The Island of Faith Part 8

"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 b.u.m, 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 pa.s.s 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-fas.h.i.+oned, 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 cla.s.ses 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 sh.e.l.l 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 flas.h.i.+ng, 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 pa.s.s, without a flicker of interest, over his wife's clean ap.r.o.n 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 G.o.dsend 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 s.h.i.+elding me--about keeping me from brus.h.i.+ng 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 cla.s.sed 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 suns.h.i.+ne? 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 pa.s.sed, "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.