ever a time when she could hear, or speak, or see?"
+
+Bennie winked back a suspicion of tears before he answered. Rose-Marie,
+who found herself almost forgetting the episode of the kitten, liked him
+better for the tears. "Yes, Miss," he told her, "she was born all
+healthy, Ma says. But she had a sickness--when she was a baby. An' she
+ain't been right since!"
+
+They walked the rest of the way in silence--a silence of untold depth.
+But it was that silent walk, Rose-Marie felt afterward, that cemented the
+strange affection that had sprung suddenly into flower between them. As
+they said good-bye, in front of the brownstone stoop of the Settlement
+House, there was none of the usual restraint that exists between a child
+and a grown-up. And when Rose-Marie asked Bennie, quite as a matter of
+course, to come to some of their boys' clubs he assented in a manner as
+casual as her own.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As she sat down to dinner, that night, Rose-Marie was beaming with
+happiness and the pride of achievement. The Superintendent, tired after
+the day's work, noticed her radiance with a wearily sympathetic
+smile--the Young Doctor, coming in briskly from his round of calls, was
+aware of her pink cheeks and her sparkling eyes. All at once he realized
+that Rose-Marie was a distinct addition to the humdrum life of the place;
+that she was like a sweet old-fashioned garden set down in the gardenless
+slums. He started to say something of the sort before he remembered that
+a quarrel lay, starkly, between them.
+
+Rose-Marie, herself, could scarcely have told why she was so bubbling
+over with gladness. When she left the tenement home of the Volskys she
+had been exceedingly depressed, when she parted from Bennie at the
+Settlement House steps she had been ready to cry. But the hours between
+that parting and dinnertime had brought her a sort of assurance, a sort
+of joyous bravery. She felt that at last she had found her true vocation,
+her real place in the sun. The Volsky family presented to her a very
+genuine challenge.
+
+She glanced, covertly, at the Young Doctor. He was eating soup, and no
+man is at his best while eating soup. And yet as she watched him, she
+considered very seriously whether she should tell him of her adventure.
+His skill might, perhaps, find some way out for Lily, who had not been
+born a mute, who had come into the world with seeing eyes. Bennie had
+told her that the child's condition was the result of an illness. Perhaps
+the Young Doctor might be able to effect at least a partial cure. Perhaps
+it was selfish of her--utterly, absurdly selfish, to keep the situation
+to herself.
+
+The Superintendent's voice broke, sharply, into her reverie. It was a
+pleasant voice, and yet Rose-Marie found herself resenting its
+questioning tone.
+
+"Did you have a pleasant afternoon, dear?" the Superintendent was asking.
+"I noticed that you were out for a long while, alone!"
+
+"Why, yes," Rose-Marie faltered, as she spoke, and, to her annoyance, she
+could feel the red wave of a blush creeping up over her face (Rose-Marie
+had never learned to control her blushes). "Why, yes, I had a very
+delightful afternoon!"
+
+The Young Doctor, glancing up from his soup, felt a sudden desire to
+tease. Rose-Marie, with her cheeks all flushed, made a startlingly
+colourful, extremely young picture.
+
+"You're blushing!" he told her accusingly. "You're blushing!"
+
+Rose-Marie, feeling the blushes creep still higher, knew a rude impulse
+to slap the Young Doctor. All of her desire to confide in him died away,
+as suddenly as it had been born. He was the man who had said that the
+people who lived in poverty are soulless. He would scoff at the Volskys,
+and at her desire to help them. Worse than that--he might keep her from
+seeing the Volskys again. And, in keeping her from seeing them, he would
+also keep her from making Bennie into a real, wholesome boy--he would
+keep her from showing Ella the dangers of the precipice that she was
+skirting. Of course, he might help Lily. But, Rose-Marie told herself
+that perhaps even Lily--golden-haired, angelic little Lily--might seem
+soulless to him.
+
+"I'm not blushing, Dr. Blanchard," she said shortly, and could have
+bitten her tongue for saying it.
+
+The Young Doctor laughed with a boyish vigour.
+
+"I thought," he said annoyingly, "that you were a Christian, Miss
+Rose-Marie Thompson!"
+
+Rose-Marie felt a tide of quite definite anger rising in her heart.
+
+"I am a Christian!" she retorted.
+
+"Then," the Young Doctor was still laughing, "then you must never, never
+tell untruths. You are blushing!"
+
+The Superintendent interrupted. It had been her role, lately, to
+interrupt quarrels between the two who sat on either side of her table.
+
+"Don't tease, Billy Blanchard!" she said, sternly. "If Rose-Marie went
+anywhere this afternoon, she certainly had a right to. And she also has a
+right to blush. I'm glad, in these sophisticated days, to see a girl who
+can blush!"
+
+The Young Doctor was leaning back in his chair, surveying the pair of
+them with unconcealed amusement.
+
+"How you women do stick together!" he said. "Talk about men being
+clannish! I believe," he chuckled, "from the way Miss Thompson is
+blushing, that she's got a very best beau! I believe that she was out
+with him, this afternoon!"
+
+Rose-Marie, who had always been taught that deceit is wicked, felt a
+sudden, unexplainable urge to be wicked! She told herself that she hated
+Dr. Blanchard--she told herself that he was the most unsympathetic of
+men! His eyes, fixed mirthfully upon her, brought words--that she
+scarcely meant to say--to her lips.
+
+"Well," she answered slowly and distinctly, "what if I was?"
+
+There was silence for a moment. And then--with something of an
+effort--the Superintendent spoke.
+
+"I told you," she said, "not to bother Rose-Marie, Doctor. If Rose-Marie
+was out with a young man I'm sure that she had every right to be.
+Rose-Marie"--was it possible that her eyes were fixed a shade inquiringly
+upon the blushing girl--"would have nothing to do with any one who had
+not been approved by her aunts. And she realizes that she is, in a way,
+under my care--that I am more or less responsible for her safety and
+welfare. Rose-Marie is trustworthy, absolutely trustworthy. And she is
+old enough to take care of herself. You must not bother her, Billy
+Blanchard!"
+
+It was a long speech for the Superintendent, and it was a kindly one. It
+was also a speech to invite confidences. But--strangely
+enough--Rose-Marie could not help feeling that there was a question half
+concealed in the kindliness of it. She could not help feeling that the
+Superintendent was just a trifle worried over the prospect of an unknown
+young man.
+
+It was her time, then, to admit that there was nobody, really--that she
+had gone out on an adventure by herself, that there had been no "beau."
+But the consciousness of the Young Doctor's eyes, fixed upon her face,
+prohibited all speech. She could not tell him about the Volskys--neither
+could she admit that no young man was interested in her. Every girl wants
+to seem popular in the eyes of some member of the opposite sex--even
+though that member may be an unpleasant person--whom she dislikes. And
+so, with a feeling of utter meanness in her soul--with a real weight of
+deceit upon her heart--she smiled into the Superintendent's anxious face.
+
+"I do appreciate the way you feel about me," she said softly, "I do,
+indeed! You may be sure that I won't do anything that either you, or my
+aunts, would disapprove of!"
+
+After all, she assured herself a trifle uncomfortably, she had in no way
+told a direct falsehood. They had assumed too much and she had not
+corrected their assumptions. She said fiercely, in her heart, that she
+was not to blame if they insisted upon taking things for granted!
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+AND ANOTHER
+
+
+As the days crept into weeks, Rose-Marie no longer felt the dull unrest
+of inaction. She was busy at the Settlement House--her clubs for mothers
+and young girls, her kindergarten for the little tots, had grown
+amazingly popular. And at the times when she was not busy at the
+Settlement House, she had the Volsky family and their many problems to
+occupy her.
+
+The Volsky family--and their many problems! Rose-Marie would have found
+it hard to tell which problem was the most important! Of course Lily came
+first--her infirmities and her sweetness made her the central figure. But
+the problem of Ella was a more vital one to watch--it was, somehow, more
+immediate. Rose-Marie had found it hard to reach Ella--except when Lily
+was the topic of conversation; except when Lily's welfare was to be
+considered, she stayed silently in the background. But the flashings of
+her great dark eyes, the quiverings of her too scarlet mouth, were
+ominous. Rose-Marie could see that the untidiness of the flat, the
+drunken mutterings of Pa, and her mother's carelessness and dirt had
+strained Ella's resistance to the breaking point. Some day there would be
+a crash and, upon that day Ella would disappear like a gorgeous butterfly
+that drifts across the road, and out of sight. Rose-Marie was hoping to
+push that day into the background--to make it only a dim uncertainty
+rather than the sword of Damocles that it was. But she could only hope.
+
+Bennie, too, was a problem. But it was Bennie who cheered Rose-Marie when
+she felt that her efforts in behalf of Ella were failing. For Bennie's
+brain was the fertile ground in which she could plant ideals, and dreams.
+Bennie was young enough to change, and easily. He got into the way of
+waiting for her, after his school had been dismissed, in the little park.
+And there, seated close together on an iron bench, they would talk; and
+Rose-Marie would tell endless stories. Most of the stories were about
+knights who rode upon gallant quests, and about old-time courtesy, and
+about wonderful animals. But sometimes she told him of her home in the
+country--of apple trees in bloom, and frail arbutus hiding under the
+snow. She told him of coasting parties, and bonfires, and trees to climb.
+And he listened, star-eyed and adoring. They made a pretty picture
+together--the slim, rosy-cheeked girl and the ragged little boy, with the
+pale, city sunshine falling, like a mist, all about them.
+
+Lily and Ella and Bennie--Rose-Marie loved them, all three. But Jim
+Volsky was the unsolvable problem--the one that she tried to push to the
+back of her mind, to avoid. Mrs. Volsky and Pa she gave up as nearly
+hopeless--she kept, as much as possible, out of Pa's way, and Mrs. Volsky
+could only be helped in the attaining of creature comforts--her spirit
+seemed dead! But Jim insisted upon intruding upon her moments in the
+flat; he monopolized conversations, and asked impertinent questions, and
+stared. More than once he had offered to "walk her home" as she was
+leaving; more than once he had thrust himself menacingly across her path.
+But she had managed, neatly, to avoid him.
+
+Rose-Marie was afraid of Jim. She admitted it to herself--she even
+admitted, at times, that the Young Doctor might be of assistance if any
+emergency should arise out of Jim's sleek persistence. She had noticed,
+from the first, that the doctor was an impressive man among men--she had
+seen the encouraging swell of muscles through the warm tweed of his coat
+sleeve. But to have asked his help in the controlling of Jim would have
+been an admission of deceit, of weakness, of failure! To prove her own
+theory that the people were real, underneath--to prove that they had some
+sort of a code, and worth-while impulses--she had to make the reformation
+of the Volsky family her own, individual task.
+
+Yes--Rose-Marie was busy. Almost she hated to give up moments of her time
+to the letters she had to write home--to the sewing that she had to do.
+She made few friends among the teachers and visitors who thronged the
+Settlement House by day--she was far too tired, when night came, to meet
+with the Young Doctor and the Superintendent in the cosy little
+living-room. But often when her activities lasted well along into the
+evening, often when her clubs gave sociables or entertainments, she was
+forced to welcome the Young Doctor (the Superintendent was always
+welcome); to make room for him beside her own place.
+
+It was during one of these entertainments--her Girls' Sewing Society was
+giving a party--that she and the Young Doctor had their first real talk.
+Before the quarrel at the luncheon table they had had little time
+together; since the quarrel the Young Doctor had seldom been able to
+corner Rose-Marie. But at the entertainment they were placed, by the hand
+of circumstance, upon a wooden settee in the back of the room. And there,
+for the better part of two hours--while Katie Syrop declaimed poetry and
+Helen Merskovsky played upon the piano, and others recited long and
+monotonous dialogues--they were forced to stay.
+
+The Young Doctor was in a chastened mood. He applauded heartily whenever
+a part of the program came to a close; the comments that he made behind
+his hand were neither sarcastic nor condescending. He praised the work
+that Rose-Marie had done and then, while she was glowing--almost against
+her will--from the warmth of that praise, he ventured a remark that had
+nothing to do with the work.
+
+"When I see you," he told her very seriously, "when I see you, sitting
+here in one of our gray coloured meeting rooms, I can't help thinking how
+appropriate your name is. Rose-Marie--there's a flower, isn't there,
+that's named Rosemary? I like flowery names!"
+
+Rose-Marie laughed, as lightly as she could, to cover a strange feeling
+of embarrassment.
+
+"Most people don't like them," she said--"flowery names, I mean. I don't
+myself. I like names like Jane, and Anne, and Nancy. I like names like
+Phyllis and Sarah. I've always felt that my first name didn't fit my last
+one. Thompson," she was warming to her subject, "is such a matter-of-fact
+name. There's no romance in it. But Rose-Marie--"
+
+The Young Doctor interrupted.
+
+"But Rose-Marie," he finished for her, "is teeming with romance! It
+suggests vague perfumes, and twilight in the country, and gay little
+lights shining through the dusk. It suggests poetry."
+
+Rose-Marie had folded her hands, softly, in her lap. Her eyes were bent
+upon them.
+
+"My mother," she said, and her voice was quiet and tender, "loved poetry.
+I've heard how she used to read it every afternoon, in her garden. She
+loved perfumes, too, and twilight in the country. My mother was the sort
+of a woman who would have found the city a bit hard, I think, to live in.
+Beauty meant such a lot--to her. She gave me my name because she thought,
+just as you think, that it had a hint of lovely things in it. And, even
+though I sometimes feel that I'd like a plainer one, I can't be sorry
+that she gave it to me. For it was a part of her--a gift that was built
+out of her imagination," all at once she coughed, perhaps to cover the
+slight tremor in her voice, and then--
+
+"To change the subject," she said, "I'll tell you what Rosemary really
+is. You said that you thought it was a flower. It's more than a flower,"
+she laughed shakily, "it's a sturdy, evergreeny sort of little shrub. It
+has a clean fragrance, a trifle like mint. And it bears small blue
+blossoms. Folk say that it stands for remembrance," suddenly her eyes
+were down, again, upon her clasped hands. "Let's stop talking about
+flowers and the country--and mothers--" she said suddenly. Her voice
+broke upon the last word.
+
+The Young Doctor's understanding glance was on the girl's down-bent face.
+After a moment he spoke.
+
+"Are you ever sorry that you left the home town, Miss Rose-Marie?" he
+questioned.
+
+Rose-Marie looked at him, for a moment, to see whether he was serious.
+And then, as no flicker of mirth stirred his mouth, she answered.
+
+"Sometimes I'm homesick," she said. "Usually after the lights are out, at
+night. But I'm never sorry!"
+
+The Young Doctor was staring off into space--past the raised platform
+where the girls of the club were performing.
