It was strange how she suddenly loved all of the people, the almost mongrel races of people, who thronged the streets! She smiled brightly at a mother, pushing a baby-buggy—she thrust a coin into the withered hand of an old beggar. On a crowded corner she paused to listen to the vague carollings of a barrel organ, to pat the head of a frayed looking little monkey that hopped about in time to the music. All at once she wanted to know a dozen foreign languages so that she could tell those who passed her by that she was their friend—their friend!
And yet, despite her sudden feeling of kinship to these people of the slums, she did not loiter. For she was the bearer of a message, a message of hope! She wished, as she sped through the crowded streets, that her feet were winged so that she might hurry the faster! She wanted to see the expression of bewilderment on Mrs. Volsky's face, she wanted to see a light dawn in Ella's great eyes, she wanted to whisper a message of—of life, almost—into Lily's tiny useless ear. And, most of all, she wanted to feel Bennie's warm, grubby little fingers touching her hand! Jim—she hoped that Jim would be out when she arrived. She did not want to have Jim throw cold water upon her plans—which did not include him. Well she knew that the arrangement would make no real difference to him—it was not love of family that kept him from leaving the dirty, crowded little flat. It was the protection of a family, with its pseudo-respectability, that he wanted. It was the locked room, which no one would think of prying into, that he desired.
She went in through the mouth-like tenement door—it was no longer frightful to her—with a feeling of intense emotion. She climbed the narrow stairs, all five flights of them, with never a pause for breath. And then she was standing, once again, in front of the Volskys' door. She knocked, softly.
Everything was apparently very still in the Volsky flat. All up and down the hall came the usual sounds of the house; the stairs echoed with noise. But behind the closed door silence reigned supreme. As Rose-Marie stood there she felt a strange mental chill—the chill of her first doubt. Perhaps the Volskys would not want to come with her to the Settlement House, perhaps they would resent her attitude—would call it interference. Perhaps they would tell her that they were tired of her—and of her plans. Perhaps—But the door, swinging open, cut short her suppositions.
Jim stood in the doorway. He was in his shirt sleeves but—even divested of his coat—he was still too painfully immaculate—too well groomed. Rose-Marie, looking at him, felt a sudden primitive desire to see him dirty and mussed up. She wished, and the wish surprised her, that she might sometime see him with his hair rumpled, his collar torn, his eye blackened and—she could hardly suppress a hysterical desire to laugh as the thought struck her—his nose bleeding. Somehow his smooth, hard neatness was more offensive to her than his mother's dirty apron—than his small brother's frankly grimy hands. She spoke to him in a cool little voice that belied her inward disturbance.
"Where," she questioned, "are your mother and Ella? I want to see them."
With a movement that was not ungraceful Jim flung wide the door. Indeed, Rose-Marie told herself, as she stepped into the Volsky flat, Jim was never ungraceful. There was something lithe and cat-like in his slightest movement, just as there was something feline in the expression of his eyes. Rose-Marie often felt like a small, helpless mouse when Jim was staring at her.
"Where are your mother and Ella?" she questioned again as she stepped into the room. "I do want to see them!"
Jim was dragging forward a chair. He answered.
"Then yer'd better sit down 'n' make yourself at home," he told her, "fer they've gone out. They're down t' th' hospital, now, takin' a last slant at Pa. Ma's cryin' to beat th' band—you'd think that she really liked him! An' Ella's cryin', too—she's fergot how he uster whip her wit' a strap when she was a kid! An' they've took Bennie; Bennie ain't cryin' but he's a-holdin' to Ma's hand like a baby. Oh," he laughed sneeringly, "it's one grand little family group that they make!"