Hawaii - James Michener [309]
He kept his sensitive finger on the pulse of Honolulu as it throbbed toward new life, but at the same time he kept close to his wife as she spent her last energies. At dinner that night, at the Hewletts', he altered the seating arrangements so that he could stay near her, and when she faltered he said calmly, "This may be the last time Lady Noelani will dine with friends." But she had rallied, and as December came she told her husband that she enjoyed more than anything else her evening drives with him, so on the eighth night in December he had the carriage roll up to take her to the Whipples' for dinner, but when Nyuk Tsin saw her enter the dining room, like a tall, shrunken brown ghost, she gasped.
At dinner that evening Captain Hoxworth shocked everyone but Noelani by saying a terrible thing: "When Noelani's mother, the great Alii Nui of Maui lay dying, her husband used to creep in to see her on his hands and knees, bringing her maile from the hills. I think it a shame and lacking in dignity to see a sweet Hawaiian lady with no maile chains about her, so I have asked some of my men to fetch us maile from the hills, and I should like to bring it to my Alii Nui."
He went to the door and whistled loudly for his coachman, and the Englishman ran up with maile chains and Captain Hoxworth placed the fragrant vines about his wife's shoulders. Then he took a chair far from her and said slowly, "The first time I saw Noelani must have been in 1820, when she was a girl. And I saw her on a surfboard, standing up with not a stitch of clothes on, riding toward the shore like a goddess. And do you know when I saw her next? In 1833. I walked out to her home, knocked on the door, and the first words I ever said to her were, 'Noelani, I've come to find me a wife.' And do you know what her first words to me were? 'Captain Hoxworth, I will go with you to the ship.' So we went aboard the Carthaginian, and she never left." He smiled at his wife and said, "Looking at the way people get engaged and married today, I'd say they had very little romance in their bones." He winked at her and then looked at the guests.
"To you young men who aren't married, I've only one bit of advice. Hang around the shore till you see a beautiful Hawaiian girl surfing in, completely naked. Marry that one, and you'll never regret it."
He took the sick woman home that night, and she never appeared on the streets of Honolulu again. Her death was a strange passing, a mysterious disappearance. No doctor could explain why she was dying, but it was obvious that she intended to do so. Like the poetic race of which she was the noblest part, she drifted casually away, and in late December she announced: "I will die in early January." The sad news spread through the Hawaiian community, so that all during the festivities of that season big women appeared at the Hoxworth door, barefooted and with flowers, explaining: "We have come to grieve with our sister." For hours they would sit about her bed, saying nothing, and at dusk, like ponderous, doomed creatures, they would slip away, leaving their flowers behind. Before Noelani died she summoned her son-in-law, dark-bearded Micah Hale of the Privy Council, and she directed him: "Look after Hawaii, Micah. Give the king good advice."
"Each time, before I counsel with him, I pray that God will direct me in the right way," he assured her.
"I don't want you merely to be pious," she said. "I want you to be right."
"It is only through prayer that I can discern the right," he countered.
"Are you as determined as ever to take Hawaii into the Union?" she asked.
"I will see it happen," he insisted.
Noelani began to weep and said, "It will be a sad day for the Hawaiians. On your day of triumph, Micah, be gentle and understanding with your wife. Malama will support you, of course, but on the day you exterminate the Hawaiian kingdom, she will also hate you."
Austere Micah Hale wanted to be lenient at this moment, the