+
+"I wonder," he said, after a moment, "I wonder if you can imagine what it
+is to have nothing in the world to be lonesome for, Miss Rose-Marie?"
+
+Rose-Marie felt a quick wave of sympathy toward him.
+
+"My mother and my father are dead, Dr. Blanchard--you know that," she
+told him, "but my aunts have always been splendid," she added honestly,
+"and I have any number of friends! No, I've never felt at all alone!"
+
+The Young Doctor was silent for a moment. And then--
+
+"It isn't an alone feeling that I mean," he told her, "not exactly! It's
+rather an empty feeling! Like hunger, almost. You see my father and
+mother are dead, too. I can't even remember them. And I never had any
+aunts to be splendid to me. My childhood--even my babyhood--was spent in
+an orphan asylum with a firm-fisted matron who punished me; with nobody
+to give me the love I needed. I came out of it a hard man--at fourteen.
+I--" he broke off, suddenly, and then--
+
+"I don't know why I'm telling you all this," he said; "you wouldn't be in
+the least interested in my school days--they were pretty drab! And you
+wouldn't be interested in the scholarship that gave me my profession.
+For," his tone changed slightly, "you aren't even interested in the
+result--not enough to try to understand my point of view, when I attempt
+to tell you, frankly, just what I think of the people down here--barring
+girls like these," he pointed to the stage, "and a few others who are
+working hard to make good! You act, when I say that they're like animals,
+as if I'm giving you a personal insult! You think, when I suggest that
+you don't go, promiscuously, into dirty tenements, that I'm trying to
+curb your ambition--to spoil your chances of doing good! But I'm not,
+really. I'm only endeavouring, for your own protection, to give you the
+benefit of my rather bitter experience. I don't want any one so young,
+and trusting and--yes, beautiful--as you are, to be forced by experience
+into my point of view. We love having you here, at the Settlement House.
+But I almost wish that you'd go home--back to the place and the people
+that you're lonesome for--after the lights are out!"
+
+Rose-Marie, watching the play of expression across his keen dark face,
+was struck, first of all by his sincerity. It was only after a moment
+that she began to feel the old resentment creeping back.
+
+"Then," she said at last, very slowly, "then you think that I'm worthless
+here? It seems to me that I can help the people more, just because I am
+fresh, and untried, and not in the least bitter! It seems to me that by
+direct contact with them I may be able to show them the tender, guiding
+hand of God--as it has always been revealed to me. But you think that I'm
+worthless!"
+
+There was a burst of loud singing from the raised platform. The girls of
+the sewing club loved to sing. But neither Rose-Marie nor the Young
+Doctor was conscious of it.
+
+"No," the Young Doctor answered, also very slowly, "no, I don't think
+that you are worthless--not at all.-But I'm almost inclined to think that
+you're _wasted_. Go home, child, go home to the little town! Go home
+before the beautiful colour has worn off the edge of your dreams!"
+
+Again Rose-Marie felt the swift burst of anger that she had felt upon
+other occasions. Why did he persist in treating her like a child? But her
+voice was steady as she answered.
+
+"Well," she said, "I'm afraid that I'll have to disappoint you! For I
+came here with a definite plan to carry out. And I'm going to stay here
+until I've at least partly made good!"
+
+The Young Doctor was watching her flushed face. He answered almost
+regretfully.
+
+"Then," he said, "I'm glad that you have a sweetheart--you didn't deny
+it, you know, the other night! He'll take you away from the slums, I
+reckon, before very long! He'll take you away before you've been hurt!"
+
+Rose-Marie, looking straight ahead, did not answer. But the weight of
+deceit upon her soul made her feel very wicked.
+
+Yes, the weight of deceit upon her soul made her feel very wicked! But
+later that night, after the club members had gone home, dizzy with many
+honours, it was not the weight of deceit that troubled her. As she crept
+into her narrow little bed she was all at once very sorry for herself;
+and for a vanished dream! Dr. Blanchard could be so nice--when he wanted
+to. He could be so understanding, so sympathetic! There on the bench in
+the rear of the room they had been, for a moment, very close together.
+She had nearly come back, during their few minutes of really intimate
+conversation, to her first glowing impression of him. And then he had
+changed so suddenly--had so abruptly thrust aside the little house of
+friendship that they had begun to build. "If he would only let me," she
+told herself, "I could teach him to like the things I like. If he would
+only understand I could explain just how I feel about people. If he would
+only give me a chance I could keep him from being so lonely."
+
+Rose-Marie had known few men. The boys of her own town she scarcely
+regarded as men--they were old playmates, that was all. No one stood out
+from the other, they were strikingly similar. They had carried her books
+to school, had shared apples with her, had played escort to
+prayer-meetings and to parties. But none of them had ever stirred her
+imagination as the Young Doctor stirred it.
+
+There in the dark Rose-Marie felt herself blushing. Could it be possible
+that she felt an interest in the Young Doctor, an interest that was more
+than a casual interest? Could it be possible that she liked a man who
+showed plainly, upon every possible occasion, that he did not like her?
+Could it be possible that a person who read sensational stories, who did
+not believe in the greatness of human nature, who refused to go to
+church, attracted her?
+
+Of a sudden she had flounced out of bed; had shrugged her slender little
+body into a shapeless wrapper--the parting gift of a girl friend--from
+which her small flushed face seemed to grow like some delicate spring
+blossom. With hurried steps--she might almost have been running away from
+something--she crossed the room to a small table that served as a
+combination dresser and writing desk. Brushing aside her modest toilet
+articles, she reached for a pad of paper and a small business-like
+fountain pen. Her aunts--she wanted them, all at once, and badly. She
+wished that she might talk with them--writing seemed so inadequate.
+
+"My dears," she began, "I miss you very much. Often I'm lonely enough to
+cry. Of course," she added hastily (for they must not worry), "of course,
+every one is nice to me. I like every one, too. That is, except Dr.
+Blanchard. I guess I told you about him; he's the resident physician.
+He's awfully good looking but he's not very pleasant. I never hated any
+one so--" she paused, for a moment, as a round tear splashed
+devastatingly down upon the paper.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+MRS. VOLSKY PROMISES TO TRY
+
+
+As Lily pattered across the room, on her soft, almost noiseless little
+feet, Rose-Marie stopped talking. She had been having one of her rare
+conversations alone with Mrs. Volsky--a conversation that she had almost
+schemed for--and yet she stopped. It struck her suddenly as strange that
+Lily's presence in any place should make such a vast difference--that the
+child should bring with her a healing silence and a curious tenderness.
+She had felt, many times before, a slowing up in conversations--she had
+seen the bitterness drain from Ella's face, the stolidness from Bennie's.
+She had even seen Pa, half intoxicated, turn and go quietly from a room
+that Lily was entering. And now, as she watched, she saw a spark leap
+into the dullness of Mrs. Volsky's eyes.
+
+With a gentle hand she reached out to the child, drew her close. Lily
+nestled against her side with a slight smile upon her faintly coral lips,
+with her blue, vacant gaze fixed upon space--or upon something that they
+could not see! Rose-Marie had often felt that Lily was watching beautiful
+vistas with those sightless eyes of hers; that she was hearing wonderful
+sounds, with her useless little ears--sounds that normal people could not
+hear. But she did not say anything of the sort to Mrs. Volsky--Mrs.
+Volsky would not have been able to understand. Instead she spoke of
+something else that had lain, for a long time, upon her mind.
+
+"Has Lily ever received any medical attention?" she asked abruptly.
+
+Mrs. Volsky's face took on lines of blankness. "What say?" she mouthed
+thickly. "I don' understan'?"
+
+Rose-Marie reconstructed her question.
+
+"Has Lily ever been taken to a doctor?" she asked.
+
+Mrs. Volsky answered more quickly than she usually answered questions.
+
+"When she was first sick, years ago," she told Rose-Marie, "she had a
+doctor then. He say--no help fer her. Las' year Ella, she took Lily by a
+free clinic. But the doctors, there, they say Lily never get no better.
+And if there comes another doctor to our door, now--" she shrugged; and
+her shrug seemed to indicate the uselessness of all doctors.
+
+Rose-Marie, with suddenly misting eyes, lifted Lily to her knee... "The
+only times," she said slowly, "when I feel any doubt in my mind of the
+Divine Plan--are the times when I see little children, who have never
+done anything at all wicked or wrong, bearing pain and suffering and..."
+she broke off.
+
+Mrs. Volsky answered, as she almost always answered, with a
+mechanical question.
+
+"What say?" she murmured dully.
+
+Rose-Marie eyed her over the top of Lily's golden head. After all, she
+told herself, in the case of Mrs. Volsky she could see the point of Dr.
+Blanchard's assertion! She had known many animals who apparently were
+quicker to reason, who apparently had more enthusiasm and ambition, than
+Mrs. Volsky. She looked at the dingy apron, the unkempt hair, the sagging
+flesh upon the gray cheeks. And she was conscious suddenly of a feeling
+of revulsion. She fought it back savagely.
+
+"Christ," she told herself, "never turned away from people because they
+were dirty, or ugly, or stupid. Christ loved everybody--no matter how low
+they were. He would have loved Mrs. Volsky."
+
+It was curious how it gave her strength--that reflection--strength to
+look straight at the woman in front of her, and to smile.
+
+"Why," she asked, and the smile became brighter as she asked it, "why
+don't you try to fix your hair more neatly, Mrs. Volsky? And why don't
+you wear fresh aprons, and keep the flat cleaner? Why don't you try to
+make your children's home more pleasant for them?"
+
+Mrs. Volsky did not resent the suggestion as some other women might have
+done. Mrs. Volsky had reached the point where she no longer resented
+even blows.
+
+"I uster try--onct," she said tonelessly, "but it ain't no good, no more.
+Ella an' Bennie an' Jim don' care. An' Pa--he musses up th' flat whenever
+he comes inter it. An' Lily can't see how it looks. So what's th' use?"
+
+It was a surprisingly long speech for Mrs. Volsky. And some of it showed
+a certain reasoning power. Rose-Marie told herself, in all fairness,
+that if she were Mrs. Volsky--she, too, might be inclined to ask "What's
+th' use?" She leaned forward, searching desperately in her mind for
+something to say.
+
+"Do you like _me_, Mrs. Volsky?" she questioned at last, "Do you like
+me?"
+
+The woman nodded, and again the suggestion of a light flamed up in her
+eyes.
+
+"Sure I like you," she said, "you are good to all of us--_an' to Lily_."
+
+"Then," Rose-Marie's voice was quivering with eagerness, "then won't you
+try--_for my sake_--to make things here," the sweep of her hand included
+every corner of the ugly room, "a little better? I'll help you, very
+gladly. I'll make new aprons for you, and I'll"--her brave resolution
+faltered, but only for a moment--"I'll wash your hair, and take you to
+the free baths with me. And then," she had a sudden inspiration, "then
+Lily will love to touch you, you'll be so nice and clean! Then Lily will
+be glad that she has you for a mother!"
+
+All at once the shell of stupidity had slipped from Mrs. Volsky's bent
+shoulders. All at once she was eager, breathlessly eager.
+
+"Miss," she said, and one thin, dingy hand was laid appealingly upon
+Rose-Marie's dress, "Miss, you can do wit' me as you wish to! If you
+t'ink dat my bein' clean will make Lily glad"--she made a sudden
+impetuous gesture with her hand--"den I will be clean! If you t'ink dat
+she will like better dat I should be her mother," the word, on her lips,
+was surprisingly sweet, "den I will do--_anyt'ing_!" All at once she
+broke into phrases that were foreign to Rose-Marie, phrases spoken
+lovingly in some almost forgotten tongue. And the girl knew that she was
+quite forgotten--that the drab woman was dreaming over some youthful
+hope, was voicing tenderly the promises of a long dead yesterday, and was
+making an impassioned pledge to her small daughter and to the future! The
+words that she spoke might be in the language of another land--but the
+tone was unmistakable, was universal.
+
+Rose-Marie, listening to her, felt a sudden desire to kneel there, on the
+dirty tenement floor, and say a little prayer of thanksgiving. Once again
+she had proved that she was right--and that the Young Doctor was wrong.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+BENNIE COMES TO THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE
+
+
+It was Bennie who came first to the Settlement House. Shyly, almost, he
+slipped through the great doors--as one who seeks something that he does
+not quite understand. As he came, a gray kitten, creeping out from the
+shadows of the hall, rubbed affectionately against his leg. And Bennie,
+half unconsciously--and with absolutely no recognition--stooped to pat
+its head. Rose-Marie would have cried with joy to have seen him do it,
+but Rose-Marie was in another part of the building, teaching tiny
+children to embroider outlines, with gay wool, upon perforated bits of
+cardboard. The Young Doctor, passing by the half-opened door of the
+kindergarten room, saw her there and paused for a moment to enjoy the
+sight. He thought, with a curious tightening of his lips, as he left
+noiselessly, that some day Rose-Marie would be surrounded by her own
+children--far away from the Settlement House. And he was surprised at the
+sick feeling that the thought gave him.
+
+"I've been rather a fool," he told himself savagely, "trying to send her
+away. I've been a fool. But I'd never known anything like her--not in all
+of my life! And it makes me shiver to think of what one meeting with some
+unscrupulous gangster would do to her point of view. It makes me want to
+fight the world when I realize how an unpleasant experience would affect
+her love of people. I'd rather never see her again," he was surprised,
+for a second time, at the pain that the words caused him, "than to have
+her made unhappy. I hope that this man of hers is a regular fellow!"
+
+He passed on down the hall. He walked slowly, the vision of Rose-Marie, a
+dream child held close to her breast, before his eyes. That was why,
+perhaps, he did not see Bennie--why he stumbled against the boy.
+
+"Hello," he said gruffly, for his voice was just a trifle hoarse (voices
+get that way sometimes, when visions _will_ stay in front of one's eyes!)
+"Hello, youngster! Do you want anything? Or are you just looking around?"
+
+Bennie straightened up. The kitten that he had been patting rubbed
+reassuringly against his legs, but Bennie needed more reassurance than
+the affection of a kitten can give. The kindness of Rose-Marie, the
+stories that she had told him, had given him a great deal of confidence.
+But he had not yet learned to stand up, fearlessly, to a big man with a
+gruff voice. It is a step forward to have stopped hurting the smaller
+things. But to accept a pretty lady's assurance that things larger than
+you will be kind--that is almost too much to expect! Bennie answered just
+a shade shrinkingly.
+
+"Th' kids in school," he muttered, "tol' me 'bout a club they come to
+here. It's a sort of a Scout Club. They wears soldier clo's. An' they
+does things fer people. An' I wanter b'long," he gulped, noisily.
