Hawaii - James Michener [87]
On the dusty walk to the Hale farm, Reverend Thorn just about decided to give up his complex plan of first convincing the Board that they ought to take Abner and then convincing his niece Jerusha that she should do the same. All he had so far heard about the boy confirmed his committee's suspicions that Abner was a difficult, opinionated young man who was bound to cause trouble wherever he went, but then the gaunt missionary came upon the home of Abner Hale, and his mind was quickly changed.
From the road a line of maples led along a narrow lane to a wandering New England farmhouse with barn attached. For nearly a hundred and fifty years the buildings had known no paint and now stood grayish brown in the New England sun, which instead of brightening what could have been a lovely grassed-in square served instead to underscore the bleakness of the buildings. It was, recalled Reverend Thorn, the kind of Christian house in which he had been raised, the archetype in which to produce true piety. He understood Abner better from having seen merely the harsh outlines of his home.
Gideon Hale, angular and hard, completed the picture. Wrapping his skinny left leg completely around his right, so that one ankle locked into the other, he put his guest at ease by saying, "If you take Abner for Owhyhee you aren't getting an unmixed blessing, Reverend Thorn. He's not an average boy. He's not too easy to handle, either. He was pretty reasonable until he found conversion. Then he was certain that it was he and not me that was to interpret God's will. But he has enormous character. If you saw his marks in the Marlboro School, you'd find he started out poor in figures. But have you seen what he accomplished at Yale College? Only the best. In many ways he's an indifferent boy, Reverend Thorn, but where the right is concerned he's a rock. All my children are."
At supper Eliphalet Thorn saw the kind of granite from which Abner had been hewn. The nine little Hales, with no dirt on their faces and dressed in the cheapest kind of homespun, filed dutifully in and sat at a table marked by spotless cleanliness and very little food. "We will say prayers," wiry, hawk-eyed Gideon announced, and all heads were bowed. One by one the nine children recited appropriate verses from the Bible, after which Mrs. Hale, an almost dead bundle of bones, mumbled briefly, "God bless this house," which was followed by a five-minute prayer from her husband. These preliminaries over, Hale said, "And now will our guest consent to bless us with a word of prayer?". And the scene was so reminiscent of his own childhood that Reverend Thorn launched into a ten-minute blessing in which he recalled the pious highlights of his youth in a Christian family.
After the meager meal Gideon Hale took his entire brood into the front room, where a particularly dank smell proved that no fire was ever wasted, and he proposed formal evening prayers. His wife and daughters led in a spirited version of "All hail the power of Jesus' name," after which Gideon and the boys sang a hymn quite popular at the time: "Oh, for a closer walk with God." When they came to the stirring verse about idols, Reverend Thorn joined in forcefully, for the words could almost serve as the dominant motive of his life:
"The dearest idol I have known, Whate'er that idol be,