Rain by W. Somerset Maughan part 8

His genial manner vanished and his voice grew on a sudden hard and stern.
"Why don`t you want to go back there?"
She cowered before him.
"I guess my people live there. I don`t want them to see me like this. I`ll go anywhere else you say."
"Why don`t you want to go back to San Francisco?"
"I`ve told you."
He leaned forward, staring at her, and his great, shining eyes seemed to try to bore into her soul. He gave a sudden gasp.
"The penitentiary."
She screamed, and then she fell at his feet, clasping his legs.
"Don`t send me back there. I swear to you before God I`ll be a good woman. I`ll give all this up."
She burst into a torrent of confused supplication and the tears coursed down her painted cheeks. He leaned over her and, lifting her face, forced her to look at him.
"Is that it, the penitentiary?"
"I beat it before they could get me, she gasped. "If the bulls grab me it`s three years for mine."
He let go his hold of her and she fell in a heap on the floor, sobbing bitterly. Dr. Macphail stood up.
"This alters the whole thing," he said. "You can`t make her go back when you know this. Give her another chance. She wants to turn over a new leaf."
"I`m going to give her the finest chance she`s ever had. If she repents let her accept her punishment."
She misunderstood the words and looked up. There was a gleam of hope in her heavy eyes.
"You`ll let me go?"
"No. You shall sail for San Francisco on Tuesday."
She gave a groan of horror and then burst into low, hoarse shrieks which sounded hardly human, and she beat her head passionately on the ground. Dr. Macphail sprang to her and lifted her up:
"Come on, you mustn`t do that. You`d better go to your room and lie down. I`ll get you something."
He raised her to her feet and partly dragging her, partly carrying her, got her downstairs. He was furious with Mrs. Davidson and with his wife because they made no effort to help. The half-caste was standing on the landing and with his assistanc he managed to get her on the bed. She was moaning and crying. She was almost insensible. He gave her a hypodermic injection. He was hot and exhausted when he went upstairs again.
"I`ve got her to lie down."
The two women and Davidson were in the same, positions as when he had left them. They could not have moved or spoken since he went.
"I was waiting for you," said Davidson, in a strange, distant voice. "I want you all to pray with me for the soul of our erring sister."
He took the Bible off a shelf, and sat down at the table at which they had supped. It had not been cleared, and he pushed the tea-pot out of the way. In a powerful voice, resonant and deep, he read to them the chapter in which is narrated the meeting of Jesus Christ with the woman taken in adultery.
"Now kneel with me and let us pray for the soul of our dear sister, Sadie Thompson."
He burst into a long, passionate prayer in which he implored God to have mercy on the sinful woman. Mrs. Macphail and Mrs. Davidson knelt with covered eyes. The doctor, taken by surprise, awkward and sheepish, knelt too. The missionary`s prayer had a savage eloquence. He was extraordinarily moved, and as he spoke the tears ran down his cheeks. Outside, the pitiless rain fell, fell steadily, with a fierce malignity that was all too human.
At last he stopped. He paused for a moment and said:
"We will now repeat the Lord`s prayer."
They said it and then, following him, they rose from their knees. Mrs. Davidson`s face was pale and restful. She was comforted and at peace, but the Macphails felt suddenly bashful. They did not know which way to look.
"I`ll just go down and see how she is now," said Dr. Macphail.
When he knocked at her door it was opened for him by Horn. Miss Thompson was in a rocking-chair, sobbing quietly.
"What are you doing there?" exclaimed Macphail. " I told you to lie down."
"I can`t lie down. I want to see Mr. Davidson."
"My poor child, what do you think is the good of it? You`ll never move him."
"He said he`d come if I sent for him."
Macphail motioned to the trader.
"Go and fetch him."
He waited with her in silence while the trader went upstairs. Davidson came in.
"Excuse me for asking you to come here," she said, looking at him sombrely.
"I was expecting you to send for me. I knew the Lord would answer my prayer."
They stared at one another for a moment and then she looked away. She kept her eyes averted when she spoke.
"I`ve been a bad woman. I want to repent,"
"Thank God! thank God! He has heard our prayers."
He turned to the two men. "
"Leave me alone with her. Tell Mrs. Davidson that, our prayers have been answered."
They went out and closed the door behind them.
"Gee whizz," said the trader.
That night Dr. Macphail could not get to sleep till late, and when he heard the missionary come upstairs he looked at his watch. It was two o`clock. But even then he did not go to bed at once, for through the wooden partition that separated their rooms he heard him praying aloud, till he himself, exhausted, fell asleep.
When he saw him next morning he was surprised at his appearance. He was paler than ever, tired, but his eyes shone with an inhuman fire. It looked as though he were filled with an overwhelming joy.
"I want you to go down presently and see Sadie," he said. "I can`t hope that her body is better, but her soul - her soul is transformed."
The doctor was feeling wan and nervous.
"You were with her very late last night," he said.