+
+The Young Doctor leaned against the wall. He did not realize how tall and
+strong he looked, leaning there, or he could not have smiled so
+whimsically. To him the small dark boy with his earnest face, standing
+beside the gray kitten, was just an interesting, rather lovable joke.
+
+"Which do you want most," he questioned, "to wear soldier clothes, or to
+do things for people?"
+
+Bennie gulped again, and shuffled his feet. His voice came, at last,
+rather thickly.
+
+"I sorter want to do things fer people!" he said.
+
+More than anything else the Young Doctor hated folk, even children, who
+say or do things for effect. And he knew well the lure that soldier
+clothes hold for the small boy.
+
+"Say, youngster," he inquired in a not too gentle voice, "are you
+trying to bluff me? Or do you really mean what you're saying? And if
+you do--why?"
+
+Bennie had never been a quitter. By an effort he steadied his voice.
+
+"I mean," he said, "what I'm a-tellin' yer. I wanter be a good boy. My
+pa, he drinks. He drinks like--" The word he used, in description, was
+not the sort of a word that should have issued from childish lips. "An'
+my big brother--he ain't like Pa, but he's a bum, too! I don't wanter be
+like they are--not if I kin help it! I wanter be th' sort of a guy King
+Arthur was, an' them knights of his'n. I wanter be like that there St.
+George feller, as killed dragons. I wanter do real things," unconsciously
+he was quoting from the gospel of Rose-Marie, "wi' my life! I wanter be a
+good husban' an' father--"
+
+All at once the Young Doctor was laughing. It was not an unkind
+laugh--it gave Bennie heart to listen to it--but it was exceedingly
+mirthful. Bennie could not know that the idea of himself, as a husband
+and father, was sending this tall man into such spasms of merriment--he
+could not know that it was rather incongruous to picture his small
+grubby form in the shining armour of St. George or of King Arthur. But,
+being glad that the doctor was not angry, he smiled too--his strange,
+twisted little smile.
+
+The Young Doctor stopped laughing almost as quickly as he had begun. With
+something of interest in his face he surveyed the little ragged boy.
+
+"Where," he questioned after a moment, "did you learn all of that stuff
+about knights, and saints, and doing things with your life, and husbands
+and fathers? Who told you about it?"
+
+Bennie hesitated a moment. Perhaps he was wondering who had given this
+stranger a right to pry into his inner shrine. Perhaps he was wondering
+if Rose-Marie would like an outsider to know just what she had told him.
+When he answered, his answer was evasive.
+
+"A lady told me," he said. "A lady."
+
+The Young Doctor was laughing again.
+
+"And I suppose," he remarked, with an effort at solemnity, "that
+gentlemen don't pass ladies' names about between 'em--I suppose that you
+wouldn't tell me who this lady of yours may be, even though I'd like to
+meet her?"
+
+Bennie's lips closed in a hard little line that quirked up at one end. He
+shook his head.
+
+"I'd ruther not," he said very slowly. "Say--Where's th' Scout Club?"
+
+The Young Doctor shook his head.
+
+"It's such a strange, old-fashioned, young person!" he informed the empty
+hallway. And then--"Come with me, youngster," he said kindly, "and we'll
+find this very wonderful club where small boys learn about doing things
+for people--and, incidentally, wear soldier clothes!"
+
+Bennie, following stealthily behind him, felt that he had found another
+friend--something like his lady, only different!
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+AN ISLAND
+
+
+Rose-Marie was exceptionally weary that night. It had been a hard day.
+All three of her classes had met, and--late in the afternoon--she had
+made good her promise to wash Mrs. Volsky's hair. The task had not been a
+joyous one--she felt that she could never wash hair again--not even her
+own soft curls or the fine, snowy locks that crowned her aunts' stately
+heads. Mrs. Volsky had once more relapsed into her shell of silence--she
+had seemed more apathetic, more dull than ever. But Rose-Marie had
+noticed that there were no unwashed dishes lying in the tub--that the
+corners of the room had had some of the grime of months swept out of
+them. When Ella Volsky came suddenly into the flat, with lips compressed,
+and a high colour, Rose-Marie had been glowingly conscious of her start
+of surprise. And when she had said, haltingly, in reference to the
+hair--"I'll dry it for you, Miss Rose-Marie!" Rose-Marie could have wept
+with happiness. It was the first time that she had ever heard Ella offer
+to do anything for her mother.
+
+Jim--coming in as she was about to leave--had added to Rose-Marie's
+weariness. He had been more insistent than usual--he had commented upon
+her rosy cheeks and he had made a laughing reference to her wide eyes.
+And he had asked her, gruffly, why she didn't take up with some feller
+like himself--a good provider, an' all, that'd doll her up the way she'd
+oughter be dolled up? And when Ella had interrupted, her dark eyes
+flashing, he had told her--with a burst of soul-chilling profanity--to
+mind her own business.
+
+And then Pa had come in--apparently more drunk than he had ever been. And
+Rose-Marie had seen his bleary eyes pass, without a flicker of interest,
+over his wife's clean apron and freshly washed hair; had seen him throw
+his coat and his empty bottle into one of the newly dusted corners, had
+seen his collapse into a heap in the center of the room. And, last of
+all, as she had hurried away, with Jim's final insinuation ringing in her
+ears, she had known the fear that all was not well with Bennie--for
+Bennie came in every afternoon before she left. She could not know that
+Bennie, by this time a budding Boy Scout, was learning more lessons of
+the sort that she had taught him.
+
+Yes, she was weary, in every fibre of her being, as she sat down to
+supper that night. She had it quite alone in the dining-room, which, all
+at once, seemed very large--for the Superintendent was sitting,
+somewhere, with a dying woman, and the Young Doctor had been called out
+on an emergency case. And then, still alone, she wandered into the
+library of the Settlement House and picked up a book. She felt, somehow,
+too tired to sleep--too utterly exhausted to lay her head upon her
+pillow. It was in the library that the Superintendent, coming wearily
+back from the watch with death, found her.
+
+"My dear," said the Superintendent, and there was a sound of tears in her
+usually steady voice, "my dear, I'm about all in! Yes, I know it's slang,
+but I can't help it--I feel slangy! Come up to my sitting-room for a few
+minutes and we'll have a cup of hot chocolate!"
+
+Rose-Marie laid down her book with alacrity. She realized, suddenly, that
+she wanted companionship of her own sort--that she longed with all of her
+soul to chat with some one who did not murder the queen's English, that
+she wanted to exchange commonplaces about books, and music, and beautiful
+things--things that the Volskys would not understand.
+
+"I guess," she said, as she followed the Superintendent into the cozy
+sitting-room, "I guess that tiredness is in the air to-day. I'm all in,
+myself. A cup of chocolate and a friendly talk will be a godsend to me,
+this evening!"
+
+The Superintendent was laying aside her coat and her hat. She smoothed
+her hair with a nervous hand, and straightened her linen collar, before
+she sank into an easy chair.
+
+"Child," she said abruptly, "_you_ shouldn't be tired--not ever! You've
+got youth, and all of the world at your feet. You've got beauty, and
+confidence, and faith. And I--well, I'm getting to be an old woman! I
+feel sometimes as if I've been sitting on the window sill, watching life
+go by, for centuries. You mustn't--" She paused, and there was a sudden
+change in her voice, "You're not tiring yourself, Rose-Marie? You're not
+doing more than your strength will permit? If you could have read the
+letter that your aunts sent to me, when you first came to the Settlement
+House! I tell you, child, I've felt my responsibility keenly! I'd no more
+think of letting you brush up against the sort of facts I'm facing, than
+I would--"
+
+Rose-Marie's cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright, as she
+interrupted.
+
+"Somehow," she said, "I can't think that you and my aunts are quite
+right about shielding me--about keeping me from brushing up against life,
+and the real facts of life. It seems to me that there's only one way to
+develop--really. And that way is to learn to accept things as they come;
+to meet situations--no matter how appalling they may be, with one's eyes
+open. If I," she was warming to her subject, "am never to tire myself
+out, working for others, how am I to help them? If I am never to see
+conditions as they are how am I ever to know the sort of a problem that
+we, here at the Settlement House, are fighting? Dr. Blanchard wouldn't
+try to treat a case if he had no knowledge of medicine--he wouldn't try
+to set a broken leg if he had never studied anatomy. You wouldn't be in
+charge, here, if you didn't know the district, if you didn't realize the
+psychological reasons back of the things that the people of the district
+say and do. Without the knowledge that you're trying to keep from me
+you'd be as useless as"--she faltered--"as I am!"
+
+The Superintendent's expression reflected all the tenderness of her
+nature; the mother-instinct, which she had never known, made her smile
+into the girl's serious face.
+
+"My dear," she said, "you must not think that you're useless. You must
+never think that! Look at the success you've had in your club
+work--remember how the children that you teach have come to love you.
+You've done more with them, because of the things that you don't know,
+than I could ever do--despite the hard facts that I've had to brush up
+against. Find content, dear, in being the sweet place in our garden--that
+has so pitifully few flowers. Do not long for the hard, uncomfortable
+places on the other side of the garden wall!"
+
+Despite the Superintendent's expression--despite the gentle tone of her
+voice, Rose-Marie felt a sudden desire to cry out against the irony of it
+all. She was so tired of being classed with the flowers! "They toil not,
+neither do they spin," came back to her, from a certain golden text that
+she had learned, long ago, in Sunday-school. Even at the time it had
+seemed to her as if the flowers enjoyed lives that were a shade too easy!
+At the time it had seemed unfair that they, who were not workers, should
+be beautiful--more beautiful than the ants, for instance, that
+uncomplainingly toiled all day long for their existence.
+
+"I don't want to be a flower," she exclaimed, almost fretfully, "I want
+to be a worth while member of society--that's what I want! What's the use
+of being a decoration in a garden! What's the use of knowing only the
+sunshine? I want to know storms, too, and gales of wind. I want to share
+the tempests that you go through!" She hesitated; and then--"I read a
+book once," she said slowly, "I forget what it was--but I remember, in
+one place, that a woman was being discussed. She was a very beautiful
+elderly woman who, despite her age, had a face as unlined and calm as a
+young girl's face could be. One character in the book commented upon the
+woman's youth and charm, and another character agreed that she _was_
+beautiful and charming, but that she'd be worth more if she had a few
+lines on her face. 'She's never known tears,' the character said, 'she's
+never lived _deeply_ enough to know tears! Her life has been just a
+surface life. If you go down deep enough into the earth you find water,
+always. If you go down deep enough into life you invariably find tears.
+It's one of the unbreakable rules!'" Rose-Marie paused, for a moment, and
+stole a covert glance at the Superintendent's face. "You don't want me to
+be a woman whose life is only a surface life," she pleaded, "and it will
+be just that if you keep me from helping, as I want to help! You don't
+want me to have a perfectly unlined face when I'm eighty years old?"
+
+All at once the Superintendent was laughing. "You child!" she exclaimed
+when the first spasm of mirth had passed, "you blessed child! If you
+could know how ridiculously young you looked, sitting there and talking
+about lined faces--and yourself at eighty. Eighty is a long way off,
+Rose-Marie--for you!"
+
+The girl joined, a trifle shamefacedly, in the older woman's laughter.
+
+"I reckon," she agreed, "that I do take myself too seriously! But--well,
+there are families that I'm just dying to help--families that I've come
+in contact with through the"--again she was forced to a slight
+deceit--"through the Settlement House. I'm sure that I could help them if
+you'd let me visit them, in their own homes. I'm sure that I'd be able to
+reform ever so many people if you'd only let me go out and find them. The
+city missionary who spoke once in our church, back home, told of
+wonderful things that he'd done--of lives that he'd actually made over.
+Of course, I couldn't do the sort of work he did, but I'm sure--if you'd
+only give me a chance--" She paused.
+
+The Superintendent was silent for a moment. And then--
+
+"Maybe you're right, dear," she said, "and maybe you're wrong. Maybe I am
+cramping your ambitions--maybe I am hampering your mental and spiritual
+growth. But then, again, maybe I'm right! And I'm inclined to think that
+I am right. I'm inclined to adhere to my point, that it will be better
+for you to wait, until you're older, before you go into many
+tenements--before you do much reforming outside of the Settlement House.
+When you're older and more experienced I'll be glad to let you do
+anything--"
+
+She was interrupted by a rap upon the door. It was a gentle rap, but it
+was, above all, a masculine one. There was real gladness on her face as
+she rose to answer it.
+
+"I didn't expect Billy Blanchard--he thought he had an all-night case,"
+she told Rose-Marie. "How nice!"
+
+But Rose-Marie was rising to her feet.
+
+"I don't think that I'll stay," she said hurriedly, "I'm too tired, after
+all! I think--"
+
+The Superintendent had paused in her progress to the door. Her voice was
+surprisingly firm, of a sudden; firmer than Rose-Marie had ever heard it.
+
+"No, my dear," said the Superintendent, "you're not too tired! You just
+don't want to be civil to a very fine boy--who has had a harder day than
+either of us. You came to the slums, Rose-Marie, to help people--to show
+that you were a Christian. I think that you can show it, to-night, by
+forgetting a silly quarrel that happened weeks ago--by forgetting the
+words Dr. Blanchard said that he never really meant, inside. If he
+thought that these people weren't worth it, do you suppose he'd stay
+here, at the Settlement House, for a mere pittance? He's had many a
+chance to go to fashionable hospitals, up-town!"
+
+Rose-Marie, bewildered, and not a little ashamed, sank back into her seat
+as the Superintendent swung open the door.
+
+The Young Doctor came in with a springing step, but there were gray lines
+that spoke of extreme fatigue about his mouth, and his eyes were darkly
+circled. His surprise, at the sight of Rose-Marie, was evident--though he
+tried to hide it by the breeziness of his manner.
+
+"You'll be glad to know," he told the Superintendent, "that the stork has
+called on the Stefan family. It's a boy--nine pounds--with lots of dark
+hair. There have been three girls, in the Stefan family," he explained to
+Rose-Marie, "and so they are wild with joy at this latest addition. Papa
+Stefan is strutting about like a proud turkey, with his chest out. And
+Mamma Stefan is trying to sing a lullaby. I feel something like a tool in
+the hand of Providence, to-night!" He threw himself upon the sofa.
+
+There was deep, motherly affection in the Superintendent's face as she
+smiled at him.
+
+"We're all of us mental and physical wrecks this evening, Billy!" she
+said. "I think that I've never been so utterly worn out before. Katie"
+(Katie was the stolid maid) "is making chocolate for us!"
