Noiselessly, but with the appearance of a certain terrible effort under the sh.e.l.l 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 was about to speak, about to a.s.sure Bennie that she didn't want any of the coffee, when steps sounded on the stairs. They were hurried steps; steps suggesting to the listener that five flights were nothing, after all! Rose-Marie found herself turning as a hand fell heavily upon a door-k.n.o.b, and the door swung in.

A young man stood jauntily upon the threshold. Rose-Marie's first impression of him was one of extreme, almost offensive neatness--of sleek hair, that looked like patent leather, and of highly polished brown shoes. She saw that his blue and white striped collar was speckless, that his blue tie was obviously new, that his trousers were creased to an almost dangerous edge. But it was the face of the young man from which Rose-Marie shrank back--a clever, sharp face with narrow, horribly speculative 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--the young man entered the room. His sharp eyes travelled with lightning-like rapidity over the place, resting a moment on the sleeping figure of Pa before they hurried past him to Rose-Marie. He surveyed her coolly, taking in every feature, every fold of her garments, with a studied boldness that was somehow offensive.

"Who's she?" he questioned abruptly, of any one who cared to answer, and one manicured finger pointed in her direction. "Where'd she come from?"

Bennie was the one who spoke. Rather gallantly he stepped in front of Rose-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 to Rose-Marie with an insolent smile, "what's yer name?"

Rose-Marie met his insolent gaze with a calm expression. No one would have guessed that she was trembling inwardly.

"My name," she told him, "is Rose-Marie Thompson. I live in the Settlement 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 pa.s.sed 'er on th' stairs. But," he laughed again, "why didn't yer come t' see me--huh?"

Rose-Marie, having no answer, turned expectantly toward the door. If this Jim had pa.s.sed 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 swift glance that the red upon the girl's cheeks was too high to be quite natural--that the scarlet of her lips was over-vivid. And yet, despite the patently artificial colouring, she realized that the girl was beautiful with a high strung, almost thoroughbred beauty. She wondered how this beauty had been born of the dim woman who seemed so colourless and the sodden brute who lay snoring in the comer.

Her train of thought was broken, suddenly. For the young man was speaking. Rose-Marie disliked, somehow, the very tone of his voice.

"Here's a girl t' see you, Ella," he said. "She's from th' Settlement House--she says! Maybe she wants," sarcastically, "that you should join a Bible Cla.s.s!"

The girl's eyes were flashing with a dangerously hard light. She turned angrily 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 want t' see you--like those other wimmen did. She come t' see _Lily_--"

He paused and Rose-Marie, who had gathered that social service workers were not welcome visitors, went on breathlessly, from where he left off.

"I _am_ from the Settlement House," she told Ella, "and I'd like awfully to have you join our cla.s.ses. But that wasn't why I came here. Bennie told 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--that Jim was the different one in this family.

"I'll get Lily," Ella said simply, and there was a warmth, a tenderness in 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 that Bennie had said his sisters shared. In a moment she came out leading a small girl by the hand.

"This is Lily!" she said softly.

Even in that dingy place--perhaps accentuated by the very dinginess of it--Lily's blond loveliness struck Rose-Marie with a sense of shock. The child might have been a flower--the very flower whose name she bore--growing upon an ash heap. Her beauty made the rest of the room fade into dim outlines--made Jim and Ella and Bennie seem heavy, and somehow overfed. Even Pa, snoring l.u.s.tily, became almost a shadow. Rose-Marie stepped toward the child impulsively, with outflung arms.

"Oh, you dear!" she said shakily, "you dear!"

n.o.body spoke. Only Ella, with gentle hands, pushed her little sister forward. The child's great blue eyes looked past Rose-Marie, and a vague smile quivered on her lips.

"Oh, you dear!" Rose-Marie exclaimed again, and went down on her knees on the dirty floor--real women will always kneel before a beautiful child.

Lily might have been four years old. Her hair, drawn back from her white little face, was the colour of pale gold, and her lips were faintly coral. But it was her deep eyes, with their vague expression, that clutched, somehow, at Rose-Marie's heart.

"Tell me that you're going to like me, Lily!" she almost implored. "I love little girls."

The child did not answer--indeed, she did not seem to hear. But one thin little hand, creeping out, touched Rose-Marie's face with a gesture that was singularly appealing, singularly full of affection. When the fingers touched her cheek, Rose-Marie felt a sudden suspicion, a sudden dread.

She noticed, all at once, that no one was speaking--that the room was quite still, except for the b.e.a.s.t.i.a.l 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--that was usually so dull and monotonous--held a certain tremor.

"Lily," she said slowly, "can't spick--'r hear.... An' she's--blind!"

VII

A LILY IN THE SLUMS

Rose-Marie started back from the child with a sickening sense of shock.

All at once she realized the reason why Bennie's eyes grew tender at the mention of his little sister--why Ella forgot anger and suspicion when Lily came into the room. She understood why Mrs. Volsky's dull voice held love and sorrow. And yet, as she looked at the small girl, it seemed almost incredible that she should be so afflicted. Deaf and dumb and blind! Never to hear the voices of those who loved her, never to see the beautiful things of life, never--even--to speak! Rose-Marie choked back a sob, and glanced across the child's cloud of pale golden hair at Ella. As their eyes met she knew that they were, in some strange way, friends.

With a sudden, overwhelming pity, her arms reached out again to Lily. As she gathered the child close she was surprised at the slenderness of the tiny figure, at the neatness of the faded gingham frock that blended in tone with the great, sightless eyes. All at once she remembered what Bennie had said to her, the day before, in the park.

"I love Lily," he had told her, "I wouldn't let n.o.body hurt Lily! If any one--even Pa, so much as spoke mean to her--I'd kill him...."

Glancing about the room, at the faces of the others, she sensed a silent echo of Bennie's words. Mrs. Volsky, who would keep neither her flat nor herself neat, quite evidently saw to it that Lily's little dress was spotless. Ella, whose temper would flare up at the slightest word, cared for the child with the tender efficiency of a professional nurse; Bennie's face, as he looked at his tiny sister, had taken on a cherubic softness. And Jim ... Rose-Marie glanced at Jim and was startled out of her reflections. For Jim was not looking at Lily. His gaze was fixed upon her own face with an intensity that frightened her. With a sudden impulse she spoke directly to him.

"You must be very kind to this little sister of yours," she told him.

"She needs every bit of love and affection and consideration that her family can give her!"

Jim, his gaze still upon her face, shrugged his shoulders. But before he could answer Ella had come a step closer to Rose-Marie. Her eyes were flashing.

"Jim," she said, "ain't got any love or kindness or consideration in him!

Jim thinks that Lily ain't got any more feelin's than a puppy dog--'cause she can't answer back. Oh," in response to the question in Rose-Marie's face, "oh, he'd never put a finger on her--not that! But he don't speak kind to her, like we do. It's enough fer him that she can't hear th'

words he lays his tongue to. Even Pa--"