"Yes, she couldn`t bear to have me leave her."
"You look as pleased as Punch," the doctor said irritably.
Davidson`s eyes shone with ecstasy.
"A great mercy has been vouchsafed me. Last night I was privileged to bring a lost soul to the loving arms of Jesus."
Miss Thompson was again in the rocking-chair. The bed had not been made. The room was in disorder. She had not troubled to dress herself, but wore a dirty dressing-gown, and her hair was tied in a sluttish knot. She had given her face a dab with a wet towel, but it was all swollen and creased with crying. She looked a drab.
She raised her eyes dully when the doctor came in. She was cowed and broken.
"Where`s Mr. Davidson?" she asked;
"He`ll come presently if you want him," answered Macphail acidly. "I came here to see how you were."
"Oh, I guess I`m OK. You needn`t worry about that"
"Have you had anything to eat?"
"Horn brought me some coffee."
She looked anxiously at the door.
"D`you think he`ll come down soon? I feel as if it wasn`t so terrible when he`s with me."
"Are you still going on Tuesday?"
"Yes, he says I`ve got to go. Please tell him to come right along. You can`t do me any good. He`s the only one as can help me now."
"Very well," said Dr. Macphail.
During the next three days the missionary spent almost all his time with Sadie Thompson. He joined the others only to have his meals. Dr. Macphail noticed that he hardly ate.
"He`s wearing himself out," said Mrs. Davidson pitifully. "He`ll have a breakdown if he, doesn`t take care, but he won`t spare himself."
She herself was white and pale. She told Mrs. Macphail that she had no sleep. When the missionary came upstairs from Miss Thompson he prayed till he was exhausted, but even then he did not sleep for long. After an hour or two he got up and dressed himself, and went for a tramp along the bay. He had strange dreams.
"This morning he told me that he`d been dreaming about the mountains of Nebraska," said Mrs. Davidson.
"That`s curious," said Dr. Macphail.
He remembered seeing them from the windows of the train when he crossed America. They were like huge mole-hills, rounded and smooth, an they rose from the plain abruptly. Dr. Macphail remembered how it struck him that they were like a woman`s breasts.
Davidson`s restlessness was intolerable even to himself. But he was buoyed up by a wonderful exhilaration. He was tearing out by the roots the last vestiges of sin that lurked in the hidden corners of that poor woman`s heart. He read with her and prayed with her.
"It`s wonderful," he said to them one day at supper. "It`s a true rebirth. Her soul, which was black as night, is now pure and white like the new-fallen snow. I am humble and afraid. Her remorse for all her sins is beautiful. I am not worthy to touch the hem of her garment."
"Have you the heart to send her back to San Francisco?" said the doctor. "Three years in an American prison. I should have thought you might have saved her from that."
"Ah, but don`t you see? It`s necessary. Do you think my heart doesn`t bleed for her? I love her as I love my wife and my sister. All the time that she is in prison I shall suffer all the pain that she suffers."
"Bunkum," cried the doctor impatiently.
"You don`t understand because you`re blind. She`s sinned, and she must suffer. I know what she`ll end-dure. She`ll be starved and tortured and humiliated. I want her to accept the punishment of man as a sacrifice to God. I want her to accept it joyfully. She has an opportunity which is offered to very few of us. God is very good and very merciful."
Davidson`s voice trembled with excitement. He could hardly articulate the words that tumbled passionately from his lips.
"All day I pray with her and when I leave her I pray again, I pray with all my might and main, so that Jesus may grant her this great mercy. I want to put in her heart the passionate desire to be punished so that at the end, even if I offered to let her go, she would refuse. I want her to feel that the bitter punishment of prison is the thank-offering that she places at the feet of our Blessed Lord, who gave his life for her."
The days passed slowly. The whole household, intent on the wretched, tortured woman down-stairs, lived in a state of unnatural excitement. She was like a victim that was being prepared for the savage rites of a bloody idolatry. Her terror numbed her. She could not bear to let Davidson out of her sight; it was only when he was with her that she had courage, and she hung upon him with a slavish dependence. She cried a great deal, and she read the Bible, and prayed. Sometimes she was exhausted and apathetic. Then she did indeed look forward to her ordeal, for it seemed to offer an escape, direct and concrete, from the anguish she was enduring. She could not bear much longer the vague terrors which now assailed her. With her sins she had put aside all personal vanity, and she slopped about her room, unkempt and dishevelled, in her tawdry dressing-gown. She had not taken off her nightdress for four days, nor put on stockings. Her room was littered and untidy. Meanwhile the rain fell with a cruel persistence. You felt that the heavens must at last be empty of water, but still it poured down, straight and heavy, with a maddening iteration, on the iron roof. Everything was damp and clammy. There was mildew on the wail and on the boots that stood on the floor. Through the sleepless nights the mosquitoes droned their angry chant.
"If it would only stop raining for a single day it wouldn`t be so bad," said Dr. Macphail.