The Island of Faith Part 2

"Ideals don't hurt any one," she said, and her voice was almost as fierce as the doctor's. "No, I haven't given her a bit of work with the boys.

She's too young and too untouched and, as you say, too pretty. I'm letting her spend her time with the mothers, and the young girls, and the little tots--not even allowing her to go out alone, if I can help it.

Such innocence--" The Superintendent broke off suddenly in the middle of the sentence. And she sighed again.

IV

THE PARK

Crying helps, sometimes. When Rose-Marie, alone in her room, finally dried away the tears that were the direct result of her quarrel with Dr.

Blanchard, there was a new resolve in her eyes--a look that had not been there when she went, an hour before, to the luncheon table. It was the look of one who has resolutions that cannot be shattered--dreams that are unbreakable. She glanced at her wrist watch and there was a shade of defiance in the very way she raised the arm that wore it.

"They make a baby of me here," she told herself, "they treat me like a silly child. It's a wonder that they don't send a nurse-maid with me to my cla.s.ses. It's a wonder"--she was growing vehement--"that they give me credit for enough sense to wear rubbers when it's raining! I," again she glanced at the watch, "I haven't a single thing to do until four o'clock--and it's only just a little after two. I'm going out--_now_. I'm going into the streets, or into a tenement, or into a--a _dive_, if necessary! I'm going to show them"--the plural p.r.o.noun, strangely, referred to a certain young man--"that I can help somebody! I'm going to show them--"

She was struggling eagerly into her coat; eagerly she pulled her tam-o'-shanter over the curls that, even in the city slums, were full of sunshine. With her hands thrust staunchly into her pockets, she went out; out into the jungle of streets that met, as in the center of a labyrinth, in front of the Settlement House.

Always, when she had gone out alone, she had sought a small park not far from her new home. It was a comfortingly green little oasis in the desert of stone and brick--a little oasis that reminded one of the country. She turned toward it now, quite blindly, for the streets confused her--they always did. As the crowds closed around her she hurried vaguely, as a swimmer hurries just before he loses his head and goes down. She caught her breath as she went, for the crowds always made her feel submerged--quite as the swimmer feels just before the final plunge. She entered the park--it was scarcely more than a square of gra.s.s--with a very definite feeling of relief, almost of rescue.

As usual, the park was crowded. But park crowds are different from street crowds--they are crowds at rest, rather than hurrying, restless throngs.

Rose-Marie sank upon an iron bench and with wide, childishly distended eyes surveyed the people that surged in upon her.

There was a woman with a hideous black wig--the badge of revered Jewish motherhood--pressed down over the front of her silvered hair. Rose-Marie, a short time ago, would have guessed her age at seventy--now she told herself that the woman was probably forty. There was a slim, cigarette-smoking youth with pale, shifty eyes. There was an old, old man--white-bearded like one of the patriarchs--and there was a dark-browed girl who held a drowsy baby to her breast. All of these and many more--Italians, Slavs, Russians, Hungarians and an occasional Chinaman--pa.s.sed her by. It seemed to the girl that this section was a veritable melting pot of the races--and that every example of every race was true to type. She had seen any number of young men with shifty eyes--she had seen many old men with white beards. She knew that other black-wigged women lived in every tenement; that other dark-browed girls were, at that same moment, rocking other babies. She fell to wondering, whimsically, whether G.o.d had fashioned the people of the slums after some half-dozen set patterns--almost as the cutter, in many an alley sweatshop, fashions the frocks of a season.

A sharp cry broke in upon her wonderings. It was the cry of an animal in utter pain--in blind, unreasoning agony. Rose-Marie was on her feet at the first moment that it cut, quiveringly, through the air. With eyes distended she whirled about to face a small boy who knelt upon the ground behind her bench.

To Rose-Marie the details of the small boy's appearance came back, later, with an amazing clarity. Later she could have described his dark, sullen eyes, his mouth with its curiously grim quirk at one corner, his shock of black hair and his ragged coat. But at the moment she had the ability to see only one thing--the scrawny gray kitten that the boy had tied to the iron leg of the bench; the shrinking kitten that the boy was torturing with a cold, relentless cruelty.

It shrieked again--with an almost human cry--as she started around the bench toward it. And the wild throbbing of her heart told her that she was witnessing, for the first time, a phase of human nature of which she had never dreamed.

V

ROSE-MARIE COMES TO THE RESCUE

Rose-Marie's hand upon the small boy's coat collar was not gentle. With surprising strength, for she was small and slight, she jerked him aside.

