A Distant Shore (24 page)

“You sound unsure,” Isobel remarked, watching her friend in the mirror. Hannah had pleated her fingers together, and the furrow between her eyebrows had deepened.

“I am sure of Jack,” she said after a moment. “He would make a good husband for any woman, I know. But…”

“But?”

“He loved his wife Annabel very much. They adored each other, or so it seemed to me. You can just tell sometimes, can’t you? They came out here having only been married a few months, and even after the trials of the ship passage, they hung on each other’s every word.”

“I see,” Isobel said heavily. So if she married this Jack, it would be as a second, poor choice. He might never learn to love her, and never mind whether she fell in love with him.

“But you could do far worse,” Hannah continued. “Far, far worse, Isobel. Jack is a good man. An honorable man. And you have gifts of your own, Isobel, to use for God’s glory. Think on that, as well.”

Isobel nodded, touched by her friend’s confidence in her abilities. “Does he have children?” she asked, and Hannah shook her head.

“I don’t think so. I haven’t seen him in over a year, but a few years ago I know Annabel was expecting, and the baby was born dead, poor soul. She took it quite hard. I think I would have heard if there had been another.”

So he would be grieving both a wife and child, Isobel thought. A family. Did she want to tie herself to a man in mourning? Did she have any choice?

Yes. You could return to Boston. Return to your life and all of its dull, familiar comforts.

“I don’t know what to do,” Isobel admitted and Hannah smiled, rising from the bed to place a hand on Isobel’s shoulder.

“Think on it,” she advised. “And pray. That is all you can do.”

Chapter Twelve

Moulmein, Burma 1838

They had been travelling up the River Salween for nearly a week, the air hot and damp and thick with mosquitoes. If she’d thought India had been uncomfortable, Isobel acknowledged wryly, she’d had no idea about Burma.

Yet despite the primitive conditions of the flat-bottomed barge that moved slowly through the yellow waters of the Salween, the endless humidity and the constant drone of insects, Isobel still felt an unquenchable excitement, a thirst for living she’d never experienced before… and was so different from the vague dread that had assailed her as she’d taken a similar journey up the Hooghly over three months ago now, to meet her fiancé George Jamison.

After her conversation with Hannah, she had done as her friend had suggested, and both thought and prayed about her decision to travel to Burma. It shamed her more than a little to realize how little she’d prayed about her earlier decisions to put her name on the list and travel to India. Each time she’d simply acted, always out of a desperation to escape the narrow confines of her life. Now she sought true guidance, thinking not only of herself but of the man whom she might bind herself to. Would she—could she—be a good wife to him? Could she comfort him in his sorrow, help him with his work? They were questions, she realized, she’d never asked herself before. When she’d been traveling to meet George Jamison, she’d only been thinking of herself. Whether she’d please him, and if he would make her happy.

Now here she was again, travelling up another river to meet another missionary, another man—possibly, if God so willed—to marry, and yet she felt so different. So much more at peace.

“What do you think to Burma then, Miss Moore?” Adoniram Judson came to stand by the rail of the boat, his gaze on the near shore, dense with tropical vegetation, the branches of the pomelo trees—a boy had brought a basket of the sweet, green fruit to the boat last night—brushing the water.

“I have not yet formed an opinion,” Isobel answered with a small smile. “Although on first glance it appears to be an even wilder place than India.”

“Indeed it is,” Judson said somberly. “The Burmese are far more suspicious and hostile to our efforts than the souls you encountered in India—but once persuaded, they have been the most faithful friends and fellow laborers. I have been honored to have served here, Miss Moore. Honored.”

Isobel heard a slightly melancholy note in the older man’s voice, and she answered with deliberate lightness, “And you shall continue to do so for many years, I am sure.”

Judson shook his head. “We shall see what the Lord wills, but I am not a young man.” He held up one hand to staunch her protest; he was in his mid-forties, she knew. “Life in a place such as this is difficult, Miss Moore. It is short. I’ve seen many men, women, and unfortunate children die in these lands, from one tropical fever or another. It is as the Lord wills, but you should know the dangers.”

“Ye-es,” Isobel answered slowly, some of her excitement dimming in the face of such hard truths and Judson’s rather grim countenance. Jack Braeburn’s wife and child had died in Burma. A couple who had served with the Judsons, Hannah had told Isobel, had gone mad and run out into the jungle, never to be seen again. It was not, she thought, a place for the faint of heart.

Yet she’d come this far already, so perhaps she was stronger than she thought. Adoniram’s features softened suddenly, a smile deepening the lines that bracketed his mouth. “I am not attempting to alarm you, Miss Moore, though I recognize it might seem to the contrary. I only want you to be prepared. So many who come out here are not.”

