back to the early days he and his wife had spent on the islands.
"Sometimes Mrs Davidson and I would look at one another and the tears
would stream down our cheeks. We worked without ceasing, day and night,
and we seemed to make no progress. I don't know what I should have done
without her then. When I felt my heart sink, when I was very near
despair, she gave me courage and hope."
Mrs Davidson looked down at her work, and a slight colour rose to her
thin cheeks. Her hands trembled a little. She did not trust herself to
speak.
"We had no one to help us. We were alone, thousands of miles from any of
our own people, surrounded by darkness. When I was broken and weary she
would put her work aside and take the Bible and read to me till peace
came and settled upon me like sleep upon the eyelids of a child, and
when at last she closed the book she'd say: 'We'll save them in spite of
themselves.' And I felt strong again in the Lord, and I answered: 'Yes,
with God's help I'll save them. I must save them.'"
He came over to the table and stood in front of it as though it were a
lectern.
"You see, they were so naturally depraved that they couldn't be brought
to see their wickedness. We had to make sins out of what they thought
were natural actions. We had to make it a sin, not only to commit
adultery and to lie and thieve, but to expose their bodies, and to dance
and not to come to church. I made it a sin for a girl to show her bosom
and a sin for a man not to wear trousers."
"How?" asked Dr Macphail, not without surprise.
"I instituted fines. Obviously the only way to make people realise that
an action is sinful is to punish them if they commit it. I fined them if
they didn't come to church, and I fined them if they danced. I fined
them if they were improperly dressed. I had a tariff, and every sin had
to be paid for either in money or work. And at last I made them
understand."
"But did they never refuse to pay?"
"How could they?" asked the missionary.
"It would be a brave man who tried to stand up against Mr Davidson,"
said his wife, tightening her lips.
Dr Macphail looked at Davidson with troubled eyes. What he heard
shocked him, but he hesitated to express his disapproval.
"You must remember that in the last resort I could expel them from their
church membership."
"Did they mind that?"
Davidson smiled a little and gently rubbed his hands.
"They couldn't sell their copra. When the men fished they got no share
of the catch. It meant something very like starvation. Yes, they minded
quite a lot."
"Tell him about Fred Ohlson," said Mrs Davidson.
The missionary fixed his fiery eyes on Dr Macphail.
"Fred Ohlson was a Danish trader who had been in the islands a good many
years. He was a pretty rich man as traders go and he wasn't very pleased
when we came. You see, he'd had things very much his own way. He paid
the natives what he liked for their copra, and he paid in goods and
whiskey. He had a native wife, but he was flagrantly unfaithful to her.
He was a drunkard. I gave him a chance to mend his ways, but he
wouldn't take it. He laughed at me."
Davidson's voice fell to a deep bass as he said the last words, and he
was silent for a minute or two. The silence was heavy with menace.
"In two years he was a ruined man. He'd lost everything he'd saved in a
quarter of a century. I broke him, and at last he was forced to come to
me like a beggar and beseech me to give him a passage back to Sydney."
"I wish you could have seen him when he came to see Mr Davidson," said
the missionary's wife. "He had been a fine, powerful man, with a lot of
fat on him, and he had a great big voice, but now he was half the size,
and he was shaking all over. He'd suddenly become an old man."
With abstracted gaze Davidson looked out into the night. The rain was
falling again.
Suddenly from below came a sound, and Davidson turned and looked
questioningly at his wife. It was the sound of a gramophone, harsh and
loud, wheezing out a syncopated tune.
"What's that?" he asked.
Mrs Davidson fixed her _pince-nez_ more firmly on her nose.
"One of the second-class passengers has a room in the house. I guess it
comes from there."
They listened in silence, and presently they heard the sound of dancing.
Then the music stopped, and they heard the popping of corks and voices
raised in animated conversation.
"I daresay she's giving a farewell party to her friends on board," said
Dr Macphail. "The ship sails at twelve, doesn't it?"
Davidson made no remark, but he looked at his watch.
"Are you ready?" he asked his wife.
She got up and folded her work.
"Yes, I guess I am," she answered.
