Mrs. Carpenter asked if Sarah knew the story of the island’s chiefess, Kapiolani.
She shook her head.
“Kapiolani was one of the first converts in the islands. The Methodists accomplished it, but nonetheless. She was already a grown woman, married to her own brother, and still cavorting with half the population.”
Sarah gasped. She knew that the natives were unschooled, but she’d had no idea that they behaved that unnaturally.
The ladies tittered, and Mrs. Carpenter nodded knowingly, pleased at the effect of that scandalous tidbit on the newcomer. “Kapiolani was won over gradually—if I knew exactly how, I’d tell my husband and we’d capture them all that way. Her family and most of her own subjects were stuck fast to their old gods, but she figured a way to show them the power of our almighty Savior.”
Mrs. Carpenter’s baby began to cry and she shifted the child in her lap.
The girl was pretty, but Sarah could already see in the too-round cheeks the promise of the mother’s corpulence. And Reverend Carpenter was so fat that his bulk had exceeded the width of the homemade pulpit by almost a foot on each side. Sarah had a sudden horrible vision of the sweaty, rolling flesh of her hosts attempting union. Thank the Lord she and Edward were fit specimens. Their children would be perfect. To make up for thinking such awful things―and right after church, no less―she held out her arms toward the querulous child.
“I’ll take her,” Sarah offered. “I’m good with babies.” Julia had certainly let her help out every chance she got.
Mrs. Carpenter pulled her daughter closer against her bosom. “That won’t be necessary,” she said, and gave the baby a sugared finger to suck on.
She continued her story. “Kapiolani walked thirty miles barefoot up the black lava tracks to the mouth of the mightiest volcano, Kilauea. Hundreds of her subjects thronged around her as she stood on the lip of the smoking rim and called on Jesus to challenge the volcano goddess, Pele. Kapiolani descended sixty feet into the flaming crater, carrying only her spelling book and her Bible. The crowd scattered, waiting for the lava to spew, the volcano to swallow her up. But of course it didn’t.”
“They all converted on the spot,” one of the women chimed in.
Mrs. Carpenter leaned back in her chair, the baby quiet now. “God will always win out, that’s what you have to remember. Even here.”
“Have you met her?” Sarah asked.
“She died ten years ago,” her hostess said. “Pity.”
When they got home, Sarah asked Edward which volcano was Kilauea.
“Right there,” he said, pointing to the largest of the mountains they could see in the far distance.
“Is it very dangerous?”
“It hasn’t erupted in more than twenty years. Only smokes a bit.”
She studied the mountaintop for a moment before she followed him into the house.
Three days later, Edward took her to Kaapalani Beach north of Lahaina. She rode sidesaddle behind him, her arms tight around his waist as he galloped, the fern-covered cliffs rising above them. They spread a blanket on the black sand and ate the lunch she had packed—boiled sweet potatoes, fried taro, slices of baked ham, and papaya. Afterward, they walked barefoot along the beach, dipping their toes in the water, the waves several feet higher than any she’d seen in the Atlantic. Sarah caught her husband staring at her ankles, and lifted her skirts a bit higher on the next wave, flashing a shimmer of white calf.
At first, Sarah told him, she’d thought it was completely different from the Massachusetts shoreline, but now she realized it was almost the same. “The feeling,” she said.
“Identical,” Edward agreed and reached for her hand. Just a touch, two fingers, before he let go. “Look!” he shouted. “Jellyfish!” And they ran to examine their find.
On the ride back, Sarah let her head press into his back, happy she’d washed her hair that morning with the aupa oil he’d given her as a wedding gift. It smelled like lilies sprinkled with cinnamon.
It was late when they arrived home, so they skipped their reading and went straight to prayers, kneeling beside each other in front of the fireplace. Most nights, they prayed only for about half an hour, but tonight Edward seemed deeply absorbed. Sarah kept opening her eyes to check, but he didn’t budge, his back ramrod straight, his hands joined in front of his bowed head. She saw that the back of his neck was sunburned, and she knew when he opened his eyes that they would look even bluer than usual.
