On the Makaloa Mat and Island Tales
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many more of their own retainers--a royal progress. It was
Princess Lihue's progress, of course, she flaming and passing as we
all knew with the dreadful tuberculosis; but with her were her
nephews, Prince Lilolilo, hailed everywhere as the next king, and
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his brothers, Prince Kahekili and Prince Kamalau. And with the
Princess was Ella Higginsworth, who rightly claimed higher chief
blood lines through the Kauai descent than belonged to the reigning
family, and Dora Niles, and Emily Lowcroft, and . . . oh, why
enumerate them all! Ella Higginsworth and I had been room-mates at
the Royal Chief School. And there was a great resting time for an
hour--no luau, for the luau awaited them at the Parkers'--but beer
and stronger drinks for the men, and lemonade, and oranges, and
refreshing watermelon for the women.
"And it was arms around with Ella Higginsworth and me, and the
Princess, who remembered me, and all the other girls and women, and
Ella spoke to the Princess, and the Princess herself invited me to
the progress, joining them at Mana whence they would depart two
days later. And I was mad, mad with it all--I, from a twelvemonth
of imprisonment at grey Nahala. And I was nineteen yet, just
turning twenty within the week.
"Oh, I had not thought of what was to happen. So occupied was I
with the women that I did not see Lilolilo, except at a distance,
bulking large and tall above the other men. But I had never been
on a progress. I had seen them entertained at Kilohana and Mana,
but I had been too young to be invited along, and after that it had
been school and marriage. I knew what it would be like--two weeks
of paradise, and little enough for another twelve months at Nahala.
"And I asked Uncle John to lend me a horse, which meant three
horses of course--one mounted cowboy and a pack horse to accompany
me. No roads then. No automobiles. And the horse for myself! It
was Hilo. You don't remember him. You were away at school then,
and before you came home, the following year, he'd broken his back
and his rider's neck wild-cattle-roping up Mauna Kea. You heard
about it--that young American naval officer."
"Lieutenant Bowsfield," Martha nodded.
"But Hilo! I was the first woman on his back. He was a three-
year-old, almost a four-year, and just broken. So black and in
such a vigour of coat that the high lights on him clad him in
shimmering silver. He was the biggest riding animal on the ranch,
descended from the King's Sparklingdow with a range mare for dam,
and roped wild only two weeks before. I never have seen so
beautiful a horse. He had the round, deep-chested, big-hearted,
well-coupled body of the ideal mountain pony, and his head and neck
were true thoroughbred, slender, yet full, with lovely alert ears
not too small to be vicious nor too large to be stubborn mulish.
And his legs and feet were lovely too, unblemished, sure and firm,
with long springy pasterns that made him a wonder of ease under the
saddle."
"I remember hearing Prince Lilolilo tell Uncle John that you were
the best woman rider in all Hawaii," Martha interrupted to say.
"That was two years afterward when I was back from school and while
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you were still living at Nahala."
"Lilolilo said that!" Bella cried. Almost as with a blush, her
long, brown eyes were illumined, as she bridged the years to her
lover near half a century dead and dust. With the gentleness of
modesty so innate in the women of Hawaii, she covered her
spontaneous exposure of her heart with added panegyric of Hilo.
"Oh, when he ran with me up the long-grass slopes, and down the
long-grass slopes, it was like hurdling in a dream, for he cleared
the grass at every bound, leaping like a deer, a rabbit, or a fox-
terrier--you know how they do. And cut up, and prance, and high
life! He was a mount for a general, for a Napoleon or a Kitchener.
And he had, not a wicked eye, but, oh, such a roguish eye,
intelligent and looking as if it cherished a joke behind and wanted
to laugh or to perpetrate it. And I asked Uncle John for Hilo.
And Uncle John looked at me, and I looked at him; and, though he
did not say it, I knew he was FEELING 'Dear Bella,' and I knew,
somewhere in his seeing of me, was all his vision of the Princess
Naomi. And Uncle John said yes. That is how it happened.
"But he insisted that I should try Hilo out--myself, rather--at
private rehearsal. He was a handful, a glorious handful. But not
vicious, not malicious. He got away from me over and over again,
but I never let him know. I was not afraid, and that helped me
keep always a feel of him that prevented him from thinking that he
was even a jump ahead of me.
"I have often wondered if Uncle John dreamed of what possibly might
happen. I know I had no thought of it myself, that day I rode
across and joined the Princess at Mana. Never was there such
festal time. You know the grand way the old Parkers had of
entertaining. The pig-sticking and wild-cattle-shooting, the
horse-breaking and the branding. The servants' quarters
overflowing. Parker cowboys in from everywhere. And all the girls
from Waimea up, and the girls from Waipio, and Honokaa, and
Paauilo--I can see them yet, sitting in long rows on top the stone
walls of the breaking pen and making leis" (flower garlands) "for
their cowboy lovers. And the nights, the perfumed nights, the
chanting of the meles and the dancing of the hulas, and the big
Mana grounds with lovers everywhere strolling two by two under the
trees.
