The rattle and peal of fife and drum drove from every source the last
lingering doubt. Uhlrix was on the march, and the shadows of intrigue
or the uncertainty of authority bore no significance as to final
results. He had been tricked into landing, but once on shore nothing
short of annihilation could restrain an orderly ordering of events
that rose in the pathway of power or forestall the destiny an abused
confidence bespoke. The marines were there to do, not to quibble, and
the grim-visaged deeds of fate quickened and multiplied at the progress
of an unchallenged daring.
A dash and venture that fires the pride of men, no matter where or what
the occasion, had stood erect every soldier and possessed the officers
as never before. Jack’s bib and tucker seldom looked so tidy, and the
lieutenant’s spare and tender form wore neatly the spotless uniform
that marked his finished course at school. For the first time in all
their lives opportunity had given them a chance to swell and banter in
the eyes of foreign lassies.
From every door step Hawaii’s fairest came, carrying garlands of
flowers and tokens of delight; these boys off duty had been their
sweethearts, their hope since the days of Cook and the missionaries,
and now that they had come ashore, as true Hawaiians believed, on dress
parade and kindly show, the girls strove hard to outdo themselves in
extending even a heartier welcome than before. Soon those innocent
children had literally strewn the roadstead with emblems that
emanate from nowhere except the tropical seas: the boys relished the
fun, and many were the friendly side glances bestowed and stolen
greetings tendered; Jack Tar knew well his finish and cherished the
contemplation, regardless of higher consequences.
But for the rations he drew and the smiles they bestowed life had
seemed an empty thing to him. Not so with them. They sought his love in
earnest, resolving anew the neglected lesson that all things in course
of provision drive toward a common level, an unalterable consequence of
material change, the spiritual end in which necessity had wrought its
inevitable virtue.
Nor were the fathers and the mothers less friendly to a mistaken
intermingling of foreign sons and native daughters. They had been
taught by the advance guards of these blood-letting experts--strangely
effective, in view of its contrast with the tenets of their own
religion--that sacrifice and toil were cardinal virtues, and that the
simple and unostentatious lives their tradition taught them to live
were relics of barbarism fit only for the uninitiated; that the absence
of poverty in the land offered no excuse for the lack of individual
wealth; that the love for song and flowers and the inborn generosity
and hospitality of the people were effeminate and of no consequence in
the higher and better life that European civilization would engender.
Without the means of judging or an opportunity to compare and
overshadowed with the display shown or driven to the terms exacted
they, at last, like their invaders, through sheer force of continuity,
becoming dead to all civic virtue--the individual waxed drunk with
blind appetite.
The clouds rolled high above their heads and from content within they
conjured a freedom illy spoken in the language of reality everywhere
around. The flowers they strew fought the elements for existence; the
song bird in the tree top defended his vantage point; the very ground
on which they stood had for ages struggled with the forces of nature
to retain its place: should man alone be favored with exemption? Only
their misconception flattered the belief, for behind the personality,
the entity they knew, might reasonably have trusted, lay the state,
broader in its conception, less tolerant of the individual and more
dependent upon community, supreme in authority and ready to destroy if
destruction be meet.
Aokahameha, their only hope and recognized leader, remained no less
oblivious to the storm that hung low upon the land. He had spent his
energies in trying to convince the queen’s assemblage that no danger
threatened, but somehow his words seemed fraught with misconception;
Liliuokolani hesitated between doubt and fear until desperation drove
her into a concession that stung Gutenborj to the quick.
“I am helpless: what would you, my grateful subjects?” asked she, weary
with endeavor.
“Promulgate the constitution,” replied the planter king, with set jaws
and determined look.
“Where is it?” demanded the queen, wholly conscious of somebody’s
blundering attitude, whether official or supporter.
They looked from one to another, in amazement and with chagrin. In
all their patriotic contentions nobody but Bender had retained the
presence of mind to save and hold intact that precious instrument. And
where might he be? Aokahameha hurriedly dispatched Norton, the quickly
released culprit and only person capable (as he had good reason to
believe) of reaching the decamped minister and, possibly, influencing
his or its return. Gutenborj was also granted no less a permission to
communicate with Young and as promised present him and his command at
court; where Aokahameha desired their immediate presence, but would not
concede the necessity for invoking warlike aid.
