The House of Pride and Other Tales of Hawaii
by
Jack London
Part 1 out of 2
THE HOUSE OF PRIDE
Contents:
The House of Pride
Koolau the Leper
Good-bye, Jack
Aloha Oe
Chun Ah Chun
The Sheriff of Kona
Jack London
THE HOUSE OF PRIDE
Percival Ford wondered why he had come. He did not dance. He did
not care much for army people. Yet he knew them all--gliding and
revolving there on the broad lanai of the Seaside, the officers in
their fresh-starched uniforms of white, the civilians in white and
black, and the women bare of shoulders and arms. After two years in
Honolulu the Twentieth was departing to its new station in Alaska,
and Percival Ford, as one of the big men of the Islands, could not
help knowing the officers and their women.
But between knowing and liking was a vast gulf. The army women
frightened him just a little. They were in ways quite different
from the women he liked best--the elderly women, the spinsters and
the bespectacled maidens, and the very serious women of all ages
whom he met on church and library and kindergarten committees, who
came meekly to him for contributions and advice. He ruled those
women by virtue of his superior mentality, his great wealth, and the
high place he occupied in the commercial baronage of Hawaii. And he
was not afraid of them in the least. Sex, with them, was not
obtrusive. Yes, that was it. There was in them something else, or
more, than the assertive grossness of life. He was fastidious; he
acknowledged that to himself; and these army women, with their bare
shoulders and naked arms, their straight-looking eyes, their
vitality and challenging femaleness, jarred upon his sensibilities.
Nor did he get on better with the army men, who took life lightly,
drinking and smoking and swearing their way through life and
asserting the essential grossness of flesh no less shamelessly than
their women. He was always uncomfortable in the company of the army
men. They seemed uncomfortable, too. And he felt, always, that
they were laughing at him up their sleeves, or pitying him, or
tolerating him. Then, too, they seemed, by mere contiguity, to
emphasize a lack in him, to call attention to that in them which he
did not possess and which he thanked God he did not possess. Faugh!
They were like their women!
In fact, Percival Ford was no more a woman's man than he was a man's
man. A glance at him told the reason. He had a good constitution,
never was on intimate terms with sickness, nor even mild disorders;
but he lacked vitality. His was a negative organism. No blood with
a ferment in it could have nourished and shaped that long and narrow
face, those thin lips, lean cheeks, and the small, sharp eyes. The
thatch of hair, dust-coloured, straight and sparse, advertised the
niggard soil, as did the nose, thin, delicately modelled, and just
hinting the suggestion of a beak. His meagre blood had denied him
much of life, and permitted him to be an extremist in one thing
only, which thing was righteousness. Over right conduct he pondered
and agonized, and that he should do right was as necessary to his
nature as loving and being loved were necessary to commoner clay.
He was sitting under the algaroba trees between the lanai and the
beach. His eyes wandered over the dancers and he turned his head
away and gazed seaward across the mellow-sounding surf to the
Southern Cross burning low on the horizon. He was irritated by the
bare shoulders and arms of the women. If he had a daughter he would
never permit it, never. But his hypothesis was the sheerest
abstraction. The thought process had been accompanied by no inner
vision of that daughter. He did not see a daughter with arms and
shoulders. Instead, he smiled at the remote contingency of
marriage. He was thirty-five, and, having had no personal
experience of love, he looked upon it, not as mythical, but as
bestial. Anybody could marry. The Japanese and Chinese coolies,
toiling on the sugar plantations and in the rice-fields, married.
They invariably married at the first opportunity. It was because
they were so low in the scale of life. There was nothing else for
them to do. They were like the army men and women. But for him
there were other and higher things. He was different from them--
from all of them. He was proud of how he happened to be. He had
come of no petty love-match. He had come of lofty conception of
duty and of devotion to a cause. His father had not married for
love. Love was a madness that had never perturbed Isaac Ford. When
he answered the call to go to the heathen with the message of life,
he had had no thought and no desire for marriage. In this they were
alike, his father and he. But the Board of Missions was economical.
With New England thrift it weighed and measured and decided that
married missionaries were less expensive per capita and more
efficacious. So the Board commanded Isaac Ford to marry.
Furthermore, it furnished him with a wife, another zealous soul with
no thought of marriage, intent only on doing the Lord's work among
the heathen. They saw each other for the first time in Boston. The
Board brought them together, arranged everything, and by the end of
the week they were married and started on the long voyage around the
Horn.
Percival Ford was proud that he had come of such a union. He had
been born high, and he thought of himself as a spiritual aristocrat.
And he was proud of his father. It was a passion with him. The
erect, austere figure of Isaac Ford had burned itself upon his
pride. On his desk was a miniature of that soldier of the Lord. In
his bedroom hung the portrait of Isaac Ford, painted at the time
when he had served under the Monarchy as prime minister. Not that
Isaac Ford had coveted place and worldly wealth, but that, as prime
minister, and, later, as banker, he had been of greater service to
the missionary cause. The German crowd, and the English crowd, and
all the rest of the trading crowd, had sneered at Isaac Ford as a
commercial soul-saver; but he, his son, knew different. When the
natives, emerging abruptly from their feudal system, with no
conception of the nature and significance of property in land, were
letting their broad acres slip through their fingers, it was Isaac
Ford who had stepped in between the trading crowd and its prey and
taken possession of fat, vast holdings. Small wonder the trading
crowd did not like his memory. But he had never looked upon his
enormous wealth as his own. He had considered himself God's
steward. Out of the revenues he had built schools, and hospitals,
and churches. Nor was it his fault that sugar, after the slump, had
paid forty per cent; that the bank he founded had prospered into a
railroad; and that, among other things, fifty thousand acres of Oahu
pasture land, which he had bought for a dollar an acre, grew eight
tons of sugar to the acre every eighteen months. No, in all truth,
Isaac Ford was an heroic figure, fit, so Percival Ford thought
privately, to stand beside the statue of Kamehameha I. in front of
the Judiciary Building. Isaac Ford was gone, but he, his son,
carried on the good work at least as inflexibly if not as
masterfully.
He turned his eyes back to the lanai. What was the difference, he
asked himself, between the shameless, grass-girdled hula dances and
the decollete dances of the women of his own race? Was there an
essential difference? or was it a matter of degree?
As he pondered the problem a hand rested on his shoulder.
"Hello, Ford, what are you doing here? Isn't this a bit festive?"
"I try to be lenient, Dr. Kennedy, even as I look on," Percival Ford
answered gravely. "Won't you sit down?"
Dr. Kennedy sat down, clapping his palms sharply. A white-clad
Japanese servant answered swiftly.
Scotch and soda was Kennedy's order; then, turning to the other, he
said:-
"Of course, I don't ask you."
"But I will take something," Ford said firmly. The doctor's eyes
showed surprise, and the servant waited. "Boy, a lemonade, please."
The doctor laughed at it heartily, as a joke on himself, and glanced
at the musicians under the hau tree.
"Why, it's the Aloha Orchestra," he said. "I thought they were with
the Hawaiian Hotel on Tuesday nights. Some rumpus, I guess."
His eyes paused for a moment, and dwelt upon the one who was playing
a guitar and singing a Hawaiian song to the accompaniment of all the
instruments.
His face became grave as he looked at the singer, and it was still
grave as he turned it to his companion.
"Look here, Ford, isn't it time you let up on Joe Garland? I
understand you are in opposition to the Promotion Committee's
sending him to the States on this surf-board proposition, and I've
been wanting to speak to you about it. I should have thought you'd
be glad to get him out of the country. It would be a good way to
end your persecution of him."
"Persecution?" Percival Ford's eyebrows lifted interrogatively.
"Call it by any name you please," Kennedy went on. "You've hounded
that poor devil for years. It's not his fault. Even you will admit
that."
"Not his fault?" Percival Ford's thin lips drew tightly together
for the moment. "Joe Garland is dissolute and idle. He has always
been a wastrel, a profligate."
"But that's no reason you should keep on after him the way you do.
I've watched you from the beginning. The first thing you did when
you returned from college and found him working on the plantation as
outside luna was to fire him--you with your millions, and he with
his sixty dollars a month."
"Not the first thing," Percival Ford said judicially, in a tone he
was accustomed to use in committee meetings. "I gave him his
warning. The superintendent said he was a capable luna. I had no
objection to him on that ground. It was what he did outside working
hours. He undid my work faster than I could build it up. Of what
use were the Sunday schools, the night schools, and the sewing
classes, when in the evenings there was Joe Garland with his
infernal and eternal tum-tumming of guitar and ukulele, his strong
drink, and his hula dancing? After I warned him, I came upon him--I
shall never forget it--came upon him, down at the cabins. It was
evening. I could hear the hula songs before I saw the scene. And
when I did see it, there were the girls, shameless in the moonlight
and dancing--the girls upon whom I had worked to teach clean living
and right conduct. And there were three girls there, I remember,
just graduated from the mission school. Of course I discharged Joe
Garland. I know it was the same at Hilo. People said I went out of
my way when I persuaded Mason and Fitch to discharge him. But it
was the missionaries who requested me to do so. He was undoing
their work by his reprehensible example."
"Afterwards, when he got on the railroad, your railroad, he was
discharged without cause," Kennedy challenged.
"Not so," was the quick answer. "I had him into my private office
and talked with him for half an hour."
"You discharged him for inefficiency?"
"For immoral living, if you please."
Dr. Kennedy laughed with a grating sound. "Who the devil gave it to
you to be judge and jury? Does landlordism give you control of the
immortal souls of those that toil for you? I have been your
physician. Am I to expect tomorrow your ukase that I give up Scotch
and soda or your patronage? Bah! Ford, you take life too
seriously. Besides, when Joe got into that smuggling scrape (he
wasn't in your employ, either), and he sent word to you, asked you
to pay his fine, you left him to do his six months' hard labour on
the reef. Don't forget, you left Joe Garland in the lurch that
time. You threw him down, hard; and yet I remember the first day
you came to school--we boarded, you were only a day scholar--you had
to be initiated. Three times under in the swimming tank--you
remember, it was the regular dose every new boy got. And you held
back. You denied that you could swim. You were frightened,
hysterical--"
"Yes, I know," Percival Ford said slowly. "I was frightened. And
it was a lie, for I could swim . . . And I was frightened."
"And you remember who fought for you? who lied for you harder than
you could lie, and swore he knew you couldn't swim? Who jumped into
the tank and pulled you out after the first under and was nearly
drowned for it by the other boys, who had discovered by that time
that you COULD swim?"