Isobel wondered who he was thinking about. The couple who had gone mad? Jack Braeburn’s wife? “I don’t know if one can ever truly prepare for a life such as this,” she said after a moment.

“Perhaps not. We must simply hold onto our faith.”

Isobel only nodded, for even now her faith felt a rather slippery thing, hardly the anchor it was for a man like Adoniram Judson—or perhaps even Jack Braeburn… which made coming all this way to live in such harsh conditions for a man she knew not at all seem foolhardy to the extreme.

But it was far too late for doubts.

“You do not have to marry Mr. Braeburn if you don’t suit,” Judson said quietly, and Isobel wondered if he had somehow guessed her thoughts.

“I could not stay in Burma otherwise,” she reminded him.

“Could you not?”

Surprise had her turning to the older man, her jaw dropping in a most inelegant manner before she thought to snap it shut. “An unwed woman—surely not, Mr. Judson?”

“The marriage policy has been under review for some time, Miss Moore. There are several women, unmarried women, who have a strong calling to this mission field. Should one insist they marry in order to meet this calling? I think not.”

“But—”

“Of course, it is better for missionaries to be wed. It is a lonely occupation, filled with danger and discouragement. To have a helpmate and confidant in the midst of trials is welcome, perhaps essential, at least in some cases.”

“I had no idea,” Isobel murmured. To think she could have stayed in India—or come to Burma—without linking herself to a man! Why had no one told her? Or had the policy changed since she had come to India? She’d been gone from Boston for the better part of a year now.

“I tell you now,” Judson resumed after a moment, seeming to have read her thoughts perfectly yet again, “in case you and Mr. Braeburn do not suit at all, and yet you still feel a calling to the work here in Burma. However…” He turned to face her, his kindly face seeming, for a moment, both knowing and shrewd. “One should only consider remaining in the mission field if it is one’s deepest desire as well as God’s will. It is not the life for a last resort.” Isobel blushed and he smiled, his voice gentling. “I think, perhaps, dear Miss Moore, your calling is not to missions, but to marriage.” The boat came sluggishly around a bend in the river, and Judson turned, nodding towards the horizon where a huddle of rather rickety buildings could be seen, along with the ancient-looking pagodas and peculiar Burmese zayats. “We are almost at Moulmein.”

Boston, 1839

Margaret watched Henry rise from his chair by the fire and pace their drawing room with restless, anxious energy. He had been home from China for several weeks, and he had not settled to anything. They’d enjoyed a quiet Christmas with Maggie and Charlotte, and Margaret had tried to get Henry to tell her about his journey, but all he’d said was that the
Charlotte Rose
had been lost at sea and he and his crew had been rescued by a Chinese official.

“Henry,” she said now, laying aside her own embroidery. She’d never been very good at it, in any case, and her roses looked rather lopsided. “Please tell me what is troubling you, for I know it is something. You have looked…
haunted
since returning.” She used the word self-consciously, for it implied the kind of melodrama Margaret had never liked. Yet it was true, Henry had looked haunted. Tormented, even, and by what? She could not begin to fathom it.

He came to a stop by the long sashed window that overlooked Boston’s Back Bay. “It is better,” he said after a moment, “if you do not know.”

Margaret’s insides gave an unpleasant lurch. “That sounds rather alarming,” she said as lightly as she could. “Surely it is not as bad as all that?”

“Worse.”

“Henry—”

He shook his head. “I find myself in an uncommon dilemma. Condemned on one side, damned on the other.” He turned to her with a sad, wry smile. “Forgive my language, my dear.”

“Do not think of such things now, Henry!” Margaret rose from her chair and went to the window to join him, laying one hand on his arm. “What has happened? Is it to do with
The Charlotte Rose
—and that Chinese official who rescued you?” She could think of nothing else that would torment him so.

After a second’s pause, his arm unbearably tense underneath her own light touch, Henry nodded. “Commissioner Zexu rescued me and ruined me in one breath,” he confessed quietly. “He asks me to do the impossible—to betray—” He stopped, shaking his head, his face gray and haggard even as his blue eyes blazed with desperation.

“Betray,” Margaret repeated briskly. “It sounds like something from an opera! What on earth can you mean, Henry?” She would be sensible if her husband could not be.

“I mean it exactly.” Henry let out a long, weary sigh and rubbed his hands over his face before dropping them to his sides. “Commissioner Zexu has asked me to betray my fellow countrymen, my fellow colleagues—”