Thence the trusted commander, with Ihoas leaning gently upon his
arm, and the Guards, from the west gate to the palace door, resting
contentedly on their empty guns, sauntered dreamily into an unmolested
nook in the garden, there suffering and pondering good-naturedly
the hoped for lover’s frank and earnest avowals that made plain and
irrevocably certain his utter quandary.
“But you must love me, Ihoas: can’t you see that I am master? that
all eyes are turned toward me? that my work is done? What more could
a loved one desire?” pleaded the big patriot, leaning back and gazing
fixedly into the tall, willowy princess’s downcast eyes.
She did not answer, and the warm flush that crept into her
cheeks convinced him that in her veins still ran the blood of a
Hawaiian--amiable and sweet, though stern and truthful. Aokahameha
paused, and measuring the force of a thought by the depth of her
emotion would yet deny the privilege of refusal.
The soft, still air and close proximity with fancied ease lolled to
dreaming the good great man, who believed the world an ordered reality
and all that is in it a peaceful heritage; and reclining leisurely upon
velvety woven pillows, banked underneath gracefully drooping purple and
pink tall-growing, wide-reaching ferns, the simple Islander’s dark,
weary eyes barely opened to feast now and again upon the love-vision
that soothingly haunted him, forsooth exacted only the plaintive, soul
touching,
“_Aloha._”
The distant rumble and warning of an approaching army did not disturb
his peaceful quest. Ihoas breathed heavily under the influence of an
uncontrollable impulse and Uhlrix swept on toward the goal of a larger,
simpler contact. The wiles of woman or the charm of intrigue made no
impression upon him; they were alike foreign to his office and impotent
under a nationalism that guaranteed supremacy.
America had intrusted those arms and their wielders with the protection
of its citizens and the guarding of her interests. Duty’s thought-throb
impelled them forward; the impetus of principle lay behind the bulwark
of advancement--a spirit enlivening the step and quickening the
conscience to blindest deeds of heroism and the only lift to greatness
the ages yet had marshalled.
Along these lines they progressed, it mattered not so much to where or
how; the reason--well; there seemed, this time, but slight excuse--grew
out of the inevitable, and consequences more than justified the
sacrifice; Uhlrix would not have missed that ride from the water front
thence for all else a true officer courts, and the horse on which he
charged outdid itself to merit the color borne and uphold a well-known
tradition of the state whence he came.
The warring hosts of an unhampered invader made bold their advance, and
the very elements lent assistance to the awe-inspiring scene: to the
resolving of an inconsequential movement into a calamity fraught with
world-wide effect. The half of those who lay within reach of battle’s
weal could not, would not, rouse from the lethargy of an inborn belief;
the remainder hearkened the call with indecision, became confused
at the thrust and the take that clear the way to ultimate if tardy
sodality.
Kaiuolani’s heart alone throbbed with life, grew impatient at the
delay of those upon whom she depended, and waged war within herself or
tolerated the abuse of others whose only interest waxed strong with
personal desire. For once her coterie of lovers and adherents had
dissipated, with the sole exception of Elmsford; who, taking advantage
of the only opportunity fate had given, sought to impress the sorely
coveted princess with his much neglected importance as well as conjured
usefulness.
They were sitting in the cover of an alcove in the great Blue Room,
where Sir Charles had intentionally left his daughter to the homely
Britisher’s care, while he himself joined Gutenborj in a last
consultation with the queen, prior to the planter’s final withdrawal;
presumably in search of the missing division of a sadly depleted army.
No base or petty contentions disturbed them. The remaining auditors
were scattered here and there around, in close communion; they neither
sought nor chose to intrude.
Elmsford broke the somewhat lengthy silence that ensued by asking,
candidly:
“What are you thinking about, Kaiuolani?”
“The future, of course,” replied she, with a long-drawn,
carelessly-heeded accent.
