Spoils of Eden
Page 1
THE
DAWN of HAWAII
SERIES
Book one
The Spoils of Eden
LINDA LEE CHAIKIN
MOODY PUBLISHERS
CHICAGO
© 2010 by
LINDA CHAIKIN
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version.
Editor: Paul Santhouse
Interior Design: Ragont Design
Cover Design: Studio Gearbox
Cover Image: girl: bigstockphoto.com; beach and trees: www.photos.com; fisherman, boat and other guy on the beach: istockphoto.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chaikin, L. L.
The spoils of Eden / Linda Lee Chaikin.
p. cm. — (The dawn of Hawaii series ; bk. 1)
ISBN 978-0-8024-3749-5
1. Missions to leprosy patients—Hawaii—Fiction.
2. Leprosy—Hospitals—Hawaii—Fiction. 3. Adoption—Fiction.
4. Hawaii—History—19th century—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.H2427S66 2010
813′.54—dc22
2010003493
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Contents
Historical Characters and Terms
Eden’s Family Tree
1. The Board’s Decision
2. Cousin Zachary … and Silas
3. Ambrose
4. Rafe Easton
5. Firestorm
6. Dr. Jerome Derrington
7. Serpents in Paradise
8. Two Brothers
9. Noelani’s Warning
10. A Ring for Three Days
11. Whose Flag Do You Salute?
12. News from a Far Country
13. Ten for Dinner
14. Rat Alley
15. Rebecca’s Letter
16. The Disclosure!
17. A Call to Tamarind House
18. Seeking the Open Door
19. Candace’s Sacrifice
20. Suspicion!
21. Hanalei Kona Plantation
22. Love’s Challenge
23. All Things Considered
24. Aloha
HISTORICAL CHARACTERS AND TERMS
Many of the characters who appear in The Spoils of Eden are not fictional. Woven into the story of the Derrington and Easton families are real people who played an important role in the history of nineteenth-century Hawaii. The following lists include several of the more important characters and terms from Hawaii’s colorful past. (Not listed are historical locations, buildings, and objects.)
CHARACTERS
Claus Spreckel — the sugar king from California.
Hiram Bingham — one of the first missionaries to Hawaii who helped create the Hawaiian alphabet, which was used to translate the Bible into Hawaiian.
John L. Stevens — American Foreign Minister (political) to Hawaii.
Kamehameha I monarchy — Kamehameha the Great conquered the other independent island kingdoms around him to form one kingdom, which he named after his island, Hawaii.
King David Kalakaua — who ruled over Hawaii for seventeen years until his death in 1891; the second elected monarch and the first to visit the United States.
Lorrin Thurston — member of the Hawaiian league and a grandson of pioneer missionary Asa Thurston.
Priest Damian — a Belgian priest who was ordained in Honolulu and assigned at his own request to the leper colony on Molokai in 1873, where he died in 1889 after contracting the disease.
Queen Liliuokalani — the last reigning monarch of the kingdom of Hawaii, who was deposed in 1893; a musician and songwriter, she wrote Hawaii’s most famous song, “Aloha Oe.”
Walter Murray Gibson — King Kalakaua’s controversial prime minister, who was eventually run out of Hawaii and died on his way to San Francisco.
Queen Emma Kaleleonalani — who in the 1870s had a cousin who was a leper at Molokai.
TERMS:
alii — chief, princely
aloha — love, hello, good-bye
auwe — an expression of lament; alas!
haole — foreigner, especially white person; Caucasian
hapa-haole — person of mixed race; Hawaiian-Caucasian
hoolaulei — festive celebration
kahu — caregiver or nurse
kahuna — sorcerer or priest of the ancient native religion
kokua — helper; a person who would live with and assist a leper
lanai — porch, terrace, veranda
luna — overseer
makua — parent or any relative of ones parents
muumuu — gown, Mother Hubbard gown
Pake — Chinese
wahine — woman
Derrington Family Free (Fictional Characters)
Easton Family Free (Fictional Characters)
Chapter One
The Board’s Decision
Honolulu, Hawaii
June 1891
Sunlight filtered through leafy palms as Eden Derrington walked the path to Kalihi Hospital. Birdsong filled the trees while crimson and lime hummingbirds fed among deep-throated flowers. Nearby, the white sand glistened as waves gently stroked the shore. Small ivory clouds moved lazily across the powder-blue sky … though an ominous sense of trouble shadowed the tropical morning. While appreciating the beauty around her, Eden considered the darkness that lay ahead.
Somewhere ahead a bird shrieked in unexpected fright, reminding her of the presence of evil. Once, in an even more glorious garden than the tropics, evil had brought spiritual and physical ruin to its inhabitants.
As Eden visualized Satan entering Paradise as a serpent, she quickened her pace through a dusky grove of palms and came into the sunlight. Father God, how beautiful that garden must have been! For even now, with the curse of thorns, thistles, death, and decay, the beauty of Your creation still remains.
