FAITH 
 
 MARGARET E. 
 SANGSTER
 
 The Island of Faith 
 
 OP CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES
 
 love Lily," he told her, "I wouldn't let nobody 
 touch Lily! "
 
 The Island of Faith 
 
 By 
 MARGARET E. SANGSTER 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Com pan) 
 
 LONDON AND EDINBURGH
 
 Copyright, 1921, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
 London: at Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
 
 To M's M- 
 and Chance 
 
 213S6R4
 
 Contents 
 
 I. INTRODUCING THE SETTLEMENT 
 
 HOUSE . . . . ii 
 
 II. THE QUARREL . . . .13 
 
 III. CONCERNING IDEALS . . . 20 
 
 IV. THE PARK 31 
 
 V. ROSE-MARIE COMES TO THE RES- 
 
 CUE 35 
 
 VI. THERE'S No PLACE " . 44 
 
 VII. A LILY IN THE SLUMS . . 57 
 
 VIII. ANOTHER QUARREL 61 
 
 IX. AND ANOTHER .... 70 
 
 X. MRS. VOLSKY PROMISES TO TRY . 83 
 
 XI. BENNIE COMES TO THE SETTLE- 
 
 MENT HOUSE .... 89 
 
 XII. AN ISLAND . . . .95 
 
 XIII. ELLA MAKES A DECISION . . 109 
 
 XIV. PA STEPS ASIDE . . . . 121 
 
 XV. A SOLUTION . . .126 
 
 XVI. ENTER JIM . . . .137 
 
 XVII. AN ANSWER . . . .145 
 
 XVIII. AND A MIRACLE . . . 161 
 
 XIX. AND THE HAPPY ENDING . .171
 
 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 bor- 
 der. 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 pictur- 
 esque 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
 
 12 THE ISLAND OP FAITH 
 
 drama ; and the stilted little parks are so teem- 
 ing 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 alley- 
 ways 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 pave- 
 ment vendors, the crying of babies, the shout- 
 ing 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 
 
 "f I 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 con- 
 sumed, 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.
 
 14 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 " 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 non- 
 chalantly 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 hun- 
 dreds of little bugs, and then there are thou- 
 sands, 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
 
 THE QUAEEEL 15 
 
 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 to- 
 gether! 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 coun- 
 try town where every one was fairly comfort- 
 able and fairly prosperous. You've always 
 been a part of a community where people went 
 to church and prayer-meeting and Sunday-
 
 16 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 so- 
 ciable." 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 qualifi- 
 cations have you to be a social service worker, 
 you child ? What do you know of the mean- 
 ing of service, of life? " 
 
 Rose-Marie's voice was earnest, though 
 shaken. 
 
 " I came," she answered, " because I love
 
 THE QUAEEEL 17 
 
 people and want to help them. I came because 
 I want to teach them to think beautiful 
 thoughts, to have beautiful ideals. I came be- 
 cause I want to show them the God that I 
 know and try to serve " she faltered. 
 
 The Young Doctor laughed but not pleas- 
 antly. 
 
 "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."
 
 18 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 "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 Superintend- 
 ent. 
 
 " 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 care- 
 fully calm as she gave orders for the evening 
 meal. If she was thinking of Giovanni Cel- 
 leni, his brute face filled with semi-madness; 
 if she was thinking of a burned baby, sobbing
 
 THE QUAEEEL 19 
 
 alone in a darkened tenement while its mother 
 breathlessly watched the gay colours and shift- 
 ing scenes of a make-believe life, her expres- 
 sion 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 remem- 
 bering the enthusiasm and the intolerance 
 of her own youth.
 
 Ill 
 
 CONCERNING IDEALS 
 
 and apple blossoms!" 
 Rose-Marie, hurrying along the hall to 
 her own room, repeated the Young 
 Doctor's words and sobbed afresh as she re- 
 peated 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 reg- 
 ularly, 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 Teachings of her personality. When she 
 ao
 
 CONCEENING IDEALS 21 
 
 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
 
 22 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 ten- 
 der 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 col- 
 ourful as ever but life, nevertheless, was be- 
 ginning 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 door- 
 bell 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
 
 CONCEENING IDEALS 23 
 
 mothers in the art of making cakes and pies 
 and salads, and of hearing a half hundred little 
 children repeat their A B C's. Only the dif- 
 ference 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 coun- 
 try school for all the good she was accom- 
 plishing. 
 
