Hawaii - James Michener [593]
The maid stood awkwardly with the heavy picture, and Miss Lucinda said, "You may take it back, Kimiko." And when the maid was gone she confided: "Sargent did that of me when I was engaged to an Englishman, but Father felt that it would be better if I found a young man closer to home, and as you know I became engaged to my cousin Horace Whipple, but he . . ." She hesitated; then realizing that all of her listeners except perhaps Noelani knew the story anyway, she concluded: "Before the wedding Horace shot himself. At first it was suspected that he might have stolen money from J & W, but of course that was quickly disproved, for there has never been a case of theft in the family."
"Which family?" Noelani asked.
"The family. All of us," Aunt Lucinda replied, and when her nephew Hoxworth had departed with his attractive daughter, she summoned Kimiko to refill the glasses, remarking, "That Noelani is one of the loveliest these islands have ever produced. She did marvelously well at Wellesley, and I think we're lucky that she's come home to marry with her proper kind. After all, she comes from excellent stock."
It was a major characteristic of Hawaii that everyone claimed distinguished ancestors. In 1949 there were no Hawaiians who were not descended from kings. The Hales had constructed the myth that cantankerous old Abner from the miserable farm near Marlboro had been, were the truth known, of knightly ancestry dating far back in English history. The Kees never mentioned the fact that their progenitor was a shifty little gambler who had bought his concubine from a Macao whorehouse; he was, if you listened closely, something of a Confucian scholar. And even Mrs. Yoriko Sakagawa always loved to tell her children, "Remember that on your mother's side you come from samurai stock." Of all these gentle fables, only Mrs. Sakagawa's was true. In 1703 the great Lord of Hiroshima had had as one of his flunkies a stocky, stupid oaf whose principal job it was to stand with a feathered staff warning away chance intruders when his lord was going to the toilet. Technically, this male chambermaid was a samurai, but he had been too stupid even to hold the toilet signal well, and after a while had been discharged and sent back to his home village, where he married a local girl and became the ancestor of Yoriko Sakagawa; and if she, like the others in Hawaii, derived consolation from her supposed illustrious heritage, no harm was done.
The Hale-Janders wedding was a splendid affair, held in the flower-decked old missionary church, with Reverend Timothy Hewlett officiating; but as I said earlier, it only seemed that Goro Sakagawa was having more domestic trouble than his adversary, Hoxworth Hale, for Noelani and Whipple had been married only four months when Whipple suddenly announced, out of a clear blue sky if ever an announcement were so made: "I just don't love you, Noelani."
"What?" she asked in heartbroken astonishment.
"I'm going to live in San Francisco," he said simply.
"Is there some other girl?" Noelani pleaded, without shame.
"No. I guess I just don't like girls," he explained.
"Whip!"
"There's nothing wrong with you, Noe, but Eddie Shane and I are taking an apartment. He's the fellow I was with in the air corps.
"Oh, my God, Whip! Have you talked with anyone about this?"
"Look, Noel Don't make a federal case of it, please. Marriage isn't for me, that's all."
"But you're willing to marry Eddie Shane, is that it?"
"If you want to put it that way, all right. I am."
He left Hawaii, and word filtered back that he and Eddie Shane had a large apartment in the North Beach area of San Francisco, where Eddie made ceramics which were featured in Life magazine, in color.
Aunt Lucinda loved to explain what had happened. She said, as Kimiko passed the gin, "Go back to Micah Hale's daughter, Mary. This girl was one-eighth Hawaiian, through her mother Malama Hoxworth, who was the daughter of Noelani Kanakoa, the last Alii Nui. Now that's bad enough,