Later that morning at Kalihi Hospital, Eden slipped unseen from the Hawaii Board of Health meeting and quickened her steps down the hall. She could hear the doctors’ muffled voices in continued discussion as she approached the sunny waiting room near the front of the hospital. Wearing an ankle-length, gray cotton dress overlaid with a traditional nurses white pinafore emblazoned with a red cross, she stepped outdoors and hurried down the steps. In her bag were official documents, signed by the Board, and she was determined to present them at Hawaiiana Plantation as the Board had charged her.
Eden’s dark, winged brows came together. The two influential doctors who had arrived late for the meeting worried her. Entering somewhat distracted, they soon realized their colleagues had already decided the matter at hand. At first they seemed amenable to the majority decision, but looking toward her, they’d hesitated. The younger doctor had drummed his fingers on the desk with disapproval, while the older gentleman kept sliding his spectacles up and down the narrow bridge of his nose.
Eden had the distinct impression the esteemed doctors thought her too young. If they had only known she’d once been engaged to the man the Board was making an inquiry about, they certainly would not have
entrusted her with this task.
The tropic sun now blazed from a clear sky. She breathed in the fresh trade wind that kept the kingly palms swaying. It cooled her face and ruffled her wavy dark hair, partially pinned up off her neck in Victorian fashion and graced with a perky white nurse’s cap.
Hurrying past the familiar shrubs of massive red and yellow hibiscus, her senses were filled with the heady fragrance given off by the clusters of pink flowers on the jacaranda trees. Insects buzzed and tiny finches twittered from the branches. Together they wove a chorus of praise to their Creator.
The hospital’s flower bed, ablaze with color, reminded her of a Fourth of July celebration in the States. No, she scolded herself. Don’t even think about independence right now. Was there not enough to concern her already without more discord between her and Rafe Easton, the ambitious young man shed so recently been engaged to marry?
The issue of independence hovered in her mind. Grandfather Ainsworth Derrington was soon to return from Washington D.C. Upon his arrival she would be called to account for her continued support of the Hawaiian queen. Grandfather was a firm annexationist, and joining other prominent sugar growers in Hawaii, he had been meeting with sympathetic members of the U.S. Senate hoping to garner support for making the Hawaiian islands a territory of the United States. Cousin Zachary Derrington, who ran Great-aunt Nora’s newspaper, the Derrington Gazette, had been castigated in public for writing in favor of Queen Liliuokalani.
What if that incident were only the beginning? Where the discord would end was anyone’s guess. Matters were coming to a climax, and it wasn’t likely to end without bloodshed. Already there were wounded hearts, broken friendships … and broken romances. She glanced at the empty ring finger of her left hand.
Nearing the road she paused, lifting a hand to shield her view. Yes, he was there. Ling Li, the Chinese driver of a horse-drawn hackney, was parked beneath some palms, waiting. Ling was a well-known driver who catered to the Kalihi staff. Eden always tipped him well, knowing there were ten youngsters in his family hut at Kea Lani, the Derrington family sugar plantation. Today, however, she was going to Hawaiiana Plantation to meet with Rafe Easton about Kip, the baby boy he was planning to adopt.
As she approached Ling’s hackney, a voice called out. “Eden, wait!”
Recognizing the voice of Lana Stanhope, the chief nurse in the leprosy research department—and also her aunt—she tensed, suspecting the worst. The two influential doctors must have changed the Board’s decision. Distressed, she clutched her bag and turned.
Aunt Lana had arrived from San Francisco some months ago, after resigning her head teaching post on tropical diseases at the nursing school where Eden had graduated. When Lana, after much prayer and heart searching, accepted the position of working with Dr. Bolton in his quest to control the spread of leprosy in the islands, Eden had greeted the decision with joyous satisfaction. For, while her aunt would be working with Dr. Bolton, Eden, hired as her assistant, would be furthering her own knowledge as well.
Matters were coming together so well, Eden had thought at the time, until the man she loved, Rafe Easton, threw down the gauntlet in frustration. Was she to become his beloved wife and mother of their children, or risk her life as a nurse in the infamous Molokai leper colony?
Eden was dismayed. She had quietly planned during her nursing studies to work at her father’s side when he returned from his world travels researching a cure for leprosy. Her beloved father, Dr. Jerome Derrington, was on extended leave from his staff position at Kalihi. The Hawaiian king, Kalakaua, had generously sponsored her father’s travels, but after Kalakaua’s death, the sponsorship revenue had dried up. Now the king’s sister, Liliuokalani, was on the throne, though it was doubtful news of this had reached Dr. Jerome.
Rafe was right about one thing—she could not fulfill the roles of two women. Rafe was not a doctor, and he would not be living on Molokai. His ambitions lay elsewhere. She knew she should either follow his lead in marriage or remain single, and so she and Rafe had mutually agreed to end their engagement. A smile graced her lips as she remembered that warm, romantic evening when they’d walked the sands of Waikiki and he’d placed the diamond ring on her finger. The fact that it no longer sparkled there pained her. Confused at times, Eden struggled with her heart, and with her faith. A day did not go by without her asking God for guidance. There were times when she could not sleep at night for fear of losing the one man she had loved and wanted since she was a young girl. And there the conflict stood, unyielding; and while they knew of their love for one another, the emotional tension between them remained.
