【英文短篇小说】雨（3）

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‘In weather like this a native hut must be a rather uncomfortable place to live in.’

‘I lived in one for years,’ said the missionary¹.

When the little native girl brought in the fried bananas which formed the sweet they had every day, Davidson turned to her.

‘Ask Miss Thompson when it would be convenient for me to see her,’ he said. The girl nodded shyly and went out

‘What do you want to see her for, Alfred?’ asked his wife.

‘It’s my duty to see her. I won’t act till I’ve given her every chance.’

‘You don’t know what she is. She’ll insult you.’

Let her insult me. Let her spit on me. She has an immortal² soul, and I must do all that is in my power to save it.’

Mrs Davidson’s ears rang still with the harlot’s mocking laughter. ‘She’s gone too far.’

‘Too far for the mercy of God?’ His eyes lit up suddenly and his voice grew mellow³ and soft. ‘Never. The sinner may be deeper in sin than the depth of hell itself, but the love of the Lord Jesus can reach him still.’

The girl came back with the message.

‘Miss Thompson’s compliments and as long as Rev⁴ Davidson don’t come in business hours she’ll be glad to see him any time.’

The party received it in stony⁵ silence, and Dr Macphail quickly effaced⁶ from his lips the smile which had come upon them. He knew his wife would be vexed⁷ with him if he found Miss Thompson’s effrontery⁸ amusing.

They finished the meal in silence. When it was over the two ladies got up and took their work. Mrs Macphail was making another of the innumerable comforters which she had turned out since the beginning of the war, and the doctor lit his pipe. But Davidson remained in his chair and with abstracted eyes stared at the table. At last he got up and without a word went out of the room. They heard him go down and they heard Miss Thompson’s defiant⁹ ‘Come in’ when he knocked at the door. He remained with her for an hour. And Dr Macphail watched the rain. It was beginning to get on his nerves. It was not like soft English rain that drops gently on the earth; it was unmerciful and somehow terrible; you felt in it the malignancy of the primitive¹⁰ powers of nature. It did not pour, it flowed. It was like a deluge¹¹ from heaven, and it rattled¹² on the roof of corrugated¹³ iron with a steady persistence¹⁴ that was maddening. It seemed to have a fury of its own. And sometimes you felt that you must scream if it did not stop, and then suddenly you felt powerless, as though your bones had suddenly become soft; and you were miserable¹⁵ and hopeless.

Macphail turned his head when the missionary came back. The two women looked up.

‘I’ve given her every chance. I have exhorted¹⁶ her to repent¹⁷. She is an evil woman.’

He paused, and Dr Macphail saw his eyes darken and his pale face grow hard and stern.

‘Now I shall take the whips with which the Lord Jesus drove the usurers and the money changers out of the Temple of the Most High.’

He walked up and down the room. His mouth was close set, and his black brows were frowning.

‘If she fled to the uttermost parts of the earth I should pursue her.’

With a sudden movement he turned round and strode out of the room. They heard him go downstairs again.

‘What is he going to do?’ asked Mrs Macphail.

‘I don’t know’ Mrs Davidson took off her pince-nez and wiped them. ‘When he is on the Lord’s work I never ask him questions.’

She sighed a little.

‘What is the matter?’

‘He’ll wear himself out. He doesn’t know what it is to spare himself.’

Dr Macphail learnt the first results of the missionary’s activity from the half-caste trader in whose house they lodged¹⁸. He stopped the doctor when he passed the store and came out to speak to him on the stoop. His fat face was worried.

‘The Rev Davidson has been at me for letting Miss Thompson have a room here,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t know what she was when I rented it to her. When people come and ask if I can rent them a room all I want to know is if they’ve the money to pay for it. And she paid me for hers a week in advance.’

Dr Macphail did not want to commit himself

‘When all’s said and done it’s your house. We’re very much obliged to you for taking us in at all.’

Horn looked at him doubtfully. He was not certain yet how definitely Macphail stood on the missionary’s side.

