IV
THE PARK
Crying helps, sometimes. When Rose-Marie, alone in her room, finallydried 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 beenthere when she went, an hour before, to the luncheon table. It was thelook of one who has resolutions that cannot be shattered--dreams that areunbreakable. She glanced at her wrist watch and there was a shade ofdefiance 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 asilly child. It's a wonder that they don't send a nurse-maid with me tomy classes. It's a wonder"--she was growing vehement--"that they give mecredit for enough sense to wear rubbers when it's raining! I," again sheglanced at the watch, "I haven't a single thing to do until fouro'clock--and it's only just a little after two. I'm going out--_now_. I'mgoing into the streets, or into a tenement, or into a--a _dive_, ifnecessary! I'm going to show them"--the plural pronoun, strangely,referred to a certain young man--"that I can help somebody! I'm going toshow them--"
She was struggling eagerly into her coat; eagerly she pulled hertam-o'-shanter over the curls that, even in the city slums, were full ofsunshine. 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 farfrom her new home. It was a comfortingly green little oasis in the desertof stone and brick--a little oasis that reminded one of the country. Sheturned toward it now, quite blindly, for the streets confused her--theyalways did. As the crowds closed around her she hurried vaguely, as aswimmer hurries just before he loses his head and goes down. She caughther breath as she went, for the crowds always made her feelsubmerged--quite as the swimmer feels just before the final plunge. Sheentered the park--it was scarcely more than a square of grass--with avery definite feeling of relief, almost of rescue.
As usual, the park was crowded. But park crowds are different from streetcrowds--they are crowds at rest, rather than hurrying, restless throngs.Rose-Marie sank upon an iron bench and with wide, childishly distendedeyes surveyed the people that surged in upon her.
There was a woman with a hideous black wig--the badge of revered Jewishmotherhood--pressed down over the front of her silvered hair. Rose-Marie,a short time ago, would have guessed her age at seventy--now she toldherself that the woman was probably forty. There was a slim,cigarette-smoking youth with pale, shifty eyes. There was an old, oldman--white-bearded like one of the patriarchs--and there was adark-browed girl who held a drowsy baby to her breast. All of these andmany more--Italians, Slavs, Russians, Hungarians and an occasionalChinaman--passed her by. It seemed to the girl that this section was averitable melting pot of the races--and that every example of every racewas true to type. She had seen any number of young men with shiftyeyes--she had seen many old men with white beards. She knew that otherblack-wigged women lived in every tenement; that other dark-browed girlswere, at that same moment, rocking other babies. She fell to wondering,whimsically, whether God had fashioned the people of the slums after somehalf-dozen set patterns--almost as the cutter, in many an alleysweatshop, fashions the frocks of a season.
A sharp cry broke in upon her wonderings. It was the cry of an animal inutter pain--in blind, unreasoning agony. Rose-Marie was on her feet atthe first moment that it cut, quiveringly, through the air. With eyesdistended she whirled about to face a small boy who knelt upon the groundbehind 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, sulleneyes, his mouth with its curiously grim quirk at one corner, his shock ofblack hair and his ragged coat. But at the moment she had the ability tosee only one thing--the scrawny gray kitten that the boy had tied to theiron leg of the bench; the shrinking kitten that the boy was torturingwith a cold, relentless cruelty.
It shrieked again--with an almost human cry--as she started around thebench toward it. And the wild throbbing of her heart told her that shewas witnessing, for the first time, a phase of human nature of which shehad never dreamed.
The Island of Faith Page 3