 She had offered, so many times, to do visit- 
 ing in the tenements to call upon families 
 of the folk who would not come to the Settle- 
 ment 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
 
 24 THE ISLAND OP FAITH 
 
 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 per- 
 fect chaperon and herself. It had seemed, 
 somehow, almost providential that they should 
 be thrown together. Yes, Rose-Marie remem- 
 bered 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 beauti- 
 fully 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 tin- 
 kindness 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
 
 CONCERNING IDEALS 25 
 
 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 Super- 
 intendent spoke differently. 
 
 "Billy Blanchard," she said, and she only
 
 26 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 spir- 
 itual 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 an- 
 swered ; " 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 mis- 
 sionary books " 
 
 The Young Doctor interrupted.
 
 CONCEBNING IDEALS 27 
 
 " 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 
 anaemic girls who wanted to be physical direct- 
 ors, 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 Thomp- 
 son 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,
 
 28 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 they say, and tell a clever girl that she's a rav- 
 ing, 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 per- 
 son. 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 match- 
 make ; 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 ! "
 
 CONCEENING IDEALS 29 
 
 The woman's face was averted as she an- 
 swered. 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.
 
 30 THE ISLA2H) OF FAITH 
 
 " 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 allow- 
 ing 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 re- 
 sult 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 de- 
 fiance 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 
 3 1
 
 32 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 some- 
 body ! 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
 
 THE PAEK 33 
 
 crowds are different from street crowds they 
 are crowds at rest, rather than hurrying, rest- 
 less 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, Hun- 
 garians 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 mo- 
 ment, rocking other babies. She fell to won- 
 dering, whimsically, whether God had fash- 
 ioned the people of the slums after some half-
 
 34 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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, quiv- 
 eringly, 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, relent- 
 less 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.
 
 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 be- 
 side 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 per- 
 haps, 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 
 35
 
 36 THE ISLAND OP FAITH 
 
 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 any- 
 thing 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 ani- 
 mals 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
 
 EOSE-MAEIE COMES TO THE EESCUE 37 
 
 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.
 
 88 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 "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 for- 
 ward 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
 
 EOSE-MAEIE COMES TO THE EESCUE 39 
 
 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, " al- 
 ways 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
 
 40 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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
 
 ROSE-MABIE COMES TO THE EESCUE 41 
 
 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 Settle- 
 ment 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 ex- 
 periencing the almost inarticulate embarrass- 
 ment of childhood. 
 
 "We live," he told her at last, "in that 
 house over there." His pointing ringer indi- 
 cated the largest and grimiest of the tenements 
 that loomed, dark and high, above the squalor
 
 42 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 serv- 
 ice. 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 an- 
 swered. 
 
 "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
 
 EOSE-MAEIE COMES TO THE EESCUE 43 
 
 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 ani- 
 mals 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 al- 
 most direct questions, she blushed with an in- 
 ward 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 de- 
 tected the glimmerings of something fine in the 
 child ! No despite his more tolerant attitude 
 she knew that, underneath, his convictions 
 44
 
 "THEKE'S NO PLACE " 45 
 
 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 tene- 
 ment 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 door- 
 way. It made the ascent of the first flight of 
 creaking stairs quite easy. At least Rose- 
 Marie could step aside from the piles of rub- 
 bish and avoid the rickety places. She won- 
 dered, 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
 
 46 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 mo- 
 ment 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 break- 
 ing crockery. There were yells of rage, 
 and worst of all bursts of appalling pro- 
 fanity. 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
 
 " THEEE'S NO PLACE " 47 
 
 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 "tiome" 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
 
 48 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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, some-
 
 " THERE'S NO PLACE " 49 
 
 how, an unbelievably bad dream a dream in 
 which she was appearing, with startling real- 
 ism. Her comfortable picture of a home was 
 vanishing vanishing as suddenly and com- 
 pletely 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, droop- 
 ing 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 f er ? " 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
 
 60 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 plates. She saw the gas stove, with its bat- 
 tered 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 re- 
 clining 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, stock- 
 ingless 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 spas- 
 modic, 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 feel- 
 ing 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.
 
