Hawaii - James Michener [92]
"I want to go back to Owhyhee,
Where the sea sings a soulful song,
Where the gals is kind and gentle,
And they don't know right from wrong!"
From listening to such songs the Board concluded that, conditions being what they were, it would be prudent to require even young men who lived in a state of grace to take their own converted women with them. More potent however was the conviction that women were the civilizing agents, the visual harbingers of Christian life. The A.B.C.F.M. therefore required females, not only to keep the young missionaries in line, but also because a devoted young wife was herself a missionary of the most persuasive kind. And so the young men scattered over New England, meeting shy, dedicated girls for the first time on Friday, proposing on Saturday, getting married after three Sundays had elapsed for banns, and departing for Hawaii immediately thereafter.
But none of these amorous odysseys was stranger than the one conducted by Abner Hale. When he left Yale in early July, duly ordained a minister in the Congregational Church, he was five feet four inches tall, weighed one hundred and thirty-six pounds, had a most sallow complexion, a somewhat stooped bearing, and stringy blond hair which he parted in the middle and pasted down with water, bear grease and tallow. He wore the black claw-hammer coat favored by ministers, had a skimpy cotton stock about his neck, and a new ten-inch-high beaver stovepipe hat which tapered inward about five inches above his head and then flared out to a considerable expanse of flatness on top. In his meager luggage, tied together in a box, he carried a small brush which he had been told to use in grooming his hat, and this was the one vanity of dress he allowed himself, for he reasoned that this hat, more than anything else, heralded him as a clergyman. His cowhide shoes, black with elastic webs, he ignored.
When the coach landed him at Marlboro, he stepped primly down, adjusted his tall hat, grabbed his box, and set out on foot for home, To his disappointment, no one in Marlboro bothered to congratulate him on having attained the ministry, for in his tall hat no one recognized him, and he reached the tree-lined lane leading to his home without having spoken to anyone, and there he stood in the hot dust, greeting, as he felt, for the last time, this bleak, unkindly home in which generations of Hales had been born, and it seemed to him so marked with love that he bowed his head and wept. He was standing in this manner when the younger children spotted him and led the whole family out to welcome him home.
They had barely assembled in the austere front room when Gideon Hale, brimming with pride at having a son who was ordained, suggested, "Abner, will you lead your first prayer in this house?" And Abner took as his text Leviticus 25:10, "And ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family," and poured forth a minor sermon. The family glowed, but when services were over, shy, gangling Esther took her brother aside and whispered, "The most wonderful thing has happened, Abner."
"Father told me, Esther. I am deeply pleased that you have entered into a state of grace."
"It would be vain of me to speak of that," the eager girl said, in blushes. "That wasn't what I meant."
"What then?"
"I have received a letter!"
It was now Abner's turn to blush, and although he did not wish to display unseemly interest he nevertheless had to ask, haltingly, "From . . ." But he could not bring himself to utter the name he had not yet spoken to anyone. It seemed to him so improbable that he should even know of Jerusha Bromley, let alone be on his way to propose to her, that he would not profane her name by mentioning it.
Esther Hale