Eden’s emotions churned as Aunt Lana hurried down the hospital steps. She should be the one to meet with Rafe over the Board’s decision. If she could not show her concern now, he might become convinced that her professed feelings for him were shallow. She must not allow him to believe that!
Lana Stanhope, now in her thirties, had remained unmarried after a bitter disappointment with Dr. Bolton many years earlier. Eden believed, or at least hoped, that the old love between them had not truly perished amid the struggles of life and might still emerge like a seed during springtime thaw. Perhaps she was a sentimentalist. Perhaps she wanted to believe this of Lana and Dr. Bolton because they alerted her to what might be awaiting her and Rafe. She longed for happy endings, but knew enough Scripture to know there can be no happy endings apart from yielding to God’s greater purposes. One could not sow seeds of willfulness and expect a harvest of purpose and peace. She also knew that a decision to obey God did not always bring a bountiful harvest in this short life, but sometimes awaited that hour when believers were rewarded at the bema seat of Christ.
Lana hurried toward her, carrying a small parcel. She was a tall, willowy woman, with thick honey-colored hair rolled up at the back of her neck. As she approached, Eden sympathetically noticed lines of fatigue at the corners of her hazel eyes.
“What a morning,” Lana moaned, pushing strands of hair back into place. “My mind’s in a whirl. This humidity is wilting me.” She thrust the small parcel, tied with string, into Eden’s hand.
“Since you’re going to Hawaiiana, bring this to Great-aunt Nora, will you? It’s her prescription from Dr. Bolton. She’ll be at Rafe’s, visiting with his mother.”
Eden stared at the parcel, then cast a glance toward the hospital. “Great-aunt Nora’s prescription? That’s all?”
“Yes. That’s all—for the moment. After you left, there was some discussion as to whether it was appropriate for you to represent them. Dr. Bolton won them over, however reluctantly. Eden, I don’t like the situation you’re facing. It might be wiser if I go as the Board’s representative. Rafe Easton will be angry about what’s happened and it’s best if you’re not associated with it.”
“Lana, please don’t. We’ve already been over this. I’ve explained to both you and Dr. Bolton how I must be the one to see Rafe about Kip. If I don’t go to explain, he’ll believe I don’t care. I need to handle this.” Though Eden kept her voice professionally calm, there was no way to fool Lana about her feelings for Rafe. The matter at hand was tearing her in two, and Lana knew only too well the signs of an injured heart—since she herself had carried one for years.
“I won’t let them down,” Eden assured her. She tightened one hand into a fist behind her back. They believed she lacked the professional fortitude to send a baby to the leper colony. Were they right? Could I really send Kip back to the leper colony?
“Of course you won’t let us down,” Lana said. “Dr. Bolton made it clear to them that you can be trusted. After all, if you’re willing to work with your father when he returns from India, you surely have the courage to follow through on this.”
Eden felt a prick. Her aunt’s boast might not be as correct as they both hoped.
When her father returned, Lana had said. More like if her father returned!
Her heart thumped with emotion. Yes, he would return to Honolulu, just as she had alway
s believed he would. How she had longed for and cherished those few letters he had sent from faraway places. Upon his return, she wanted Dr. Jerome Derrington to become in actuality what he was to her genetically. A father. Her father!
“You know, don’t you, that Rafe will insist on knowing who informed the Board that Kip came from the Molokai leper colony?” Eden said.
Lana shook her head with frustration. “I know. But you saw the message that arrived for Dr. Bolton. We both did.”
Yes, and shed written the words down. Even so, Rafe would not let the matter end there. Of that Eden was certain.
When Rafe’s merchant ship, the Minoa, had anchored in Honolulu last year after a two-year voyage to French Guiana, few knew there was something even more valuable than prized pineapple slips on board. A baby boy. Rafe had kept Kip alive by instructing the cook to prepare a canteen with the thumb from a leather glove tied at the opening, with a hole poked through it, so the baby could drink milk supplied by the ship’s goat. Once safe in Honolulu Rafe had allowed a story to circulate that baby Kip was his nephew.
At the time, Eden had been distraught over the new child and could not accept Rafe’s explanation. Later, asking for her avowed silence, Rafe secretly informed her Kip came from Molokai. Rafe had put in there to rendezvous with her father. Her father did not arrive for the meeting, however; a baby did. It was left abandoned on the beach.
Unable to walk away and leave the baby to the incoming tide, Rafe checked him all over for leprosy, saw no visible signs, and brought him aboard his vessel. Now Kip was like a son, and Rafe planned to adopt him. Yet, Kip posed a risk, and she must be the one to deliver the Board’s decision that Kip must be returned to … a fate so heartbreaking she could not bear the thought.
“All right then, Eden,” Lana was saying. “The matter about Rafe and Kip is in your hands. And remember,” she added, tapping the parcel, “make certain your great-aunt takes her prescription this time. The directions are inside. It’s just the regular dosages at morning and bedtime.”
One of the nurses came out from the hospital and called for Lana, saying that Dr. Bolton needed to see her. As her aunt hurried back to her duties, Eden walked to the hackney that would bring her to Hawaiiana … and her meeting with Rafe Easton.