"And the Prince . . . " Bella paused, and for a long minute her
small fine teeth, still perfect, showed deep in her underlip as she
sought and won control and sent her gaze vacantly out across the
far blue horizon. As she relaxed, her eyes came back to her
sister.
"He was a prince, Martha. You saw him at Kilohana before . . .
after you came home from seminary. He filled the eyes of any
woman, yes, and of any man. Twenty-five he was, in all-glorious
ripeness of man, great and princely in body as he was great and
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princely in spirit. No matter how wild the fun, how reckless mad
the sport, he never seemed to forget that he was royal, and that
all his forebears had been high chiefs even to that first one they
sang in the genealogies, who had navigated his double-canoes to
Tahiti and Raiatea and back again. He was gracious, sweet, kindly
comradely, all friendliness--and severe, and stern, and harsh, if
he were crossed too grievously. It is hard to express what I mean.
He was all man, man, man, and he was all prince, with a strain of
the merry boy in him, and the iron in him that would have made him
"I can see him yet, as I saw him that first day and touched his
hand and talked with him . . . few words and bashful, and anything
but a year-long married woman to a grey haole at grey Nahala. Half
a century ago it was, that meeting--you remember how our young men
then dressed in white shoes and trousers, white silk shirts, with
slashed around the middle the gorgeously colourful Spanish sashes--
and for half a century that picture of him has not faded in my
heart. He was the centre of a group on the lawn, and I was being
brought by Ella Higginsworth to be presented. The Princess Lihue
had just called some teasing chaff to her which had made her halt
to respond and left me halted a pace in front of her.
"His glance chanced to light on me, alone there, perturbed,
embarrassed. Oh, how I see him!--his head thrown back a little,
with that high, bright, imperious, and utterly care-free poise that
was so usual of him. Our eyes met. His head bent forward, or
straightened to me, I don't know what happened. Did he command?
Did I obey? I do not know. I know only that I was good to look
upon, crowned with fragrant maile, clad in Princess Naomi's
wonderful holoku loaned me by Uncle John from his taboo room; and I
know that I advanced alone to him across the Mana lawn, and that he
stepped forth from those about him to meet me half-way. We came to
each other across the grass, unattended, as if we were coming to
each other across our lives.
"--Was I very beautiful, Sister Martha, when I was young? I do not
know. I don't know. But in that moment, with all his beauty and
truly royal-manness crossing to me and penetrating to the heart of
me, I felt a sudden sense of beauty in myself--how shall I say? as
if in him and from him perfection were engendered and conjured
within myself.
"No word was spoken. But, oh, I know I raised my face in frank
answer to the thunder and trumpets of the message unspoken, and
that, had it been death for that one look and that one moment I
could not have refrained from the gift of myself that must have
been in my face and eyes, in the very body of me that breathed so
high.
"Was I beautiful, very beautiful, Martha, when I was nineteen, just
turning into twenty?"
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And Martha, three-score and four, looked upon Bella, three-score
and eight, and nodded genuine affirmation, and to herself added the
appreciation of the instant in what she beheld--Bella's neck, still
full and shapely, longer than the ordinary Hawaiian woman's neck, a
pillar that carried regally her high-cheeked, high-browed, high
chiefess face and head; Bella's hair, high-piled, intact, sparkling
the silver of the years, ringleted still and contrasting definitely
and sharply with her clean, slim, black brows and deep brown eyes.
And Martha's glance, in modest overwhelming of modesty by what she
saw, dropped down the splendid breast of her and generously true
lines of body to the feet, silken clad, high-heeled-slippered,
small, plump, with an almost Spanish arch and faultlessness of
instep.
"When one is young, the one young time!" Bella laughed. "Lilolilo
was a prince. I came to know his every feature and their every
phase . . . afterward, in our wonder days and nights by the singing
waters, by the slumber-drowsy surfs, and on the mountain ways. I
knew his fine, brave eyes, with their straight, black brows, the
nose of him that was assuredly a Kamehameha nose, and the last,
least, lovable curve of his mouth. There is no mouth more
beautiful than the Hawaiian, Martha.
"And his body. He was a king of athletes, from his wicked, wayward
hair to his ankles of bronzed steel. Just the other day I heard
one of the Wilder grandsons referred to as 'The Prince of Harvard.'
Mercy! What would they, what could they have called my Lilolilo
could they have matched him against this Wilder lad and all his
team at Harvard!"