+
+"Chocolate!" The Young Doctor's glance answered the affection that shone
+out of the Superintendent's face--"You _are_ a dear!" He smiled at her,
+and then--all at once--turned swiftly to Rose-Marie.
+
+"Don't let's squabble to-night," he said childishly, "not about anything!
+We're dog-tired, all three of us, and we're not up to even a tiny
+quarrel. I'm willing to admit anything you want me to--even that I'm
+wrong on a lot of subjects. And I want you to admit, yourself, that you'd
+rather be here, with the two of us, than out in some den of
+iniquity--reforming people. Am I right?"
+
+Rose-Marie felt a glow of friendship toward the Young Doctor. Why
+couldn't he always be like this--confiding and boyish and approachable?
+She smiled at him, very sweetly, as she answered.
+
+"You're right," she admitted. "I'm afraid that I haven't the heart to
+think of reforming any one, this evening! I'm just glad--glad from the
+very soul of me--to be here with you all, in the very center of
+this--island!"
+
+The Superintendent's face was puzzled--the Superintendent's eyes were
+vague--as she asked a question.
+
+"You said--_island_?" she questioned.
+
+Rose-Marie laughed with a shade of embarrassment.
+
+"I didn't really mean to say island," she explained, "but--well, you
+remember what Dr. Blanchard told us, once, about the little bugs that
+fastened together--first one and then another until there were billions?
+And how, at last, they made an island?" She paused and, at their nods of
+assent, went on. "Ever since then," she told them slowly, "I've thought
+of us, here at the Settlement House, as the first little bugs--the ones
+that the others must hold to. And I've felt, though many of them don't
+realize it, though we hardly realize it ourselves, that we're building an
+island together--_an island of faith_!"
+
+There was silence for a moment. And then the Young Doctor spoke. His
+voice was a trifle husky.
+
+"You've made me more than a bit ashamed of myself, Miss Rose-Marie," he
+said, "and I want to thank you for putting a real symbolism into my
+chance words. After all"--suddenly he laughed, and then--"after all," he
+said, "I wouldn't be surprised if you are right! I had a curious
+experience, this afternoon, that would go to prove your theory."
+
+The Superintendent was leaning back, shielding her eyes from the light.
+"Tell us about your experience, Billy," she said.
+
+The chocolate had come, and the Young Doctor took an appreciative sip
+before he answered.
+
+"Just as I was going out this afternoon," he said, at last, "I ran into a
+dirty little boy in the hall. He was fondling a kitten--that thin gray
+one that you brought to the Settlement House, Miss Rose-Marie. I asked
+him what he was doing and he told me that he was hunting for a Scout Club
+that he'd heard about. I"--the Young Doctor chuckled--"I engaged him in
+conversation. And he told me that his ambition was to be a combination of
+St. George and King Arthur and all the rest of those fellows. He said
+that, some day, he wanted to be a good husband and father. When I asked
+him where he got his large ambitions he told me that a lady had given
+them to him."
+
+Rose-Marie was leaning forward. "Did he tell you the lady's name?"
+she breathed.
+
+The Young Doctor shook his head.
+
+"Not a thing did he tell me!" he said dramatically. "The lady's name
+seemed to be something in the nature of a sacred trust to him. But his
+big dark eyes were full of the spirit that she'd given him. And his funny
+little crooked mouth was--" He paused, suddenly, his gaze fixed upon
+Rose-Marie. "What's the matter?" he queried. "What's the matter? You look
+as if somebody'd just left you a million dollars!"
+
+Rose-Marie's face was flushed and radiant. Her eyes were deep
+wells of joy.
+
+"I have every reason in the world," she said softly, "to be happy!" And
+she was too absorbed in her own thoughts to realize that a sudden cloud
+had crept across the brightness of the Young Doctor's face.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+ELLA MAKES A DECISION
+
+
+And then the climax of Ella's life--the crash that Rose-Marie had been
+expecting--happened. It happened when Ella came furiously into the Volsky
+flat, early one afternoon, and--ignoring the little Lily, who sat
+placidly on Rose-Marie's lap--hurried silently into her own room. Mrs.
+Volsky, bending over the wash-tubs, straightened up as if she could
+almost feel the electric quality of the air, as Ella passed her, but
+Rose-Marie only held tighter to Lily--as if, somehow, the slim little
+body gave her comfort.
+
+"I wonder what's the matter?" she ventured, after a moment.
+
+Mrs. Volsky, again bending over the wash-tubs, answered.
+
+"Ella, she act so funny, lately," she told Rose-Marie, "an' there is some
+feller; Bennie, he tell me that he have seen her wit' some feller! A rich
+feller, maybe; maybe he puts Ella up to her funny business!"
+
+There were sounds of activity from the inner room, as if clothing was
+being torn down from hooks--as if heavy garments were being flung into
+bags. Rose-Marie listened, apprehensively, to the sounds before she
+spoke again.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better go in and see what's the matter," she suggested.
+
+Mrs. Volsky, looking back over her shoulder, gave a helpless little
+shrug. "If you t'inks best," she said hopelessly. "But Ella--she not
+never want to take any help..."
+
+Only too well Rose-Marie knew what Mrs. Volsky meant by her twisted
+sentence. Only too well she understood that Ella would never allow
+herself to be biased by another's judgment,--that Ella would not allow
+herself to be moved by another's plea. And yet she set Lily gently down
+upon the floor and rose to her feet.
+
+"I'll see what she's doing," she told Mrs. Volsky, and pushed open the
+inner door.
+
+Despite all of the time that she had spent in the Volsky flat,
+Rose-Marie had never been past the front room with its tumbled heaps of
+bedding, and its dirt. She was surprised to see that the inner room,
+shared by Ella and Lily, was exquisitely neat, though tiny. There were
+no windows--the only light came from a rusty gas fixture--but
+Rose-Marie, after months in the slums, was prepared for that. It was the
+geranium, blooming on the shabby table, that caught her eye; it was the
+clean hair-brush, lying on the same table, and the framed picture of a
+Madonna, upon the wall, that attracted her. She spoke of them, first, to
+the girl who knelt on the floor, packing a cheap suit-case--spoke of
+them before she questioned gently:
+
+"You're not going away, are you, Ella?"
+
+Ella glanced up from her packing.
+
+"Yes. I'm going away!" she said, shortly. And then, as if against her
+will, she added:
+
+"I got th' flower an' th' picture for Lily. Oh, sure, I know that she
+can't see 'em! But I sorter feel that she knows they're here!"
+
+Rose-Marie's voice was very soft, as she spoke again.
+
+"I'm glad that you chose the picture you did," she said, "the picture of
+the Christ Child and His Mother!"
+
+Ella wadded a heavy dress into the suit-case.
+
+"I don't hold much with religious pictures," she said, without looking
+up; "religion never did much fer me! I only got it 'cause th' Baby had
+hair like Lily's hair!"
+
+Rose-Marie crouched down, suddenly, upon the floor beside the girl. She
+laid her hand upon the suit-case.
+
+"Where are you going, Ella?" she asked abruptly. "Where are you
+going--and when will you be back?"
+
+Ella's lips drew up into the semblance of a smile--a very bitter one--as
+she answered.
+
+"It's none of yer business where I'm goin'," she said, "an' I may not
+ever come back--see?"
+
+Rose-Marie caught her breath in a kind of sob. It was as she had
+guessed--and feared!
+
+"Ella," she asked slowly, "are you going alone?"
+
+The girl's face coloured swiftly, with a glorious wave of crimson. She
+tossed her head with a defiant movement.
+
+"No, I ain't goin' alone!" she told Rose-Marie. "You kin betcha life I
+ain't goin' alone!"
+
+Rose-Marie--sitting beside her on the floor--asked God, silently, for
+help before she spoke again. She felt suddenly powerless, futile.
+
+"_Why_ are you going, dear?" she questioned, at last.
+
+Ella dropped the shoes that she had been about to tuck into the
+suit-case. Her eyes were grim.
+
+"Because," she said, "I'm tired of all o' this," Her finger pointed in
+the direction of the outer room. "I'm tired o' dirt, and drunken people,
+and Jim's rotten talk. I'm tired o' meals et out o' greasy dishes, an'
+cheap clothes, and jobs that I hate--an' that I can't nohow seem ter
+hold! I'm tired, dog-tired, o' life. All that's ever held me in this
+place is Lily. An' sometimes, when I look at her, I don't think that
+she'd know the difference whether I was here 'r not!"
+
+Rose-Marie was half sobbing in her earnestness.
+
+"Ah, but she would know the difference," she cried. "Lily loves you with
+all of her heart. And your mother is really trying to be neater, to make
+a better home for you! She hasn't a pleasant time of it, either--your
+mother. But she doesn't run away. She stays!"
+
+There was scorn in the laugh that came, all at once, from Ella's twisted
+mouth. Her great eyes were somberly sarcastic.
+
+"Sure, she stays," said Ella, "'cause she ain't got enough gumption ter
+be gettin' out! I know."
+
+In her heart Rose-Marie was inclined to agree with Ella. She knew,
+herself, that Mrs. Volsky would never have the courage to make any sort
+of a definite decision. But she couldn't say so--not while Ella was
+staring at her with that cynical expression.
+
+"I guess," she said bravely, "that we'd better leave your mother out of
+this discussion. After all, it's between you--and your conscience."
+
+"Say," Ella's face was suddenly drawn and ugly, "say, where do you get
+off to pull this conscience stuff? You've always had a nice home, an'
+pretty clothes, an' clean vittles, an'--an' love! I ain't had any of it.
+But," her eyes flamed, "I'm goin' to! Don't you dast ter pull this
+conscience stuff on me--I've heard you profess'nal slummers talk
+before--a lot o' times. What good has a conscience ever done me--huh?"
+
+Rose-Marie had been watching the girl's face. Of a sudden she shot her
+thunderbolt.
+
+"Are you running away to be married, Ella?" she asked.
+
+A second flush ran over Ella's face, and receded slowly--leaving it very
+pale. But her head went up rather gallantly.
+
+"No, I ain't," she retorted. "Marriage," she said the words parrot-like,
+"was made fer th' sort o' folks who can't stick at nothin' unless they're
+tied. I ain't one of those folks!"
+
+Across the nearly forgotten suit-case, Rose-Marie leaned toward Ella
+Volsky. Her eyes were suddenly hot with anger.
+
+"Who gave you that sort of an argument?" she demanded. "Who has been
+filling your head with lies? You never thought of that yourself, Ella--I
+know you never thought of that yourself!"
+
+Ella's eyes met Rose-Marie's angry glance. Her words, when she spoke,
+came rapidly--almost tumbled over each other. It was as if some
+class-resentment, long repressed, were breaking its bounds.
+
+"How d' you know," she demanded passionately, "that I didn't think of
+that myself? How do you know? You're th' only one, I s'pose," her tone
+was suddenly mocking, "that knows how t' think! No"--as Rose-Marie
+started to interrupt--"don't try t' pull any alibi on me! I know th' way
+you Settlement House _ladies_"--she accented the word--"feel about _us_.
+You have clubs for us, an' parties, an' uplift meetin's. You pray fer
+us--an' with us. You tell us who t' marry, an' how t' bring up our
+children, an' what butcher t' buy our meat off of. But when it comes t'
+understandin' us--an' likin' us! Well, you're too good, that's all." She
+paused, staring at Rose-Marie's incredulous face with insolent eyes.
+
+"You're like all th' rest," she went on, after a moment, "just like
+all th' rest. I was beginnin' t' think that you was diff'rent. You've
+been so white about Bennie. An' you washed Ma's hair--I wouldn't 'a'
+done that myself! But now--now it sticks out all over you; th'
+I'm-better-'n-you-are stuff. I never could think of a thing, _I_
+couldn't. But you--you're smart, you are. You could think--"
+
+Rose-Marie's cheeks were flushed with a very real resentment, as she
+interrupted the girl's flow of half-articulate speech.
+
+"Ella," she said, and her words, too, came rapidly, "you know that you're
+not being fair--you know it! I've never held apart from you in any way.
+Oh, I realize that we've been brought up in different--surroundings. And
+it's made us different from each other in the unimportant things. But
+we're both girls, Ella--we're both young and we've both got all of life
+before us. And so, perhaps, we can understand each other"--she was
+fumbling mentally for words, in an effort to make clear her
+meaning--"more than either of us realize. I wasn't, for one moment,
+trying to patronize you when I said what I did. I was only wondering how
+you happened to say something that I wouldn't ever dream of saying--that
+no nice girl, who had a real understanding of life"--she wondered, even
+as she spoke the words, what the Young Doctor would think if he could
+hear them issuing from her lips--"would dream of saying. You're a nice
+girl, Ella--or you wouldn't be in the same family with Bennie and Lily.
+And you're a sensible girl, so you must realize how important and sacred
+marriage is. Who told you that it was a mistake, Ella? Who," her childish
+face was very grave, indeed, "who told you such a terrible thing?"
+
+Ella's eyes were blazing--Rose-Marie almost thought that the girl
+was going to strike her! But the blazing eyes wavered, after a
+moment, and fell.
+
+"My gentleman fren' says marriage is wrong," said Ella. "He knows a lot.
+And he has _so_ much money"--she made a wide gesture with her hands--"I
+can have a nice place ter live, Miss Rose-Marie, an' pretty clothes.
+Lookit Ma; she's married an' she ain't got nothin'! I can have coats an'
+hats an'--"
+
+Rose-Marie touched Ella's hand, timidly, with her cool fingers.
+
+"But you'll have to pay for them, Ella," she said. "Think, dear; will the
+coats and hats be worth the price that you'll have to pay? Will they be
+worth the price of self-respect--will they be worth the price of
+honourable wifehood and--motherhood? Will the pretty clothes, Ella, make
+it easier for you to look into the face of some other woman--who has kept
+straight? Will they?"
+
+Ella raised her eyes and, in their suddenly vague expression, Rose-Marie
+saw a glimmering of the faded, crushed mother. She hurried on.
+
+"What kind of a chap is this gentleman friend," she raged, "to ask so
+much of you, dear? Is there--is there any reason why he can't marry you?
+Is he tied to some one else?"
+
+All at once Ella was sobbing, with gusty, defiant sobs.
+
+"Not as far as I've heard of, there ain't nobody else," she sobbed. "I
+don't know much about him, Miss Rose-Marie. Jim gimme a knockdown ter
+him, one night, in a dance-hall. I thought he was all right--Jim said he
+was ... An' he said he loved me, an'"--wildly--"I love him, too! An' I
+hate it all, here, except Lily--"
+
+Rose-Marie, thinking rapidly, seized her advantage.