"You wicked child!" she exclaimed, and the Young Doctor would have chuckled to hear her tone. "You wicked child, what are you doing?"

Without waiting for an answer she knelt beside the pitiful little animal that was tied to the bench, and with trembling fingers unloosed the cord that held it, noting as she did so how its bones showed, even through its coat of fur. When it was at liberty she gathered it close to her breast and turned to face the boy.

He had not tried to run away. Even with the anger surging through her, Rose-Marie admitted that the child was not--in one sense--a coward. He had waited, brazenly perhaps, to hear what she had to say. With blazing eyes she said it:

"Why," she questioned, and the anger that made her eyes blaze also put a tremor into her voice, "why were you deliberately hurting this kitten?

Don't you know that kittens can feel pain just as much as you can feel pain? Don't you know that it is wicked to make anything suffer? Why were you so wicked?"

The boy looked up at her with sullen, dark eyes. The grim twist at one corner of his mouth became more p.r.o.nounced.

"Aw," he said gruffly, "why don't yer mind yer own business?"

If Rose-Marie's hands had been free, she would have taken the boy suddenly and firmly by both shoulders. She felt an overwhelming desire to shake him--to shake him until his teeth chattered. But both of her hands were busy, soothing the gray kitten that shivered against her breast.

"I am minding my own business," she told the boy. "It's my business to give help where it's needed, and this kitten," she cuddled it closer, "certainly needed help! Haven't you ever been told that you should be kind? Like," she faltered, "like Jesus was kind? He wouldn't have hurt anything. He loved animals--and He loved boys, too. Why don't you try to be the sort of a boy He could love? Why do you try to be bad--to do wrong things?"

The eyes of the child were even more sullen--the twist of his mouth was even more grim as he listened to Rose-Marie. But when she had finished speaking, he answered her--and still he did not try to run away.

"Wot," he questioned, almost in the words of the Young Doctor, "wot do you know about things that's right an' things that's wrong? It ain't bad t' hurt animals--not if they're little enough so as they ain't able t'

hurt you!"

Rose-Marie sat down, very suddenly, upon the bench. In all of her life--her sheltered, glad life--she had never heard such a brutal creed spoken, and from the lips of a child! Her eyes, searching his face, saw that he was not trying to be funny, or saucy, or smart. Curiously enough she noted that he was quite sincere--that, to him, the torturing of a kitten was only a part of the day with its various struggles and amus.e.m.e.nts. 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.

"n.o.body 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 d.i.c.k. He used to go to the store for me, he used to carry my bundles home in his mouth--and he did tricks--"

The boy had seated himself, gingerly, on the bench. He interrupted her, and his voice was eager.

"Did yer have t' beat him," he questioned, "t' make him do the tricks?

Did he bleed when yer beat him?"

Again Rose-Marie gasped. She leaned forward until her face was on a level with the boy's face.

"Why," she asked him, "do you think that the only way to teach an animal is to teach him by cruelty? I taught my dog tricks by being kind and sweet to him. Why do you talk of beatings--I couldn't hurt anything, even if I disliked it, until it _bled_!"

The small boy drew back from Rose-Marie. His expression was vaguely puzzled--it seemed almost as if he did not comprehend what her words meant.

"My pa beats me," he said suddenly, "always he beats me--when he's drunk! An' sometimes he beats me when he ain't. He beats Ma, too, an'

he uster beat Jim, 'n' Ella. He don't dare beat Jim now, though"--this proudly--"Jim's as big as he is now, an' Ella--n.o.body'd dast lay a hand on Ella ..." almost as suddenly as he had started to talk, the boy stopped.

For the moment the episode of the kitten was a forgotten thing. There was only pity, only a blank sort of horror, on Rose-Marie's face.

"Doesn't your father love you--any of you?" she asked.

"Naw." The boy's mouth was a straight line--a straight and very bitter line, for such a young mouth. "Naw, he only loves his booze. He hits me all th' time--an' he's four times as big as me! An' so I hit whoever's smaller'n I am. An' even if they cry I don't care. I hate things that's little--that can't take care o' themselves. Everything had oughter be able t' take care of itself!"

"Haven't you"--again Rose-Marie asked a question--"haven't you ever loved anything that was smaller than you are? Haven't you ever had a pet?

Haven't you ever felt that you must protect and take care of some one--or something? Haven't you?"

All at once the boy was smiling, and the smile lit up his small, dark face as a candle, slowly flickering, brings cheer and brightness to a dull, lonely room.