She stood up quietly and went into the bedroom. She held up the small gilt hand mirror and what she saw pleased her. For the first time, her blonde hair, bleached now almost white, seemed to glow against the fresh tan of her skin. She even liked the freckles on her nose. Sarah changed into her dressing gown and dabbed a bit of the aupa oil on her neck and wrists. Just a little—it was very expensive, he’d told her, and he seemed to be earning much less than she’d thought a Harvard-educated minister, even in this corner of the world, would be due.
He didn’t come into her bed that night either, and the next afternoon, she wrote to Julia: Did your husband extend you a prolonged period of kindness and ease when you were first married? How long? Of course, by the time she might receive an answer back—it could take months on the packet steamers winding their way around Cape Horn―the problem would doubtless be solved.
Sarah was feeding the chickens when Edward rode up at dusk.
“The Artemis arrived today with the mail,” Edward said, swinging off his horse. “You haven’t been here a month, and already it’s the biggest packet I’ve ever received.” He held the parcel above his head, out of her reach, and made her jump for it.
“Give it here!” she said, and he let her have it, laughing. She rushed inside to light the lamp. She unstrung the packet, and pulled out the letters. Edward stood in the doorway, watching her, smiling.
“One from Laura, Julia, my sister, my sister, Laura, another Laura,” she recited. “And another from Julia…no, she’s written over this one.” She brought it closer to the flame. “It says, ‘This arrived after you left.’ It’s from you, Edward.” She held it out to him, surprised.
Edward hung his hat on the hook behind the door. He walked to the table and took the letter from her, turning it over and over as if he couldn’t believe it was his, or that it even existed. He rubbed the envelope between his fingers, traced each line of his handwriting in the address.
“What is it?” Sarah asked, but he walked out into the yard, still holding the letter. She followed him. “Did you write and tell me not to come?”
He shook his head, his back to her. The tips of the ti leaves above them glowed pink in the setting sun, and the shadows played on his shoulders. Finally he turned around. “Here,” he said, offering her the letter. “Read it.”
She took it from his hand, trying to read instead whatever was in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before. She went into the house and settled into her chair. He pulled his chair to face hers, a few feet away, different from the way they sat reading at night with their chairs beside each other. She opened the letter.
October 1850, Lahaina
Dearest Sarah,
I am so sorry to hear about the way that Dr. Howe has treated you. You have always been the most affectionate and sincere friend and champion of Laura, and it is a shock and a pity that he doesn’t recognize your goodness. My sad thoughts go out to Laura also, that she is not only losing you, but her home, and perhaps even her place in the world.
My offer of course still stands, but my circumstances have altered since I made it. There is no way to tell you but straight out, as I have always spoken with you.
A month after you declined me and I set my path on missionary work, I was given a physical examination in Cambridge to ascertain my fitness for the voyage. What Dr. Barber found made me unfit, it was decided, to pursue the ministry, even with my graduation from the Divinity School. The French disease, some call it, or the Italian, it doesn’t matter. Now it is mine, and som
eday I might lose my sanity because of that one dark, untempered moment of my youth. I have already lost my real vocation, though the Foreign Missions Board allowed me to come here to assist Reverend Carpenter with legal and administrative matters. He was apprised of my situation, and he has welcomed me as well as he is able. I will never preach the word of God, nor minister to the sick or heathen, and I should not.
So you, my darling Sarah, must be the judge of your future and of mine. I want you to come, I want you to be my wife, even if it is in name only.
I will try at least to prove worthy of being your life’s best companion.
Sarah raised her head and looked at her husband. His eyes were closed, and he sat rocking a little in his chair. She stood and put the letter on his lap, but still he didn’t open his eyes. She walked into the bedroom, lifted the netting, and crawled under it, keeping her arms folded tight across her chest, hugging her shoulders. She didn’t weep for almost an hour, but when she did, the sound of it drove him out into the yard.