 " THERE'S NO PLACE 61 
 
 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 neat- 
 ness 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 al- 
 most dangerous edge. But it was the face of 
 the young man from which Rose-Marie shrank 
 back a clever, sharp face with narrow, hor-
 
 62 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 ribly 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 fea- 
 ture, 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 mani- 
 cured 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, V 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
 
 " THEEE'S NO PLACE ' ' 53 
 
 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 ex- 
 pectantly 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 supposi- 
 tion, 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 arti- 
 ficial colouring, she realized that the girl was 
 beautiful with a high strung, almost thorough- 
 bred 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 corner. 
 
 Her train of thought was broken, suddenly. 
 For the young man was speaking. Rose-Marie 
 disliked, somehow, the very tone of his voice.
 
 54 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 " 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 danger- 
 ously 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 gath- 
 ered that social service workers were not wel- 
 come 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,"
 
 "THEBE'S NO PLACE 55 
 
 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 ac- 
 centuated 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 out- 
 lines made Jim and Ella and Bennie seem 
 heavy, and somehow overfed. Even Pa, snor- 
 ing 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 be- 
 fore a beautiful child. 
 
 Lily might have been four years old. Her 
 hair, drawn back from her white little face,
 
 56 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 was the colour of pale gold, and her lips were 
 faintly coral. But it was her deep eyes, with 
 their vague expression, that clutched, some- 
 how, 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, sin- 
 gularly 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 neat- 
 ness of the faded gingham frock that blended 
 57
 
 68 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 look- 
 ing 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
 
 A LILY IN THE SLUMS 59 
 
 Ella had come a step closer to Rose-Marie. 
 Her eyes were flashing. 
 
 " Jim," she said, " ain't got any love or kind- 
 ness 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 pos- 
 ture, and then to a standing one, she felt a hot 
 little hand touch her own.
 
 60 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 " 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 al- 
 most 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 mo- 
 ments 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, 
 61
 
 62 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 ques- 
 tions, " 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 con- 
 dition 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
 
 ANOTHER QTJAREEL 63 
 
 many such cases discussed, with an amazing 
 frankness, during her short stay at the Settle- 
 ment 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 be- 
 fore 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
 
 64 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 hum- 
 drum life of the place; that she was like a 
 sweet old-fashioned garden set down in the 
 gardenless slums. He started to say some- 
 thing 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 glad- 
 ness. When she left the tenement home of the 
 Volskys she had been exceedingly depressed, 
 when she parted from Bennie at the Settle- 
 ment House steps she had been ready to cry. 
 But the hours between that parting and dinner- 
 time 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.
 
 ANOTHEE QUAEEBL 65 
 
 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 re- 
 sult 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 con- 
 trol 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
 
 66 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 startlingly colourful, extremely young pic- 
 ture. 
 
 " 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 keep- 
 ing her from seeing them, he would also keep 
 her from making Bennie into a real, whole- 
 some 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 Thomp- 
 son!" 

 
 ANOTHER QUAEEEL 67 
 
 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 laugh- 
 ing, " then you must never, never tell un- 
 truths. You are blushing! " 
 
 The Superintendent interrupted. It had 
 been her role, lately, to interrupt quarrels be- 
 tween 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 uncon- 
 cealed 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, unexplain- 
 able urge to be wicked ! She told herself that 
 she hated Dr. Blanchard she told herself that
 
 68 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 Su- 
 perintendent 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 Su- 
 perintendent was just a trifle worried over the 
 prospect of an unknown young man.
 
