Hawaii - James Michener [99]
"Ouch! Charity's trying to make me keep still, Abner, but I thought somebody ought to tell you. He was much handsomer than you are, but not as nice."
"Jerusha would never have married him, anyway," Charity added.
"Why not?" Abner asked.
"It takes a certain type of girl to marry a sailor," Charity said.
"What type?"
"The Salem type. The New Bedford type. Women who are willing to have their husbands away for years at a time. Jerusha is not that kind of woman, Abner. She lives on affection. Do be sweet with her."
"I shall be," he said, and on the marriage morning, when Reverend Thorn arrived by coach from Boston to conduct the ceremonies for his niece, he found his young minister friend from Yale in a state of gentle hypnosis. "I can't believe that I am going to marry this angel," Abner exploded, eager for someone to talk with after the three weeks of sewing and parties and meeting friends. "Her sisters have been unbelievable. Eighteen women were at their home all last week making me clothes. I've never known . . ."
He showed the tall missionary six barrels of clothing made by the women of Walpole, books donated for the mission in Owhyhee, and crockery. "I have experienced an outpouring of the spirit in this town that I never knew existed," Abner confessed.
"My sister Abigail is a girl who always made friends quickly," Eliphalet Thorn admitted. "I am so glad that you and Jerusha have found each other in God. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll step along to the house to complete arrangements with Charles."
But as he left Abner's room, the innkeeper called him and said, "If you're heading for Bromley's, you can take along this letter which just came in the mail," and he handed the missionary several sheets of paper folded upon themselves to form an envelope, and it was from Canton, in China, and had been on the sea for many months to London and to Charleston in South Carolina and to New Bedford. It was addressed to Miss Jerusha Bromley, Walpole, New Hampshire, and was written in a strong, fine hand. Reverend Thorn studied the letter for a long time and rationalized: "What chance is there that the innkeeper will mention this letter before Jerusha leaves Walpole? Not very much, I should think. But there is still a chance, so I must not burn it. Besides, to do so would be a sin. But if I now honestly declare, 'Eliphalet Thorn, you are to deliver that letter to your niece, Jerusha Bromley,' my intentions will be clear. Then, if I tuck it deep inside my inner pocket, like this, it would be only logical for me to forget it. Three months hence I can post it to my sister with apologies. And with Jerusha already married, why would Abigail want to bother her daughter with such a letter? Abigail's no fool." So he hid the letter and said in a loud voice as he walked across the common, "I must give this letter to Jerusha immediately I see her."
That afternoon Abner Hale, twenty-one, married Jerusha Bromley, twenty-two, whom he had known two weeks and four days, and on the next morning the young couple, accompanied by fourteen barrels of missionary goods, set out for Boston and the hermaphrodite brig Thetis, 230 tons, bound for Owhyhee.
The mission party assembled for the first time on August 30, 1821, in a brick church on the Boston waterfront. When Abner and Jerusha entered, John Whipple saw them and gasped with surprise at the beauty of the young woman who stood hesitantly in a fawn-oolored coat and a pale blue poke bonnet that neatly framed her dancing brown curls and flashing eyes.
"Amanda!" he whispered to his wife. "Look at Abner!"
"Is that Abner?" the tiny bride from Hartford asked. "You said . . ."
"Hello, Abner!" Whipple called softly. When the couples met, Whipple said, "This is my wife, Amanda."
"This is Mrs. Hale," Abner replied, and they proceeded to meet the other nine mission couples.
Of the eleven young men convened in the church, all were under the age of twenty-eight, and nine were less than twenty-four. One had been married for two years, another for almost a year. The remaining nine