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.