"Of course I know," the other rejoined coldly. "But a generous act
as a boy does not excuse a lifetime of wrong living."
"He has never done wrong to you?--personally and directly, I mean?"
"No," was Percival Ford's answer. "That is what makes my position
impregnable. I have no personal spite against him. He is bad, that
is all. His life is bad--"
"Which is another way of saying that he does not agree with you in
the way life should be lived," the doctor interrupted.
"Have it that way. It is immaterial. He is an idler--"
"With reason," was the interruption, "considering the jobs out of
which you have knocked him."
"He is immoral--"
"Oh, hold on now, Ford. Don't go harping on that. You are pure New
England stock. Joe Garland is half Kanaka. Your blood is thin.
His is warm. Life is one thing to you, another thing to him. He
laughs and sings and dances through life, genial, unselfish,
childlike, everybody's friend. You go through life like a
perambulating prayer-wheel, a friend of nobody but the righteous,
and the righteous are those who agree with you as to what is right.
And after all, who shall say? You live like an anchorite. Joe
Garland lives like a good fellow. Who has extracted the most from
life? We are paid to live, you know. When the wages are too meagre
we throw up the job, which is the cause, believe me, of all rational
suicide. Joe Garland would starve to death on the wages you get
from life. You see, he is made differently. So would you starve on
his wages, which are singing, and love--"
"Lust, if you will pardon me," was the interruption.
Dr. Kennedy smiled.
"Love, to you, is a word of four letters and a definition which you
have extracted from the dictionary. But love, real love, dewy and
palpitant and tender, you do not know. If God made you and me, and
men and women, believe me He made love, too. But to come back.
It's about time you quit hounding Joe Garland. It is not worthy of
you, and it is cowardly. The thing for you to do is to reach out
and lend him a hand."
"Why I, any more than you?" the other demanded. "Why don't you
reach him a hand?"
"I have. I'm reaching him a hand now. I'm trying to get you not to
down the Promotion Committee's proposition of sending him away. I
got him the job at Hilo with Mason and Fitch. I've got him half a
dozen jobs, out of every one of which you drove him. But never mind
that. Don't forget one thing--and a little frankness won't hurt
you--it is not fair play to saddle another fault on Joe Garland; and
you know that you, least of all, are the man to do it. Why, man,
it's not good taste. It's positively indecent."
"Now I don't follow you," Percival Ford answered. "You're up in the
air with some obscure scientific theory of heredity and personal
irresponsibility. But how any theory can hold Joe Garland
irresponsible for his wrongdoings and at the same time hold me
personally responsible for them--more responsible than any one else,
including Joe Garland--is beyond me."
"It's a matter of delicacy, I suppose, or of taste, that prevents
you from following me," Dr. Kennedy snapped out. "It's all very
well, for the sake of society, tacitly to ignore some things, but
you do more than tacitly ignore."
"What is it, pray, that I tacitly ignore!"
Dr. Kennedy was angry. A deeper red than that of constitutional
Scotch and soda suffused his face, as he answered:
"Your father's son."
"Now just what do you mean?"
"Damn it, man, you can't ask me to be plainer spoken than that. But
if you will, all right--Isaac Ford's son--Joe Garland--your
brother."
Percival Ford sat quietly, an annoyed and shocked expression on his
face. Kennedy looked at him curiously, then, as the slow minutes
dragged by, became embarrassed and frightened.
"My God!" he cried finally, "you don't mean to tell me that you
didn't know!"
As in answer, Percival Ford's cheeks turned slowly grey.
"It's a ghastly joke," he said; "a ghastly joke."
The doctor had got himself in hand.
"Everybody knows it," he said. "I thought you knew it. And since
you don't know it, it's time you did, and I'm glad of the chance of
setting you straight. Joe Garland and you are brothers--half-
brothers."
"It's a lie," Ford cried. "You don't mean it. Joe Garland's mother
was Eliza Kunilio." (Dr. Kennedy nodded.) "I remember her well,
with her duck pond and taro patch. His father was Joseph Garland,
the beach-comber." (Dr. Kennedy shook his head.) "He died only two
or three years ago. He used to get drunk. There's where Joe got
his dissoluteness. There's the heredity for you."
"And nobody told you," Kennedy said wonderingly, after a pause.
"Dr. Kennedy, you have said something terrible, which I cannot allow
to pass. You must either prove or, or . . . "
"Prove it yourself. Turn around and look at him. You've got him in
profile. Look at his nose. That's Isaac Ford's. Yours is a thin
edition of it. That's right. Look. The lines are fuller, but they
are all there."
Percival Ford looked at the Kanaka half-breed who played under the
hau tree, and it seemed, as by some illumination, that he was gazing
on a wraith of himself. Feature after feature flashed up an
unmistakable resemblance. Or, rather, it was he who was the wraith
of that other full-muscled and generously moulded man. And his
features, and that other man's features, were all reminiscent of
Isaac Ford. And nobody had told him. Every line of Isaac Ford's
face he knew. Miniatures, portraits, and photographs of his father
were passing in review through his mind, and here and there, over
and again, in the face before him, he caught resemblances and vague
hints of likeness. It was devil's work that could reproduce the
austere features of Isaac Ford in the loose and sensuous features
before him. Once, the man turned, and for one flashing instant it
seemed to Percival Ford that he saw his father, dead and gone,
peering at him out of the face of Joe Garland.
"It's nothing at all," he could faintly hear Dr. Kennedy saying,
"They were all mixed up in the old days. You know that. You've
seen it all your life. Sailors married queens and begat princesses
and all the rest of it. It was the usual thing in the Islands."
"But not with my father," Percival Ford interrupted.
"There you are." Kennedy shrugged his shoulders. "Cosmic sap and
smoke of life. Old Isaac Ford was straitlaced and all the rest, and
I know there's no explaining it, least of all to himself. He
understood it no more than you do. Smoke of life, that's all. And
don't forget one thing, Ford. There was a dab of unruly blood in
old Isaac Ford, and Joe Garland inherited it--all of it, smoke of
life and cosmic sap; while you inherited all of old Isaac's ascetic
blood. And just because your blood is cold, well-ordered, and well-
disciplined, is no reason that you should frown upon Joe Garland.
When Joe Garland undoes the work you do, remember that it is only
old Isaac Ford on both sides, undoing with one hand what he does
with the other. You are Isaac Ford's right hand, let us say; Joe
Garland is his left hand."
Percival Ford made no answer, and in the silence Dr. Kennedy
finished his forgotten Scotch and soda. From across the grounds an
automobile hooted imperatively.
"There's the machine," Dr. Kennedy said, rising. "I've got to run.
I'm sorry I've shaken you up, and at the same time I'm glad. And
know one thing, Isaac Ford's dab of unruly blood was remarkably
small, and Joe Garland got it all. And one other thing. If your
father's left hand offend you, don't smite it off. Besides, Joe is
all right. Frankly, if I could choose between you and him to live
with me on a desert isle, I'd choose Joe."
Little bare-legged children ran about him, playing, on the grass;
but Percival Ford did not see them. He was gazing steadily at the
singer under the hau tree. He even changed his position once, to
get closer. The clerk of the Seaside went by, limping with age and
dragging his reluctant feet. He had lived forty years on the
Islands. Percival Ford beckoned to him, and the clerk came
respectfully, and wondering that he should be noticed by Percival
Ford.
"John," Ford said, "I want you to give me some information. Won't
you sit down?"
The clerk sat down awkwardly, stunned by the unexpected honour. He
blinked at the other and mumbled, "Yes, sir, thank you."
"John, who is Joe Garland?"
The clerk stared at him, blinked, cleared his throat, and said
nothing.
"Go on," Percival Ford commanded.
"Who is he?"
"You're joking me, sir," the other managed to articulate.
"I spoke to you seriously."
The clerk recoiled from him.
"You don't mean to say you don't know?" he questioned, his question
in itself the answer.
"I want to know."
"Why, he's--" John broke off and looked about him helplessly.
"Hadn't you better ask somebody else? Everybody thought you knew.
We always thought . . . "
"Yes, go ahead."
"We always thought that that was why you had it in for him."
Photographs and miniatures of Isaac Ford were trooping through his
son's brain, and ghosts of Isaac Ford seemed in the air about hint
"I wish you good night, sir," he could hear the clerk saying, and he
saw him beginning to limp away.
"John," he called abruptly.
John came back and stood near him, blinking and nervously moistening
his lips.
"You haven't told me yet, you know."
"Oh, about Joe Garland?"
"Yes, about Joe Garland. Who is he?"
"He's your brother, sir, if I say it who shouldn't."
"Thank you, John. Good night."
"And you didn't know?" the old man queried, content to linger, now
that the crucial point was past.
"Thank you, John. Good night," was the response.
"Yes, sir, thank you, sir. I think it's going to rain. Good night,
sir."
Out of the clear sky, filled only with stars and moonlight, fell a
rain so fine and attenuated as to resemble a vapour spray. Nobody
minded it; the children played on, running bare-legged over the
grass and leaping into the sand; and in a few minutes it was gone.
In the south-east, Diamond Head, a black blot, sharply defined,
silhouetted its crater-form against the stars. At sleepy intervals
the surf flung its foam across the sands to the grass, and far out
could be seen the black specks of swimmers under the moon. The
voices of the singers, singing a waltz, died away; and in the
silence, from somewhere under the trees, arose the laugh of a woman
that was a love-cry. It startled Percival Ford, and it reminded him
of Dr. Kennedy's phrase. Down by the outrigger canoes, where they
lay hauled out on the sand, he saw men and women, Kanakas, reclining
languorously, like lotus-eaters, the women in white holokus; and
against one such holoku he saw the dark head of the steersman of the
canoe resting upon the woman's shoulder. Farther down, where the
strip of sand widened at the entrance to the lagoon, he saw a man
and woman walking side by side. As they drew near the light lanai,
he saw the woman's hand go down to her waist and disengage a
girdling arm. And as they passed him, Percival Ford nodded to a
captain he knew, and to a major's daughter. Smoke of life, that was
it, an ample phrase. And again, from under the dark algaroba tree
arose the laugh of a woman that was a love-cry; and past his chair,
on the way to bed, a bare-legged youngster was led by a chiding
Japanese nurse-maid. The voices of the singers broke softly and
meltingly into an Hawaiian love-song, and officers and women, with
encircling arms, were gliding and whirling on the lanai; and once
again the woman laughed under the algaroba trees.