 ANOTHEE QUAEEEL 69 
 
 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, pro- 
 hibited 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 per- 
 son whom she dislikes. And so, with a feel- 
 ing 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 uncom- 
 fortably, she had in no way told a direct false- 
 hood. 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 Settle- 
 ment 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 prob- 
 lems! 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 conver- 
 sation; except when Lily's welfare was to be 
 considered, she stayed silently in the back- 
 ground. But the flashings of her great dark 
 eyes, the quiverings of her too scarlet mouth, 
 were ominous. Rose-Marie could see that the 
 70
 
 AND ANOTHEB 71 
 
 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,
 
 72 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 in- 
 truding upon her moments in the flat ; he mon- 
 opolized conversations, and asked impertinent 
 questions, and stared. More than once he had 
 offered to " walk her home " as she was leav- 
 ing; more than once he had thrust himself 
 menacingly across her path. But she had man- 
 aged, neatly, to avoid him. 
 
 Rose-Marie was afraid of Jim. She ad- 
 mitted it to herself she even admitted, at 
 times, that the Young Doctor might be of as- 
 sistance 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
 
 AND ANOTHER 73 
 
 the controlling of Jim would have been an ad- 
 mission 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 enter- 
 tainments, she was forced to welcome the 
 Young Doctor (the Superintendent was al- 
 ways 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 to- 
 gether; since the quarrel the Young Doctor 
 had seldom been able to corner Rose-Marie.
 
 74 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 Merskov- 
 sky 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 sarcas- 
 tic 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 re- 
 mark that had nothing to do with the work. 
 
 " When I see you," he told her very seri- 
 ously, " 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 al-
 
 AND ANOTHEE 75 
 
 ways 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 per- 
 fumes, and twilight in the country, and gay lit- 
 tle lights shining through the dusk. It sug- 
 gests 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 twi- 
 light 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 be- 
 cause 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
 
 76 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 " 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 an- 
 swered. 
 
 " 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
 
 AND ANOTHER 77 
 
 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 inter- 
 ested 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
 
 78 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 protec- 
 tion, to give you the benefit of my rather bit- 
 ter 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 peo- 
 ple that you're lonesome for after the lights 
 are out ! " 
 
 Rose-Marie, watching the play of expres- 
 sion across his keen dark face, was struck, first 
 of all by his sincerity. It was only after a mo- 
 ment 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 be*
 
 AIsTD ANOTHEE 79 
 
 cause I am fresh, and untried, and not in the 
 least bitter ! It seems to me that by direct con- 
 tact 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
 
 80 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 sympa- 
 thetic ! 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 conversa- 
 tion, to her first glowing impression of him. 
 And then he had changed so suddenly had so 
 abruptly thrust aside the little house of friend- 
 ship 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
 
 AND ANOTHEE 81 
 
 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 blos- 
 som. 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
 
 82 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 reached for a pad of paper and a small busi- 
 ness-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 mo- 
 ment, 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 intox- 
 icated, 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 
 83
 
 84 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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. Vol- 
 sky 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 at- 
 tention?" she asked abruptly. 
 
 Mrs. Volsky's face took on lines of blank- 
 ness. "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 f er 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
 
 MES. VOLSKY PEOMISES TO TEY 85 
 
 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 sag- 
 ging 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
 
 86 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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' Ben- 
 nie 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 desper- 
 ately in her mind for something to say. 
 
 " Do you like me, Mrs. Volsky ? " she ques- 
 tioned at last, " Do you like me ? " 
 
 The woman nodded, and again the sugges- 
 tion 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
 
 MES. VOLSKY PEOMI8ES TO TEY 87 
 
 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 sur- 
 prisingly sweet, " den I will do any f 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
 
 88 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 hope, was voicing tenderly the promises of a 
 long dead yesterday, and was making an im- 
 passioned 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 SETTLE- 
 MENT HOUSE 
 
 IT was Bennie who came first to the Settle- 
 ment House. Shyly, almost, he slipped 
 through the great doors as one who 
 seeks something that he does not quite under- 
 stand. As he came, a gray kitten, creeping 
 out from the shadows of the hall, rubbed af- 
 fectionately against his leg. And Bennie, half 
 unconsciously and with absolutely no recog- 
 nition 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 curi- 
 ous tightening of his lips, as he left noiselessly, 
 that some day Rose-Marie would be sur- 
 rounded by her own children far away from 
 the Settlement House. And he was surprised 
 at the sick feeling that the thought gave him. 
 89
 
 90 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 " 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 fel- 
 low!" 
 