"It's early to go to bed yet, isn't it?" said the doctor.
"We have a good deal of reading to do," explained Mrs Davidson.
"Wherever we are, we read a chapter of the Bible before retiring for the
night and we study it with the commentaries, you know, and discuss it
thoroughly. It's a wonderful training for the mind."
The two couples bade one another good night. Dr and Mrs Macphail were
left alone. For two or three minutes they did not speak.
"I think I'll go and fetch the cards," the doctor said at last.
Mrs Macphail looked at him doubtfully. Her conversation with the
Davidsons had left her a little uneasy, but she did not like to say that
she thought they had better not play cards when the Davidsons might come
in at any moment. Dr Macphail brought them and she watched him, though
with a vague sense of guilt, while he laid out his patience. Below the
sound of revelry continued.
It was fine enough next day, and the Macphails, condemned to spend a
fortnight of idleness at Pago-Pago, set about making the best of things.
They went down to the quay and got out of their boxes a number of
books. The doctor called on the chief surgeon of the naval hospital and
went round the beds with him. They left cards on the governor. They
passed Miss Thompson on the road. The doctor took off his hat, and she
gave him a "Good morning, doc.," in a loud, cheerful voice. She was
dressed as on the day before, in a white frock, and her shiny white
boots with their high heels, her fat legs bulging over the tops of them,
were strange things on that exotic scene.
"I don't think she's very suitably dressed, I must say," said Mrs
Macphail. "She looks extremely common to me."
When they got back to their house, she was on the verandah playing with
one of the trader's dark children.
"Say a word to her," Dr Macphail whispered to his wife. "She's all alone
here, and it seems rather unkind to ignore her."
Mrs Macphail was shy, but she was in the habit of doing what her husband
bade her.
"I think we're fellow lodgers here," she said, rather foolishly.
"Terrible, ain't it, bein' cooped up in a one-horse burg like this?"
answered Miss Thompson. "And they tell me I'm lucky to have gotten a
room. I don't see myself livin' in a native house, and that's what some
have to do. I don't know why they don't have a hotel."
They exchanged a few more words. Miss Thompson, loud-voiced and
garrulous, was evidently quite willing to gossip, but Mrs Macphail had
a poor stock of small talk and presently she said:
"Well, I think we must go upstairs."
In the evening when they sat down to their high-tea Davidson on coming
in said:
"I see that woman downstairs has a couple of sailors sitting there. I
wonder how she's gotten acquainted with them."
"She can't be very particular," said Mrs Davidson.
They were all rather tired after the idle, aimless day.
"If there's going to be a fortnight of this I don't know what we shall
feel like at the end of it," said Dr Macphail.
"The only thing to do is to portion out the day to different
activities," answered the missionary. "I shall set aside a certain
number of hours to study and a certain number to exercise, rain or
fine--in the wet season you can't afford to pay any attention to the
rain--and a certain number to recreation."
Dr Macphail looked at his companion with misgiving. Davidson's programme
oppressed him. They were eating Hamburger steak again. It seemed the
only dish the cook knew how to make. Then below the gramophone began.
Davidson started nervously when he heard it, but said nothing. Men's
voices floated up. Miss Thompson's guests were joining in a well-known
song and presently they heard her voice too, hoarse and loud. There was
a good deal of shouting and laughing. The four people upstairs, trying
to make conversation, listened despite themselves to the clink of
glasses and the scrape of chairs. More people had evidently come. Miss
Thompson was giving a party.
"I wonder how she gets them all in," said Mrs Macphail, suddenly
breaking into a medical conversation between the missionary and her
husband.
It showed whither her thoughts were wandering. The twitch of Davidson's
face proved that, though he spoke of scientific things, his mind was
busy in the same direction. Suddenly, while the doctor was giving some
experience of practice on the Flanders front, rather prosily, he sprang
to his feet with a cry.
"What's the matter, Alfred?" asked Mrs Davidson.
"Of course! It never occurred to me. She's out of Iwelei."
"She can't be."
"She came on board at Honolulu. It's obvious. And she's carrying on her
trade here. Here."