‘The missionaries¹⁹ are in with one another,’ he said, hesitatingly. ‘If they get it in for a trader he may just as well shut up his store and quit.’

Did he want you to turn her out?’

‘No, he said so long as she behaved herself he couldn’t ask me to do that. He said he wanted to be just to me. I promised she shouldn’t have no more visitors. I’ve just been and told her.’

‘How did she take it?’

‘She gave me Hell.’

The trader squirmed in his old ducks. He had found Miss Thompson a rough customer.

‘Oh, well, I daresay she’ll get out. I don’t suppose she wants to stay here if she can’t have anyone in.’

‘There’s nowhere she can go, only a native house, and no native’ll take her now, not now that the missionaries have got their knife in her.’

Dr Macphail looked at the falling rain.

‘Well, I don’t suppose it’s any good waiting for it to clear up.’

In the evening when they sat in the parlour Davidson talked to them of his early days at college. He had had no means and had worked his way through by doing odd jobs during the vacations. There was silence downstairs. Miss Thompson was sitting in her little room alone. But suddenly the gramophone began to play. She had set it on in defiance²⁰, to cheat her loneliness, but there was no one to sing, and it had a melancholy²¹ note. It was like a cry for help. Davidson took no notice. He was in the middle of a long anecdote²² and without change of expression went on. The gramophone continued. Miss Thompson put on one reel after another. It looked as though the silence of the night were getting on her nerves. It was breathless and sultry. When the Macphails went to bed they could not sleep. They lay side by side with their eyes wide open, listening to the cruel singing of the mosquitoes outside their curtain.

‘What’s that?’ whispered Mrs Macphail at last.

They heard a voice, Davidson’s voice, through the wooden partition. It went on with a monotonous²³, earnest insistence²⁴. He was praying aloud. He was praying for the soul of Miss Thompson.

Two or three days went by. Now when they passed Miss Thompson on the road she did not greet them with ironic²⁵ cordiality or smile; she passed with her nose in the air, a sulky look on her painted face, frowning, as though she did not see them. The trader told Macphail that she had tried to get lodging²⁶ elsewhere, but had failed. In the evening she played through the various reels of her gramophone, but the pretence²⁷ of mirth was obvious now The ragtime²⁸ had a cracked, heart-broken rhythm as though it were a one-step of despair.

When she began to play on Sunday Davidson sent Horn to beg her to stop at once since it was the Lord’s day. The reel was taken off and the house was silent except for the steady pattering of the rain on the iron roof

‘I think she’s getting a bit worked up,’ said the trader next day to Macphail. ‘She don’t know what Mr Davidson’s up to and it makes her scared.’

Macphail had caught a glimpse of her that morning and it struck him that her arrogant²⁹ expression had changed. There was in her face a hunted look. The half-caste gave him a sidelong glance.

‘I suppose you don’t know what Mr Davidson is doing about it?’ he hazarded. ‘No, I don’t.’

It was singular that Horn should ask him that question, for he also had the idea that the missionary was mysteriously at work.

He had an impression that he was weaving a net around the woman, carefully, systematically³⁰, and suddenly, when everything was ready, would pull the strings³¹ tight.

‘He told me to tell her,’ said the trader, ‘that if at any time she wanted him she only had to send and he’d come.’

‘What did she say when you told her that?’

‘She didn’t say nothing. I didn’t stop. I just said what he said I was to and then I beat it. I thought she might be going to start weepin’.’

‘I have no doubt the loneliness is getting on her nerves,’ said the doctor. ‘And the rain-that’s enough to make anyone jumpy,’ he continued irritably³². ‘Doesn’t it ever stop in this confounded place?’

‘It goes on pretty steady in the rainy season. We have three hundred inches in the year. You see, it’s the shape of the bay. It seems to attract the rain from all over the Pacific.’

‘Damn the shape of the bay,’ said the doctor.

