The Island of Faith Part 1

The Island of Faith.

by Margaret E. Sangster.

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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.ser-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 b.u.t.tering 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 n.o.body 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 G.o.d 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 rea.s.suring 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 k.n.o.b 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 s.h.i.+fting 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.