 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 some- 
 times, 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
 
 BENNIE 91 
 
 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 shrink- 
 ingly. 
 
 " 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
 
 92 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 send- 
 ing this tall man into such spasms of merri-
 
 93 
 
 ment 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 ef- 
 fort 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?"
 
 94 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 wonder- 
 ful club where small boys learn about doing 
 things for people and, incidentally, wear sol- 
 dier 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 si- 
 lence 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 con- 
 scious 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- 
 95
 
 96 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 profan- 
 ity 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
 
 AN ISLAND 97 
 
 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 common-
 
 98 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 places 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 even- 
 ing!" 
 
 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 win- 
 dow 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 do- 
 ing 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 Settle- 
 ment House! I tell you, child, I've felt my 
 responsibility keenly! I'd no more think of
 
 AN ISLAND 99 
 
 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 shield- 
 ing 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 cha'rge, 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
 
 100 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 de- 
 spite 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 piti- 
 fully 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 uncom-
 
 AN ISLAND 101 
 
 plainingly toiled all day long for their exist- 
 ence. 
 
 " I don't want to be a flower," she ex- 
 claimed, 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 tem- 
 pests that you go through ! " She hesitated ; 
 and then " I read a book once," she said 
 slowly, " I forget what it was but I remem- 
 ber, in one place, that a woman was being dis- 
 cussed. 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 an- 
 other 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
 
 102 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 my- 
 self too seriously! But well, there are fam- 
 ilies 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
 
 AJS ISLAND 103 
 
 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 mo- 
 ment. 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 tene- 
 ments before you do much reforming out- 
 side 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 hur- 
 riedly, " I'm too tired, after all ! I think " 
 
 The Superintendent had paused in her prog- 
 ress to the door. Her voice was surprisingly
 
 104 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 forget- 
 ting 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 Super- 
 intendent swung open the door. 
 
 The Young Doctor came in with a spring- 
 ing 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 Su- 
 perintendent, " 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,
 
 AN ISLAND 105 
 
 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 be- 
 fore. 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, your- 
 self, that you'd rather be here, with the two of 
 us, than out in some den of iniquity reform- 
 ing people. Am I right ? "
 
 106 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 Rose-Marie felt a glow of friendship toward 
 the Young Doctor. Why couldn't he always 
 be like this confiding and boyish and ap- 
 proachable ? 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 is- 
 land!" 
 
 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 embar- 
 rassment. 
 
 " I didn't really mean to say island," she ex- 
 plained, "but well, you remember what Dr. 
 Blanchard told us, once, about the little bugs 
 that fastened together first one and then an- 
 other 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,
 
 AN ISLAND 107 
 
 that we're building an island together~^an ir- 
 land 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 an- 
 swered. 
 
 "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 Settle- 
 ment 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
 
 108 LTHE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 am- 
 bitions 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 dra- 
 matically. "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 ab- 
 sorbed in her own thoughts to realize that a 
 sudden cloud had crept across the brightness 
 of the Young Doctor's face.
 
 XIII 
 
 I 
 
 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, straight- 
 ened 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, some- 
 how, the slim little body gave her comfort. 
 
 " I wonder what's the matter ? " she ven- 
 tured, 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 fel- 
 ler ! A rich feller, maybe ; maybe he puts Ella 
 up to her funny business ! " 
 
 There were sounds of activity from the in- 
 109
 
 110 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 ner room, as if clothing was being torn down 
 from hooks as if heavy garments were being 
 flung into bags. Rose-Marie listened, appre- 
 hensively, 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 shoul- 
 der, 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 judg- 
 ment, 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.
 
 ELLA MAKES A DECISION 111 
 
 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 f er 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
 
 112 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 glo- 
 rious 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 ques- 
 tioned, 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
 
 ELLA MAKES A DECISION 113 
 
 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 earnest- 
 ness. 
 
