Hawaii - James Michener [128]
"No, Abner. I simply gave a brave old man a Bible."
"But, Mrs. Hale . . ."
"My name is Jerusha."
"But we discussed this in the cabin. How backsliders are the ones who do the church greatest damage."
"I didn't give my Bible to a backslider, Abner. I gave it to a man who was afraid. And if the Bible cannot dispel fear, then it is not the book we have been led to believe."
"But the position of the mission? The foundation of our church?"
"Abner," she said persuasively, "I'm sure that this old man will backslide again, and he may do us damage. But on Thursday night, when he climbed down from that mast, he was close to God. He saved my life, and yours. And the idea of God has no meaning for me unless at such times He is willing to meet even an evil old man with love."
"What do you mean, the idea of God?"
"Abner, do you think that God is a man who hides up there in the clouds?"
"I think that God hears every word you are saying, and I think He must be as perplexed as I am." But before he could continue his charges, Jerusha, with her liquid brown curls dancing beside her ears, kissed him once more, and they fell into their narrow bunk.
It was long after midnight when Abner Hale, troubled as never before, left his bunk and went on deck, where a few bright stars were strong enough to dominate the dim, gray Antarctic night. He was troubled, first because Jerusha had given the old man her Bible, against his orders as it were, but more because of his deep and growing appetite for his wife's consoling body. Three times on this trip major arguments with Jerusha had ended by her laughingly drawing him into the narrow bunk, across whose opening she lowered the curtains, and each time during the next dazzling half hour he had forgot God and the problems of God. All he knew was that Jerusha Bromley Hale was more exciting than the storm, more peaceful than the ocean at rest.
He was convinced that such surrender on his part must be evil. He had often listened, in the cramped stateroom, to John and Amanda Whipple whiling away the hours, and he had marked their sudden cessation of whispering, followed by strange noises and Amanda's curious, uncontrollable cries, and he had judged that this was what the church meant when it spoke of "sanctified joy." He had intended discussing this with Jerusha, but he had been ashamed to do so, for now and again his own great surges of "sanctified joy" had left him morally stunned. Anything so mysterious and powerful must be evil, and surely the Bible spoke frequently of women who tempted men, with disastrous results. So on the one hand, Abner's imperfect knowledge of life inclined him to think that as a minister he would be far better off with Jerusha not so close to him. She was too intoxicating, too instinct with "sanctified joy."
But as soon as he reached this confused yet understandable conclusion, he was faced with the undeniable fact, clear to even a fool, that for a minister to live without a wife was nothing but popery, and if there was one thing he wished with all his heart to avoid it was popish ways. "The great men of the Old Testament had wives," he reasoned, "and it is not until you reach St. Paul that you get such admonitions as, 'I say therefore to the unmarried . . . , It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.' What does such a passage signify?" he asked himself throughout the strange half-night.
He walked back and forth for several hours, and the night watch joked, "He really has to do the missionary waltz!" but being of simpler minds, and particularly of minds that had long ago settled this difficult problem of man and woman--"The reason Honolulu's the best port on earth is that in Honolulu the women climb aboard the ship already undressed and ready to work"--they would have been unable to comprehend his real perplexities.
"Do I love Jerusha too profoundly?" he asked the gray night. But whenever he came near concluding that he ought to love her less, he would think of her overwhelming loveliness