Hawaii (55 page)

"Are they determined in Honolulu to throw him out of the church?" Jerusha asked.

"Yes," Dr. Whipple said.

"What else could they do?" Abner demanded. "A Christian minister marrying a heathen. 'Gone a whoring after the heathenl' I do not want to go to Honolulu, but it seems my duty."

Dr. Whipple said, "Would you excuse us, Sister Jerusha, if we walk down to the pier?" And he led Abner along the lovely paths of Lahaina, under the gnarled hau trees and the palms. "You are fortunate to live here," Whipple reflected. "It's the best climate in Hawaii. Plenty of water. And that glorious view."

"What view?" Abner asked.

"Don't you come down here every night to see the best view in the islands?" Whipple asked astonished.

"I wasn't aware . . ."

"Look," Whipple cried, as a kind of poetry took command of him, tired as he was from seeing so many bleak Hawaiian prospects. "To the west the handsome rounded hills of Lanai across a few miles of blue water. Have you ever seen gentler hills than those? Their verdure looks like velvet, thrown there by God. And to the north the clean-cut rugged mountains of Molokai. And over to the south the low hills of Kahoolawe. Wherever you look, mountains and valleys and blue sea. You lucky people of Lahaina! You exist in a nest of beauty. Tell me, do you ever see the whales that breed in the channel here?"

"I've never watched for any whales," Abner replied.

"A sailor told me, as I was cutting off his arm, that one night at Lahaina he saw a dozen whales with their babies, and he said that all his life he had been harpooning whales and had thought of them only as enormous, impersonal beasts so huge that the ocean was scarcely large enough to hold them. But when his arm was gangrenous and he knew that he was going to lose it, he, for the first time, observed whales as mothers and fathers, and they were playing with their babies in the Lahaina Roads, and he told me ... Well, anyway, he won't be throwing a harpoon any more."

Abner was not listening. He was doing something he had not done before: he was looking at the physical setting in which his whaling town existed. To be sure, he had seen the hills behind the town, for he had walked over them, but he had not appreciated the glorious ocean roads: jeweled islands on every side, the deepest blue water, white sands and the constant scud of impressive clouds. He understood why the whaling ships were content to anchor here, for no storm could get at them. From all sides they were protected, and ashore they had Lahaina for water, and fresh meat and cool roads.

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"This is rather attractive," Abner admitted.

"I was sorry to hear your view on Brother Hewlett," Dr. Whipple began when he had found a comfortable rock.

It's not my view," Abner replied. "It's the Bible's. He went whoring after a heathen."

"Let's not use that old-style language," Whipple interrupted. "We're dealing with a human being in the year 1829. He isn't a strong human being and I never liked him much . . ."

"What do you mean, Brother John? Old-style language?"

"He wasn't whoring after heathens, Brother Abner . . . Do you mind if I quit this brother calling? Abner, this man Abraham Hewlett was left alone at Hana with a baby boy and not a damned thing to guide him in the care of that child."

"Brother John!" Abner exploded. "Please do not offend me with such language. And besides, Brother Abraham had as much . . ."

"And the Hawaiian girl wasn't a heathen. She was a fine, Christian girl ... his best student . . . and I know, because I delivered her baby."

"She had a baby?" Abner asked in a whisper.

"Yes, a fine baby girl. She named her Amanda, after my wife."

"Was it . . ."

"I no longer count the months, Abner. They're married now and they seem very happy, and if there is any system of morality which requires a lonely man like Abraham Hewlett . . ."

"I hardly comprehend your words any longer, Brother John," Abner protested.

"I have buried so many people, cut off so many legs . . . Many of the things we used to worry about at Yale don't worry me any more, ancient roommate."

"But surely you would not allow a man like Brother Hewlett to remain in the church? With a heathen wife?"

"I wish you would stop using that word, Abner. She's not a heathen. If Amanda Whipple were to die tomorrow, I'd marry such a girl any day, and Amanda would want me to. She'd know at least that her children had a good mother."

"The others will not think as you do, Brother John."

"Immanuel Quigley does, I'm proud to say. And that's why I've come to Lahaina. We want you on our side. Don't drive poor Hewlett from his church."