 "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 bet-
 
 114 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 ter leave your mother out of this discussion. 
 After all, it's between you and your con- 
 science." 
 
 " 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 re- 
 ceded 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' un- 
 less 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?"
 
 ELLA MAKES A DECISION 115 
 
 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 pas- 
 sionately, " 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 Set- 
 tlement 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 be- 
 ginnin' t' think that you was diff' rent. You've
 
 116 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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, / 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 won- 
 dering 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
 
 ELLA MAKES A DECISION 117 
 
 " 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 ter- 
 rible thing?" 
 
 Ella's eyes were blazing Rose-Marie al- 
 most thought that the girl was going to strike 
 her! But the blazing eyes wavered, after a 
 moment, and fell. 
 
 " My gentleman f ren* 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
 
 118 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 glimmer- 
 ing of the faded, crushed mother. She hur- 
 ried 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, de- 
 fiant sobs. 
 
 " Not as far as I've heard of, there ain't no- 
 body 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 ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 "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?
 
 ELLA MAKES A DECISION 119 
 
 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 mis- 
 ery 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
 
 120 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 gal- 
 vanized 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 for- 
 give 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, al- 
 most, have understood.
 
 xrv 
 
 PA STEPS ASIDE 
 
 THEY vrept 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 
 
 121
 
 122 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 al- 
 most 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 tre- 
 mendous 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
 
 PA STEPS ASIDE 123 
 
 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 to- 
 gether 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 primi- 
 tively appealing. 
 
 At first Rose-Marie thought that the com- 
 motion had to do with Jim. She was always
 
 124 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 half expecting to hear that he had been appre- 
 hended in some sort of mischief, that he had 
 been accused of some crime. But she dis- 
 missed 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 smil- 
 ing 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
 
 PA STEPS ASIDE 125 
 
 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 for- 
 ward 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 recflar feller" he re- 
 peated, " like me!. "
 
 XV 
 A SOLUTION 
 
 AS Rose-Marie left the Volsky flat- 
 Ella had begged her to go; had as- 
 sured her that it would be better to 
 leave Mrs. Volsky to her inarticulate grief 
 her brain was in a whirl. Things had hap- 
 pened, in the last few hours, with a kaleido- 
 scopic rapidity the whirl of events had left 
 her mind in a dazed condition. She told her- 
 self, 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? 
 
 126
 
 A SOLUTION 127 
 
 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 quar- 
 ters! 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 sanc- 
 tity. She remembered the dim parlours of the 
 little town when there was a funeral she re- 
 membered the singing of the village choir and 
 the voice of the pastor, slightly unsteady, per- 
 haps, 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
 
 128 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 bet- 
 ter 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 chil- 
 dren dying! Perhaps, without him, they'll 
 be able to make good. . . ." 
 
 She was crossing the park splashed with 
 sunshine, it was. And suddenly she remem- 
 bered 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
 
 A SOLUTION 129 
 
 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 desper- 
 ately 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,
 
 130 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 when the girl entered the room, she saw that 
 the Superintendent's kind eyes were troubled. 
 
 " What's the matter? " she questioned, for- 
 getting, 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 ex- 
 pect 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 him-
 
 A SOLUTION 131 
 
 self . . ." 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 hurt- 
 ing the kitten because he didn't know any bet- 
 ter think of it, because he didn't know any 
 better! And so I was interested, ever so in- 
 terested. And I decided it was my duty to 
 know something of him to find out what 
 sort of an environment was responsible for 
 him."
 
 132 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 Super- 
 intendent's eyes never left her face and at 
 certain parts of the story the Superintend-
 
 A SOLUTION 133 
 
 ent's cheeks grew girlishly pink. She told of 
 the saving of Ella she told of Bennie, ex- 
 plaining 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
 
 134 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 irrele- 
 vantly. 
 