“I wish that I might share it,” ventured he, diligently expectant.
“The thought, or the future?” queried the open-minded princess, calmly,
and without manifesting the least concern about discretion.
“Just as you prefer, lady beautiful,” replied the artist manager, so
quickly and earnestly as to impress deeply his listener.
“I should think that Ihoas had best be arbiter,” suggested Kaiuolani, a
knowing smile the while brightening her apparently vexed countenance.
The color rose to the ruddy Englishman’s face; he had not taken
into consideration the chief lady in waiting’s bearing; neither her
likes nor dislikes; did not understand that his demeanor had given
occasion for any such confusing of interests or sentiments. He could
not, however, recall that he had openly denied Ihoas the privilege
of pressing an inclination, hence the reasonableness of Kaiuolani’s
presumption: the thought, therefore, very reluctantly but forcibly
dawned that he had best not disabuse the latter’s mind, as her present
enlightenment might tend ultimately to thwart his real purpose.
“I fear both of you shall have need for my protection if not affection
before nightfall: I would not so much as presume partiality,” replied
Elmsford, rather more sure than hopeful of a footing.
“Are you not alarmed at such prodigality? Really, it is not becoming,”
retorted Kaiuolani, a little provoked at the possible need for his
assumption.
“It is English, though.”
“What of that?”
“Ah--I say--really, you amaze me!”
“I shall probably do more than that before your dull comprehension
concedes less than a woman’s disparity.”
The straight, out and out, cast in the die, believer in and
practitioner of male superiority adjusted his one eyeglass and looked
blankly at the sole personage of his acquaintance who dared voice
her entity in the very presence of man. Elmsford was shocked. He had
never before met with such audacity in woman, outside the few chance
Americans it had been his good fortune to meet. Where the princess
could have imbibed such thoughts, found the courage to question a
suitor’s role, was more than he should undertake to guess. That she,
a woman, born and reared to the code, might assert an independent
personality opened wide his mouth, and with bowing stiffly at her
rising and withdrawal the wounded Britisher mumbled inaudibly but
bitterly:
“Oh; these blasted Americans: they shall yet poison the minds and
shrivel the hearts of all womankind!”
Elmsford was in love, however, and he did not propose to yield the
advantages of a convenient marriage, even at the cost of changing face,
however inexorable. Living beyond the pale of etiquette for so long
a time, only sentiment and not form grated upon his inborn sense of
propriety: the level, if must be, of the New World’s profanity need not
follow beyond the limits of a woer’s exigencies.
The fruitage, too, already seemed the more inviting for its plucking; a
deliciousness quite without the reach of antiquated taste inspired the
thought; necessity laid bare the hard-beaten track of advancement: to
win, the determined suitor must relegate and adapt, buckle on the armor
of to-day, plunge into the world alive to the new and dead to the old,
his face bright, purpose triumphant, and action as free, as bold, and
as untrammeled as is the spirit that moves--comes no man knows whence,
yet resolves the endless trend and tramp of time.
“I am no longer a slave,” said he, as he hustled forward, begging the
retiring princess to heed a determined future.
“That is pleasing: I might say encouraging,” replied Kaiuolani with a
careless, harmless tilt of the head.
“What care I for empty forms,” urged the livened enthusiast, dashing a
prized eyeglass into fragments on the floor. “These fixings and such
trumpery are but a handicap: I am going to prove myself a man. Give me
only a chance.”
The opportunity soon came--burst upon him before he had fairly assumed
the part of combatant; but Elmsford proved more than equal, as compared
with Aokahameha who bandied aimlessly with chance.
“I am content” became his watchword, as it had been, always, the
people’s ruling passion; and at the arrival of couriers bearing the
news of Uhlrix’s advance their commander in chief waved them aside
with the vain assurance that peace and not war leads to ultimate glory.
Aokahameha looked into the vast unrealized everywhere around then
whispered contentedly:
“Let me lie here communing; the god instinct holds; immortality
possesses, and love adjures a fellowship with deeds grander, thoughts
purer than the conquest of all arms ever yet attained.”