VI
"THERE'S NO PLACE--"
When Rose-Marie paused in front of the tenement, at three o'clock on thefollowing afternoon, she felt like a naughty little girl who is playingtruant from school. When she remembered the way that she had avoided theSuperintendent's almost direct questions, she blushed with an inwardsense of shame. But when she thought of the Young Doctor's offer to gowith her--"wherever she was going"--she threw back her head with adefiant little gesture. She knew well that the Young Doctor was sorry foryesterday's quarrel--she knew that a night beside the dying Mrs. Celleni,and the wails of the Cohen baby, had temporarily softened his viewpointupon life. And yet--he had said that they were soulless--these peoplethat she had come to help! He would have condemned Bennie Volsky from thefirst--but she had detected the glimmerings of something fine in thechild! No--despite his more tolerant attitude--she knew that, underneath,his convictions were unchanged. She was glad that she had gone out uponher adventure alone.
With a heart that throbbed in quick staccato beats, she mounted the stepsof the tenement. Little dark-eyed children moved away from her,apparently on every side, but somehow she scarcely noticed them. Thedoorway yawned, like an open mouth, in front of her--and she could thinkof nothing else. As she went over the dark threshold she rememberedstories that she had read about people who go in at tenement doorways andare never seen again. Every one has read such stories in the dailynewspapers--and perhaps some of them are true!
A faint light flickered in through the doorway. It made the ascent of thefirst flight of creaking stairs quite easy. At least Rose-Marie couldstep aside from the piles of rubbish and avoid the rickety places. Shewondered, as she went up, her fingers gingerly touching the dirtyhand-rail, how people could exist under such wretched conditions.
The second flight was harder to manage. The light from the narrow doorwaywas shut off, and there were no windows. There might have been gas jetsupon every landing--Rose-Marie supposed that there were--but it wasmid-afternoon, and they had not yet been lighted. She groped her way upthe second flight, and the third, feeling carefully along each step withher foot before she put her weight upon it.
On the fourth flight she paused for a moment to catch her breath. But sherealized, as she paused, that even breathing had to be done underdifficulties in this place. There was no ventilation of any sort, so faras she could tell--all about her floated the odours of boiled cabbage,and fried onions, and garlic. And there were other odours, too; theindescribable smells of soiled clothing and soap-suds and greasy dishes.
But in Rose-Marie's mind, the odours--poignant though they were--tooksecond place to the sounds. Never, she told herself, had she imaginedthat so many different sorts of noises could exist in the same place atone 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 ofbreaking crockery. There were yells of rage, and--worst of all--bursts ofappalling profanity. Rose-Marie, standing there in the darkness of thefourth flight, heard words that she had never expected to hear--phrasesof which she had never dreamed. She shuddered as she started up the fifthflight, and when, at last, she stood in front of the Volsky flat, sheexperienced 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 ashad always sheltered Rose-Marie--the very sound of the word "home" bringsa certain sense of warmth and comfort. Home stands for shelter andprotection and love. "Be it ever so humble," the old song tells us, "beit ever so humble ..."
And Rose-Marie, knocking timidly upon the Volsky door, expected to find ahome. She expected it to be humble in the truest sense of the word--to beragged and poverty-stricken and mean. And yet she could not feel that itwould be utterly divorced from the ideals she had always built around herconception of the word. She expected it to be a home because a familylived there together--a mother, and a father, and children.
In answer to her knock the door swung open--a little way. The glow of adingy lamp fell about her, through the opening--she felt suddenly as ifshe had been swept, willy-nilly, before the footlights of some hostilestage. For a moment she stood blinking. And as she stood there, quiteunable to see, she heard the voice of Bennie Volsky, speaking in ahoarse whisper.
"It's you, Miss!" said the voice, and it was as full of intensewonderment as a voice could be. "I never thought that you'd come--Ididn'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 makeany noise, if yer can help it! Pa's come home, all lit up. An' he'sasleep, 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 seeMa 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 hisarm lightly, for she knew that he was labouring under intense excitement.She stepped into the room, on mousy-quiet feet--and then, with a quickgasp, drew back again.
Never, in her wildest dreams of poverty, had Rose-Marie supposed thatsqualor, such as she saw in the Volsky home, could exist. Never had shesupposed that a family could live in such cramped, airless quarters.Never had she thought that filth, such as she saw in the room, waspossible. It all seemed, somehow, an unbelievably bad dream--a dream inwhich she was appearing, with startling realism. Her comfortable pictureof a home was vanishing--vanishing as suddenly and completely as a soapbubble vanishes, if pricked by a pin.
"Why--why, Bennie!" she began. But the child was not listening. He haddarted from her side and was dragging forward, by one listless,work-coarsened hand, a pallid, drooping woman.
"Dis is my ma," he told Rose-Marie. "She didn't know yer was comin'. Ididn't tell her!"
It seemed to Rose-Marie that there was a scared sort of appeal in thewoman's eyes as they travelled, slowly, over her face. But there wasnot even appeal in the tone of her voice--it was all a drab,colourless monotone.
"Whatcha come here fer?" she questioned. "Pa, he's home. If he should terwake up--" She left the sentence unfinished.
Almost instinctively the eyes of Rose-Marie travelled past the figureof Mrs. Volsky. There was nothing in that figure to hold her gaze--itwas so vague, so like a shadow of something that had been. She saw thefew broken chairs, the half-filled wash tub, the dish-pan with itsfreight of soiled cups and plates. She saw the gas stove, with itsbattered coffee-pot, and a mattress or two piled high with dingybedding. And, in one corner, she saw--with a new sense of horror--thereclining figure of Pa.