And Percival Ford knew only disapproval of it all. He was irritated
by the love-laugh of the woman, by the steersman with pillowed head
on the white holoku, by the couples that walked on the beach, by the
officers and women that danced, and by the voices of the singers
singing of love, and his brother singing there with them under the
hau tree. The woman that laughed especially irritated him. A
curious train of thought was aroused. He was Isaac Ford's son, and
what had happened with Isaac Ford might happen with him. He felt in
his cheeks the faint heat of a blush at the thought, and experienced
a poignant sense of shame. He was appalled by what was in his
blood. It was like learning suddenly that his father had been a
leper and that his own blood might bear the taint of that dread
disease. Isaac Ford, the austere soldier of the Lord--the old
hypocrite! What difference between him and any beach-comber? The
house of pride that Percival Ford had builded was tumbling about his
ears.
The hours passed, the army people laughed and danced, the native
orchestra played on, and Percival Ford wrestled with the abrupt and
overwhelming problem that had been thrust upon him. He prayed
quietly, his elbow on the table, his head bowed upon his hand, with
all the appearance of any tired onlooker. Between the dances the
army men and women and the civilians fluttered up to him and buzzed
conventionally, and when they went back to the lanai he took up his
wrestling where he had left it off.
He began to patch together his shattered ideal of Isaac Ford, and
for cement he used a cunning and subtle logic. It was of the sort
that is compounded in the brain laboratories of egotists, and it
worked. It was incontrovertible that his father had been made of
finer clay than those about him; but still, old Isaac had been only
in the process of becoming, while he, Percival Ford, had become. As
proof of it, he rehabilitated his father and at the same time
exalted himself. His lean little ego waxed to colossal proportions.
He was great enough to forgive. He glowed at the thought of it.
Isaac Ford had been great, but he was greater, for he could forgive
Isaac Ford and even restore him to the holy place in his memory,
though the place was not quite so holy as it had been. Also, he
applauded Isaac Ford for having ignored the outcome of his one step
aside. Very well, he, too, would ignore it.
The dance was breaking up. The orchestra had finished "Aloha Oe"
and was preparing to go home. Percival Ford clapped his hands for
the Japanese servant.
"You tell that man I want to see him," he said, pointing out Joe
Garland. "Tell him to come here, now."
Joe Garland approached and halted respectfully several paces away,
nervously fingering the guitar which he still carried. The other
did not ask him to sit down.
"You are my brother," he said.
"Why, everybody knows that," was the reply, in tones of wonderment.
"Yes, so I understand," Percival Ford said dryly. "But I did not
know it till this evening."
The half-brother waited uncomfortably in the silence that followed,
during which Percival Ford coolly considered his next utterance.
"You remember that first time I came to school and the boys ducked
me?" he asked. "Why did you take my part?"
The half-brother smiled bashfully.
"Because you knew?"
"Yes, that was why."
"But I didn't know," Percival Ford said in the same dry fashion.
"Yes," the other said.
Another silence fell. Servants were beginning to put out the lights
on the lanai.
"You know . . . now," the half-brother said simply.
Percival Ford frowned. Then he looked the other over with a
considering eye.
"How much will you take to leave the Islands and never come back?"
he demanded.
"And never come back?" Joe Garland faltered. "It is the only land I
know. Other lands are cold. I do not know other lands. I have
many friends here. In other lands there would not be one voice to
say, 'Aloha, Joe, my boy.'"
"I said never to come back," Percival Ford reiterated. "The Alameda
sails tomorrow for San Francisco."
Joe Garland was bewildered.
"But why?" he asked. "You know now that we are brothers."
"That is why," was the retort. "As you said yourself, everybody
knows. I will make it worth your while."
All awkwardness and embarrassment disappeared from Joe Garland.
Birth and station were bridged and reversed.
"You want me to go?" he demanded.
"I want you to go and never come back," Percival Ford answered.
And in that moment, flashing and fleeting, it was given him to see
his brother tower above him like a mountain, and to feel himself
dwindle and dwarf to microscopic insignificance. But it is not well
for one to see himself truly, nor can one so see himself for long
and live; and only for that flashing moment did Percival Ford see
himself and his brother in true perspective. The next moment he was
mastered by his meagre and insatiable ego.
"As I said, I will make it worth your while. You will not suffer.
I will pay you well."
"All right," Joe Garland said. "I'll go."
He started to turn away.
"Joe," the other called. "You see my lawyer tomorrow morning. Five
hundred down and two hundred a month as long as you stay away."
"You are very kind," Joe Garland answered softly. "You are too
kind. And anyway, I guess I don't want your money. I go tomorrow
on the Alameda."
He walked away, but did not say goodbye.
Percival Ford clapped his hands.
"Boy," he said to the Japanese, "a lemonade."
And over the lemonade he smiled long and contentedly to himself.
KOOLAU THE LEPER
"Because we are sick they take away our liberty. We have obeyed the
law. We have done no wrong. And yet they would put us in prison.
Molokai is a prison. That you know. Niuli, there, his sister was
sent to Molokai seven years ago. He has not seen her since. Nor
will he ever see her. She must stay there until she dies. This is
not her will. It is not Niuli's will. It is the will of the white
men who rule the land. And who are these white men?
"We know. We have it from our fathers and our fathers' fathers.
They came like lambs, speaking softly. Well might they speak
softly, for we were many and strong, and all the islands were ours.
As I say, they spoke softly. They were of two kinds. The one kind
asked our permission, our gracious permission, to preach to us the
word of God. The other kind asked our permission, our gracious
permission, to trade with us. That was the beginning. Today all
the islands are theirs, all the land, all the cattle--everything is
theirs. They that preached the word of God and they that preached
the word of Rum have fore-gathered and become great chiefs. They
live like kings in houses of many rooms, with multitudes of servants
to care for them. They who had nothing have everything, and if you,
or I, or any Kanaka be hungry, they sneer and say, 'Well, why don't
you work? There are the plantations.'
Koolau paused. He raised one hand, and with gnarled and twisted
fingers lifted up the blazing wreath of hibiscus that crowned his
black hair. The moonlight bathed the scene in silver. It was a
night of peace, though those who sat about him and listened had all
the seeming of battle-wrecks. Their faces were leonine. Here a
space yawned in a face where should have been a nose, and there an
arm-stump showed where a hand had rotted off. They were men and
women beyond the pale, the thirty of them, for upon them had been
placed the mark of the beast.
They sat, flower-garlanded, in the perfumed, luminous night, and
their lips made uncouth noises and their throats rasped approval of
Koolau's speech. They were creatures who once had been men and
women. But they were men and women no longer. They were monsters--
in face and form grotesque caricatures of everything human. They
were hideously maimed and distorted, and had the seeming of
creatures that had been racked in millenniums of hell. Their hands,
when they possessed them, were like harpy claws. Their faces were
the misfits and slips, crushed and bruised by some mad god at play
in the machinery of life. Here and there were features which the
mad god had smeared half away, and one woman wept scalding tears
from twin pits of horror, where her eyes once had been. Some were
in pain and groaned from their chests. Others coughed, making
sounds like the tearing of tissue. Two were idiots, more like huge
apes marred in the making, until even an ape were an angel. They
mowed and gibbered in the moonlight, under crowns of drooping,
golden blossoms. One, whose bloated ear-lobe flapped like a fan
upon his shoulder, caught up a gorgeous flower of orange and scarlet
and with it decorated the monstrous ear that flip-flapped with his
every movement.
And over these things Koolau was king. And this was his kingdom,--a
flower-throttled gorge, with beetling cliffs and crags, from which
floated the blattings of wild goats. On three sides the grim walls
rose, festooned in fantastic draperies of tropic vegetation and
pierced by cave-entrances--the rocky lairs of Koolau's subjects. On
the fourth side the earth fell away into a tremendous abyss, and,
far below, could be seen the summits of lesser peaks and crags, at
whose bases foamed and rumbled the Pacific surge. In fine weather a
boat could land on the rocky beach that marked the entrance of
Kalalau Valley, but the weather must be very fine. And a cool-
headed mountaineer might climb from the beach to the head of Kalalau
Valley, to this pocket among the peaks where Koolau ruled; but such
a mountaineer must be very cool of head, and he must know the wild-
goat trails as well. The marvel was that the mass of human wreckage
that constituted Koolau's people should have been able to drag its
helpless misery over the giddy goat-trails to this inaccessible
spot.
"Brothers," Koolau began.
But one of the mowing, apelike travesties emitted a wild shriek of
madness, and Koolau waited while the shrill cachination was tossed
back and forth among the rocky walls and echoed distantly through
the pulseless night.
"Brothers, is it not strange? Ours was the land, and behold, the
land is not ours. What did these preachers of the word of God and
the word of Rum give us for the land? Have you received one dollar,
as much as one dollar, any one of you, for the land? Yet it is
theirs, and in return they tell us we can go to work on the land,
their land, and that what we produce by our toil shall be theirs.
Yet in the old days we did not have to work. Also, when we are
sick, they take away our freedom."
"Who brought the sickness, Koolau?" demanded Kiloliana, a lean and
wiry man with a face so like a laughing faun's that one might expect
to see the cloven hoofs under him. They were cloven, it was true,
but the cleavages were great ulcers and livid putrefactions. Yet
this was Kiloliana, the most daring climber of them all, the man who
knew every goat-trail and who had led Koolau and his wretched
followers into the recesses of Kalalau.
"Ay, well questioned," Koolau answered. "Because we would not work
the miles of sugar-cane where once our horses pastured, they brought
the Chinese slaves from overseas. And with them came the Chinese
sickness--that which we suffer from and because of which they would
imprison us on Molokai. We were born on Kauai. We have been to the
other islands, some here and some there, to Oahu, to Maui, to
Hawaii, to Honolulu. Yet always did we come back to Kauai. Why did
we come back? There must be a reason. Because we love Kauai. We
were born here. Here we have lived. And here shall we die--unless-
-unless--there be weak hearts amongst us. Such we do not want.
They are fit for Molokai. And if there be such, let them not
remain. Tomorrow the soldiers land on the shore. Let the weak
hearts go down to them. They will be sent swiftly to Molokai. As
for us, we shall stay and fight. But know that we will not die. We
have rifles. You know the narrow trails where men must creep, one
by one. I, alone, Koolau, who was once a cowboy on Niihau, can hold
the trail against a thousand men. Here is Kapalei, who was once a
judge over men and a man with honour, but who is now a hunted rat,
like you and me. Hear him. He is wise."