Hours later, she heard him come into the room to get his blanket and drag it out to the other room. When she woke in the morning, he was already gone.
For three days, they barely spoke, aside from the necessities. He came home after dark, shoved down whatever she’d prepared, read for an hour or so, and then went down on his knees to pray alone in front of the fireplace until she went into the bedroom. He slept in the main room, or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he prayed all night. She didn’t know.
On the fourth evening after dinner, she fixed his tea, a quarter cream, the way he liked it, and watched him sip. “You’re having the mercury treatments?” she asked him.
He looked at her full in the face for the first time since the letter had arrived. “Once a month when I go in to the island.” He waited, as if trying to gauge whether he should continue. “But there’s no way to tell…in the future―”
“I understand,” she said and returned to her knitting.
The next night as soon as he came home, Edward grabbed the ax from behind the door and went out into the yard. Sarah watched him swing wildly at the small koa tree at the edge of their clearing. The puffballs of yellow flowers trembled on its delicate branches.
“What are you doing?” she said. “It just started blooming on Sunday.”
He swung again, barely making contact with the wood. “Are you staying?” he asked, without turning around. She watched him throw his weight into the next stroke, and it connected. He did it again, and she saw the wood was dented at least an inch. She looked at the peak of the volcano silhouetted in the distance, rosy gold against the gathering night.
“It’s too dark to chop wood,” she told him. “You’ll lose a finger.”
He swung harder, and small pieces of the red bark splintered against the grass. “If you’re staying, I’m building a bed,” he said. “For myself.”
He kept working, shoulders moving, half-bent over the tree. She could see the sweat beginning to soak through his shirt, limning a faint, dark line down his backbone.
“Come inside,” Sarah told her husband. “We’ll pray.”
Edward stopped, and after a moment, he turned and walked toward her. The sun was behind him and she couldn’t see his eyes. He still held the ax in one hand, dragging its blade through the grass until he dropped it outside the door. They entered the house and knelt, a foot apart, in front of the unlit fire.
For the first hour, there was no sound, no movement, except for their breathing. Then Sarah reached across the divide between them and loosened one hand from the steeple of his prayers. The sweat of her palm slid against his, and the dampness sealed their hands together.
Chapter 18
Chev, 1851
Chev read with interest the article in the Boston Evening Transcript about the Great Exhibition taking place in London. Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort, had overseen the construction, in only nine months, of the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. Beneath the soaring glass dome, all the civilized nations of the world, including the imperial colonies of India, Australia, and New Zealand, displayed their contributions to nineteenth-century industry and manufacturing at its halfway point. The crowds lined the ten miles of the pavilion to see India’s Koh-i-Noor Diamond, England’s adding and cigarette-making machines, and the sumptuous textiles of France. Among the more than ten thousand objects, half of which were British, were such frippery as the stiletto umbrella, the leech barometer, and foldable pianos for yachting. Chev’s interest was piqued, however, by the “tangible ink” for the blind, which allegedly produced raised-letter type automatically. Why hadn’t he thought of that? And the first public conveniences in the Retiring Rooms, charging one penny each for private cubicles—another step forward! But oh dear, now the article got round to reporting on the American exhibit: a giant eagle draped in the Stars and Stripes, a model of Niagara Falls, a few sets of false teeth, McCormick’s reaping machine. Who could have put this mockery together?
Thank goodness Mathew Brady had at least won a medal for his daguerreotypes, sparing Americans from total disgrace. He had done portraits of both Chev and Laura years ago for his Gallery of Illustrious Americans. But not Julia; Brady had not considered her illustrious enough apparently. Chev thought his own particularly good, though Laura, even with Brady’s skill, betrayed some of the strangeness that now marked her: her head held too rigidly, her face lacking in animation. She had been a well-enough-looking child, but at this point he could barely stand to look at her. She was grown and peculiar, and she reminded him of nothing but both their early promises. She had failed him on every front, both those she couldn’t help (the way she looked, the way she bore herself) and those she could (her embrace of religion; her stubbornness; and those godawful noises, which he had once trumpeted as evidence of her profound and innate desire to communicate at all costs).