"The Lord saith, "Thou hast gone a whoring after the heathen.'" Dully, Abner closed the discussion, but in doing so he began to wonder about John Whipple. What the doctor said next erased the wonder and confirmed the doubt.

"I've^been doing a great deal of speculation recently, Abner," he began. "Do you think we've done right in bursting into this island kingdom with our new ideas?"

"The word of God," Abner began, "is not a new idea."

"I accept that," Whipple apologized. "But the things that go with it? Did you know that when Captain Cook discovered these

islands he estimated their population at four hundred thousand? That was fifty years ago. Today how many Hawaiians are there? Less than a hundred and thirty thousand. What happened to them?"

To Whipple's surprise, Abner was not particularly shocked by these figures, but asked casually, "Are your facts correct?"

"Captain Cook vouches for the first. I vouch for the second. Abner, have you ever seen measles strike a Hawaiian village? Don't. Ppppsssshhhhl" He made a sound like fire rushing through the grass walls of a house. "The entire village vanishes. For example, do you make your church members wear New England clothes?"

"I have only nine members," Abner explained.

"You mean that in this entire . . ." Dr. Whipple threw a pebble into the blue waters and watched a near-naked Hawaiian riding the surf onto the kapu beach. "On Sundays, for example, do you require a man like that one out there to wear New England clothes?"

"Of course. Doesn't the Bible specifically state, 'And thou shall make them linen breeches to cover their nakedness'?"

"Do you ever listen to the hacking coughs that fill the church?"

"No."

"I do, and I'm terribly worried."

"What about?"

"I'm afraid that in another thirty years the Hawaiians will be not a hundred and thirty thousand but more likely thirty thousand. Out of all those who were here when we came, twelve out of thirteen will have been destroyed."

"Lahaina was never any bigger," Abner replied prosaically.

"Not the town, perhaps, but how about the valleys?" Whipple, as was his practice in touring the islands, called an old man to the seaside and asked in Hawaiian, "In that valley, did people used to live?"

"More thousand was stay before."

"How many live there now?"

"Tree. Ikahi, ilua, ikulu. Tree."

"In that valley over here, did people used to live?"

"More two t'ousand was stay before."

"How many live there now?"

"All dis fellow stay before, now make . . . die," the old man answered, and Whipple dismissed him.

"It's that way in all the valleys," he said gloomily. "I think the only thing that will save Hawaii is some radical move. There has got to be a big industry of some kind. Then we must bring in some strong, virile new people. Say from Java, or perhaps China. And let them many with the Hawaiians. Maybe . . ."

"You seem beset with doubts," Abner marked.

"I am," Whipple confessed. "I am terribly afraid that what we are doing is not right. I am certain that we are sponsoring the spread of consumption and that these wonderful people are doomed. Unless we change things right away."

"We are not concerned with change," Abner said coldly. "Ha—

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waiians are the children of Shem, and God has ordained that they shall perish from the earth. He has promised that their lands shall be occupied by your children and mine, Genesis 9, verse 27: 'God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem.' The Hawaiians are doomed, and in a hundred years they will have vanished from the earth."

Whipple was aghast, and asked, "How can you preach such a doctrine, Abner?"

"It is God's will. The Hawaiians are a deceitful and licentious people. Even though I have warned them, they continue to smoke, they circumcise their sons and abandon their daughters. They gamble and play games on Sunday, and for these sins God has ordained that they shall be stricken from the face of the earth. When they are gone, our children, as the Bible directs, shall inherit their tents.

"But if you believe this, Abner, why do you remain among them as missionary?"

"Because I love them. I want to bring them the consolation of the Lord, so that when they do vanish it will be to His love and not to eternal hellfire."

"I do not like such religion," Whipple said flatly, "and I do not aspire to their tents. There must be a better way. Abner, when we were students at Yale, the first tenet of our church was that each individual church should be a congregation unto itself. No bishops, no priests, no popes. Our very name bespoke that conviction. The Congregationalists. But what do we find here? A system of bishoprics! A solemn convocation to throw a poor, lonely man out or the ministry. In all these years you've allowed nine people to join your church as full members. Somewhere, Abner, we've gone wrong."