Kapalei arose. Once he had been a judge. He had gone to college at
Punahou. He had sat at meat with lords and chiefs and the high
representatives of alien powers who protected the interests of
traders and missionaries. Such had been Kapalei. But now, as
Koolau had said, he was a hunted rat, a creature outside the law,
sunk so deep in the mire of human horror that he was above the law
as well as beneath it. His face was featureless, save for gaping
orifices and for the lidless eyes that burned under hairless brows.
"Let us not make trouble," he began. "We ask to be left alone. But
if they do not leave us alone, then is the trouble theirs and the
penalty. My fingers are gone, as you see." He held up his stumps
of hands that all might see. "Yet have I the joint of one thumb
left, and it can pull a trigger as firmly as did its lost neighbour
in the old days. We love Kauai. Let us live here, or die here, but
do not let us go to the prison of Molokai. The sickness is not
ours. We have not sinned. The men who preached the word of God and
the word of Rum brought the sickness with the coolie slaves who work
the stolen land. I have been a judge. I know the law and the
justice, and I say to you it is unjust to steal a man's land, to
make that man sick with the Chinese sickness, and then to put that
man in prison for life."
"Life is short, and the days are filled with pain," said Koolau.
"Let us drink and dance and be happy as we can."
From one of the rocky lairs calabashes were produced and passed
round. The calabashes were filled with the fierce distillation of
the root of the ti-plant; and as the liquid fire coursed through
them and mounted to their brains, they forgot that they had once
been men and women, for they were men and women once more. The
woman who wept scalding tears from open eye-pits was indeed a woman
apulse with life as she plucked the strings of an ukulele and lifted
her voice in a barbaric love-call such as might have come from the
dark forest-depths of the primeval world. The air tingled with her
cry, softly imperious and seductive. Upon a mat, timing his rhythm
to the woman's song Kiloliana danced. It was unmistakable. Love
danced in all his movements, and, next, dancing with him on the mat,
was a woman whose heavy hips and generous breast gave the lie to her
disease-corroded face. It was a dance of the living dead, for in
their disintegrating bodies life still loved and longed. Ever the
woman whose sightless eyes ran scalding tears chanted her love-cry,
ever the dancers of love danced in the warm night, and ever the
calabashes went around till in all their brains were maggots
crawling of memory and desire. And with the woman on the mat danced
a slender maid whose face was beautiful and unmarred, but whose
twisted arms that rose and fell marked the disease's ravage. And
the two idiots, gibbering and mouthing strange noises, danced apart,
grotesque, fantastic, travestying love as they themselves had been
travestied by life.
But the woman's love-cry broke midway, the calabashes were lowered,
and the dancers ceased, as all gazed into the abyss above the sea,
where a rocket flared like a wan phantom through the moonlit air.
"It is the soldiers," said Koolau. "Tomorrow there will be
fighting. It is well to sleep and be prepared."
The lepers obeyed, crawling away to their lairs in the cliff, until
only Koolau remained, sitting motionless in the moonlight, his rifle
across his knees, as he gazed far down to the boats landing on the
beach.
The far head of Kalalau Valley had been well chosen as a refuge.
Except Kiloliana, who knew back-trails up the precipitous walls, no
man could win to the gorge save by advancing across a knife-edged
ridge. This passage was a hundred yards in length. At best, it was
a scant twelve inches wide. On either side yawned the abyss. A
slip, and to right or left the man would fall to his death. But
once across he would find himself in an earthly paradise. A sea of
vegetation laved the landscape, pouring its green billows from wall
to wall, dripping from the cliff-lips in great vine-masses, and
flinging a spray of ferns and air-plants in to the multitudinous
crevices. During the many months of Koolau's rule, he and his
followers had fought with this vegetable sea. The choking jungle,
with its riot of blossoms, had been driven back from the bananas,
oranges, and mangoes that grew wild. In little clearings grew the
wild arrowroot; on stone terraces, filled with soil scrapings, were
the taro patches and the melons; and in every open space where the
sunshine penetrated were papaia trees burdened with their golden
fruit.
Koolau had been driven to this refuge from the lower valley by the
beach. And if he were driven from it in turn, he knew of gorges
among the jumbled peaks of the inner fastnesses where he could lead
his subjects and live. And now he lay with his rifle beside him,
peering down through a tangled screen of foliage at the soldiers on
the beach. He noted that they had large guns with them, from which
the sunshine flashed as from mirrors. The knife-edged passage lay
directly before him. Crawling upward along the trail that led to it
he could see tiny specks of men. He knew they were not the
soldiers, but the police. When they failed, then the soldiers would
enter the game.
He affectionately rubbed a twisted hand along his rifle barrel and
made sure that the sights were clean. He had learned to shoot as a
wild-cattle hunter on Niihau, and on that island his skill as a
marksman was unforgotten. As the toiling specks of men grew nearer
and larger, he estimated the range, judged the deflection of the
wind that swept at right angles across the line of fire, and
calculated the chances of overshooting marks that were so far below
his level. But he did not shoot. Not until they reached the
beginning of the passage did he make his presence known. He did not
disclose himself, but spoke from the thicket.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
"We want Koolau, the leper," answered the man who led the native
police, himself a blue-eyed American.
"You must go back," Koolau said.
He knew the man, a deputy sheriff, for it was by him that he had
been harried out of Niihau, across Kauai, to Kalalau Valley, and out
of the valley to the gorge.
"Who are you?" the sheriff asked.
"I am Koolau, the leper," was the reply.
"Then come out. We want you. Dead or alive, there is a thousand
dollars on your head. You cannot escape."
Koolau laughed aloud in the thicket.
"Come out!" the sheriff commanded, and was answered by silence.
He conferred with the police, and Koolau saw that they were
preparing to rush him.
"Koolau," the sheriff called. "Koolau, I am coming across to get
you."
"Then look first and well about you at the sun and sea and sky, for
it will be the last time you behold them."
"That's all right, Koolau," the sheriff said soothingly. "I know
you're a dead shot. But you won't shoot me. I have never done you
any wrong."
Koolau grunted in the thicket.
"I say, you know, I've never done you any wrong, have I?" the
sheriff persisted.
"You do me wrong when you try to put me in prison," was the reply.
"And you do me wrong when you try for the thousand dollars on my
head. If you will live, stay where you are."
"I've got to come across and get you. I'm sorry. But it is my
duty."
"You will die before you get across."
The sheriff was no coward. Yet was he undecided. He gazed into the
gulf on either side and ran his eyes along the knife-edge he must
travel. Then he made up his mind.
"Koolau," he called.
But the thicket remained silent.
"Koolau, don't shoot. I am coming."
The sheriff turned, gave some orders to the police, then started on
his perilous way. He advanced slowly. It was like walking a tight
rope. He had nothing to lean upon but the air. The lava rock
crumbled under his feet, and on either side the dislodged fragments
pitched downward through the depths. The sun blazed upon him, and
his face was wet with sweat. Still he advanced, until the halfway
point was reached.
"Stop!" Koolau commanded from the thicket. "One more step and I
shoot."
The sheriff halted, swaying for balance as he stood poised above the
void. His face was pale, but his eyes were determined. He licked
his dry lips before he spoke.
"Koolau, you won't shoot me. I know you won't."
He started once more. The bullet whirled him half about. On his
face was an expression of querulous surprise as he reeled to the
fall. He tried to save himself by throwing his body across the
knife-edge; but at that moment he knew death. The next moment the
knife-edge was vacant. Then came the rush, five policemen, in
single file, with superb steadiness, running along the knife-edge.
At the same instant the rest of the posse opened fire on the
thicket. It was madness. Five times Koolau pulled the trigger, so
rapidly that his shots constituted a rattle. Changing his position
and crouching low under the bullets that were biting and singing
through the bushes, he peered out. Four of the police had followed
the sheriff. The fifth lay across the knife-edge still alive. On
the farther side, no longer firing, were the surviving police. On
the naked rock there was no hope for them. Before they could
clamber down Koolau could have picked off the last man. But he did
not fire, and, after a conference, one of them took off a white
undershirt and waved it as a flag. Followed by another, he advanced
along the knife-edge to their wounded comrade. Koolau gave no sign,
but watched them slowly withdraw and become specks as they descended
into the lower valley.
Two hours later, from another thicket, Koolau watched a body of
police trying to make the ascent from the opposite side of the
valley. He saw the wild goats flee before them as they climbed
higher and higher, until he doubted his judgment and sent for
Kiloliana, who crawled in beside him.
"No, there is no way," said Kiloliana.
"The goats?" Koolau questioned.
"They come over from the next valley, but they cannot pass to this.
There is no way. Those men are not wiser than goats. They may fall
to their deaths. Let us watch."
"They are brave men," said Koolau. "Let us watch."
Side by side they lay among the morning-glories, with the yellow
blossoms of the hau dropping upon them from overhead, watching the
motes of men toil upward, till the thing happened, and three of
them, slipping, rolling, sliding, dashed over a cliff-lip and fell
sheer half a thousand feet.
Kiloliana chuckled.
"We will be bothered no more," he said.
"They have war guns," Koolau made answer. "The soldiers have not
yet spoken."
In the drowsy afternoon, most of the lepers lay in their rock dens
asleep. Koolau, his rifle on his knees, fresh-cleaned and ready,
dozed in the entrance to his own den. The maid with the twisted
arms lay below in the thicket and kept watch on the knife-edge
passage. Suddenly Koolau was startled wide awake by the sound of an
explosion on the beach. The next instant the atmosphere was
incredibly rent asunder. The terrible sound frightened him. It was
as if all the gods had caught the envelope of the sky in their hands
and were ripping it apart as a woman rips apart a sheet of cotton
cloth. But it was such an immense ripping, growing swiftly nearer.
Koolau glanced up apprehensively, as if expecting to see the thing.
Then high up on the cliff overhead the shell burst in a fountain of
black smoke. The rock was shattered, the fragments falling to the
foot of the cliff.
Koolau passed his hand across his sweaty brow. He was terribly
shaken. He had had no experience with shell-fire, and this was more
dreadful than anything he had imagined.
"One," said Kapahei, suddenly bethinking himself to keep count.
A second and a third shell flew screaming over the top of the wall,
bursting beyond view. Kapahei methodically kept the count. The
lepers crowded into the open space before the caves. At first they
were frightened, but as the shells continued their flight overhead
the leper folk became reassured and began to admire the spectacle.