+
+"Will going away with him," she asked steadily, "be worth never seeing
+Lily again? For you wouldn't be able to see her again--you wouldn't feel
+able to touch her, you know, if your hands weren't--clean. You bought
+her a religious picture, Ella, and a flower. Why? Because you know, in
+your heart, that she's aware of religion and beauty and sweetness! Going
+away with this man, Ella, will separate you from Lily, just as
+completely as an ocean--flowing between the two of you--would make a
+separation! And all of your life you'll have to know that she's
+suffering somewhere, perhaps; that maybe somebody's hurting her--that
+her dresses are dirty and her hair isn't combed! Every time you hear a
+little child crying you'll think of Lily--who can't cry aloud. Every
+time a pair of blue eyes look into your face you'll think of her
+eyes--that can't see. Will going away with him be worth never knowing,
+Ella, whether she's alive or dead--"
+
+Ella had stopped sobbing, but the acute misery of her face was somehow
+more pitiful than tears. Rose-Marie waited, for a moment, and then--as
+Ella did not speak--she got up from her place beside the suit-case, and
+going to the dividing door, opened it softly.
+
+The room was as she had left it. Mrs. Volsky was still bending above the
+tubs, Lily was standing in almost the same place in which she had been
+left. With hurried steps Rose-Marie crossed the room, and took the
+child's slim, little hand in her own.
+
+"Come with me, honey," she said, almost forgetting that Lily could not
+hear her voice. "Come with me," and she led her gently back to the
+inner room.
+
+Ella was sitting on the floor, her face still wan, her attitude
+unconsciously tragic. But as the child, clinging to Rose-Marie's hand,
+came over to her side, she was suddenly galvanized into action.
+
+"Oh, darlin', darlin'," she sobbed wildly, "Ella was a-goin' ter leave
+you! Ella was a-goin' away. But she isn't now--not now! Darlin'," her
+arms were flung wildly about the little figure, "show, some way, that you
+forgive Ella--who loves you!"
+
+Rose-Marie was crying, quite frankly. All at once she dropped down on the
+floor and put her arms about the two sisters--the big one and the little
+one--and her sobs mingled with Ella's. But, curiously enough, as she
+stood like a little statue between them, a sudden smile swept across the
+face of Lily. She might, almost, have understood.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+PA STEPS ASIDE
+
+
+They wept together for a long time, Ella and Rose-Marie. And as they
+cried something grew out of their common emotion. It was a something that
+they both felt subconsciously--a something warm and friendly. It might
+have been a new bond of affection, a new chain of love. Rose-Marie, as
+she felt it, was able to say to herself--with more of tolerance than she
+had ever known--
+
+"If I had been as tempted and as unhappy as she--well, I might, perhaps,
+have reacted in the same way!"
+
+And Ella, sobbing in the arms of the girl that she had never quite
+understood, was able to tell herself: "She's right--dead right! The
+straight road's the only road...."
+
+It was little Lily who created a diversion. She had been standing, very
+quietly, in the shelter of their arms for some time--she had a way of
+standing with an infinite patience, for hours, in one place. But
+suddenly, as if drawn by some instinct, she dropped down on the floor,
+beside the cheap suit-case, and her small hands, shaking with eagerness,
+started to take out the clothes that had been flung into it.
+
+It was uncanny, almost, to see the child so happily beginning to unpack
+the suit-case. The sight dried Rose-Marie's tears in an almost
+miraculous way.
+
+"Let's put away the things," she suggested shakily, to Ella. "For you
+won't be going now, will you?"
+
+The face that Ella Volsky lifted was a changed face. Her expression was a
+shade more wistful, perhaps, but the somber glow had gone out of her
+eyes, leaving them softer than Rose-Marie had supposed possible.
+
+"No, Miss," she said quietly, "I won't be going--away. You're right, it
+ain't worth the price!" And the incident, from that moment, was closed.
+
+They unpacked the garments--there weren't many of them--quietly. But
+Rose-Marie was very glad, deep in her soul, and she somehow felt that
+Ella's mind was relieved of a tremendous strain. They didn't speak
+again, but there was something in the way Ella's hand touched her
+little sister's sunny hair that was more revealing than words. And
+there was something in the way Rose-Marie's mouth curved blithely up
+that told a whole story of satisfaction and content. It seemed as if
+peace, with her white wings folded and at rest, was hovering, at last,
+above the Volsky flat.
+
+And then, all at once, the momentary lull was over. All at once the calm
+was shattered as a china cup, falling from a careless hand, is broken.
+There was a sudden burst of noise in the front room; of rough words; of a
+woman sobbing. There was the sound of Mrs. Volsky's voice, raised in an
+unwonted cry of anguish, there was a trickle of water slithering down
+upon an uncarpeted floor--as if the wash-tub had been overturned.
+
+It was the final event of an unsettling day--the last straw. Forgetting
+Lily, forgetting the unpacking, Rose-Marie jumped to her feet, ran to the
+door. Ella followed. They stood together on the threshold of the outer
+room, and stared.
+
+The room seemed full of people--shouting, gesticulating people. And in
+the foreground was Jim--as sleek and well groomed as ever. Of all the
+crowd he seemed the only one who was composed. In front of him stood Mrs.
+Volsky--her face drawn and white, her hands clasped in a way that was
+singularly and primitively appealing.
+
+At first Rose-Marie thought that the commotion had to do with Jim. She
+was always half expecting to hear that he had been apprehended in some
+sort of mischief, that he had been accused of some crime. But she
+dismissed the idea quickly--his composure was too real to be born of
+bravado. It was while her brain groped for some new solution that she
+became conscious of Mrs. Volsky's voice.
+
+"Oh, he ain't," the woman was moaning, "say he ain't! My man--he could
+not be so! There ain't no truth in it--there can't be no truth.... Say as
+he ain't been done to so bad! Say it!"
+
+Ella, with a movement that was all at once love-filled, stepped quickly
+to her mother's side. As she faced the crowd--and Jim--her face was also
+drawn; drawn and apprehensive.
+
+"What's up?" she queried tersely of her brother. "What's up?"
+
+The face of Jim was calm and almost smiling as he answered. Behind him
+the shrill voices of the crowd sounded, like a background, to the blunt
+words that he spoke.
+
+"Pa was comin' home drunk," he told Ella, "an' he was ran inter by a
+truck. He was smashed up pretty bad; dead right away, th' cop said. But
+they took him ter a hospital jus' th' same. Wonder why they'd take a
+stiff ter a hospital?"
+
+Mrs. Volsky's usually colourless voice was breaking into loud, almost
+weird lamentation. Ella stood speechless. But Rose-Marie, the horror of
+it all striking to her very soul, spoke.
+
+"It can't be true," she cried, starting forward and--in the excitement of
+the moment--laying her hand upon Jim's perfectly tailored coat sleeve.
+"It can't be true.... It's too terrible!"
+
+Jim's laugh rang out heartlessly, eerily, upon the air.
+
+"It ain't so terrible!" he told Rose-Marie. "Pa--he wasn't no good! He
+wasn't a reg'lar feller--like me." All at once his well-manicured white
+hand crept down over her hand. "_He wasn't a reg'lar feller_," he
+repeated, "_like me_!"
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+A SOLUTION
+
+
+As Rose-Marie left the Volsky flat--Ella had begged her to go; had
+assured her that it would be better to leave Mrs. Volsky to her
+inarticulate grief--her brain was in a whirl. Things had happened, in the
+last few hours, with a kaleidoscopic rapidity--the whirl of events had
+left her mind in a dazed condition. She told herself, over and over, that
+Ella was saved. But she found it hard to believe that Ella would ever
+find happiness, despite her salvation, in the grim tenement that was her
+home. She told herself that Bennie was learning to travel the right
+road--that the Scout Club would be the means of leading him to other
+clubs and that the other clubs would, in time, introduce him to
+Sunday-school and to the church. She told herself that Mrs. Volsky was
+willing to try; very willing to try! But of what avail would be Bennie's
+growing faith and idealism if he had to come, night after night, to the
+home that was responsible for men like Jim--and like Pa?
+
+Pa! Rose-Marie realized with a new sense of shock that Pa was no longer a
+force to reckon with. Pa was dead--had been crushed by a truck. Never
+again would he slouch drunkenly into the flat, never again would he throw
+soiled clothing and broken bottles and heavy shoes into newly tidied
+corners. He was dead and he had--after all--been the one link that tied
+the Volskys to their dingy quarters! With Pa gone the family could seek
+cleaner, sweeter rooms--rooms that would have been barred to the family
+of a drunkard! With Pa gone the air would clear, magically, of some of
+its heaviness.
+
+Rose-Marie, telling herself how much the death of Pa was going to benefit
+the Volsky family, felt all at once heartless. She had been brought up in
+an atmosphere where death carries sorrow with it--deep sorrow and
+sanctity. She remembered the dim parlours of the little town when there
+was a funeral--she remembered the singing of the village choir and the
+voice of the pastor, slightly unsteady, perhaps, but very confident of
+the life hereafter. She remembered the flowers, and the mourners in their
+black gowns, and the pure tears of grief. She had always seen folk meet
+death so--meet it rather beautifully.
+
+But the passing of Pa! She shuddered to think of its cold cruelty--it was
+rather like his life. He had been snuffed out--that was all--snuffed out!
+There would be for him no dim parlour, no singing choir, no pastor with
+an unsteady voice. The black-robed mourners would be absent, and so would
+the flowers. His going would cause not a ripple in the life of the
+community--it would bring with it better opportunities for his family,
+rather than a burden of sorrow!
+
+"I can't grieve for him!" Rose-Marie told herself desperately. "I can't
+grieve for him! It's the only chance he ever gave to his
+children--_dying_! Perhaps, without him, they'll be able to make
+good...."
+
+She was crossing the park--splashed with sunshine, it was. And suddenly
+she remembered the first time that she had met Bennie in the park. It
+seemed centuries away, that first meeting! She remembered how she had
+been afraid, then, of the crowds. Now she walked through them with a
+certain assurance--_she belonged_. She had come a long distance since
+that first meeting with Bennie--a very long distance! She told herself
+that she had proved her ability to cope with circumstance--had proved her
+worth, almost. Why, now, should the Superintendent keep her always in the
+shadow of the Settlement House--why should the Young Doctor laugh at her
+desire to help people? She had something to show them--she could flaunt
+Bennie before their eyes, she could quote the case of Ella; she could
+produce Mrs. Volsky, broken of spirit but ready to do anything that she
+could. And--last but not least--she would show Lily to them, Lily who had
+been hidden away from the eyes of the ones who could help her--Lily who
+so desperately needed help!
+
+All at once Rose-Marie was weary of deceit. She would be glad--ever so
+glad--to tell her story to the Superintendent! She was tired of going out
+furtively of an afternoon to help these folk that she had come to help.
+She wanted to go in an open way--with the stamp of approval upon her. The
+Superintendent had said, once, that she would hardly be convincing to the
+people of the slums. With the Volsky family to show, she could prove that
+she had been convincing, very convincing!
+
+With a singing heart she approached the Settlement House. With a smile on
+her lips she went up the brownstone steps, pushed wide the door--which
+was never locked. And then she hurried, as fast as her feet could hurry,
+to the Superintendent's tiny office.
+
+The Superintendent was in. She answered Rose-Marie's knock with a cheery
+word, but, when the girl entered the room, she saw that the
+Superintendent's kind eyes were troubled.
+
+"What's the matter?" she questioned, forgetting, for a moment, the
+business of which she had been so full. "What's the matter? You look ever
+so worried!"
+
+The Superintendent's tired face broke into a smile.
+
+"Was I looking as woe-begone as that?" she queried. "I didn't realize
+that I was. Nothing serious is the matter, dear--nothing very serious!
+Only Katie's sister in the old country is ill--and Katie is going home to
+stay with her. And it's just about impossible to get a good maid,
+nowadays--it seems as if Katie has been with me for a lifetime. I expect
+that we'll manage, somehow, but I don't just fancy cooking and sweeping,
+and running the Settlement House, too!"
+
+All at once an idea leaped, full-blown, into the brain of Rose-Marie. She
+leaned forward and laid her hand upon the Superintendent's arm.
+
+"I wonder," she asked excitedly, "if you'd consider a woman with a
+family to take Katie's place? The family isn't large--just a small boy
+who goes to school, and a small girl, and an older girl who is working.
+There's a grown son, but he can take care of himself..." the last she
+said almost under her breath. "He can take care of himself. It would be
+better, for them--"
+
+The Superintendent was eyeing Rose-Marie curiously.
+
+"We have plenty of sleeping-rooms on the top floor," she said slowly,
+"and I suppose that the older girl could help a bit, evenings. Why, yes,
+perhaps a family might solve the problem--it's easier to keep a woman
+with children than one who is," she laughed, "heart-whole and fancy free!
+Who are they, dear, and how do you happen to know of them?"
+
+Rose-Marie sat down, suddenly, in a chair beside the Superintendent's
+desk. All at once her knees were shaky--all at once she felt strangely
+apprehensive.
+
+"Once," she began, and her voice quivered slightly, "I met a little boy,
+in the park. He was hurting a kitten. I started to scold him and then
+something made me question him, instead. And I found out that he was
+hurting the kitten because he didn't know any better--think of it,
+_because he didn't know any better_! And so I was interested, ever so
+interested. And I decided it was my duty to know something of him--to
+find out what sort of an environment was responsible for him."
+
+The Superintendent's tired face was alight She leaned forward to ask
+a question.
+
+"How long ago," she questioned, "did you meet this child, in the park?"
+
+Rose-Marie flushed. The time, suddenly, seemed very long to her.
+
+"It was the day that I came home bringing a little gray cat with me," she
+said. "It was the day that I quarreled with Dr. Blanchard at the luncheon
+table. Do you remember?"
+
+The Superintendent smiled reminiscently. "Ah, yes, I remember!" she
+said. And then--"Go on with the story, dear."
+
+Rose-Marie went on.
+
+"I found the place where he lived," she said hurriedly. "Yes--I know that
+you wouldn't have let me go if you'd known about it! That's why I didn't
+tell you. I found the place where he lived; an unspeakable tenement on an
+unspeakable street. And I met, there, his family--a most remarkable
+family! There was a mother, and an older sister, and an older brother,
+and a drunken father, and a little crippled girl...."
+
+And then, shaking inwardly, Rose-Marie told the story of the Volskys. She
+told it well; better than she realized. For the Superintendent's eyes
+never left her face and--at certain parts of the story--the
+Superintendent's cheeks grew girlishly pink. She told of the saving of
+Ella--she told of Bennie, explaining that he was the same child whom the
+Young Doctor had met in the hall. She told of Mrs. Volsky's effort to
+better herself, and of Jim's snake-like smoothness. And then she told of
+Lily--Lily with her almost unearthly beauty and her piteous physical
+condition. As she told of Lily the Superintendent's kind eyes filled with
+tears, and her lips quivered.