Pa was sleeping. Sleeping heavily, with his mouth open and his tousledhead slipping to one side. One great hairy hand was clenched about anempty bottle--one huge foot, stockingless and half out of its shoe, wasdragging limply off the heap of blankets that was his bed. A stubble ofbeard made his already dark face even more sinister, his tousled hairlooked as if it had never known the refining influences of a comb orbrush. As Rose-Marie stared at him, half fascinated, he turned--with aspasmodic, drunken movement--and flung one heavy arm above his head.
The room was not a large one. But, at that moment, it seemed appallinglyspacious to Rose-Marie. She turned, almost with a feeling of affection,toward Bennie. At least she had seen him before. And, as if heinterpreted 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 longtime, now. 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 underthe 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 w
as about to speak, about to assure Bennie that she didn'twant any of the coffee, when steps sounded on the stairs. They werehurried steps; steps suggesting to the listener that five flights werenothing, after all! Rose-Marie found herself turning as a hand fellheavily upon a door-knob, and the door swung in.
A young man stood jauntily upon the threshold. Rose-Marie's firstimpression of him was one of extreme, almost offensive neatness--of sleekhair, that looked like patent leather, and of highly polished brownshoes. She saw that his blue and white striped collar was speckless, thathis blue tie was obviously new, that his trousers were creased to analmost dangerous edge. But it was the face of the young man from whichRose-Marie shrank back--a clever, sharp face with narrow, horriblyspeculative 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--theyoung man entered the room. His sharp eyes travelled with lightning-likerapidity over the place, resting a moment on the sleeping figure of Pabefore they hurried past him to Rose-Marie. He surveyed her coolly,taking in every feature, every fold of her garments, with a studiedboldness that was somehow offensive.
"Who's she?" he questioned abruptly, of any one who cared to answer, andone manicured finger pointed in her direction. "Where'd she come from?"
Bennie was the one who spoke. Rather gallantly he stepped in front ofRose-Marie.
"She's a friend of mine," he said; "she lives by th' Settlement House.She come up here t' see me, 'n' Ma, 'n' 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 toRose-Marie with an insolent smile, "what's yer name?"
Rose-Marie met his insolent gaze with a calm expression. No one wouldhave guessed that she was trembling inwardly.
"My name," she told him, "is Rose-Marie Thompson. I live in theSettlement 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 laughedagain, "why didn't yer come t' see me--huh?"
Rose-Marie, having no answer, turned expectantly toward the door. If thisJim had passed his sister on the stairs, she couldn't be very far away.As if in reply to her supposition, the door swung open again and a tall,dark-eyed girl came into the room. Rose-Marie saw with her first swiftglance that the red upon the girl's cheeks was too high to be quitenatural--that the scarlet of her lips was over-vivid. And yet, despitethe patently artificial colouring, she realized that the girl wasbeautiful with a high strung, almost thoroughbred beauty. She wonderedhow this beauty had been born of the dim woman who seemed so colourlessand the sodden brute who lay snoring in the comer.
Her train of thought was broken, suddenly. For the young man wasspeaking. Rose-Marie disliked, somehow, the very tone of his voice.
"Here's a girl t' see you, Ella," he said. "She's from th' SettlementHouse--she says! Maybe she wants," sarcastically, "that you should join aBible Class!"
The girl's eyes were flashing with a dangerously hard light. She turnedangrily 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 wantt' see you--like those other wimmen did. She come t' see _Lily_--"
He paused and Rose-Marie, who had gathered that social service workerswere not welcome visitors, went on breathlessly, from where he left off.
"I _am_ from the Settlement House," she told Ella, "and I'd like awfullyto have you join our classes. But that wasn't why I came here. Bennietold 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--thatJim was the different one in this family.
"I'll get Lily," Ella said simply, and there was a warmth, a tendernessin her dark eyes that had been so hard. "I didn't understand," she added,as she went quickly past Rose-Marie and into the small inner room thatBennie had said his sisters shared. In a moment she came out leading asmall girl by the hand.
"This is Lily!" she said softly.
Even in that dingy place--perhaps accentuated by the very dinginess ofit--Lily's blond loveliness struck Rose-Marie with a sense of shock. Thechild might have been a flower--the very flower whose name shebore--growing upon an ash heap. Her beauty made the rest of the room fadeinto dim outlines--made Jim and Ella and Bennie seem heavy, and somehowoverfed. Even Pa, snoring lustily, became almost a shadow. Rose-Mariestepped 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 sisterforward. The child's great blue eyes looked past Rose-Marie, and a vaguesmile quivered on her lips.
"Oh, you dear!" Rose-Marie exclaimed again, and went down on her knees onthe dirty floor--real women will always kneel before a beautiful child.
Lily might have been four years old. Her hair, drawn back from her whitelittle face, was the colour of pale gold, and her lips were faintlycoral. But it was her deep eyes, with their vague expression, thatclutched, somehow, at Rose-Marie's heart.
"Tell me that you're going to like me, Lily!" she almost implored. "Ilove little girls."
The child did not answer--indeed, she did not seem to hear. But one thinlittle hand, creeping out, touched Rose-Marie's face with a gesture thatwas singularly appealing, singularly full of affection. When the fingerstouched her cheek, Rose-Marie felt a sudden suspicion, a sudden dread.She noticed, all at once, that no one was speaking--that the room wasquite 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--thatwas usually so dull and monotonous--held a certain tremor.
"Lily," she said slowly, "can't spick--'r hear.... An' she's--blind!"