He uttered the last word with a passion of indignation.
"What's Iwelei?" asked Mrs Macphail.
He turned his gloomy eyes on her and his voice trembled with horror.
"The plague spot of Honolulu. The Red Light district. It was a blot on
our civilisation."
Iwelei was on the edge of the city. You went down side streets by the
harbour, in the darkness, across a rickety bridge, till you came to a
deserted road, all ruts and holes, and then suddenly you came out into
the light. There was parking room for motors on each side of the road,
and there were saloons, tawdry and bright, each one noisy with its
mechanical piano, and there were barbers' shops and tobacconists. There
was a stir in the air and a sense of expectant gaiety. You turned down a
narrow alley, either to the right or to the left, for the road divided
Iwelei into two parts, and you found yourself in the district. There
were rows of little bungalows, trim and neatly painted in green, and the
pathway between them was broad and straight. It was laid out like a
garden-city. In its respectable regularity, its order and spruceness, it
gave an impression of sardonic horror; for never can the search for love
have been so systematised and ordered. The pathways were lit by a rare
lamp, but they would have been dark except for the lights that came from
the open windows of the bungalows. Men wandered about, looking at the
women who sat at their windows, reading or sewing, for the most part
taking no notice of the passers-by; and like the women they were of all
nationalities. There were Americans, sailors from the ships in port,
enlisted men off the gunboats, sombrely drunk, and soldiers from the
regiments, white and black, quartered on the island; there were
Japanese, walking in twos and threes; Hawaiians, Chinese in long robes,
and Filipinos in preposterous hats. They were silent and as it were
oppressed. Desire is sad.
"It was the most crying scandal of the Pacific," exclaimed Davidson
vehemently. "The missionaries had been agitating against it for years,
and at last the local press took it up. The police refused to stir. You
know their argument. They say that vice is inevitable and consequently
the best thing is to localise and control it. The truth is, they were
paid. Paid. They were paid by the saloon-keepers, paid by the bullies,
paid by the women themselves. At last they were forced to move."
"I read about it in the papers that came on board in Honolulu," said Dr
Macphail.
"Iwelei, with its sin and shame, ceased to exist on the very day we
arrived. The whole population was brought before the justices. I don't
know why I didn't understand at once what that woman was."
"Now you come to speak of it," said Mrs Macphail, "I remember seeing her
come on board only a few minutes before the boat sailed. I remember
thinking at the time she was cutting it rather fine."
"How dare she come here!" cried Davidson indignantly. "I'm not going to
allow it."
He strode towards the door.
"What are you going to do?" asked Macphail.
"What do you expect me to do? I'm going to stop it. I'm not going to
have this house turned into--into...."
He sought for a word that should not offend the ladies' ears. His eyes
were flashing and his pale face was paler still in his emotion.
"It sounds as though there were three or four men down there," said the
doctor. "Don't you think it's rather rash to go in just now?"
The missionary gave him a contemptuous look and without a word flung out
of the room.
"You know Mr Davidson very little if you think the fear of personal
danger can stop him in the performance of his duty," said his wife.
She sat with her hands nervously clasped, a spot of colour on her high
cheek bones, listening to what was about to happen below. They all
listened. They heard him clatter down the wooden stairs and throw open
the door. The singing stopped suddenly, but the gramophone continued to
bray out its vulgar tune. They heard Davidson's voice and then the noise
of something heavy falling. The music stopped. He had hurled the
gramophone on the floor. Then again they heard Davidson's voice, they
could not make out the words, then Miss Thompson's, loud and shrill,
then a confused clamour as though several people were shouting together
at the top of their lungs. Mrs Davidson gave a little gasp, and she
clenched her hands more tightly. Dr Macphail looked uncertainly from her
to his wife. He did not want to go down, but he wondered if they
expected him to. Then there was something that sounded like a scuffle.
The noise now was more distinct. It might be that Davidson was being
thrown out of the room. The door was slammed. There was a moment's
silence and they heard Davidson come up the stairs again. He went to his
room.
"I think I'll go to him," said Mrs Davidson.
She got up and went out.
