HAWAII, 1920.
I went back, alone, and in that aloneness there was something very solemn. Of course I went back. One who knows Hawaii always goes back. The old lure abides; nor does it abate when the vessel’s forefoot, spurning the silver flying-fish, is heard thripping into the azure silken sea-level which betokens nearness to remembered isles. Again “The old lost stars wheel back”; again the yard-arm of the Southern Cross leans upon the night-purple horizon; again, the old, lovely approach to Oahu, with Molokai sleeping to the southeast.
It was the Maui’s first sailing for Honolulu since her war service in the Atlantic. Long will sound in the ears of her passengers the mighty conching of her deep-sea siren, as the battle-grey hull warped in to the quay. Every brazen throat, every clangorous bell of Honolulu joined in swelling the deafening, triumphal paean. Never had the many wharves been so obliterated by waving, flower-bedecked throngs. It must have been a proud and happy day for Captain Francis Milner Edwards. The approximate number of men under arms in Hawaii during the war, as given by the American Legion, was 8,500. This included practically every nationality represented in the Islands, and included army and navy. A large proportion of this total were in the federalized national guard, which took over the local garrison and released the regular troops for service on the mainland or over-seas.
How strange, to be arriving alone in Honolulu! Not a soul in the city knew that I was aboard. Sheltered by a life-boat, I waited, watching the concourse as it welcomed, and bound with embraces and cables of blossoms, its disembarking friends. There is no welcome so rare as Honolulu’s. Do I not know? But on that day, not a familiar face could I pick out in the vast bouquet of upturned faces, though in it were a score of old friends.
I have since wondered at my lack of emotion. Nature, as if to bear me across a void, seemed to have congealed all thrills and tears. What I remember is a sense of almost creeping, half-diffidently, half-curiously, between two walls of humanity that formed a lane through the sheds to the street.
“But aren’t you Mrs. Jack?”
Startled, I looked up into a fresh, young face.
“Joe!” It was Alexander Hume Ford’s ward. Never before had I beheld in him any striking resemblance to an angel. Assuring me he was not meeting any one, into his car he tucked me. I hardly had to explain that I wanted to drive about the city, and to Waikiki, before letting any one know I had come. I would have it all over with first; I would acquaint myself thoroughly with the event—that I had returned to Jack’s Loveland. Before I had gone to the hotel, I had dared to look into my long garden on Kalia Road; at the Beach Walk cottage of earlier memory; once more at the Outrigger Club, had again shaken hands with David and Duke Kahanamoku, and met two other champion sea-gods, Norman Ross and Rudy Langer. Then I had been whirled up Honolulu’s incomparable background, upon a new and perfect serpentine of road, in and out of the canyons that opened enchanting vistas in every direction. The last dash was out to Nuuanu Pali, to marvel afresh at the undisappointing grandeur of Oahu’s windward sea-prospect, Oahu’s dimming miles of green pineapples upon rolling, rosy prairie, Oahu’s eroded mountains, my Mirrored Mountains, their bastions like green waves, frothing and curling with kukui foliage that flooded cliff and gorge.
For that one day and night I went in the same lightly frozen state, observing the world in a detached way. I telephoned surprised acquaintances, and gradually oriented myself. One never knows what factor will thaw the ice. Next morning, upon the breakfast tray it was the golden sickle of the papaia that cut my controls and loosed the gate of tears. Why the papaia? Why not the coco palms, the fragrance of the plumeria, the clinging caress of the ilima lei, the sight of the long garden beneath its palms, or, above all, the wet eyes of Jack’s friends and mine? Why the mild breakfast melon from the carven papaia tree? I do not know. But thence on I was myself again, myself in my own Hawaii, aware of the compensations of life.
After the tears, the joy of knowing more than ever surely how kind are the hearts of Hawaii. Haole, hapa-haole, and all-Hawaiian, they flocked to me, dear friends all, and gave me to know that I “belonged,” that I was kamaaina, not less but more—in double measure for myself and our lost one.