The two idiots shrieked with delight, prancing wild antics as each
air-tormenting shell went by. Koolau began to recover his
confidence. No damage was being done. Evidently they could not aim
such large missiles at such long range with the precision of a
rifle.
But a change came over the situation. The shells began to fall
short. One burst below in the thicket by the knife-edge. Koolau
remembered the maid who lay there on watch, and ran down to see.
The smoke was still rising from the bushes when he crawled in. He
was astounded. The branches were splintered and broken. Where the
girl had lain was a hole in the ground. The girl herself was in
shattered fragments. The shell had burst right on her.
First peering out to make sure no soldiers were attempting the
passage, Koolau started back on the run for the caves. All the time
the shells were moaning, whining, screaming by, and the valley was
rumbling and reverberating with the explosions. As he came in sight
of the caves, he saw the two idiots cavorting about, clutching each
other's hands with their stumps of fingers. Even as he ran, Koolau
saw a spout of black smoke rise from the ground, near to the idiots.
They were flung apart bodily by the explosion. One lay motionless,
but the other was dragging himself by his hands toward the cave.
His legs trailed out helplessly behind him, while the blood was
pouring from his body. He seemed bathed in blood, and as he crawled
he cried like a little dog. The rest of the lepers, with the
exception of Kapahei, had fled into the caves.
"Seventeen," said Kapahei. "Eighteen," he added.
This last shell had fairly entered into one of the caves. The
explosion caused the caves to empty. But from the particular cave
no one emerged. Koolau crept in through the pungent, acrid smoke.
Four bodies, frightfully mangled, lay about. One of them was the
sightless woman whose tears till now had never ceased.
Outside, Koolau found his people in a panic and already beginning to
climb the goat-trail that led out of the gorge and on among the
jumbled heights and chasms. The wounded idiot, whining feebly and
dragging himself along on the ground by his hands, was trying to
follow. But at the first pitch of the wall his helplessness
overcame him and he fell back.
"It would be better to kill him," said Koolau to Kapahei, who still
sat in the same place.
"Twenty-two," Kapahei answered. "Yes, it would be a wise thing to
kill him. Twenty-three--twenty-four."
The idiot whined sharply when he saw the rifle levelled at him.
Koolau hesitated, then lowered the gun.
"It is a hard thing to do," he said.
"You are a fool, twenty-six, twenty-seven," said Kapahei. "Let me
show you."
He arose, and with a heavy fragment of rock in his hand, approached
the wounded thing. As he lifted his arm to strike, a shell burst
full upon him, relieving him of the necessity of the act and at the
same time putting an end to his count.
Koolau was alone in the gorge. He watched the last of his people
drag their crippled bodies over the brow of the height and
disappear. Then he turned and went down to the thicket where the
maid had keen killed. The shell-fire still continued, but he
remained; for far below he could see the soldiers climbing up. A
shell burst twenty feet away. Flattening himself into the earth, he
heard the rush of the fragments above his body. A shower of hau
blossoms rained upon him. He lifted his head to peer down the
trail, and sighed. He was very much afraid. Bullets from rifles
would not have worried him, but this shell-fire was abominable.
Each time a shell shrieked by he shivered and crouched; but each
time he lifted his head again to watch the trail.
At last the shells ceased. This, he reasoned, was because the
soldiers were drawing near. They crept along the trail in single
file, and he tried to count them until he lost track. At any rate,
there were a hundred or so of them--all come after Koolau the leper.
He felt a fleeting prod of pride. With war guns and rifles, police
and soldiers, they came for him, and he was only one man, a crippled
wreck of a man at that. They offered a thousand dollars for him,
dead or alive. In all his life he had never possessed that much
money. The thought was a bitter one. Kapahei had been right. He,
Koolau, had done no wrong. Because the haoles wanted labour with
which to work the stolen land, they had brought in the Chinese
coolies, and with them had come the sickness. And now, because he
had caught the sickness, he was worth a thousand dollars--but not to
himself. It was his worthless carcass, rotten with disease or dead
from a bursting shell, that was worth all that money.
When the soldiers reached the knife-edged passage, he was prompted
to warn them. But his gaze fell upon the body of the murdered maid,
and he kept silent. When six had ventured on the knife-edge, he
opened fire. Nor did he cease when the knife-edge was bare. He
emptied his magazine, reloaded, and emptied it again. He kept on
shooting. All his wrongs were blazing in his brain, and he was in a
fury of vengeance. All down the goat-trail the soldiers were
firing, and though they lay flat and sought to shelter themselves in
the shallow inequalities of the surface, they were exposed marks to
him. Bullets whistled and thudded about him, and an occasional
ricochet sang sharply through the air. One bullet ploughed a crease
through his scalp, and a second burned across his shoulder-blade
without breaking the skin.
It was a massacre, in which one man did the killing. The soldiers
began to retreat, helping along their wounded. As Koolau picked
them off he became aware of the smell of burnt meat. He glanced
about him at first, and then discovered that it was his own hands.
The heat of the rifle was doing it. The leprosy had destroyed most
of the nerves in his hands. Though his flesh burned and he smelled
it, there was no sensation.
He lay in the thicket, smiling, until he remembered the war guns.
Without doubt they would open upon him again, and this time upon the
very thicket from which he had inflicted the danger. Scarcely had
he changed his position to a nook behind a small shoulder of the
wall where he had noted that no shells fell, than the bombardment
recommenced. He counted the shells. Sixty more were thrown into
the gorge before the war-guns ceased. The tiny area was pitted with
their explosions, until it seemed impossible that any creature could
have survived. So the soldiers thought, for, under the burning
afternoon sun, they climbed the goat-trail again. And again the
knife-edged passage was disputed, and again they fell back to the
beach.
For two days longer Koolau held the passage, though the soldiers
contented themselves with flinging shells into his retreat. Then
Pahau, a leper boy, came to the top of the wall at the back of the
gorge and shouted down to him that Kiloliana, hunting goats that
they might eat, had been killed by a fall, and that the women were
frightened and knew not what to do. Koolau called the boy down and
left him with a spare gun with which to guard the passage. Koolau
found his people disheartened. The majority of them were too
helpless to forage food for themselves under such forbidding
circumstances, and all were starving. He selected two women and a
man who were not too far gone with the disease, and sent them back
to the gorge to bring up food and mats. The rest he cheered and
consoled until even the weakest took a hand in building rough
shelters for themselves.
But those he had dispatched for food did not return, and he started
back for the gorge. As he came out on the brow of the wall, half a
dozen rifles cracked. A bullet tore through the fleshy part of his
shoulder, and his cheek was cut by a sliver of rock where a second
bullet smashed against the cliff. In the moment that this happened,
and he leaped back, he saw that the gorge was alive with soldiers.
His own people had betrayed him. The shell-fire had been too
terrible, and they had preferred the prison of Molokai.
Koolau dropped back and unslung one of his heavy cartridge-belts.
Lying among the rocks, he allowed the head and shoulders of the
first soldier to rise clearly into view before pulling trigger.
Twice this happened, and then, after some delay, in place of a head
and shoulders a white flag was thrust above the edge of the wall.
"What do you want?" be demanded.
"I want you, if you are Koolau the leper," came the answer.
Koolau forgot where he was, forgot everything, as he lay and
marvelled at the strange persistence of these haoles who would have
their will though the sky fell in. Aye, they would have their will
over all men and all things, even though they died in getting it.
He could not but admire them, too, what of that will in them that
was stronger than life and that bent all things to their bidding.
He was convinced of the hopelessness of his struggle. There was no
gainsaying that terrible will of the haoles. Though he killed a
thousand, yet would they rise like the sands of the sea and come
upon him, ever more and more. They never knew when they were
beaten. That was their fault and their virtue. It was where his
own kind lacked. He could see, now, how the handful of the
preachers of God and the preachers of Rum had conquered the land.
It was because -
"Well, what have you got to say? Will you come with me?"
It was he voice of the invisible man under the white flag. There he
was, like any haole, driving straight toward the end determined.
"Let us talk," said Koolau.
The man's head and shoulders arose, then his whole body. He was a
smooth-faced, blue-eyed youngster of twenty-five, slender and natty
in his captain's uniform. He advanced until halted, then seated
himself a dozen feet away.
"You are a brave man," said Koolau wonderingly. "I could kill you
like a fly."
"No, you couldn't," was the answer.
"Why not?"
"Because you are a man, Koolau, though a bad one. I know your
story. You kill fairly."
Koolau grunted, but was secretly pleased.
"What have you done with my people?" he demanded. "The boy, the two
women, and the man?"
"They gave themselves up, as I have now come for you to do."
Koolau laughed incredulously.
"I am a free man," he announced. "I have done no wrong. All I ask
is to be left alone. I have lived free, and I shall die free. I
will never give myself up."
"Then your people are wiser than you," answered the young captain.
"Look--they are coming now."
Koolau turned and watched the remnant of his band approach.
Groaning and sighing, a ghastly procession, it dragged its
wretchedness past. It was given to Koolau to taste a deeper
bitterness, for they hurled imprecations and insults at him as they
went by; and the panting hag who brought up the rear halted, and
with skinny, harpy-claws extended, shaking her snarling death's head
from side to side, she laid a curse upon him. One by one they
dropped over the lip-edge and surrendered to the hiding soldiers.
"You can go now," said Koolau to the captain. "I will never give
myself up. That is my last word. Good-bye."
The captain slipped over the cliff to his soldiers. The next
moment, and without a flag of truce, he hoisted his hat on his
scabbard, and Koolau's bullet tore through it. That afternoon they
shelled him out from the beach, and as he retreated into the high
inaccessible pockets beyond, the soldiers followed him.
For six weeks they hunted him from pocket to pocket, over the
volcanic peaks and along the goat-trails. When he hid in the
lantana jungle, they formed lines of beaters, and through lantana
jungle and guava scrub they drove him like a rabbit. But ever he
turned and doubled and eluded. There was no cornering him. When
pressed too closely, his sure rifle held them back and they carried
their wounded down the goat-trails to the beach. There were times
when they did the shooting as his brown body showed for a moment
through the underbrush. Once, five of them caught him on an exposed
goat-trail between pockets. They emptied their rifles at him as he
limped and climbed along his dizzy way. Afterwards they found
bloodstains and knew that he was wounded. At the end of six weeks
they gave up. The soldiers and police returned to Honolulu, and
Kalalau Valley was left to him for his own, though head-hunters
ventured after him from time to time and to their own undoing.