+
+"Oh," she breathed, "if only something could be done for her--if only
+something could be done! Billy Blanchard must see her at once--he's done
+marvellous things with the crippled children of the neighbourhood!"
+
+With a feeling of sudden confidence Rose-Marie smiled. She realized that
+she had caught the Superintendent's interest--and her sympathy. It would
+be easier, now, to give the family their chance! Her voice was more calm
+as she went on with the narrative. It was only when she told of the death
+of Pa that her lips trembled.
+
+"You'll think that I'm hard and callous," she said, "taking his death so
+easily. But I can't help feeling that it's for the best. They could never
+have broken away--not with him alive. _You_ would never have taken them
+in--if he had had to be included! You couldn't have done it.... But now,"
+her voice was aquiver with eagerness, "now, say that they may come! Say
+that Mrs. Volsky may take Katie's place. Oh, I know that she isn't very
+neat; that she doesn't cook as we would want her to. But she can learn
+and, free from the influence of her husband and son, I'm sure she'll
+change amazingly. Say that you'll give the family a chance!"
+
+The Superintendent was wavering. "I'm not so sure," she began, and
+hesitated. "I'm not so sure--"
+
+Rose-Marie interrupted. Her voice was very soft.
+
+"It will mean," she said, "that Lily will be here, under the doctor's
+care. It will mean that she will get well--perhaps! For her sake give
+them a chance...."
+
+The Superintendent's eyes were fixed upon space. When she spoke, she
+spoke irrelevantly.
+
+"Then," she said, "that was where you went every afternoon--to the
+tenement. You weren't out with some man, after all?"
+
+Rose-Marie hung her head. "I went to the tenement every afternoon," she
+admitted, "to the _tenement_. Oh, I know that you're angry with me--I
+know it. And I don't in the least blame you. I've been deceitful, I've
+_sneaked_ away when your back was turned, I've practically told lies to
+you! Don't think," her voice was all a-tremble, "don't think that I
+haven't been sorry. I've been tremendously sorry ever so many times. I've
+tried to tell you, too--often. And I've tried to make you think my way.
+Do you remember the talk we had, that night when we were both so tired,
+in your sitting-room--before Dr. Blanchard came? I was trying to scrape
+up the courage to tell you, then, but you so disagreed with me that I
+didn't dare!"
+
+The Superintendent seemed scarcely to be listening. There seemed to be
+something upon her mind.
+
+"Rose-Marie," she said with a mock sternness, "you're evading my
+questions. Answer me, child! Isn't there any one that you--care for?
+Weren't you out with some man?"
+
+Rose-Marie was blushing furiously.
+
+"No," she admitted, "I wasn't out with a man. I never had any sort of a
+sweetheart, not ever! I just let you all think that I was with some one
+because--if I hadn't let you think that way--you might have made me stay
+in. I wouldn't have made a point of deliberately telling you a
+falsehood--but Dr. Blanchard gave me the idea and "--defiantly--"I just
+let him think what he wanted to think!"
+
+The Superintendent was laughing.
+
+"What he _wanted_ to think!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Rose-Marie--you've a lot
+to answer for! What he wanted to think...." Suddenly the laugh died out
+of her voice, all at once she was very serious. "Perhaps," she said
+slowly, "your idea about the Volsky family is a good one. We'll try it
+out, dear! There was a MAN, once, Who said: 'Suffer the little children
+to come--'Why, Rose-Marie, what's the matter?" For Rose-Marie, her face
+hidden in the crook of her elbow, was crying like a very tired child.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+ENTER--JIM
+
+
+It was with a light heart that Rose-Marie started back to the tenement.
+The tears had cleared her soul of the months of evasion that had so
+worried her--she felt suddenly free and young and happy. It was as if a
+rainbow had come up, tenderly, out of a storm-tossed sky; it was as if a
+star was shining, all at once, through the blackness of midnight. She
+felt a glad assurance of the future--a faith in the Hand of God,
+stretched out to His children. "Everything," she sing-songed, joyously,
+to herself, "will come right, now. Everything will come right!"
+
+It was strange how she suddenly loved all of the people, the almost
+mongrel races of people, who thronged the streets! She smiled brightly at
+a mother, pushing a baby-buggy--she thrust a coin into the withered hand
+of an old beggar. On a crowded corner she paused to listen to the vague
+carollings of a barrel organ, to pat the head of a frayed looking little
+monkey that hopped about in time to the music. All at once she wanted to
+know a dozen foreign languages so that she could tell those who passed
+her by that she was their friend--_their friend!_
+
+And yet, despite her sudden feeling of kinship to these people of the
+slums, she did not loiter. For she was the bearer of a message, a message
+of hope! She wished, as she sped through the crowded streets, that her
+feet were winged so that she might hurry the faster! She wanted to see
+the expression of bewilderment on Mrs. Volsky's face, she wanted to see a
+light dawn in Ella's great eyes, she wanted to whisper a message of--of
+life, almost--into Lily's tiny useless ear. And, most of all, she wanted
+to feel Bennie's warm, grubby little fingers touching her hand! Jim--she
+hoped that Jim would be out when she arrived. She did not want to have
+Jim throw cold water upon her plans--which did not include him. Well she
+knew that the arrangement would make no real difference to him--it was
+not love of family that kept him from leaving the dirty, crowded little
+flat. It was the protection of a family, with its pseudo-respectability,
+that he wanted. It was the locked room, which no one would think of
+prying into, that he desired.
+
+She went in through the mouth-like tenement door--it was no longer
+frightful to her--with a feeling of intense emotion. She climbed the
+narrow stairs, all five flights of them, with never a pause for breath.
+And then she was standing, once again, in front of the Volskys' door. She
+knocked, softly.
+
+Everything was apparently very still in the Volsky flat. All up and down
+the hall came the usual sounds of the house; the stairs echoed with
+noise. But behind the closed door silence reigned supreme. As Rose-Marie
+stood there she felt a strange mental chill--the chill of her first
+doubt. Perhaps the Volskys would not want to come with her to the
+Settlement House, perhaps they would resent her attitude--would call it
+interference. Perhaps they would tell her that they were tired of
+her--and of her plans. Perhaps--But the door, swinging open, cut short
+her suppositions.
+
+Jim stood in the doorway. He was in his shirt sleeves but--even divested
+of his coat--he was still too painfully immaculate--too well groomed.
+Rose-Marie, looking at him, felt a sudden primitive desire to see him
+dirty and mussed up. She wished, and the wish surprised her, that she
+might sometime see him with his hair rumpled, his collar torn, his eye
+blackened and--she could hardly suppress a hysterical desire to laugh as
+the thought struck her--his nose bleeding. Somehow his smooth, hard
+neatness was more offensive to her than his mother's dirty apron--than
+his small brother's frankly grimy hands. She spoke to him in a cool
+little voice that belied her inward disturbance.
+
+"Where," she questioned, "are your mother and Ella? I want to see them."
+
+With a movement that was not ungraceful Jim flung wide the door. Indeed,
+Rose-Marie told herself, as she stepped into the Volsky flat, Jim was
+never ungraceful. There was something lithe and cat-like in his slightest
+movement, just as there was something feline in the expression of his
+eyes. Rose-Marie often felt like a small, helpless mouse when Jim was
+staring at her.
+
+"Where are your mother and Ella?" she questioned again as she stepped
+into the room. "I _do_ want to see them!"
+
+Jim was dragging forward a chair. He answered.
+
+"Then yer'd better sit down 'n' make yourself at home," he told her, "fer
+they've gone out. They're down t' th' hospital, now, takin' a last slant
+at Pa. Ma's cryin' to beat th' band--you'd think that she really liked
+_him_! An' Ella's cryin', too--she's fergot how he uster whip her wit' a
+strap when she was a kid! An' they've took Bennie; Bennie ain't cryin'
+but he's a-holdin' to Ma's hand like a baby. Oh," he laughed sneeringly,
+"it's one grand little family group that they make!"
+
+Rose-Marie sat down gingerly upon the edge of the chair. She did not
+relish the prospect of spending any time alone with Jim, but a certain
+feeling of pride kept her from leaving the place. She would not let Jim
+know that she feared him--it would flatter him to think that he had so
+much influence over her. She would stay, even though the staying made her
+uneasy! But she hoped, from the bottom of her heart, that the rest of the
+family would not be long at the hospital.
+
+"When did they go out?" she questioned, trying to make her tone casual.
+"Do you expect them back soon?"
+
+Jim sat down in a chair that was near her own. He leaned forward as
+he answered.
+
+"They haven't been gone so awful long," he told her. "An'--say--what's
+th' difference _when_ they gets back? I never have no chance to talk wit'
+you--not ever! An'," he sighed with mock tragedy, "an' I have so much t'
+say t' yer! You never have a word fer me--think o' that! An' think o' all
+th' time yer waste on Bennie--an' him too young t' know a pretty girl
+when he sees one!"
+
+Rose-Marie flushed and hated herself for doing it. "We'll leave
+personalities out of this!" she said primly.
+
+Jim was laughing, but there was a sinister note in his mirth.
+
+"Not much we won't!" he told her. "I like you--see? You're th' best
+lookin' girl in this neck o' woods--even if you do live at the Settlement
+House! If you'd learn to dress more snappy--t' care more about hats than
+yer do about Bible Classes--you'd make a big hit when yer walked out on
+Delancy Street. There ain't a feller livin' as wouldn't turn t' look at
+yer--not one! Say, kid," he leaned still closer, "I'm strong fer yer when
+yer cheeks get all pink-like. I'm strong fer yer any time a-tall!"
+
+Rose-Marie was more genuinely shocked than she had ever been in her life.
+The flush receded slowly from her face.
+
+"You'd like me to be more interested in clothes than in Bible Classes!"
+she said slowly. "You'd like me to go parading down Delancy Street ..."
+she paused, and then--"You're a fine sort of a man," she said
+bitterly--"a fine sort of a man! Oh, I know. I know the sort of people
+you introduce to Ella--and she's your sister. I've seen the way you look
+at Lily, and she's your sister, too! You wouldn't think of making things
+easier for your mother; and you'd give Bennie a push down--instead of a
+boost _up_! And you scoff at your father--lying dead in his coffin!
+You're a fine sort of a _man_.... I don't believe that you've a shred of
+human affection in your whole make-up!"
+
+Jim had risen slowly to his feet. There was no anger in his face--only a
+huge amusement. Rose-Marie, watching his expression, knew all at once
+that nothing she said would have the slightest effect upon him. His
+sensibilities were too well concealed, beneath a tough veneer of conceit,
+to be wounded. His soul seemed too well hidden to be reached.
+
+"So that's what you think, is it?" he asked, and his voice was almost
+silky, it was so smooth, "so that's what you think! I haven't any 'human
+affection in my make-up,'" he was imitating her angry voice, "I haven't
+any 'human affection'!" he laughed suddenly, and bent with a swift
+movement until his face was on a level with her face. "Lot yer know about
+it!" he told her and his voice thickened, all at once, "lot yer know
+about it! I'm crazy about you, little kid--just crazy! Yer th' only girl
+as I've ever wanted t' tie up to, get that? How'd yer like t' marry me?"
+
+For one sickening moment Rose-Marie thought that she had
+misunderstood. And then she saw his face and knew that he had been
+deadly serious. Her hands fluttered up until they rested, like
+frightened birds, above her heart.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+AN ANSWER
+
+
+There was eagerness--and a hint of something else--in Jim's voice as he
+repeated his question.
+
+"Well," he asked for the second time, "what d' yer say about it--huh?
+How'd yer like ter marry me?"
+
+Rose-Marie's fascinated eyes were on his face. At the first she had
+hardly believed her ears--but her ears had evidently been functioning
+properly. Jim wanted to marry her--to marry _her_! It was a possibility
+that she had never dreamed of--a thought that she had never, for one
+moment, entertained. Jim had always seemed so utterly of another
+world--of another epoch, almost. He spoke a language that was far removed
+from her language, his mind worked differently--even his emotions were
+different from her emotions. He might have been living upon another
+planet--so distant he had always seemed from her. _And yet he had asked
+her to marry him_!
+
+Like every other normal girl, Rose-Marie had thought ahead to the time
+when she would have a home and a husband. She had dreamed of the day when
+her knight would come riding--a visionary, idealized figure, always, but
+a noble one! She had pictured a hearth-fire, and a blue and white kitchen
+with aluminum pans and glass baking dishes. She had even wondered how
+tiny fingers would feel as they curled about her hand--if a wee head
+would be heavy upon her breast.
+
+Of late her dreams, for some reason, had become a little less misty--a
+little more definite. The figure of her knight had been a trifle more
+clear cut--the armour of her imagination had given place to rough tweed
+suits and soft felt hats. And the children had looked at her, from out of
+the shadows, with wide, dark eyes--almost like real children. Her
+thoughts had shaped themselves about a figure that was not the romantic
+creation of girlhood--that was strong and willing and very tender. Dr.
+Blanchard--had he not been mistaken upon so many subjects--would have
+fitted nicely into the picture!
+
+But Jim--of all people, _Jim!_ He was as far removed from the boundaries
+of her dream as the North Pole is removed from the South. His patent
+leather hair--she could not picture it against her arm--his mouth,
+thin-lipped and too red.... She shuddered involuntarily, as she thought
+of it and the man, bending above her, saw the shudder.
+
+"Well," he questioned for the third time, "what about it? I'm a reg'lar
+guy, ain't I? How'd you like to marry me?"
+
+Rose-Marie moistened her lips before she answered. Her voice, when it
+came, was very husky.
+
+"Why, Jim," she said faintly, "what an idea! How did you ever come to
+think of it?"
+
+The man's face was flushed. His words tumbled, quickly, from his
+unsteady mouth.
+
+"I'm crazy about yer, kid," he said, "crazy about yer! Don't think that
+bein' married t' me will mean as you'll have ter live in a dump like
+this-there"--the sweep of his arm was expressive--"fer yer won't! You'll
+have th' grandest flat in this city--anywhere yer say'll suit me! Yer'll
+have hats an' dresses, an' a car--if yer want it. Yer'll have
+everything--if yer'll marry me! What d' yer say?"
+
+Rose-Marie's face was a study of mixed emotions--consternation struggling
+with incredulity for first place. The man saw the unbelief; for he
+hurried on before she could speak.
+
+"Yer think that I'm like my pa was"--he told her--"livin' on measly
+wages! Well, I ain't. Some nights I make a pile that runs inter
+thousands--an' it'll be all fer yer! All fer yer!"