He scratched his mosquito bites. He felt very short-tempered. When the rain stopped and the sun shone, it was like a hot-house, seething³³, humid, sultry, breathless, and you had a strange feeling that everything was growing with a savage³⁴ violence. The natives, blithe³⁵ and childlike by reputation, seemed then, with their tattooing³⁶ and their dyed hair, to have something sinister³⁷ in their appearance; and when they pattered along at your heels with their naked feet you looked back instinctively³⁸. You felt they might at any moment come behind you swiftly and thrust a long knife between your shoulder-blades. You could not tell what dark thought lurked³⁹ behind their wide-set eyes. They had a little the look of ancient Egyptians painted on a temple wall, and there was about them the terror of what is immeasurably old.

The missionary came and went. He was busy, but the Macphails did not know what he was doing. Horn told the doctor that he saw the governor every day, and once Davidson mentioned him.

‘He looks as if he had plenty of determination,’ he said, ‘but when you come down to brass⁴⁰ tacks⁴¹ he has no backbone⁴².’

‘I suppose that means he won’t do exactly what you want,’ suggested the doctor facetiously⁴³.

The missionary did not smile.

‘I want him to do what’s right. It shouldn’t be necessary to persuade a man to do that.’

‘But there may be differences of opinion about what is right.’

‘If a man had a gangrenous foot would you have patience with anyone who hesitated to amputate it?’

‘Gangrene is a matter of fact.’

‘And Evil?’

What Davidson had done soon appeared. The four of them had just finished their midday meal, and they had not yet separated for the siesta⁴⁴ which the heat imposed on the ladies and on the doctor. Davidson had little patience with the slothful habit. The door was suddenly flung open and Miss Thompson came in. She looked round the room and then went up to Davidson.

‘You low-down skunk⁴⁵, what have you been saying about me to the governor?’ She was spluttering with rage. There was a moment’s pause. Then the missionary drew forward a chair.

‘Won’t you be seated, Miss Thompson? I’ve been hoping to have another talk with you.’

‘You poor low-life bastard⁴⁶.’

She burst into a torrent⁴⁷ of insult, foul⁴⁸ and insolent⁴⁹. Davidson kept his grave eyes on her.

‘I’m indifferent to the abuse you think fit to heap on me, Miss Thompson,’ he said, ‘but I must beg you to remember that ladies are present.’

Tears by now were struggling with her anger. Her face was red and swollen⁵⁰ as though she were choking.

‘What has happened?’ asked Dr Macphail.

‘A feller’s just been in here and he says I gotter beat it on the next boat.’ Was there a gleam in the missionary’s eyes? His face remained impassive. ‘You could hardly expect the governor to let you stay here under the circumstances.’

‘You done it,’ she shrieked⁵¹. ‘You can’t kid me. You done it.’

‘I don’t want to deceive you. I urged the governor to take the only possible step consistent with his obligations.’

‘Why couldn’t you leave me be? I wasn’t doin’ you no harm.’

‘You may be sure that if you had I should be the last man to resent it.’

‘Do you think I want to stay on in this poor imitation of a burg? I don’t look no Busher, do I?’

‘In that case I don’t see what cause of complaint you have,’ he answered.

She gave an inarticulate cry of rage and flung out of the room. There was a short silence.

‘It’s a relief to know that the governor has acted at last,’ said Davidson finally. ‘He’s a weak man and he shilly-shallied. He said she was only here for a fortnight anyway, and if she went on to Apia, that was under British jurisdiction⁵² and had nothing to do with him.’

The missionary sprang to his feet and strode across the room.

‘It’s terrible the way the men who are in authority seek to evade⁵³ their responsibility. They speak as though evil that was out of sight ceased to be evil. The very existence of that woman is a scandal and it does not help matters to shift it to another of the islands. In the end I had to speak straight from the shoulder.’

Davidson’s brow lowered, and he protruded⁵⁴ his firm chin. He looked fierce and determined⁵⁵.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Our mission is not entirely⁵⁶ without influence at Washington. I pointed⁵⁷ out to the governor that it wouldn’t do him any good if there was a complaint about the way he managed things here.’