 "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
 
 A SOLUTION 135 
 
 away when your back was turned, I've prac- 
 tically 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 stern- 
 ness, " 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 deliber- 
 ately telling you a falsehood but Dr. Blanch- 
 ard gave me the idea and " defiantly " I 
 just let him think what he wanted to think ! "
 
 136 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 chil- 
 dren to come ' Why, Rose-Marie, what's 
 
 the matter ? " For Rose-Marie, her face hid- 
 den 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 sud- 
 denly 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 shin- N 
 ing, all at once, through the blackness of mid- 
 night. She felt a glad assurance of the fu- 
 ture 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
 
 138 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 kin- 
 ship 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 bewilder- 
 ment 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 de- 
 sired. 
 
 She went in through the mouth-like tene-
 
 ENTEK JIM 139 
 
 ment 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 atti- 
 tude 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 supposi- 
 tions. 
 
 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 sur- 
 prised her, that she might sometime see him 
 with his hair rumpled, his collar torn, his eye 
 blackened and she could hardly suppress a
 
 140 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 broth- 
 er'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 your- 
 self 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 1 Ella's cryin', too she's fergot how he
 
 ENTER JIM 141 
 
 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 ex- 
 pect 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 f er me 
 think o' that! An' think o' all th' time yen
 
 142 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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
 
 ENTEB JIM 143 
 
 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 amuse- 
 ment. Rose-Marie, watching his expression, 
 knew all at once that nothing she said would 
 have the slightest effect upon him. His sensi- 
 bilities 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
 
 144 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 func- 
 tioning 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 lan- 
 guage that was far removed from her lan- 
 guage, 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
 
 146 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 defi- 
 nite. The figure of her knight had been a 
 trifle more clear cut the armour of her im- 
 agination 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
 
 AN ANSWEB 147 
 
 too red. . . . She shuddered involunta- 
 rily, 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 " f er 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 in- 
 credulity for first place. The man saw the un- 
 belief ; 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
 
 148 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 ain't. Some nights I make a pile that runs 
 inter thousands an' it'll be all fer yer! All 
 f er 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 sud- 
 denly, " an' yer wouldn't understand, anyhow ! 
 Yer only a girl a little kid! What's it mat- 
 ter 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 " Whatfs 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
 
 AN ANSWER 149 
 
 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, sud- 
 denly, 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 un- 
 derstand. 
 
 " Yer mean," he stammered at last, " that 
 yer t'rowing me down? "
 
 150 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 bewil- 
 derment 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 mis- 
 take. 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 experi- 
 encing a touch of snobbishness, of class distinc- 
 tion. 
 
 " We won't discuss my reason," she told
 
 AN ANSWEK 151 
 
 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 Superin- 
 tendent 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 unthink- 
 able. 
 
 Always, Rose-Marie had imagined that a
 
 152 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 
 a Settlement worker. She was no better, de- 
 spite the ancestors with gentle blood, than the 
 man in front of her just more fortunate. 
 She realized that she had been not only un- 
 kind, 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
 
 AN ANSWER 153 
 
 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 gloat- 
 ingly. 
 
 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
 
 154 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 her- 
 self. 
 
 " 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 hos- 
 pital 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.
 
 AN ANSWER 155 
 
 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 her- 
 self, 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, sink- 
 ing 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 man- 
 kind had been abused! She realized why, at 
 times, he had hurt her, and with the realization 
 came the knowledge that she wanted him, des- 
 perately, 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-
 
 156 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 some- 
 body 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
 
 AN ANSWER 157 
 
 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 state- 
 ment. 
 
 "God," she said slowly, "is in this tene- 
 ment. 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 re- 
 membering how her aunts had taught her, when
 
 158 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 ex- 
 pectin* this God that yer talk about " The 
 
 laughter died out of his face and he jerked her 
 suddenly close so close that she lay trem- 
 bling in his arms. " Lily can't hear," he ex- 
 ulted, "'r see, 'r speak. I'll take my kiss 
 now! " 
 
 It was then that Rose-Marie, forgetting her- 
 self in the panic of the moment, screamed. 
 She screamed lustily, twisting her face away
 
 AN ANSWEB 159 
 
 from his lips. And as she screamed Lily, as si- 
 lently 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 wist- 
 fully to the faces above her the faces that she 
 could not see. And she clung the closer. 
 
