Hawaii - James Michener [232]
"Where is Iliki?" the alii asked.
"I hope she's in good hands," Hoxworth said bluntly. "Where would she be if she were here?"
The question caused Noelani to reflect, and to gain time she asked, "When will the house be finished?"
"In two days, ma'am, and that's why I think it important that you dine with me tonight aboard ship. I want you to see your quarters ... in case you should ever decide to join me on one of the trips to Canton."
The sound of this word, this distant city from which had come her clothes and her furniture and which she had never expected to see--nor had she any reason to see it--so captivated Noelani that she betrayed her excitement, whereupon Hoxworth said bluntly, "Noelani, you've had a bad time here, caught up in things of which you were no part. Why not leave it all? It's a sad, messy business that you will never conquer. I offer you a wild, exciting life."
"I have a son, you know," the proud woman said tentatively.
"Bring him with you. I've always wanted a tyke of my own aboard ship."
"He belongs to the people . . ." she hesitated.
"Then leave him with the people," he said firmly, and before she could protest, he had caught her by the hand and drawn her to him, kissing her harshly upon the mouth and pulling at her garments.
"Please," she whispered.
"Go to the door and tell the women to guard it. You're entertaining your husband-to-be."
She pushed him away, stood solemnly before him and asked, "Could you forget that I was once married to . . ."
"Noelani!" he chided. "How many of the girls of this village have I kept in my cabin? That's also past. Now I need a wife."
"I meant, that it was my brother who . . ."
He pondered this question for a moment, then laughed again and said reassuringly, "With me each day that dawns begins a new year. I have no memories."
The tall captain's words were warm in her ear, the kind of bold, sweet words an alii liked, and she thought: "This kapena is much like an alii. He is tall, eager to fight, and he is the leader of his men. He is tired of running after waterfront women. He owns an important ship and he was willing to take my son as his own. He is not pious, but I think he is honest. The day of the Hawaiian is dead, but the years of the white man are upon us." To Hoxworth she said quietly, "I will go with you to the ship."
He kissed her again and felt her wealth of hair cascading upon his hands, and it aroused him as the kisses of dark island girls had always done, and he whispered, "Tell the women to guard the door," but she refused and said, "Not in this room. It is a center of the old ways. I will go with you to your ship." And the town of Lahaina was astonished to see Captain Hoxworth and Noelani, the Alii Nui, walking down the dusty road beneath the palm trees, talking idly as if they were lovers. But they were more astonished when the tall girl, marvelously beautiful now that she was seeing daylight again, climbed into the captain's rowboat and went out to the Carthaginian, where she stayed till dawn, and when at parting she looked at the handsome, well-kept cabin which was to be hers, she thought: "He is a real man, and I will be faithful to him. I will eat his food to please him. I will dress as he prefers, so that other men shall look at him and say, 'Kapena is the lucky one.' I will never say no to him"--and then a soft smile came to her face, as it would later come to the thousand Hawaiian girls who would marry Americans--"for I know that with my own words I can win him to a gentler life."
Noelani saw Captain Hoxworth on each of the next two days, and on the last day of his visit to Lahaina, while his men were dragging a complete set of furniture from the Carthaginian to the new mission house, she was alone in the grass palace wrapping in tapa cloth two heavy thigh bones; one Keoki had given her before his death, and the other she had received directly for herself. Taking the bundles in her arms, she went out to her father's small