"It takes time to convert the heathen to true . . ."

"No!" Whipple protested. "They are not heathen! One of the most brilliant women I have ever met or read about was Kaahumanu. I understand you have one like her here on Maui, your Alii Nui. Heathen? The word doesn't mean anything to me any more. For example, have you admitted any of your so-called heathen to the ministry? Of course not."

Abner, finding the turn of Whipple's argument most distasteful, rose to go, but his old roommate grasped him by the hand and pleaded: "You have nothing more important to do today than talk with me, Abner. I find my soul wandering from its moorings, and I seek guidance. I had hoped that when you and Jerusha and Captain Janders and I sat down together, something of the spirit that animated us on the Thetis . . ." His voice trailed off, and after a while he confessed, "I am sick with God."

"What do you mean?" Abner asked quietly.

"The spirit of God fills my brain, but I am dissatisfied with the way we administer His word."

"You are speaking against the church, Brother John," Abner warned.

"I am, and I'm glad that you said so, for I was ashamed to."

"It is the church that has brought us here, Brother John. It is only through the church that we build our accomplishments. Do you think I would dare to speak to the alii as I do if I were plain Abner Hale? But as the instrument of the church I can dare all things."

"Even wisdom?" Whipple inquired.

"What do you mean?"

"If your mind suddenly comprehended a new wisdom . . . some radical new concept of existence . . . well, could you as a servant of an all-powerful church dare to accept that new wisdom?"

"There is no new or old, Brother John. There is only the word of God, and it is revealed in the church, through the instrumentality of the Holy Bible. There can be no greater than that."

"No greater," Dr. Whipple agreed, "but there can be a different."

"I do not think so," Abner replied, and he wished to hear no more of this argument and left. But that night, in the warm fellowship of Captain Janders' excellent dinner, with good wine, and whiskey for the doctor, the old friends relaxed and Janders said, "Lahaina's becoming a first-rate city, thanks to Abner Hale's exertions."

"Who is that girl who's bringing in the dishes?" Abner asked, for her face seemed familiar, yet he did not recognize it.

Captain Janders blushed ever so slightly, in a way that Abner missed but which Dr. Whipple had seen often in the islands. "I understand you're bringing Mrs. Janders and the children out from Boston?" Whipple said by way of rescue.

"I am," Janders replied quickly.

"We need all the Christians we can get," Abner said heartily.

"Do you intend remaining here?" Whipple asked directly. "In Lahaina, that is?"

"It's the jewel of the Pacific," Janders replied. "I've seen all the towns, and this is best."

"You'll be in trade, I judge?"

"I see great opportunity for ships' chandlery here, Doctor."

"Do you suppose there is any way ... it would be difficult I grant you . . . but do you suppose that if a man with good native connections could get some canoes at Hana . . . well, if he had some fine land there and energy, do you suppose he could grow things and sell them to you ... for the whalers, that is?"

"You speaking of Abraham Hewlett?" Janders asked abruptly, i es,'

"If he could grow hogs . . . beef ... I might buy 'em. He ever think of growing sugar? We could use a lot of sugar."

"I'll speak to him about sugar," Whipple said thoughtfully.

"You expect him to be giving up the church at Hana?" Janders inquired.

"Yes. I fear the Honolulu meeting is going to expel him."

Captain Janders sat very thoughtfully for some moments. He did not want to offend Reverend Hale, with whom he must live in

T

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intimacy, and yet he had always liked young John Whipple's honest approach to life. "Tell you what I'd be willing to do," he said slowly. "If Hewlett could get his stuff to me in the whaling season ... on time and in good shape . . . well, I judge I could use everything he produces. But I want one thing he may not be willing to give."

"What's that?" Whipple asked.

"I hear his wife has claim to a nice piece of land at Hana, more than Abraham could possibly farm. Isn't he the scrawny fellow with big eyes that slept in your stateroom? He's the one I had in mind. I want him to enter into a contract with me so that I manage that land. Ill tell him what to grow and he won't ever have to worry about where his next meal's comin' from," Janders promised.