Hawaii - James Michener [592]
"It's not that I'm against Hawaiians," she assured her visitors. "It's just that I get frightfully irritated at the hero-worship that goes on around here over the so-called Hawaiian royalty. I sit in the library and I can spot every malihini girl who is going to ask me, 'Do you have that book on Kelly Kanakoa?' I have to stop myself from warning them, 'You'll have to put your chewing gum away while you look at the pictures.' And when she hands the book back reverently she always says, 'Gee, his grandfather was a king!' As if that meant anything. I've always thought it was one of the most ridiculous aspects of Hawaiian life, the way they memorize these pathetic old lists of kings, as if a litany of imaginary names meant anything. You remember what Abner Hale, he was my great-grandfather, wrote about such ancestor worship: 'I think it impedes Hawaii as much as any other one thing, for the poor fools are so attentive to their past that they have no time to contemplate eternity.' And nothing makes me more irritated than the way a Hawaiian will point to some pathetic dregs of humanity and say accusingly, 'If the missionaries hadn't interfered, he would now be our king,' as if we had halted something fine and good. Do you know who the present king of Hawaii would be if the missionaries hadn't put a stop to such nonsense? The beachboy Kelly Kanakoa! Have you ever heard him speak? He insists on using a vocabulary of about ninety words, half of them blalah. Everybody Kelly likes is blalah except that he calls me his seestah."
Hoxworth coughed and his aunt collected her thoughts. "Oh yes, now about Whipple Janders. He went to Punahou and Yale, as you know, and had a very good record in the war. Handsome boy, but not so fleshy as his father, which is understandable, because Hewlett takes after the Hewlett side of the family, and they were always unprepossessing types, if you'll allow me to say so, Abigail, because as you know Abraham married a Hawaiian . . . well, he picked up a Hawaiian wahine after Urania died, but that's neither here nor there.
"I suppose what you're really interested in is how the intended bridegroom Whipple relates to the Hales. If you'll go back to Micah, who married the half-caste girl Malama Hoxworth, you'll remember that he had two children, Ezra and Mary, and Ezra of course was your great-grandfather, Noelani, and that takes care of that." The Japanese maid returned to pass coconut chips, toasted a delicious salty brown. "You may fill tie glasses, too, Kimiko," Aunt Lucinda reminded her.
She never got back to Mary Hale, Micah's daughter, but the group understood that somehow Mary was related to Whipple Janders, but what Aunt Lucinda did say was perhaps of greater importance: "So you can see that Whipple comes from some of the finest stock in the islands. For three generations, Whipples have married Janderses, which accounts in part, I suppose, for the way in which their family fortunes have been conserved."
Turning directly to Noelani, the beautiful girl who was soon to be married, Lucinda said, "I can think of no one you could have chosen finer than Whipple Janders, and I am extremely happy for you, Noelani. When I look at your marvelous face I see your great-great-grandfather Micah Hale, the savior of these islands. You have his high forehead, his courage and his force of character. But your beauty comes from the Whipples. Isn't it strange," she asked the hushed group, "how the seed of one handsome man could have produced so much beauty in these islands? I know it's fashionable to laugh at old maids who haven't married, and I'm sure you'll think me vain if I claim that when I was young I too was a typical Whipple beauty. Kimiko, fetch me that portrait in the bedroom!" And the Japanese maid silently brought in one of the last great portraits completed by Sargent, and it showed a glowing young beauty in white, with lace and combs, and Lucinda said, "That's what I mean by the Whipple complexion. You have it, Noelani, and it's a great consolation to me to think that it will be reunited with