The Island of Faith written by Margaret E. Sangster
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Margaret E. Sangster >> The Island of Faith
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8 The Island of Faith
By MARGARET E. SANGSTER
1921
To M's M and Chance
Contents
I. INTRODUCING--THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE
II. THE QUARREL
III. CONCERNING IDEALS
IV. THE PARK
V. ROSE-MARIE COMES TO THE RESCUE
VI. "THERE'S NO PLACE--"
VII. A LILY IN THE SLUMS
VIII. ANOTHER QUARREL
IX. AND ANOTHER
X. MRS. VOLSKY PROMISES TO TRY
XI. BENNIE COMES TO THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE
XII. AN ISLAND
XIII. ELLA MAKES A DECISION
XIV. PA STEPS ASIDE
XV. A SOLUTION
XVI. ENTER--JIM
XVII. AN ANSWER
XVIII. AND A MIRACLE
XIX. AND THE HAPPY ENDING
I
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 border. 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 picturesque 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 drama; and the stilted little parks are so teeming 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 alleyways--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 pavement vendors, the
crying of babies, the shouting 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
"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 consumed, 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.
"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 nonchalantly 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 hundreds of little bugs,
and then there are thousands, 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 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 together! 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 country town where every one was fairly
comfortable and fairly prosperous. You've always been a part of a
community where people went to church and prayer-meeting and
Sunday-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 sociable." 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 qualifications have you to be a social service worker, you
child? What do you know of the meaning of service, of life?"
Rose-Marie's voice was earnest, though shaken.
"I came," she answered, "because I love people and want to help them. I
came because I want to teach them to think beautiful thoughts, to have
beautiful ideals. I came because I want to show them the God that I
know--and try to serve--" she faltered.
The Young Doctor laughed--but not pleasantly.
"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."
"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
Superintendent.
"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 carefully calm as she gave orders for the evening meal. If
she was thinking of Giovanni Celleni, his brute face filled with
semi-madness; if she was thinking of a burned baby, sobbing alone in a
darkened tenement while its mother breathlessly watched the gay colours
and shifting scenes of a make-believe life, her expression 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 remembering the enthusiasm--and the intolerance--of her own youth.
III
CONCERNING IDEALS
"Sunshine and apple blossoms!" Rose-Marie, hurrying along the hall to her
own room, repeated the Young Doctor's words and sobbed afresh as she
repeated 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 regularly,
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 reachings of her
personality. When she 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 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 tender 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 colourful as ever--but
life, nevertheless, was beginning 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 doorbell 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 mothers in the art of making
cakes and pies and salads, and of hearing a half hundred little children
repeat their A B Cs. Only the difference 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 country school--for
all the good she was accomplishing.
She had offered, so many times, to do visiting in the tenements--to call
upon families of the folk who would not come to the Settlement 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 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 perfect chaperon--and herself. It had
seemed, somehow, almost providential that they should be thrown together.
Yes, Rose-Marie remembered 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 beautifully
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 unkindness 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 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 Superintendent spoke differently.
"Billy Blanchard," she said, and she only 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 spiritual 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 answered; "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 missionary books--"
The Young Doctor interrupted.
"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 anemic girls who wanted to be physical
directors, 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 Thompson 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, they say, and tell a
clever girl that she's a raving, 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
person. 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 matchmake; 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!"
The woman's face was averted as she answered. 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.
"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 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 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 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 grass--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--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 moment, rocking other babies. She fell to wondering,
whimsically, whether God 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.
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