Bella ceased and breathed deeply, the while she clasped her fine
small hands in her ample silken lap. But her pink fairness blushed
faintly through her skin and warmed her eyes as she relived her
prince-days.
"Well--you have guessed?" Bella said, with defiant shrug of
shoulders and a straight gaze into her sister's eyes. "We rode out
from gay Mana and continued the gay progress--down the lava trails
to Kiholo to the swimming and the fishing and the feasting and the
sleeping in the warm sand under the palms; and up to Puuwaawaa, and
more pig-sticking, and roping and driving, and wild mutton from the
upper pasture-lands; and on through Kona, now mauka"
(mountainward), "now down to the King's palace at Kailua, and to
the swimming at Keauhou, and to Kealakekua Bay, and Napoopoo and
Honaunau. And everywhere the people turning out, in their hands
gifts of flowers, and fruit, and fish, and pig, in their hearts
love and song, their heads bowed in obeisance to the royal ones
while their lips ejaculated exclamations of amazement or chanted
meles of old and unforgotten days.
"What would you, Sister Martha? You know what we Hawaiians are.
You know what we were half a hundred years ago. Lilolilo was
wonderful. I was reckless. Lilolilo of himself could make any
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woman reckless. I was twice reckless, for I had cold, grey Nahala
to spur me on. I knew. I had never a doubt. Never a hope.
Divorces in those days were undreamed. The wife of George Castner
could never be queen of Hawaii, even if Uncle Robert's prophesied
revolutions were delayed, and if Lilolilo himself became king. But
I never thought of the throne. What I wanted would have been the
queendom of being Lilolilo's wife and mate. But I made no mistake.
What was impossible was impossible, and I dreamed no false dream.
"It was the very atmosphere of love. And Lilolilo was a lover. I
was for ever crowned with leis by him, and he had his runners bring
me leis all the way from the rose-gardens of Mana--you remember
them; fifty miles across the lava and the ranges, dewy fresh as the
moment they were plucked, in their jewel-cases of banana bark;
yard-long they were, the tiny pink buds like threaded beads of
Neapolitan coral. And at the luaus" (feasts) the for ever never-
ending luaus, I must be seated on Lilolilo's Makaloa mat, the
Prince's mat, his alone and taboo to any lesser mortal save by his
own condescension and desire. And I must dip my fingers into his
own pa wai holoi" (finger-bowl) "where scented flower petals
floated in the warm water. Yes, and careless that all should see
his extended favour, I must dip into his pa paakai for my pinches
of red salt, and limu, and kukui nut and chili pepper; and into his
ipu kai" (fish sauce dish) "of kou wood that the great Kamehameha
<
br /> himself had eaten from on many a similar progress. And it was the
same for special delicacies that were for Lilolilo and the Princess
alone--for his nelu, and the ake, and the palu, and the alaala.
And his kahilis were waved over me, and his attendants were mine,
and he was mine; and from my flower-crowned hair to my happy feet I
was a woman loved."
Once again Bella's small teeth pressed into her underlip, as she
gazed vacantly seaward and won control of herself and her memories.
"It was on, and on, through all Kona, and all Kau, from Hoopuloa
and Kapua to Honuapo and Punaluu, a life-time of living compressed
into two short weeks. A flower blooms but once. That was my time
of bloom--Lilolilo beside me, myself on my wonderful Hilo, a queen,
not of Hawaii, but of Lilolilo and Love. He said I was a bubble of
colour and beauty on the black back of Leviathan; that I was a
fragile dewdrop on the smoking crest of a lava flow; that I was a
rainbow riding the thunder cloud . . . "
Bella paused for a moment.
"I shall tell you no more of what he said to me," she declared
gravely; "save that the things he said were fire of love and
essence of beauty, and that he composed hulas to me, and sang them
to me, before all, of nights under the stars as we lay on our mats
at the feasting; and I on the Makaloa mat of Lilolilo.
"And it was on to Kilauea--the dream so near its ending; and of
course we tossed into the pit of sea-surging lava our offerings to
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the Fire-Goddess of maile leis and of fish and hard poi wrapped
moist in the ti leaves. And we continued down through old Puna,
and feasted and danced and sang at Kohoualea and Kamaili and
Opihikao, and swam in the clear, sweet-water pools of Kalapana.
And in the end came to Hilo by the sea.
"It was the end. We had never spoken. It was the end recognized
and unmentioned. The yacht waited. We were days late. Honolulu
called, and the news was that the King had gone particularly
pupule" (insane), "that there were Catholic and Protestant
missionary plottings, and that trouble with France was brewing. As
they had landed at Kawaihae two weeks before with laughter and
flowers and song, so they departed from Hilo. It was a merry
parting, full of fun and frolic and a thousand last messages and