+
+Of a sudden, Rose-Marie spoke. She was scarcely tactful.
+
+"How do you make all of this money, Jim?" she questioned; "do you come by
+it honestly?"
+
+A dark wave of colour spread over the man's face--dyeing it to an
+ugly crimson.
+
+"What's it matter how I get it," he snarled, "long's I get it! What
+business is it of yers how I come by my coin? I ain't stagin' a
+investergation. And"--his face softened suddenly, "an' yer wouldn't
+understand, anyhow! Yer only a girl--a little kid! What's it matter how I
+gets th' roll--long as I'm willin' ter spend it on m' sweetie? What's it
+matter?" He made a movement as if to take her into his arms--"_What's it
+matter_?" he questioned again.
+
+Like a flash Rose-Marie was upon her feet. With a swing of her body she
+had evaded his arms. Her face was white and drawn, but her mind was
+exceptionally active--more active than it had ever been in all of her
+life. She knew that Jim was in a difficult mood--that a word, one way or
+the other, would make him as easy to manage as a kitten or as relentless
+as a panther, stalking his prey. She knew that it was in her power to say
+the word that would calm him until the return of his mother and his
+sister. And yet she found it well-nigh impossible to say that word.
+
+"I'm tired of deceit," she told herself, as she stepped back in the
+direction of the door. "I'll not say anything to him that isn't true! ...
+Nothing can happen to me, anyway," she assured herself. "This is the
+twentieth century, and I'm Rose-Marie Thompson. This is a civilized
+country--nothing can hurt me! I'm not afraid--not while God is taking
+care of me!"
+
+Jim had straightened up. He seemed, suddenly, to tower.
+
+"Well," he growled, "how about it? When'll we be married?"
+
+Rose-Marie raised her head gallantly.
+
+"We won't ever be married, Jim Volsky!" she told him, and even to her own
+surprise there was not the suggestion of a quaver in her voice. "We won't
+ever be married. I'm surprised at you for suggesting it!"
+
+The man stared at her, a moment, and his eyes showed clearly that he did
+not quite understand.
+
+"Yer mean," he stammered at last, "that yer t'rowing me down?"
+
+Rose-Marie's head was still gallantly lifted.
+
+"I mean," she said, "that I won't marry you! Please--we'll let the matter
+drop, at once!"
+
+The man came a step nearer. The bewilderment was dying from his face.
+
+"Not much, we won't let the matter drop!" he snarled. "What's yer reason
+fer turnin' me down--huh?"
+
+It was then that Rose-Marie made her mistake. It was then that she ceased
+to be tactful. But suddenly she was tired, desperately tired, of Jim's
+persistence. Suddenly she was too tired even to be afraid. The lift of
+her chin was very proud--proud with some ingrained pride of race, as she
+answered. Behind her stood a long line of ancestors with gentle blood,
+ancestors who had known the meaning of chivalry.
+
+Coolly she surveyed him. Dispassionately she noticed the lack of breeding
+in his face, the marks of early dissipation, the lines that sin had
+etched. And as she looked she laughed with just the suggestion of
+hauteur. For the first time in her life Rose-Marie was experiencing a
+touch of snobbishness, of class distinction.
+
+"We won't discuss my reason," she told him slowly; "it should be quite
+evident to _any one_!"
+
+Not many weeks before, Rose-Marie had told the Young Doctor--in the
+presence of the Superintendent--that she loved the people of the slums.
+She had been so sure of herself then--so certain that she spoke the
+truth. More recently she had assured the Superintendent that she could
+cope with any situation. And that very afternoon she had told Ella that
+they were alike, were just young girls--both of them--with all of life in
+front of them, with the same hopes and the same fears and the same
+ambitions.
+
+She had believed the statement that she had made, so emphatically, to the
+Young Doctor--she had believed it very strongly. She had been utterly
+sure of herself when she begged the Superintendent to let her know more
+of life. And, during her talk with Ella, she had felt a real kinship to
+the whole of the Volsky family! But now that she had come face to face
+with a crisis--now that she was meeting her big test--she knew that her
+strong beliefs were weakening and that she was no longer at all sure of
+herself! And as for being kin to the Volskys--the idea was quite
+unthinkable.
+
+Always, Rose-Marie had imagined that a proposal of marriage would be
+the greatest compliment that a man could pay a girl. But the proposal
+of the man in front of her did not seem in the least complimentary.
+She realized--with the only feeling of irony she had ever known, that
+this proposal was her very first. And she was looking upon it as an
+insult. With a tiny curl of her lips she raised her eyes until they
+met Jim's eyes.
+
+"It should be quite evident," she repeated, "to any one!"
+
+Jim Volsky's face had turned to a dark mottled red. His slim, well
+manicured hands were clenched at his sides.
+
+"Y' mean," he questioned, and his voice had an ugly ring, "y' mean I
+ain't good enough fer yer?"
+
+All at once the snobbishness had slipped, like a worn coat, from the
+shoulders of the girl. She was Rose-Marie Thompson again--Settlement
+worker. She was no better, despite the ancestors with gentle blood,
+than the man in front of her--just more fortunate. She realized that
+she had been not only unkind, but foolish. She tried, hurriedly--and
+with a great scare looking out of her wide eyes--to repair the mistake
+that she had made.
+
+"I don't mean that I am better than you, Jim," she said softly, "not in
+the matter of family. We are all the children of God--we are all brothers
+and sisters in His sight."
+
+Jim Volsky interrupted. He came nearer to Rose-Marie--so near that only a
+few inches of floor space lay between them.
+
+"Don't yer go sayin' over Sunday-school lessons at me," he snarled. "I
+know what yer meant. Yer think I ain't good enough--t' marry yer.
+Well"--he laughed shortly, "well, maybe I ain't good enough--t' marry
+yer! But I guess I'm good enough t' kiss yer--" All at once his hands
+shot out, closed with the strength of a vise upon her arms, just above
+her elbows. "I guess I'm good enough t' kiss yer!" he repeated
+gloatingly.
+
+Rose-Marie felt cold fear creeping through her veins. There was
+something clammy in Jim's touch, something more than menacing in his
+eyes. She knew that her strength was nothing to be pitted against
+his--she knew that in any sort of a struggle she would be easily
+subdued. And yet she knew that she would rather die than feel his lips
+upon hers. She felt an intense loathing for him--the loathing that some
+women feel for toads and lizards.
+
+"Jim," she said slowly and distinctly, "let go of me _this instant_!"
+
+The man was bending closer. A thick lock of his heavy hair had shaken
+down over his forehead, giving him a strangely piratical look.
+
+"Not much I won't," he told her. "_So I ain't good enough_--"
+
+All at once Rose-Marie felt the blindness of rage--unreasoning, deadly
+anger. Only two things she knew--that she hated Jim and that she would
+not let him kiss her. She spoke sudden defiant words that surprised
+even herself.
+
+"No," she told him, and her voice was hysterically high, "no, you're not
+good enough! You're not good enough for _any_ decent girl! You're
+bad--too bad to lay your fingers upon me. You're--you're unclean! Let go
+of me or I'll"--her courage was oozing rapidly away, "or I'll _scream_!"
+
+Jim Volsky's too red lips were on a level with her own. His voice came
+thickly. "Scream, if you want to, little kid!" he said. "Scream t' beat
+th' band! There ain't no one t' hear yer. Ma an' Ella an' Bennie are at
+the hospital--givin' Pa th' once over. An' th' folks in this house are
+used t' yellin'. They'd oughter be! Scream if yer want to--but I'm
+a-goin' ter have my kiss!"
+
+Rose-Marie could feel the warmth of his breath upon her face. Knowing the
+futility--the uselessness of it--she began to struggle. Desperately she
+tried to twist her arms from the slim, brutal hands that held them--but
+the hands did not loosen their hold. She told herself, as she struggled,
+that Jim had spoken the truth--that a scream, more or less, was an
+every-day occurrence in the tenement.
+
+All at once she realized, with a dazed, sinking feeling, that the Young
+Doctor had had some foundation of truth in certain of his statements.
+Some of the slum people were like animals--very like animals! Jim was all
+animal as he bent above her--easily holding her with his hands. Nothing
+that she said could reach him--nothing. She realized why the Young Doctor
+had wanted her to leave the Settlement House before any of her dreams had
+been shattered, before her faith in mankind had been abused! She realized
+why, at times, he had hurt her, and with the realization came the
+knowledge that she wanted him, desperately, at that minute--that he, out
+of all the people in the world, was the one that her heart was calling to
+in her time of need. She wanted his strength, his protection.
+
+Once before, earlier in the afternoon, she had realized that there was
+much of the cat in Jim. Now she realized it again, with a new sense of
+fear and dislike. For Jim was not claiming the kiss that he wanted, in a
+straight-forward way--he was holding her gloatingly, as a cat tortures a
+mouse. He was letting her know, without words, that she was utterly
+helpless--that he could kiss her when he wanted to, and not until he
+wanted to. There was something horribly playful in his attitude. She
+struggled again--but more weakly, her strength was going. If there were
+only somebody to help--somebody!
+
+And then, all at once, she remembered--with a blinding sense of
+relief--what she had been forgetting. She remembered that there was
+Somebody--a Somebody Who is always ready to help--a Somebody who watches
+over the fate of every little sparrow.
+
+"If you hurt me," she said desperately, to Jim, "God will know! Let go of
+me--or I'll--"
+
+Jim interrupted.
+
+"Yer'll scream!" he chuckled, and there was cruel mirth in the chuckle.
+"Yer'll scream, an' God will take care o' yer! Well--scream! I don't
+believe as God can help yer. God ain't never been in this tenement--as
+far as I know!"
+
+Despite her weight of fear and loathing, Rose-Marie was suddenly sorry
+for Jim. There was something pitiful--something of which he did not
+realize the pathos--in his speech. God had never been in the
+tenement--_God had never been in the tenement_! All at once she realized
+that Jim's wickedness, that Jim's point of view, was not wholly his
+fault. Jim had not been brought up, as she had, in the clean
+out-of-doors; he--like many another slum child--had grown to manhood
+without his proper heritage of fresh air and sunshine. One could not
+entirely blame him for thinking of his home--the only home that he had
+ever known--as a Godless place. She stopped struggling and her voice was
+suddenly calm and sweet as she answered Jim's statement.
+
+"God," she said slowly, "_is_ in this tenement. God is everywhere,
+Jim--everywhere! If I call on Him, He will help me!"
+
+All at once Jim had swung her away from him, until he was holding her at
+arm's length. He looked at her, from between narrowed lids, and there was
+bitter sarcasm in his eyes.
+
+"Call on Him, then," he taunted, "call on Him! Lotta good it'll do yer!"
+The very tone of his voice was a sacrilege, as he said it.
+
+Rose-Marie's eyes were blurred with tears as she spoke her answer to his
+challenge. She was remembering the prayers that she had said back
+home--in the little town. She was remembering how her aunts had taught
+her, when she was a wee girl, to talk with God--to call upon Him in times
+of deep perplexity. She had called upon Him, often, but she had never
+really needed Him as she did now. "Help me, God!" she said softly, "_Help
+me, God_!"
+
+The Volsky flat was still, for a moment. And then, with surprising
+quickness, the door to the inner room swung open. Jim, who was
+standing with his back to the door, did not see the tiny,
+golden-haired figure that stood in the opening, but Rose-Marie caught
+her breath in a kind of a sob.
+
+"I had forgotten Lily--" she murmured, almost to herself.
+
+Jim, hearing her words, glanced quickly back over his shoulder. And then
+he laughed, and there was an added brutality in the tone of his laughter.
+
+"Oh--Lily!" he laughed. "Lily! She won't help yer--not much! I was sort
+of expectin' this God that yer talk about--" The laughter died out of his
+face and he jerked her suddenly close--so close that she lay trembling in
+his arms. "Lily can't hear," he exulted, "'r see, 'r speak. _I'll take my
+kiss--now_!"
+
+It was then that Rose-Marie, forgetting herself in the panic of the
+moment, screamed. She screamed lustily, twisting her face away from his
+lips. And as she screamed Lily, as silently as a little wraith, started
+across the room. She might almost have heard, so straight she came. She
+might almost have known what was happening, so directly she ran to the
+spot where Rose-Marie was struggling in the arms of Jim. All at once her
+thin little hands had fastened themselves upon the man's trouser leg, all
+at once she was pulling at him, with every bit of her feeble strength.
+
+Rose-Marie, still struggling, felt an added weight of apprehension. Not
+only her own safety was at stake--Lily, who was so weak, was in danger of
+being hurt. She jerked back, with another cry.
+
+"Oh, God help me!" she cried, "God help _us_!"
+
+Silently, but with a curious persistence, the child clung to the man's
+trouser leg. With an oath he looked back again over his shoulder.
+
+"Leave go of me," he mouthed. "Leave go o' me--y' little brat! 'r I'll--"
+
+And "Let go of him, Lily," sobbed Rose-Marie, forgetting that the child
+could not hear. "Let go of him, or he'll hurt you!"
+
+The child lifted her sightless blue eyes wistfully to the faces above
+her--the faces that she could not see. And she clung the closer.
+
+Jim was swearing, steadily--swearing with a dogged, horrible regularity.
+Of a sudden he raised his heavy foot and kicked viciously at the child
+who clung so tenaciously to his other leg. Rose-Marie, powerless to help,
+closed her eyes--and opened them again almost spasmodically.
+
+"You brute," she screamed, "_you utter brute_!"
+
+Lily, who had never, in all of her broken little life, felt an unkind
+touch, wavered, as the man's boot touched her slight body. Her sightless
+eyes clouded, all at once, with tears. And then, with a sudden piercing
+shriek, she crumpled up--in a white little heap--upon the floor.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+AND A MIRACLE
+
+
+For a moment Rose-Marie was stunned by the child's unexpected cry. She
+hung speechless, filled with wonderment, in Jim's arms. And then, with a
+wrench, she was free--was running across the floor to the little huddled
+bundle that was Lily.
+
+"You beast," she flung back, over her shoulder, as she ran. "You beast!
+You've killed her!"
+
+Jim did not attempt to follow--or to answer. He had wheeled about, and
+his face was very pale.
+
+"God!" he said, in a tense whisper, "_God_!" It was the first time that
+the word, upon his lips, was neither mocking nor profane.
+
+Rose-Marie, with tender hands, gathered the child up from the hard floor.
+She was not thinking of the miracle that had taken place--she was not
+thinking of the sound that had come, so unexpectedly, from dumb lips. She
+only knew that the child was unconscious, perhaps dying. Her trembling
+fingers felt of the slim wrist; felt almost with apprehension. She was
+surprised to feel that the pulse was still beating, though faintly.