At the close of the column, the paper proposed a remedy for America’s poor showing at the Exhibition: to send posthaste to London the showpiece with which no nation could compete, the new republic’s finest accomplishment, Laura Bridgman. Chev’s jaw dropped; he wondered if the writer had had a good look lately at this gem, this pearl beyond price. And his last report on her had been written up in the very same paper.
He folded the paper slowly. Then again, it was he who had effected this transformation, this miracle of philanthropy and education, and it was his creation that was being proposed as the highest achievement of his nation. Two hundred fifty thousand tickets had sold out the opening day of the Exhibition, and up to six million were expected over the nine-month run. It could be Laura’s—and his—largest audience by far. He allowed himself a smile in the privacy of his study. If Laura were the pièce de résistance, then he was certainly the godhead. He wondered if Julia had read the piece yet; surely her heart too would swell with pride on his account. But wait—now the public would no doubt rally for Laura to actually be sent to the Exhibition. The broadening acclaim, the acknowledgment, was one thing, but the idea of sending her out to the greatest show on earth was frightening. The only time she’d ever even been on a ship was when she’d toured the Britannia before their honeymoon voyage, and look what had happened then.
Good Lord, what if someone had already told Laura about the paper’s proposal? She would no doubt think it grand, but without a teacher or companion for her, he was the sole decider of her fate, a role he had once, but no longer, relished. Should he abandon all in his hands now to accompany Laura to London? Perhaps if he could extract a promise that she would not speak on the subject of religion. Nonsense, of course the press would ask her. They would field questions to her like sugar cubes to a horse. And she would gobble. She believed only what she believed now, and set her God—who was not Chev’s God (though he was no longer sure if his God even qualified as a “who”)—as a higher authority than her mentor. Better that she had never grown up or that he had not exhibited her to the world so steadfastly in the past. He would have to blame his own pride and ego for tha
t.
But if he did accept the herculean challenge and go to London, would Julia perhaps accompany them? Would it make her happy? At this point, he cared more about his wife’s happiness than his ward’s, even if Julia was not the nation’s greatest and most peculiar wonder. Actually, sometimes she was, to his mind.
He crossed the hall to Julia’s room. For a year now, separate bedrooms. Four children, and she said she couldn’t bear more. As a doctor, he knew damn well she could, but that she simply didn’t want to. So here he was, the Chevalier, denied intimate companionship in his own home. He didn’t know what to do about this most delicate and absurd predicament. He’d tentatively broached the subject with Sumner, but Sumner had seemed somehow pleased rather than vexed and offered absolutely nothing useful. Of course, Charlie wouldn’t know his way around a woman; as far as Howe could tell, his dearest friend had made no inroads on any female territory whatsoever.
He knocked, but didn’t wait for an answer before entering. She was dressing, the milk of her shoulders and upper back visible, her eyes staring up at him from the oval of the vanity table mirror. She turned and crossed her arms, and he wondered if this was because she believed that the mere sight of her uncorseted breasts swelling above her linen chemise might prove too enticing for him. She might be right. He adjusted his gaze upward.
“Did you read the editorial on the Exhibition?” he asked, brandishing the paper at her.
“Of course. You and Laura are quite the cause célèbre again. You don’t seem pleased.”
“It’s a bit late in the game; the Exhibition is already under way.”
Julia shrugged. “Six weeks at sea.”
“You actually think I should go? After what I said about Laura in the last report?”
“No one will remember if you hoist her up again on those broad shoulders.”
Was she flirting with him? She still hadn’t put on her dress.
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