"If you want me, just call," said Mrs Macphail, and then when the other
was gone: "I hope he isn't hurt."
"Why couldn't he mind his own business?" said Dr Macphail.
They sat in silence for a minute or two and then they both started, for
the gramophone began to play once more, defiantly, and mocking voices
shouted hoarsely the words of an obscene song.
Next day Mrs Davidson was pale and tired. She complained of headache,
and she looked old and wizened. She told Mrs Macphail that the
missionary had not slept at all; he had passed the night in a state of
frightful agitation and at five had got up and gone out. A glass of beer
had been thrown over him and his clothes were stained and stinking. But
a sombre fire glowed in Mrs Davidson's eyes when she spoke of Miss
Thompson.
"She'll bitterly rue the day when she flouted Mr Davidson," she said.
"Mr Davidson has a wonderful heart and no one who is in trouble has ever
gone to him without being comforted, but he has no mercy for sin, and
when his righteous wrath is excited he's terrible."
"Why, what will he do?" asked Mrs Macphail.
"I don't know, but I wouldn't stand in that creature's shoes for
anything in the world."
Mrs Macphail shuddered. There was something positively alarming in the
triumphant assurance of the little woman's manner. They were going out
together that morning, and they went down the stairs side by side. Miss
Thompson's door was open, and they saw her in a bedraggled
dressing-gown, cooking something in a chafing-dish.
"Good morning," she called. "Is Mr Davidson better this morning?"
They passed her in silence, with their noses in the air, as if she did
not exist. They flushed, however, when she burst into a shout of
derisive laughter. Mrs Davidson turned on her suddenly.
"Don't you dare to speak to me," she screamed. "If you insult me I shall
have you turned out of here."
"Say, did I ask Mr Davidson to visit with me?"
"Don't answer her," whispered Mrs Macphail hurriedly.
They walked on till they were out of earshot.
"She's brazen, brazen," burst from Mrs Davidson.
Her anger almost suffocated her.
And on their way home they met her strolling towards the quay. She had
all her finery on. Her great white hat with its vulgar, showy flowers
was an affront. She called out cheerily to them as she went by, and a
couple of American sailors who were standing there grinned as the ladies
set their faces to an icy stare. They got in just before the rain began
to fall again.
"I guess she'll get her fine clothes spoilt," said Mrs Davidson with a
bitter sneer.
Davidson did not come in till they were half way through dinner. He was
wet through, but he would not change. He sat, morose and silent,
refusing to eat more than a mouthful, and he stared at the slanting
rain. When Mrs Davidson told him of their two encounters with Miss
Thompson he did not answer. His deepening frown alone showed that he had
heard.
"Don't you think we ought to make Mr Horn turn her out of here?" asked
Mrs Davidson. "We can't allow her to insult us."
"There doesn't seem to be any other place for her to go," said Macphail.
"She can live with one of the natives."
"In weather like this a native hut must be a rather uncomfortable place
to live in."
"I lived in one for years," said the missionary.
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 immortal 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 mellow 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 Rev. Davidson don't come in
business hours she'll be glad to see him any time."
The party received it in stony silence, and Dr Macphail quickly effaced
from his lips the smile which had come upon them. He knew his wife would
be vexed with him if he found Miss Thompson's effrontery 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 defiant "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 our soft English rain
that drops gently on the earth; it was unmerciful and somehow terrible;
you felt in it the malignancy of the primitive powers of nature. It did
not pour, it flowed. It was like a deluge from heaven, and it rattled on
the roof of corrugated iron with a steady persistence 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
miserable and hopeless.
Macphail turned his head when the missionary came back. The two women
looked up.
"I've given her every chance. I have exhorted her to repent. 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 lodged. 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 missionaries 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 defiance, to
cheat her loneliness, but there was no one to sing, and it had a
melancholy note. It was like a cry for help. Davidson took no notice. He
was in the middle of a long anecdote 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 monotonous, earnest insistence. 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 ironic 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 lodging elsewhere, but had failed. In the evening she played
through the various reels of her gramophone, but the pretence of mirth
was obvious now. The ragtime 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 arrogant 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."