“That was two years afterward when I was back from school and while
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
15
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
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
16
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
a good and strong king of Hawaii had he come to the throne.
“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?”
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
17
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