There were times when we twain were included in affairs that were solely Hawaiian except for the few who had married into the families—as at Charles W. Booth’s beautiful house, Halewa, one night in Pauoa Valley. There a hundred sat down to a great banquet, with a dance to follow in the vine-screened lanai to music from instruments invisible in the fragrant shrubbery; from which one could see up the valley the hundreds of tended acres that were as a back-garden of the estate. Mrs. Booth, herself part Hawaiian, and daughter of a Maui chief, let us roam about the absorbing apartments, each a veritable museum of treasure trove inherited from her aunt, Malie Kahai, a celebrated beauty—feather leis, tapas, calabashes, finest of mats, and, prize of all, a feather cape that had belonged to her princely father. Some of the furniture had come from the palace of the king and from Queen Emma’s residence. Here we met Stella Keomailani, Mrs. Kea, “Stella” to her intimates, last living descendant of the high chiefs of the Poohoolewaikala line—a sort of royal Hawaiian clan descended from kings. Blue-blooded pure Hawaiian, she is a remarkable type—tall, slender with brown hair and hazel eyes and a skin as of ivory washed with pale gold. On her father’s side she is cousin to Queen Emma, and one of the heirs mentioned in the Queen’s will.
But there—to mention all who blessed us with their friendship would be almost to quote our Honolulu telephone directory, which hangs now at my elbow, with its markings desolately reminiscent of the roof under which Jack London dwelt those seven months on Kalia Road.
Eager for the criticism of Honoluluans upon certain stories he Was writing at this period, “On the Makaloa Mat,” “The Water Baby,” “When Alice Told Her Soul,” “The Bones of Kahekili,” Jack often had me telephoning for a party to come for luncheon or drop around for tea under the hau, for the reading, with a swim to follow. Other new stories he wrote and read aloud—“The Kanaka Surf,” “The Message,” “The Princess,” and “Like Argus of the Ancient Times.” With the exception of “The Kanaka Surf,” which was a haole tale placed in Honolulu, none of these latter are Hawaiian fiction. The next novel he contemplated settling down to was to bear the title of “Cherry”—a Japanese heroine with an Islands setting and a potent racial motif. And this work, “Cherry,” was the broken thing he left behind when he died on November 22.
One morning Jack was obliged to have me call in Doctors Herbert and Walters, for he had been seized with the agonies of kidney stone. Shortly before, he had been very ill all night, as if from ptomaine poisoning. “Don’t worry,” he would usually brush aside attempts to diagnose or to call in medical advice. “It will pass—look at me: I am in good weight, and shall live many happy years, my dear.” But there was that in his face which brought me white nights, and caused his friends to ask, “What ails Jack? He looks well enough, but there’s something about him... his eyes...”
And so the gay wheel turned in Honolulu, as the golden days and star-blue nights came and went. And yet, for all Jack courted more or less excitement—I quote from my pocket diary, and the date is June 14, 1916: “Mate said to-night that this has been the happiest day he ever spent in the Islands. And what did he do? Write, read me what he had composed; and we lunched and dined conjugally alone together, with a little swim in between whiles; and in the evening he read to me from George Sterling’s latest book of poems, ‘The Caged Eagle,’ just received from George, and broke down in the reading before the deathless beauty of the poem called ‘In Autumn.’”
Before we sailed for home, which was on July 26, that Jack might attend the Bohemian Jinks, we put our heads together with Mary Low’s for the planning of a luau, just before our departure, under our own roof and hau tree for our own Hawaiian friends, with a night of dancing and music and cards to follow. The only haoles to be bidden were their close connections. Forty they sat at the great board that was entirely covered with deep layers first of ti-leaves and then ferns, strewn with flowers and fruit of every description, native and imported. It was a feast served by Hawaiian women whose business it was to see that every detail was in the most approved native fashion.
To Mary Low must be given the praise for the success of this occasion, for under her superintendence it was produced. And upon her unerring wisdom and tact the place-cards, bearing embossed the royal coat-of-arms of Hawaii, were laid. The ends of the enormous table were seated in this wise: Jack center, with Princess Cupid to his right, and Mrs. Stella Kea left. Myself at opposite end, with Prince Cupid on my right, and Mayor Lane at my other side, while his wife, Alice, sat at the Prince’s right—she of the beautiful hands that are her husband’s pride, exquisitely modeled by a mother’s early manipulation, lomilomi, after the charming Hawaiian practise. A characteristic of many well-born Hawaiians is the straight, high back-head; and the mothers here, as with the hands, have exercised their patient modeling. Full thighs were also deemed a mark of superior beauty, and much attention was given to massaging and developing the limbs of the young wahines.
Our friends will not, I am sure, be offended if I mention a laughable incident that all took in jovial good part. Next the Princess, Senator “Bob” Shingle, best of toastmasters, had concluded his opening speech, and sat down amidst hearty applause. But his sitting was not of a permanence that was to be expected, being in fact an entire disappearance to those at my end of the long table, and alarm widened the eyes of Muriel, his wife, sister to Princess David Kawananakoa. Alack, the floor of the aged lanai had not upborne such weight of Polynesian aristocracy these many years, and the hind-legs of even this medium-sized haole’s chair had gone incontinently through the rotten planking.
Hardly had the bubble of merriment subsided when, to my speechless horror, Prince Cupid vanished from my side in a clean back-somersault. He was on his nimble feet almost before he struck the sand nearly a foot below the lanai-level—not for nothing had he learned football tactics in his university days. His good-natured mirth put all at ease, and the alert nervousness of Senator Charles Chillingworth and others of his stature and avoirdupois called forth much funning. There were fortunately no more accidents, and the speech-making in appreciation of Jack and his services to Hawaii was gratifying in the extreme.
I can see Jack now, as he rose, all in white save for his black soft tie, hesitating half-diffidently with the fingers of one hand absently caressing the flowers on the ti-leaves, before lifting his eyes, black-blue and misted with feeling. At first his voice, low and clear, shook slightly, but gathered, with his beautiful, Greek face, a solemnity that increased as he spoke his heart to these people among whom he loved to dwell.