Two years later, and for the last time, Koolau crawled into a
thicket and lay down among the ti-leaves and wild ginger blossoms.
Free he had lived, and free he was dying. A slight drizzle of rain
began to fall, and he drew a ragged blanket about the distorted
wreck of his limbs. His body was covered with an oilskin coat.
Across his chest he laid his Mauser rifle, lingering affectionately
for a moment to wipe the dampness from the barrel. The hand with
which he wiped had no fingers left upon it with which to pull the
trigger.
He closed his eyes, for, from the weakness in his body and the fuzzy
turmoil in his brain, he knew that his end was near. Like a wild
animal he had crept into hiding to die. Half-conscious, aimless and
wandering, he lived back in his life to his early manhood on Niihau.
As life faded and the drip of the rain grew dim in his ears it
seemed to him that he was once more in the thick of the horse-
breaking, with raw colts rearing and bucking under him, his stirrups
tied together beneath, or charging madly about the breaking corral
and driving the helping cowboys over the rails. The next instant,
and with seeming naturalness, he found himself pursuing the wild
bulls of the upland pastures, roping them and leading them down to
the valleys. Again the sweat and dust of the branding pen stung his
eyes and bit his nostrils.
All his lusty, whole-bodied youth was his, until the sharp pangs of
impending dissolution brought him back. He lifted his monstrous
hands and gazed at them in wonder. But how? Why? Why should the
wholeness of that wild youth of his change to this? Then he
remembered, and once again, and for a moment, he was Koolau, the
leper. His eyelids fluttered wearily down and the drip of the rain
ceased in his ears. A prolonged trembling set up in his body.
This, too, ceased. He half-lifted his head, but it fell back. Then
his eyes opened, and did not close. His last thought was of his
Mauser, and he pressed it against his chest with his folded,
fingerless hands.
GOOD-BYE, JACK
Hawaii is a queer place. Everything socially is what I may call
topsy-turvy. Not but what things are correct. They are almost too
much so. But still things are sort of upside down. The most ultra-
exclusive set there is the "Missionary Crowd." It comes with rather
a shock to learn that in Hawaii the obscure martyrdom-seeking
missionary sits at the head of the table of the moneyed aristocracy.
But it is true. The humble New Englanders who came out in the third
decade of the nineteenth century, came for the lofty purpose of
teaching the kanakas the true religion, the worship of the one only
genuine and undeniable God. So well did they succeed in this, and
also in civilizing the kanaka, that by the second or third
generation he was practically extinct. This being the fruit of the
seed of the Gospel, the fruit of the seed of the missionaries (the
sons and the grandsons) was the possession of the islands
themselves,--of the land, the ports, the town sites, and the sugar
plantations: The missionary who came to give the bread of life
remained to gobble up the whole heathen feast.
But that is not the Hawaiian queerness I started out to tell. Only
one cannot speak of things Hawaiian without mentioning the
missionaries. There is Jack Kersdale, the man I wanted to tell
about; he came of missionary stock. That is, on his grandmother's
side. His grandfather was old Benjamin Kersdale, a Yankee trader,
who got his start for a million in the old days by selling cheap
whiskey and square-face gin. There's another queer thing. The old
missionaries and old traders were mortal enemies. You see, their
interests conflicted. But their children made it up by
intermarrying and dividing the island between them.
Life in Hawaii is a song. That's the way Stoddard put it in his
"Hawaii Noi":-
"Thy life is music--Fate the notes prolong!
Each isle a stanza, and the whole a song."
And he was right. Flesh is golden there. The native women are sun-
ripe Junos, the native men bronzed Apollos. They sing, and dance,
and all are flower-bejewelled and flower-crowned. And, outside the
rigid "Missionary Crowd," the white men yield to the climate and the
sun, and no matter how busy they may be, are prone to dance and sing
and wear flowers behind their ears and in their hair. Jack Kersdale
was one of these fellows. He was one of the busiest men I ever met.
He was a several-times millionaire. He was a sugar-king, a coffee
planter, a rubber pioneer, a cattle rancher, and a promoter of three
out of every four new enterprises launched in the islands. He was a
society man, a club man, a yachtsman, a bachelor, and withal as
handsome a man as was ever doted upon by mammas with marriageable
daughters. Incidentally, he had finished his education at Yale, and
his head was crammed fuller with vital statistics and scholarly
information concerning Hawaii Nei than any other islander I ever
encountered. He turned off an immense amount of work, and he sang
and danced and put flowers in his hair as immensely as any of the
idlers.
He had grit, and had fought two duels--both, political--when he
was no more than a raw youth essaying his first adventures in
politics. In fact, he played a most creditable and courageous part
in the last revolution, when the native dynasty was overthrown; and
he could not have been over sixteen at the time. I am pointing out
that he was no coward, in order that you may appreciate what happens
later on. I've seen him in the breaking yard at the Haleakala
Ranch, conquering a four-year-old brute that for two years had
defied the pick of Von Tempsky's cow-boys. And I must tell of one
other thing. It was down in Kona,--or up, rather, for the Kona
people scorn to live at less than a thousand feet elevation. We
were all on the lanai of Doctor Goodhue's bungalow. I was talking
with Dottie Fairchild when it happened. A big centipede--it was
seven inches, for we measured it afterwards--fell from the rafters
overhead squarely into her coiffure. I confess, the hideousness of
it paralysed me. I couldn't move. My mind refused to work. There,
within two feet of me, the ugly venomous devil was writhing in her
hair. It threatened at any moment to fall down upon her exposed
shoulders--we had just come out from dinner.
"What is it?" she asked, starting to raise her hand to her head.
"Don't!" I cried. "Don't!"
"But what is it?" she insisted, growing frightened by the fright she
read in my eyes and on my stammering lips.
My exclamation attracted Kersdale's attention. He glanced our way
carelessly, but in that glance took in everything. He came over to
us, but without haste.
"Please don't move, Dottie," he said quietly.
He never hesitated, nor did he hurry and make a bungle of it.
"Allow me," he said.
And with one hand he caught her scarf and drew it tightly around her
shoulders so that the centipede could not fall inside her bodice.
With the other hand--the right--he reached into her hair, caught the
repulsive abomination as near as he was able by the nape of the
neck, and held it tightly between thumb and forefinger as he
withdrew it from her hair. It was as horrible and heroic a sight as
man could wish to see. It made my flesh crawl. The centipede,
seven inches of squirming legs, writhed and twisted and dashed
itself about his hand, the body twining around the fingers and the
legs digging into the skin and scratching as the beast endeavoured
to free itself. It bit him twice--I saw it--though he assured the
ladies that he was not harmed as he dropped it upon the walk and
stamped it into the gravel. But I saw him in the surgery five
minutes afterwards, with Doctor Goodhue scarifying the wounds and
injecting permanganate of potash. The next morning Kersdale's arm
was as big as a barrel, and it was three weeks before the swelling
went down.
All of which has nothing to do with my story, but which I could not
avoid giving in order to show that Jack Kersdale was anything but a
coward. It was the cleanest exhibition of grit I have ever seen.
He never turned a hair. The smile never left his lips. And he
dived with thumb and forefinger into Dottie Fairchild's hair as
gaily as if it had been a box of salted almonds. Yet that was the
man I was destined to see stricken with a fear a thousand times more
hideous even than the fear that was mine when I saw that writhing
abomination in Dottie Fairchild's hair, dangling over her eyes and
the trap of her bodice.
I was interested in leprosy, and upon that, as upon every other
island subject, Kersdale had encyclopedic knowledge. In fact,
leprosy was one of his hobbies. He was an ardent defender of the
settlement at Molokai, where all the island lepers were segregated.
There was much talk and feeling among the natives, fanned by the
demagogues, concerning the cruelties of Molokai, where men and
women, not alone banished from friends and family, were compelled to
live in perpetual imprisonment until they died. There were no
reprieves, no commutations of sentences. "Abandon hope" was written
over the portal of Molokai.
"I tell you they are happy there," Kersdale insisted. "And they are
infinitely better off than their friends and relatives outside who
have nothing the matter with them. The horrors of Molokai are all
poppycock. I can take you through any hospital or any slum in any
of the great cities of the world and show you a thousand times worse
horrors. The living death! The creatures that once were men!
Bosh! You ought to see those living deaths racing horses on the
Fourth of July. Some of them own boats. One has a gasoline launch.
They have nothing to do but have a good time. Food, shelter,
clothes, medical attendance, everything, is theirs. They are the
wards of the Territory. They have a much finer climate than
Honolulu, and the scenery is magnificent. I shouldn't mind going
down there myself for the rest of my days. It is a lovely spot."
So Kersdale on the joyous leper. He was not afraid of leprosy. He
said so himself, and that there wasn't one chance in a million for
him or any other white man to catch it, though he confessed
afterward that one of his school chums, Alfred Starter, had
contracted it, gone to Molokai, and there died.
"You know, in the old days," Kersdale explained, "there was no
certain test for leprosy. Anything unusual or abnormal was
sufficient to send a fellow to Molokai. The result was that dozens
were sent there who were no more lepers than you or I. But they
don't make that mistake now. The Board of Health tests are
infallible. The funny thing is that when the test was discovered
they immediately went down to Molokai and applied it, and they found
a number who were not lepers. These were immediately deported.
Happy to get away? They wailed harder at leaving the settlement
than when they left Honolulu to go to it. Some refused to leave,
and really had to be forced out. One of them even married a leper
woman in the last stages and then wrote pathetic letters to the
Board of Health, protesting against his expulsion on the ground that
no one was so well able as he to take care of his poor old wife."
"What is this infallible test?" I demanded.
"The bacteriological test. There is no getting away from it.
Doctor Hervey--he's our expert, you know--was the first man to apply
it here. He is a wizard. He knows more about leprosy than any
living man, and if a cure is ever discovered, he'll be that
discoverer. As for the test, it is very simple. They have
succeeded in isolating the bacillus leprae and studying it. They
know it now when they see it. All they do is to snip a bit of skin
from the suspect and subject it to the bacteriological test. A man
without any visible symptoms may be chock full of the leprosy
bacilli."
"Then you or I, for all we know," I suggested, "may be full of it
now."
Kersdale shrugged his shoulders and laughed.
"Who can say? It takes seven years for it to incubate. If you have
any doubts go and see Doctor Hervey. He'll just snip out a piece of
your skin and let you know in a jiffy."
Later on he introduced me to Dr. Hervey, who loaded me down with
Board of Health reports and pamphlets on the subject, and took me
out to Kalihi, the Honolulu receiving station, where suspects were
examined and confirmed lepers were held for deportation to Molokai.