+
+"Get somebody," she said, tersely, to Jim. "Get somebody who
+knows--something!"
+
+Jim's face was still the colour of ashes. He did not stir--did not seem
+to have the power to stir.
+
+"Did yer hear her?" he mouthed thickly. "She _yelled_. I heard her. Did
+yer hear--"
+
+Rose-Marie was holding Lily close to her breast. Her stern young eyes
+looked across the drooping golden head into the scared face of the man.
+
+"It was God, speaking through her," she said. "It was God. And you--you
+had denied Him--_you beast_!"
+
+All at once Jim was down upon the floor beside her. The mask of passion
+had slipped from his face--his shoulders seemed suddenly more narrow--his
+cruel hands almost futile. Rose-Marie wondered, subconsciously, how she
+had ever feared him.
+
+"She yelled," he reiterated, "_did yer hear her--_"
+
+Rose-Marie clutched the child tighter in her arms.
+
+"Get some one, at once," she ordered, "if you don't want her to die--if
+you don't want to be a murderer!"
+
+But Jim had not heard her voice. He was sobbing, gustily.
+
+"I'm t'rough," he was sobbing, "t'rough! Oh--God, fergive--"
+
+It was then that the door opened. And Rose-Marie, raising eyes abrim with
+relief, saw that Ella and Mrs. Volsky and Bennie stood upon the
+threshold.
+
+"What's a-matter?" questioned Mrs. Volsky--her voice sodden with grief.
+"What's been a-happenin'?" But Ella ran across the space between them,
+and knelt in front of Rose-Marie.
+
+"Give 'er t' me!" she breathed fiercely; "she's my sister. Give
+'er t' me!"
+
+Silently Rose-Marie handed over the light little figure. But as Ella
+pillowed the dishevelled head upon her shoulder, she spoke directly
+to Bennie.
+
+"Run to the Settlement House, as fast as ever you can!" she told him.
+"And bring Dr. Blanchard back with you. Hurry, dear--it may mean Lily's
+life!" And Bennie, with his grimy face tear-streaked, was out of the door
+and clattering down the stairs before she had finished.
+
+Ella, her mouth agonized and drawn, was the first to speak after Bennie
+left the room. When she did speak she asked a question.
+
+"Who done this t' her?" she questioned. "_Who done it_?"
+
+Rose-Marie hesitated. She could feel the eyes of Mrs. Volsky, dumb with
+suffering, upon her--she could feel Jim's rat-like gaze fixed, with a
+certain appeal, on her face. At last she spoke.
+
+"Jim will tell you!" she said.
+
+If she had expected the man to evade the issue--if she had expected a
+downright falsehood from him--she was surprised. For Jim's head came up,
+suddenly, and his eyes met the burning dark ones of his sister.
+
+"I done it," he said, simply, and he scrambled up from the floor, as he
+spoke. "I kicked her. She come in when I was tryin' t' kiss"--his finger
+indicated Rose-Marie, "_her_. Lily got in th' way. So I kicked out
+hard--then--she," he gulped back a shudder, "she _yelled_!"
+
+Ella was suddenly galvanized into action. She was on her feet, with one
+lithe, pantherlike movement--the child held tight in her arms.
+
+"Yer kicked her," she said softly--and the gentleness of her voice was
+ominous. "Yer kicked her! An' she yelled--" For the first time the full
+significance of it struck her. "_She yelled_?" she questioned, whirling
+to Rose-Marie; "yer don't mean as she made a _sound_?"
+
+Rose-Marie nodded dumbly. It was Jim's voice that went on with the story.
+
+"She ain't dead," he told Ella, piteously. "She ain't dead. An'--I
+promise yer true--I'll never do such a thing again. I promise yer true!"
+
+Ella took a step toward him. Her face was suddenly lined, and old. "If
+she dies," she told him, "_if she dies_..." she hesitated, and
+then--"Much yer promises mean," she shrilled, "much yer promises--"
+
+Rose-Marie had been watching Jim's face. Almost without meaning to she
+interrupted Ella's flow of speech.
+
+"I think that he means what he says," she told Ella slowly. "I think that
+he means ... what he says."
+
+For she had seen the birth of something--_that might have been soul_--in
+Jim's haggard eyes.
+
+The child in Ella's arms stirred, weakly, and was still again. But the
+movement, slight as it was, made the girl forget her brother. Her dark
+head bent above the fair one.
+
+"Honey," she whispered, "yer goin' ter get well fer Ella--ain't yer? Yer
+goin' ter get well--"
+
+The door swung open with a startling suddenness, and Rose-Marie sprang
+forward, her hands outstretched. Framed in the battered wood stood
+Bennie--the tears streaking his face--and behind him was the Young
+Doctor. So tall he seemed, so capable, so strong, standing there, that
+Rose-Marie felt as if her troubles had been lifted, magically, from her
+shoulders. All at once she ceased to be afraid--ceased to question the
+ways of the Almighty. All at once she felt that Lily would get
+better--that the Volskys would be saved to a better life. And all at
+once she knew something else. And the consciousness of it looked from
+her wide eyes.
+
+"You!" she breathed. "_You_!"
+
+And, though she had sent for him, herself, she felt a glad sort of
+surprise surging through her heart.
+
+The Young Doctor's glance, in her direction, was eloquent. But as his
+eyes saw the child in Ella's arms his expression became impersonal,
+again, concentrated, and alert. With one stride he reached Ella's side,
+and took the tiny figure from her arms.
+
+"What's the matter here?" he questioned sharply.
+
+Rose-Marie was not conscious of the words that she used as she described
+Lily's accident. She glossed over Jim's part in it as lightly as
+possible; she told, as quickly as she could, the history of the child.
+And as she told it, the doctor's lean capable hands were passing, with
+practiced skill, over the little relaxed body. When she told of the
+child's deaf and dumb condition she was conscious of his absolute
+attention--though he did not for a moment stop his work--when she spoke
+of the scream she saw his start of surprise. But his only words were in
+the nature of commands. "Bring water"--he ordered, "clean water, in a
+basin. A _clean_ basin. Bring a sponge"--he corrected himself--"a clean
+rag will do--only it must be _clean_"--this to Mrs. Volsky, "you
+_understand?_ Where," his eyes were on Ella's face, "can we lay the
+child? Is there a _clean_ bed, anywhere?"
+
+Ella was shaking with nervousness as she opened the door of the inner
+room that she and Lily shared. Mrs. Volsky, carrying the basin of water,
+was sobbing. Jim, standing in the center of the room, was like a
+statue--only his haunted eyes were alive. The Young Doctor, glancing from
+face to face, spoke suddenly to Rose-Marie.
+
+"I hate to ask you," he said simply, "but you seem to be the only one who
+hasn't gone to pieces. Will you come in here with me?"
+
+Rose-Marie nodded, and she spoke, very softly. "Then you think that I'll
+be able--to help?" she questioned.
+
+The Young Doctor was remembering--or forgetting--many things.
+
+"I know that you will!" he said, and he spoke as softly as she had done.
+"I know that you will!"
+
+They went, together, with Lily, into the inner room. And as the Young
+Doctor closed the door, Rose-Marie knew a very real throb of triumph. For
+he had admitted that her help was to be desired--that she could really do
+something!
+
+But, the moment that the door closed, she forgot her feeling of victory,
+for, of a sudden, she saw Dr. Blanchard in a new light. She saw him lay
+the little figure upon the bed--she saw him pull off his coat. And then,
+while she held the basin of water, she saw him get to work. And as she
+watched him her last feeling of doubt was swept away.
+
+"He may say that he's not interested in people," she told herself
+joyously, "but he is. He may think that he doesn't care for religion--but
+he does. There's love of people in every move of his hands! There's
+something religious in the very way his fingers touch Lily!"
+
+Yes, she was seeing the Young Doctor in a new light. As she watched him
+she knew that he had quite forgotten her presence--had quite forgotten
+the little quarrels that had all but ruined their chance at friendship.
+She knew that his mind was only on the child who lay so still under his
+hands--she knew that all the intensity of his nature was concentrated
+upon Lily. As she watched him, deftly obeying His simple directions, she
+gloried in his skill--in his surety.
+
+And then, at last, Lily opened her eyes. She might have been waking from
+a deep slumber as she opened them--she might have been dreaming a
+pleasant dream as she smiled faintly. Rose-Marie had a sudden feeling--a
+feeling that she had experienced before--that the child was seeing
+visions, with her great sightless eyes, that other, normal folk could not
+see. All at once a great dread clutched at her soul.
+
+"She's not dying--?" she whispered, gaspingly. "Her smile is so
+very--wonderful. She's not dying?"
+
+The Young Doctor turned swiftly from the bed. All at once he looked like
+a knight to Rose-Marie--an armourless, modern knight who fought an
+endless fight against the dragons of disease and pain.
+
+"Bless your heart, no!" he answered. "She isn't dying! We'll bring her
+around in a few minutes. And now"--a great tenderness shone out of his
+eyes, "tell me all about it. You were very sketchy," his gesture
+indicated the other room, "out there! How did the child really get
+hurt--and how did you come to be here? How--Why, Rose-Marie....
+_Sweetheart_!"
+
+For Rose-Marie had fainted very quietly--and for the first time in all of
+her strong young life.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+AND THE HAPPY ENDING
+
+
+They were sitting together at the luncheon table--the Superintendent,
+Rose-Marie, and the Young Doctor. The noontime sunshine slanted across
+the table--dancing on the silver, touching softly Rose-Marie's curls,
+finding an answering sparkle in the Young Doctor's smile. And
+silence--the warm silence of happiness--lay over them all.
+
+It was the Young Doctor who spoke first.
+
+"Just about a month ago, it was," he said reflectively, "that I saw Lily
+for the first time. And now"--he paused teasingly--"and now--"
+
+Rose-Marie laid down the bit of roll that she was buttering. Her face was
+glowing with eagerness.
+
+"They've come to some decision," she whispered, in a question that was
+little more than a breath of sound, "the doctors at the hospital have
+come to some decision?"
+
+The Superintendent was leaning forward and her kind soul shone out of her
+tired eyes. "Tell us at once, Billy Blanchard!" she ordered, "_At once_!"
+
+Quite after the maddening fashion of men the Young Doctor did not
+answer--not until he had consumed, and appreciatively, the bit of roll
+that he had been buttering. And then--"The other doctors agree with my
+diagnosis," he told them simply. "It's an extraordinary case, they say;
+but a not incurable one. The shock--when Jim kicked her--was a blessing
+in disguise. Not, of course, that I'd prescribe kicks for crippled
+children! But"--the term that he used was long and technical--"but such
+things have happened. Not often, of course. The doctors agree with me
+that, if her voice comes back--as I believe it will--there may be a very
+real hope for her hearing. And her eyes "--his voice was suddenly
+tender--"well--thousands of slum kiddies are blind--and thousands of them
+have been cured. If Lily is, some day, a normal child--if she can some
+day speak and see, and hear, it will be--"
+
+The Superintendent's voice was soft--
+
+"It is already a miracle!" she said simply. "It is already a miracle.
+Look at Jim--working for a small salary, _and liking it_! Look at
+Bennie--he was the head of his class in school, this month, he told me.
+And Ella--"
+
+The Young Doctor interrupted.
+
+"Ella and her mother went to church with us last Sunday," he said.
+"Rose-Marie and I were starting out, together, and they asked if they
+might go along. I tell you"--his eyes were looking deep, _deep_, into the
+eyes of Rose-Marie and he spoke directly to her, "I tell you, dear--I've
+learned a great many lessons in the last few weeks. Jim isn't the only
+one--or Bennie. Lily isn't the only nearly incurable case that has found
+new strength...."
+
+Rose-Marie was blushing. The Superintendent, watching the waves of colour
+sweep over her face, spoke suddenly--reminiscently.
+
+"Child," she said--and laughter, tremulous laughter, was in her voice,
+"your face is ever so _pink_! I believe," she was quoting, "'that you
+have a best beau'!"
+
+The Young Doctor was laughing, too. Strangely enough his laughter had
+just the suggestion of a tremor in it.
+
+"I'll say that she has!" he replied, and his words, though slangy, were
+very tender. "I'll say that she has!" And then--"Are _we_ going back to
+the little town, Rose-Marie," he questioned. "Are _we_ going back to the
+little town to be married?"
+
+The blush had died from Rose-Marie's face, leaving it just faintly
+flushed. The eyes that she raised to the Young Doctor's eyes were like
+warm stars.
+
+"No," she told him, "we're not! I've thought it all out. We're going to
+be married here--here in the Settlement House. I'll write for my aunts to
+come on--and for my old pastor! I couldn't be married without my
+aunts.... And my pastor; he christened me, and he welcomed me into the
+church, and"--all at once she started up from the table, "I'm going
+up-stairs to write, now," she managed. "I want to tell them that we're
+going to start our home here"--her voice broke, "here, on our own
+Island...." Like a flash she was out of the door.
+
+The Young Doctor was on his feet. Luncheon was quite forgotten.
+
+"I think," he said softly, and his face was like a light, "I think that
+I'll go with her--and help her with the letter!" The door closed,
+sharply, upon his hurrying back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Superintendent, left alone at the table, rang for the maid. Her voice
+was carefully calm as she ordered the evening meal. But her eyes were
+just a bit misty as she looked into the maid's dull face.
+
+"Mrs. Volsky," she said suddenly, "love must have its way! And love is--"
+
+The maid looked at her blankly. Obviously she did not understand. But,
+seeing her neat apron, her clean hands, her carefully combed hair, one
+could forgive her vague expression.
+
+"What say?" she questioned.
+
+The Superintendent laughed wearily, "Anyway," she remarked, "Ella likes
+her work, doesn't she? And Jim? And Bennie is going to be a great man,
+some day--isn't he? And Lily may be made well--quite well! You should be
+a glad woman, Mrs. Volsky!"
+
+Pride flamed up, suddenly, in the maid's face--blotting out the dullness.
+
+"God," she said simply and--marvel of marvels--her usually toneless
+voice was athrob with love--"God is good!" She went out, with a tray
+full of dishes.
+
+Her chin in the palm of her hand, the Superintendent stared off into
+space. If she was thinking of a little blond child--lying in a hospital
+bed--if she was thinking of a man with sleek hair, trying to make a new
+start--if she was thinking of a girl with dark, flashing eyes, and a
+small, grubby-fingered boy, her expression did not mirror her thought.
+Only once she spoke, as she was folding her napkin. And then--
+
+"They're both very young," she murmured, a shade wistfully. Perhaps she
+was remembering the springtime of her own youth.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Island of Faith, by Margaret E. Sangster
+
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