 Jim was swearing, steadily swearing with
 
 160 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 spasmod- 
 ically. 
 
 "You brute," she screamed, "you utter 
 brute!" 
 
 Lily, who had never, in all of her broken lit- 
 tle 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 wonder- 
 ment, 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 shoul- 
 der, as she ran. " You beast ! You've killed 
 her!" 
 
 Jim did not attempt to follow or to an- 
 swer. 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 pro- 
 fane. 
 
 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 
 161
 
 162 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 only knew that the child was unconscious, per- 
 haps dying. Her trembling ringers 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 yetted. 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 de- 
 nied 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.
 
 AND A MIRACLE 163 
 
 " 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. Vol- 
 sky 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 dis- 
 hevelled head upon her shoulder, she spoke di- 
 rectly 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.
 
 164 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 false- 
 hood 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 scram- 
 bled 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, panther- 
 like 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
 
 AND A MIEACLB 166 
 
 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
 
 166 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 well fer Ella ain't yer? Yer goin' ter get 
 well " 
 
 The door swung open with a startling sud- 
 denness, 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, stand- 
 ing 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 Al- 
 mighty. 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 direc- 
 tion, was eloquent. But as his eyes saw the 
 child in Ella's arms his expression became im- 
 personal, 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.
 
 AND A MIEACLE 167 
 
 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 at- 
 tention 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 under- 
 stand? 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 Doc- 
 tor, glancing from face to face, spoke sud- 
 denly to Rose-Marie. 
 
 " I hate to ask you," he said simply, " but
 
 168 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 in- 
 ner 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 peo- 
 ple," 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 re-
 
 AND A MIEACLE 169 
 
 ligious 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 in- 
 tensity 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
 
 170 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 who fought an endless fight against the dra- 
 gons 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, rinding 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 whis- 
 pered, 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 or- 
 dered. "At once!" 
 
 171
 
 172 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 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 diag- 
 nosis," he told them simply. " It's an extra- 
 ordinary 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 sud- 
 denly tender " well thousands of slum kid- 
 dies 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 work- 
 ing 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
 
 AND THE HAPPY ENDING 173 
 
 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 Superin- 
 tendent, 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 go- 
 ing 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.
 
 174 THE ISLAND OF FAITH 
 
 " 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 pas- 
 tor ! 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 go- 
 ing 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. Lunch- 
 eon 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
 
 AND THE HAPPY ENDING 175 
 
 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 Su- 
 perintendent stared off into space. If she was 
 thinking of a little blond child lying in a hos- 
 pital 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 expres- 
 sion 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 remem- 
 bering the springtime of her own youth. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America
 
 FICTION, JUVENILE, ETC. 
 
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 Vice-President Western China University 
 
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 A Tale of Love and Adventure in Western 
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 A Tale of Adventure in the Dark Continent. 
 
 Illustrated, $1.50 
 
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 A Story of Christ for Young People. Illus. $1.50 
 
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 (New Testament.) Illustrated, $1.50 
 
 A companion volume to the author's former book. M 
 Hurst belongs authentically, to the world of the young; 
 
 ild; 
 
 she is an accredited citizen of the Kingdom of the Chi 
 of that fact the work she has done in this book is proof 
 
 Introduction by John Martin 
 AMY LE FEUVRE Author of "Probable Sons," etc. 
 
 The Little Tots' Story of Jesus 
 
 "The Most Wonderful Story in the World." 
 With colored jacket and illustrations, $1.50 
 
 A new edition, with colored jacket, of Miss Le Feuvre's 
 "The Most Wonderful Story in. the World"--which has 
 already received a cordial reception from the press. 
 
 GERTRUDE S. TROWBRIDGE 
 
 Author of "Faith at Work," etc. 
 
 Those Wilson Children 
 
 A Tale of Harum-Scarum Days. Illustrations 
 by Joseph Cummings Chase. Illustrated, $1.50 
 
 A jolly, rollicking story written around the fortuitous 
 adventures of a tomboyish family of a college professor 
 who is not overburdened with a superabundance of thU 
 world's goods.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000036618 7