These deportations occurred about once a month, when, the last good-
byes said, the lepers were marched on board the little steamer, the
Noeau, and carried down to the settlement.
One afternoon, writing letters at the club, Jack Kersdale dropped in
on me.
"Just the man I want to see," was his greeting. "I'll show you the
saddest aspect of the whole situation--the lepers wailing as they
depart for Molokai. The Noeau will be taking them on board in a few
minutes. But let me warn you not to let your feelings be harrowed.
Real as their grief is, they'd wail a whole sight harder a year
hence if the Board of Health tried to take them away from Molokai.
We've just time for a whiskey and soda. I've a carriage outside.
It won't take us five minutes to get down to the wharf."
To the wharf we drove. Some forty sad wretches, amid their mats,
blankets, and luggage of various sorts, were squatting on the
stringer piece. The Noeau had just arrived and was making fast to a
lighter that lay between her and the wharf. A Mr. McVeigh, the
superintendent of the settlement, was overseeing the embarkation,
and to him I was introduced, also to Dr. Georges, one of the Board
of Health physicians whom I had already met at Kalihi. The lepers
were a woebegone lot. The faces of the majority were hideous--too
horrible for me to describe. But here and there I noticed fairly
good-looking persons, with no apparent signs of the fell disease
upon them. One, I noticed, a little white girl, not more than
twelve, with blue eyes and golden hair. One cheek, however, showed
the leprous bloat. On my remarking on the sadness of her alien
situation among the brown-skinned afflicted ones, Doctor Georges
replied:-
"Oh, I don't know. It's a happy day in her life. She comes from
Kauai. Her father is a brute. And now that she has developed the
disease she is going to join her mother at the settlement. Her
mother was sent down three years ago--a very bad case."
"You can't always tell from appearances," Mr. McVeigh explained.
That man there, that big chap, who looks the pink of condition, with
nothing the matter with him, I happen to know has a perforating
ulcer in his foot and another in his shoulder-blade. Then there are
others--there, see that girl's hand, the one who is smoking the
cigarette. See her twisted fingers. That's the anaesthetic form.
It attacks the nerves. You could cut her fingers off with a dull
knife, or rub them off on a nutmeg-grater, and she would not
experience the slightest sensation."
"Yes, but that fine-looking woman, there," I persisted; "surely,
surely, there can't be anything the matter with her. She is too
glorious and gorgeous altogether."
"A sad case," Mr. McVeigh answered over his shoulder, already
turning away to walk down the wharf with Kersdale.
She was a beautiful woman, and she was pure Polynesian. From my
meagre knowledge of the race and its types I could not but conclude
that she had descended from old chief stock. She could not have
been more than twenty-three or four. Her lines and proportions were
magnificent, and she was just beginning to show the amplitude of the
women of her race.
"It was a blow to all of us," Dr. Georges volunteered. "She gave
herself up voluntarily, too. No one suspected. But somehow she had
contracted the disease. It broke us all up, I assure you. We've
kept it out of the papers, though. Nobody but us and her family
knows what has become of her. In fact, if you were to ask any man
in Honolulu, he'd tell you it was his impression that she was
somewhere in Europe. It was at her request that we've been so quiet
about it. Poor girl, she has a lot of pride."
"But who is she?" I asked. "Certainly, from the way you talk about
her, she must be somebody."
"Did you ever hear of Lucy Mokunui?" he asked.
"Lucy Mokunui?" I repeated, haunted by some familiar association. I
shook my head. "It seems to me I've heard the name, but I've
forgotten it."
"Never heard of Lucy Mokunui! The Hawaiian nightingale! I beg your
pardon. Of course you are a malahini, {1} and could not be expected
to know. Well, Lucy Mokunui was the best beloved of Honolulu--of
all Hawaii, for that matter."
"You say WAS," I interrupted.
"And I mean it. She is finished." He shrugged his shoulders
pityingly. "A dozen haoles--I beg your pardon, white men--have lost
their hearts to her at one time or another. And I'm not counting in
the ruck. The dozen I refer to were haoles of position and
prominence."
"She could have married the son of the Chief Justice if she'd wanted
to. You think she's beautiful, eh? But you should hear her sing.
Finest native woman singer in Hawaii Nei. Her throat is pure silver
and melted sunshine. We adored her. She toured America first with
the Royal Hawaiian Band. After that she made two more trips on her
own--concert work."
"Oh!" I cried. "I remember now. I heard her two years ago at the
Boston Symphony. So that is she. I recognize her now."
I was oppressed by a heavy sadness. Life was a futile thing at
best. A short two years and this magnificent creature, at the
summit of her magnificent success, was one of the leper squad
awaiting deportation to Molokai. Henley's lines came into my mind:-
"The poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers;
Life is, I think, a blunder and a shame."
I recoiled from my own future. If this awful fate fell to Lucy
Mokunui, what might my lot not be?--or anybody's lot? I was
thoroughly aware that in life we are in the midst of death--but to
be in the midst of living death, to die and not be dead, to be one
of that draft of creatures that once were men, aye, and women, like
Lucy Mokunui, the epitome of all Polynesian charms, an artist as
well, and well beloved of men -. I am afraid I must have betrayed
my perturbation, for Doctor Georges hastened to assure me that they
were very happy down in the settlement.
It was all too inconceivably monstrous. I could not bear to look at
her. A short distance away, behind a stretched rope guarded by a
policeman, were the lepers' relatives and friends. They were not
allowed to come near. There were no last embraces, no kisses of
farewell. They called back and forth to one another--last messages,
last words of love, last reiterated instructions. And those behind
the rope looked with terrible intensity. It was the last time they
would behold the faces of their loved ones, for they were the living
dead, being carted away in the funeral ship to the graveyard of
Molokai.
Doctor Georges gave the command, and the unhappy wretches dragged
themselves to their feet and under their burdens of luggage began to
stagger across the lighter and aboard the steamer. It was the
funeral procession. At once the wailing started from those behind
the rope. It was blood-curdling; it was heart-rending. I never
heard such woe, and I hope never to again. Kersdale and McVeigh
were still at the other end of the wharf, talking earnestly--
politics, of course, for both were head-over-heels in that
particular game. When Lucy Mokunui passed me, I stole a look at
her. She WAS beautiful. She was beautiful by our standards, as
well--one of those rare blossoms that occur but once in generations.
And she, of all women, was doomed to Molokai. She straight on
board, and aft on the open deck where the lepers huddled by the
rail, wailing now, to their dear ones on shore.
The lines were cast off, and the Noeau began to move away from the
wharf. The wailing increased. Such grief and despair! I was just
resolving that never again would I be a witness to the sailing of
the Noeau, when McVeigh and Kersdale returned. The latter's eyes
were sparkling, and his lips could not quite hide the smile of
delight that was his. Evidently the politics they had talked had
been satisfactory. The rope had been flung aside, and the lamenting
relatives now crowded the stringer piece on either side of us.
"That's her mother," Doctor Georges whispered, indicating an old
woman next to me, who was rocking back and forth and gazing at the
steamer rail out of tear-blinded eyes. I noticed that Lucy Mokunui
was also wailing. She stopped abruptly and gazed at Kersdale. Then
she stretched forth her arms in that adorable, sensuous way that
Olga Nethersole has of embracing an audience. And with arms
outspread, she cried:
"Good-bye, Jack! Good-bye!"
He heard the cry, and looked. Never was a man overtaken by more
crushing fear. He reeled on the stringer piece, his face went white
to the roots of his hair, and he seemed to shrink and wither away
inside his clothes. He threw up his hands and groaned, "My God! My
God!" Then he controlled himself by a great effort.
"Good-bye, Lucy! Good-bye!" he called.
And he stood there on the wharf, waving his hands to her till the
Noeau was clear away and the faces lining her after-rail were vague
and indistinct.
"I thought you knew," said McVeigh, who had been regarding him
curiously. "You, of all men, should have known. I thought that was
why you were here."
"I know now," Kersdale answered with immense gravity. "Where's the
carriage?"
He walked rapidly--half-ran--to it. I had to half-run myself to
keep up with him.
"Drive to Doctor Hervey's," he told the driver. "Drive as fast as
you can."
He sank down in a seat, panting and gasping. The pallor of his face
had increased. His lips were compressed and the sweat was standing
out on his forehead and upper lip. He seemed in some horrible
agony.
"For God's sake, Martin, make those horses go!" he broke out
suddenly. "Lay the whip into them!--do you hear?--lay the whip into
them!"
"They'll break, sir," the driver remonstrated.
"Let them break," Kersdale answered. "I'll pay your fine and square
you with the police. Put it to them. That's right. Faster!
Faster!"
"And I never knew, I never knew," he muttered, sinking back in the
seat and with trembling hands wiping the sweat away.
The carriage was bouncing, swaying and lurching around corners at
such a wild pace as to make conversation impossible. Besides, there
was nothing to say. But I could hear him muttering over and over,
"And I never knew. I never knew."
ALOHA OE
Never are there such departures as from the dock at Honolulu. The
great transport lay with steam up, ready to pull out. A thousand
persons were on her decks; five thousand stood on the wharf. Up and
down the long gangway passed native princes and princesses, sugar
kings and the high officials of the Territory. Beyond, in long
lines, kept in order by the native police, were the carriages and
motor-cars of the Honolulu aristocracy. On the wharf the Royal
Hawaiian Band played "Aloha Oe," and when it finished, a stringed
orchestra of native musicians on board the transport took up the
same sobbing strains, the native woman singer's voice rising
birdlike above the instruments and the hubbub of departure. It was
a silver reed, sounding its clear, unmistakable note in the great
diapason of farewell.
Forward, on the lower deck, the rail was lined six deep with khaki-
clad young boys, whose bronzed faces told of three years'
campaigning under the sun. But the farewell was not for them. Nor
was it for the white-clad captain on the lofty bridge, remote as the
stars, gazing down upon the tumult beneath him. Nor was the
farewell for the young officers farther aft, returning from the
Philippines, nor for the white-faced, climate-ravaged women by their
sides. Just aft the gangway, on the promenade deck, stood a score
of United States Senators with their wives and daughters--the
Senatorial junketing party that for a month had been dined and
wined, surfeited with statistics and dragged up volcanic hill and
down lava dale to behold the glories and resources of Hawaii. It
was for the junketing party that the transport had called in at
Honolulu, and it was to the junketing party that Honolulu was saying
good-bye.
