Hawaii - James Michener [187]
"You are saying very bitter things, Reverend Hale," Keoki replied.
"Do you remember aboard the Thetis, when I gave the old whaler in the fo'c's'l the Bible, and how he brought ridicule on the Bible and on me and on God? That's what happens when we risk the welfare of the church in the wrong hands. You must wait, Keoki, until you have proved yourself."
"I have proved myself," Keoki said stubbornly. "I proved myself at Yale College, when I stood in the snow begging an education. I proved myself at Cornwall, where I was the top student in the mission school. And here in Lahaina I have protected you against the sailors. What more must I do to prove myself?"
"Those acts were your duty, Keoki. They qualified you for church membership. But to qualify for the ministry itself! Perhaps when you are an old, tested man. Not now." And he dismissed the arrogant young man.
He was rather startled when, in discussing these matters with Jerusha, she sided with Keoki, arguing, "Your commission, Abner, from the American Board that sent you here was to train up the Hawaiians so that they could organize and run their own churches."
"Organize them and run them, yes!" Abner instantly agreed. "Soon we will take in more members and institute a board of deacons. But to make a Hawaiian a minister! Jerusha, it would be complete folly. I couldn't tell poor Keoki, but he will never become a minister. Never."
"Why not?" Jerusha asked.
"He's a heathen. He's no more civilized than Pupali's daughters. One good hurricane, and he would lose all his veneer of civilization."
"But when we are gone, Abner, we shall have to turn the church over to Keoki and his fellows."
"We shall never go," Abner said with great solemnity. "This is our home, our church."
"You mean to stay here forever?" Jerusha asked.
"Yes. And when we die, the Board in Boston will send out others to take our places. Keoki running a church! Impossible!"
But Abner had acquired the habit of listening to his wife, and long after their discussion ended he brooded about what she had said, and at last he found a reasonable solution to the impasse over Keoki, and he summoned the young Hawaiian. "Keoki," he announced happily, "I have discovered a way whereby you can serve the church as you desire."
"You mean I can be ordained?" the young man cried joyfully.
"Not exactly," Abner replied, and he was so preoccupied with his satisfactory answer to Keoki's problem that he failed to observe how disappointed the latter was. "What I'm willing to do, Keoki, is to make you the luna of the church, the top deacon. You move among the Hawaiians and find out who is smoking. You check to see who has alcohol on his breath. Each week you hand me a list of people to be admonished from the pulpit, and you draw up the names of those to be expelled from church. At night you will creep quietly through Lahaina to let me know who is sleeping with another man's wife. I am willing to have you do these things for the church," Abner concluded happily. "How do you like that?"
Keoki stood silent, staring at the little missionary, and when the latter asked again for his response Keoki said bitterly, "I sought a way to serve my people, not to spy upon them." And he stalked from the mission, remaining in seclusion for many days.
If Jerusha and Keoki could not stand up to Abner's arguments against the Hawaiians, a visitor was about to descend on Lahaina who not only marshaled all of Jerusha's doubts and expressed them in vigorous English but who also brought along many of his own. It was Dr. Whipple, lean and brown from years of work on distant outposts, who came in one day on Kelolo's ship, the Thetis. He hurried immediately to the mission house and shouted, "Sister Jerusha, forgive me for not being here when you were pregnant. Good heavens! I forgot you have two children. And pregnant again!"
The years had mellowed Whipple and given him a strong no-nonsense vernacular. He had witnessed too much death--wives, children, black-frocked