Chapter 5
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.