‘When has she got to go?’ asked the doctor, after a pause.

‘The San Francisco boat is due here from Sydney next Tuesday. She’s to sail on that.’

That was in five days’ time. It was next day, when he was coming back from the hospital where for want of something better to do Macphail spent most of his mornings, that the half-caste stopped him as he was going upstairs.

‘Excuse me, Dr Macphail, Miss Thompson’s sick. Will you have a look at her?’

‘Certainly’

Horn led him to her room. She was sitting in a chair idly, neither reading nor sewing, staring in front of her. She wore her white dress and the large hat with the flowers on it. Macphail noticed that her skin was yellow and muddy under her powder, and her eyes were heavy.

‘I’m sorry to hear you’re not well,’ he said.

‘Oh, I ain’t sick really. I just said that, because I just had to see you. I’ve got to clear on a boat that’s going to ‘Frisco.’

She looked at him and he saw that her eyes were suddenly startled. She opened and clenched⁵⁸ her hands spasmodically. The trader stood at the door, listening.

‘So I understand,’ said the doctor.

She gave a little gulp⁵⁹.

‘I guess it ain’t very convenient for me to go to ‘Frisco just now I went to see the governor yesterday afternoon, but I couldn’t get to him. I saw the secretary, and he told me I’d got to take that boat and that was all there was to it. I just had to see the governor, so I waited outside his house this morning, and when he came out I spoke⁶⁰ to him. He didn’t want to speak to me, I’ll say, but I wouldn’t let him shake me off, and at last he said he hadn’t no objection to my staying here till the next boat to Sydney if the Rev Davidson will stand for it.’

She stopped and looked at Dr Macphail anxiously.

‘I don’t know exactly what I can do,’ he said.

Well, I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind asking him. I swear to God I won’t start anything here if he’ll just only let me stay. I won’t go out of the house if that’ll suit him. It’s no more’n a fortnight.’

‘I’ll ask him.’

‘He won’t stand for it,’ said Horn. ‘He’ll have you out on Tuesday, so you may as well make up your mind to it.’

‘Tell him I can get work in Sydney, straight stuff, I mean. ‘Tain’t asking very much.’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘And come and tell me right away, will you? I can’t set down to a thing till I get the dope one way or the other.’

It was not an errand that much pleased the doctor, and, characteristically perhaps, he went about it indirectly⁶¹. He told his wife what Miss Thompson had said to him and asked her to speak to Mrs Davidson. The missionary’s attitude seemed rather arbitrary and it could do no harm if the girl were allowed to stay in Pago-Pago another fortnight. But he was not prepared for the result of his diplomacy⁶². The missionary came to him straightway.

‘Mrs Davidson tells me that Thompson has been speaking to you.’

Dr Macphail, thus directly tackled, had the shy man’s resentment⁶³ at being forced out into the open. He felt his temper rising, and he flushed. ‘I don’t see that it can make any difference if she goes to Sydney rather than to San Francisco, and so long as she promises to behave while she’s here it’s dashed hard to persecute⁶⁴ her.’

The missionary fixed⁶⁵ him with his stern eyes.

‘Why is she unwilling⁶⁶ to go back to San Francisco?’

‘I didn’t inquire,’ answered the doctor with some asperity⁶⁷. ‘And I think one does better to mind one’s own business.’

Perhaps it was not a very tactful answer.

‘The governor has ordered her to be deported⁶⁸ by the first boat that leaves the island. He’s only done his duty and I will not interfere⁶⁹. Her presence is a peril⁷⁰ here.’

‘I think you’re very harsh and tyrannical.’

The two ladies looked up at the doctor with some alarm, but they need not have feared a quarrel, for the missionary smiled gently.

‘I’m terribly sorry you should think that of me, Dr Macphail. Believe me, my heart bleeds for that unfortunate woman, but I’m only trying to do my duty.’ The doctor made no answer. He looked out of the window sullenly⁷¹. For once it was not raining and across the bay you saw nestling among the trees the huts of a native village.