The Senators were garlanded and bedecked with flowers. Senator
Jeremy Sambrooke's stout neck and portly bosom were burdened with a
dozen wreaths. Out of this mass of bloom and blossom projected his
head and the greater portion of his freshly sunburned and perspiring
face. He thought the flowers an abomination, and as he looked out
over the multitude on the wharf it was with a statistical eye that
saw none of the beauty, but that peered into the labour power, the
factories, the railroads, and the plantations that lay back of the
multitude and which the multitude expressed. He saw resources and
thought development, and he was too busy with dreams of material
achievement and empire to notice his daughter at his side, talking
with a young fellow in a natty summer suit and straw hat, whose
eager eyes seemed only for her and never left her face. Had Senator
Jeremy had eyes for his daughter, he would have seen that, in place
of the young girl of fifteen he had brought to Hawaii a short month
before, he was now taking away with him a woman.
Hawaii has a ripening climate, and Dorothy Sambrooke had been
exposed to it under exceptionally ripening circumstances. Slender,
pale, with blue eyes a trifle tired from poring over the pages of
books and trying to muddle into an understanding of life--such she
had been the month before. But now the eyes were warm instead of
tired, the cheeks were touched with the sun, and the body gave the
first hint and promise of swelling lines. During that month she had
left books alone, for she had found greater joy in reading from the
book of life. She had ridden horses, climbed volcanoes, and learned
surf swimming. The tropics had entered into her blood, and she was
aglow with the warmth and colour and sunshine. And for a month she
had been in the company of a man--Stephen Knight, athlete, surf-
board rider, a bronzed god of the sea who bitted the crashing
breakers, leaped upon their backs, and rode them in to shore.
Dorothy Sambrooke was unaware of the change. Her consciousness was
still that of a young girl, and she was surprised and troubled by
Steve's conduct in this hour of saying good-bye. She had looked
upon him as her playfellow, and for the month he had been her
playfellow; but now he was not parting like a playfellow. He talked
excitedly and disconnectedly, or was silent, by fits and starts.
Sometimes he did not hear what she was saying, or if he did, failed
to respond in his wonted manner. She was perturbed by the way he
looked at her. She had not known before that he had such blazing
eyes. There was something in his eyes that was terrifying. She
could not face it, and her own eyes continually drooped before it.
Yet there was something alluring about it, as well, and she
continually returned to catch a glimpse of that blazing, imperious,
yearning something that she had never seen in human eyes before.
And she was herself strangely bewildered and excited.
The transport's huge whistle blew a deafening blast, and the flower-
crowned multitude surged closer to the side of the dock. Dorothy
Sambrooke's fingers were pressed to her ears; and as she made a moue
of distaste at the outrage of sound, she noticed again the
imperious, yearning blaze in Steve's eyes. He was not looking at
her, but at her ears, delicately pink and transparent in the
slanting rays of the afternoon sun. Curious and fascinated, she
gazed at that strange something in his eyes until he saw that he had
been caught. She saw his cheeks flush darkly and heard him utter
inarticulately. He was embarrassed, and she was aware of
embarrassment herself. Stewards were going about nervously begging
shore-going persons to be gone. Steve put out his hand. When she
felt the grip of the fingers that had gripped hers a thousand times
on surf-boards and lava slopes, she heard the words of the song with
a new understanding as they sobbed in the Hawaiian woman's silver
throat:
"Ka halia ko aloha kai hiki mai,
Ke hone ae nei i ku'u manawa,
O oe no kan aloha
A loko e hana nei."
Steve had taught her air and words and meaning--so she had thought,
till this instant; and in this instant of the last finger clasp and
warm contact of palms she divined for the first time the real
meaning of the song. She scarcely saw him go, nor could she note
him on the crowded gangway, for she was deep in a memory maze,
living over the four weeks just past, rereading events in the light
of revelation.
When the Senatorial party had landed, Steve had been one of the
committee of entertainment. It was he who had given them their
first exhibition of surf riding, out at Waikiki Beach, paddling his
narrow board seaward until he became a disappearing speck, and then,
suddenly reappearing, rising like a sea-god from out of the welter
of spume and churning white--rising swiftly higher and higher,
shoulders and chest and loins and limbs, until he stood poised on
the smoking crest of a mighty, mile-long billow, his feet buried in
the flying foam, hurling beach-ward with the speed of an express
train and stepping calmly ashore at their astounded feet. That had
been her first glimpse of Steve. He had been the youngest man on
the committee, a youth, himself, of twenty. He had not entertained
by speechmaking, nor had he shone decoratively at receptions. It
was in the breakers at Waikiki, in the wild cattle drive on Manna
Kea, and in the breaking yard of the Haleakala Ranch that he had
performed his share of the entertaining.
She had not cared for the interminable statistics and eternal
speechmaking of the other members of the committee. Neither had
Steve. And it was with Steve that she had stolen away from the
open-air feast at Hamakua, and from Abe Louisson, the coffee
planter, who had talked coffee, coffee, nothing but coffee, for two
mortal hours. It was then, as they rode among the tree ferns, that
Steve had taught her the words of "Aloha Oe," the song that had been
sung to the visiting Senators at every village, ranch, and
plantation departure.
Steve and she had been much together from the first. He had been
her playfellow. She had taken possession of him while her father
had been occupied in taking possession of the statistics of the
island territory. She was too gentle to tyrannize over her
playfellow, yet she had ruled him abjectly, except when in canoe, or
on horse or surf-board, at which times he had taken charge and she
had rendered obedience. And now, with this last singing of the
song, as the lines were cast off and the big transport began backing
slowly out from the dock, she knew that Steve was something more to
her than playfellow.
Five thousand voices were singing "Aloha Oe,"--"MY LOVE BE WITH YOU
TILL WE MEET AGAIN,"--and in that first moment of known love she
realized that she and Steve were being torn apart. When would they
ever meet again? He had taught her those words himself. She
remembered listening as he sang them over and over under the hau
tree at Waikiki. Had it been prophecy? And she had admired his
singing, had told him that he sang with such expression. She
laughed aloud, hysterically, at the recollection. With such
expression!--when he had been pouring his heart out in his voice.
She knew now, and it was too late. Why had he not spoken? Then she
realized that girls of her age did not marry. But girls of her age
did marry--in Hawaii--was her instant thought. Hawaii had ripened
her--Hawaii, where flesh is golden and where all women are ripe and
sun-kissed.
Vainly she scanned the packed multitude on the dock. What had
become of him? She felt she could pay any price for one more
glimpse of him, and she almost hoped that some mortal sickness would
strike the lonely captain on the bridge and delay departure. For
the first time in her life she looked at her father with a
calculating eye, and as she did she noted with newborn fear the
lines of will and determination. It would be terrible to oppose
him. And what chance would she have in such a struggle? But why
had Steve not spoken? Now it was too late. Why had he not spoken
under the hau tree at Waikiki?
And then, with a great sinking of the heart, it came to her that she
knew why. What was it she had heard one day? Oh, yes, it was at
Mrs. Stanton's tea, that afternoon when the ladies of the
"Missionary Crowd" had entertained the ladies of the Senatorial
party. It was Mrs. Hodgkins, the tall blonde woman, who had asked
the question. The scene came back to her vividly--the broad lanai,
the tropic flowers, the noiseless Asiatic attendants, the hum of the
voices of the many women and the question Mrs. Hodgkins had asked in
the group next to her. Mrs. Hodgkins had been away on the mainland
for years, and was evidently inquiring after old island friends of
her maiden days. "What has become of Susie Maydwell?" was the
question she had asked. "Oh, we never see her any more; she married
Willie Kupele," another island woman answered. And Senator
Behrend's wife laughed and wanted to know why matrimony had affected
Susie Maydwell's friendships.
"Hapa-haole," was the answer; "he was a half-caste, you know, and we
of the Islands have to think about our children."
Dorothy turned to her father, resolved to put it to the test.
"Papa, if Steve ever comes to the United States, mayn't he come and
see us some time?"
"Who? Steve?"
"Yes, Stephen Knight--you know him. You said good-bye to him not
five minutes ago. Mayn't he, if he happens to be in the United
States some time, come and see us?"
"Certainly not," Jeremy Sambrooke answered shortly. "Stephen Knight
is a hapa-haole and you know what that means."
"Oh," Dorothy said faintly, while she felt a numb despair creep into
her heart.
Steve was not a hapa-haole--she knew that; but she did not know that
a quarter-strain of tropic sunshine streamed in his veins, and she
knew that that was sufficient to put him outside the marriage pale.
It was a strange world. There was the Honourable A. S. Cleghorn,
who had married a dusky princess of the Kamehameha blood, yet men
considered it an honour to know him, and the most exclusive women of
the ultra-exclusive "Missionary Crowd" were to be seen at his
afternoon teas. And there was Steve. No one had disapproved of his
teaching her to ride a surf-board, nor of his leading her by the
hand through the perilous places of the crater of Kilauea. He could
have dinner with her and her father, dance with her, and be a member
of the entertainment committee; but because there was tropic
sunshine in his veins he could not marry her.
And he didn't show it. One had to be told to know. And he was so
good-looking. The picture of him limned itself on her inner vision,
and before she was aware she was pleasuring in the memory of the
grace of his magnificent body, of his splendid shoulders, of the
power in him that tossed her lightly on a horse, bore her safely
through the thundering breakers, or towed her at the end of an
alpenstock up the stern lava crest of the House of the Sun. There
was something subtler and mysterious that she remembered, and that
she was even then just beginning to understand--the aura of the male
creature that is man, all man, masculine man. She came to herself
with a shock of shame at the thoughts she had been thinking. Her
cheeks were dyed with the hot blood which quickly receded and left
them pale at the thought that she would never see him again. The
stem of the transport was already out in the stream, and the
promenade deck was passing abreast of the end of the dock.
"There's Steve now," her father said. "Wave good-bye to him,
Dorothy."
Steve was looking up at her with eager eyes, and he saw in her face
what he had not seen before. By the rush of gladness into his own
face she knew that he knew. The air was throbbing with the song -
My love to you.
My love be with you till we meet again.
There was no need for speech to tell their story. About her,
passengers were flinging their garlands to their friends on the
dock. Steve held up his hands and his eyes pleaded. She slipped
her own garland over her head, but it had become entangled in the
string of Oriental pearls that Mervin, an elderly sugar king, had
placed around her neck when he drove her and her father down to the
Back to Full Books
|