‘I think I’ll take advantage of the rain stopping to go out,’ he said.

‘Please don’t bear me malice⁷² because I can’t accede⁷³ to your wish,’ said Davidson, with a melancholy smile. ‘I respect you very much, doctor, and I should be sorry if you thought ill of me.’

‘I have no doubt you have a sufficiently⁷⁴ good opinion of yourself to bear mine with equanimity,’ he retorted.

‘That’s one on me,’ chuckled⁷⁵ Davidson.

When Dr Macphail, vexed with himself because he had been uncivil to no purpose, went downstairs, Miss Thompson was waiting for him with her door ajar.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘have you spoken to him?’

‘Yes, I’m sorry, he won’t do anything,’ he answered, not looking at her in his embarrassment⁷⁶.

But then he gave her a quick glance, for a sob⁷⁷ broke from her. He saw that her face was white with fear. It gave him a shock of dismay. And suddenly he had an idea.

‘But don’t give up hope yet. I think it’s a shame the way they’re treating you and I’m going to see the governor myself.’

‘Now?’

He nodded. Her face brightened.

‘Say, that’s real good of you. I’m sure he’ll let me stay if you speak for me. I just won’t do a thing I didn’t ought all the time I’m here.’

Dr Macphail hardly knew why he had made up his mind to appeal to the governor. He was perfectly⁷⁸ indifferent to Miss Thompson’s affairs, but the missionary had irritated him, and with him temper was a smouldering thing. He found the governor at home. He was a large, handsome man, a sailor, with a grey toothbrush moustache; and he wore a spotless uniform of white drill.

‘I’ve come to see you about a woman who’s lodging in the same house as we are,’ he said. ‘Her name’s Thompson.’

‘I guess I’ve heard nearly enough about her, Dr Macphail,’ said the governor, smiling. ‘I’ve given her the order to get out next Tuesday and that’s all I can do.’

‘I wanted to ask you if you couldn’t stretch a point and let her stay here till the boat comes in from San Francisco so that she can go to Sydney. I will guarantee her good behaviour.’

The governor continued to smile, but his eyes grew small and serious.

‘I’d be very glad to oblige you, Dr Macphail, but I’ve given the order and it must stand.’

The doctor put the case as reasonably as he could, but now the governor ceased to smile at all. He listened sullenly, with averted⁷⁹ gaze. Macphail saw that he was making no impression.

‘I’m sorry to cause any lady inconvenience, but she’ll have to sail on Tuesday and that’s all there is to it.’

‘But what difference can it make?’

‘Pardon me, doctor, but I don’t feel called upon to explain my official actions except to the proper authorities.’

Macphail looked at him shrewdly. He remembered Davidson’s hint that he had used threats, and in the governor’s attitude he read a singular embarrassment.

Davidson’s a damned busybody,’ he said hotly.

‘Between ourselves, Dr Macphail, I don’t say that I have formed a very favourable⁸⁰ opinion of Mr Davidson, but I am bound to confess that he was within his rights in pointing out to me the danger that the presence of a woman of Miss Thompson’s character was to a place like this where a number of enlisted⁸¹ men are stationed among a native population.’

He got up and Dr Macphail was obliged to do so too.

‘I must ask you to excuse me. I have an engagement. Please give my respects to Mrs Macphail.’

The doctor left him crestfallen⁸². He knew that Miss Thompson would be waiting for him, and unwilling to tell her himself that he had failed, he went into the house by the back door and sneaked⁸³ up the stairs as though he had something to hide.

At supper he was silent and ill-at-ease, but the missionary was jovial⁸⁴ and animated⁸⁵. Dr Macphail thought his eyes rested on him now and then with triumphant⁸⁶ good-humour. It struck him suddenly that Davidson knew of his visit to the governor and of its ill success. But how on earth could he have heard of it? There was something sinister about the power of that man.

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