Mr. Ford could hardly spare time to look his pleasure, nor to be introduced to me, before rushing on, in a breathless way that made one wonder what was the hurry:
“Now look here, London,” in a confidential undertone. “I’ve got a lot of whacking good material—for stories, you understand. I can’t write stories—there’s no use my trying. My fiction is rot—rot, I tell you. I can write travel stuff of sorts, but it takes no artist to do that. You can write stories—the greatest stories in the world—and I’ll tell you what: I’ll jot down some of the things I’ve got hold of here and everywhere, and you’re welcome to them.... What d’you say?”
Jack suggested that he make three at our table, and he talked a steady stream all through—of information about everything under the sky, it would seem, for he has traveled widely. At present he is interested in reviving the old Hawaiian sport of surf-riding, and promised to see us at Waikiki, and show us how to use a board.
On the electric car bound for Waikiki, we found ourselves part of a holiday crowd that sat and stood, or hung on the running-boards—a crowd that convinced me Honolulu was Honolulu after all. The passengers on the running boards made merry way for the haole wahine, while a beaming Hawaiian, a gentleman if ever was one, gave me his seat, raising a garlanded hat. The people made a kaleidoscope of color—white women in evening gowns and fluffy wraps, laughing Hawaiian and hapahaole girls in gaudy holokus and woolly crocheted “fascinators,” the native men sporting brilliant leis of fresh flowers, the most characteristic being the ilima, which, strung on thread, forms an orange-hued inch-rope greatly affected for neck garlands and hat bands. Like ourselves, all were making for the gardens of their Prince.
Some three miles from the center of town, we alighted at the big Moana Hotel, where, in a lofty seaward lanai overlooking a palmy carriage court, was spent our first hour at Waikiki, sipping from cool glasses while we rested in large rattan chairs; for none but a malihini moves quickly here in hours of relaxation, though the haoles of Hawaii work at least as hard as on the mainland, and no shorter hours. Lovely indeed was this my first glimpse of Hawaii’s celebrated watering place, as we lounged in the liquid night-breeze from over rolling star-tipped waters that broke in long white lines on the dim crescent beach.
Strolling across broad Kalakaua Avenue, we entered a park where great looming trees were festooned high and low with colored lights—Prince Cupid’s private gardens thrown wide to his own people as well as to foreign guests. A prodigious buzz and hum came from a lighted building, and we stepped over the lawns to a fanfare of martial music from Berger’s Royal Hawaiian Band. From an immense open tent where many were sitting at little tables, the lilting of a Hawaiian orchestra of guitars and ukuleles (oo-koo-lay’lees) blended into the festive din; and then, threading purely the medley of sound, was heard a woman’s voice that was like a violin, rising high and higher, dominating the throng until it lapsed into absolute silence. It was the sweetest of Hawaiian singers, Madame Alapai; and when she had finished a prodigious gale of applause went up from all over the grounds, ceasing instantly at the first crystal tone of her encore.
Like a child at a fair, I had no attention for the way of my feet in the grass, and Jack laughed paternally at my absorption as he piloted me by the elbow, with a “Dear Kid—it’s a pleasure to take you anywhere, you do have such a good time!”
A pretty Hawaiian maid at the dressing-tent greeted us haole wahines with a smiling “Aloha,” and led to where we women could shed wraps, and dust noses and pat coiffures; after which the four of us picked a way through the company, the women lovely in their trailing gowns, and men in black and white evening attire or glittering army and navy uniforms. All around under the trees in the back-ground hundreds of Hawaiians looked on, their dusky faces and eyes eloquent with curiosity and interest. Up a green terrace we paced, to the broad encircling lanai of what looked to be an immense grass house. And grass house it proved, in which the royal owners dwelt before the building of the more modern mansion.
This entertainment, including as it did the Congressional party, was unique in its significance. To the right of the receiving line stood the delegate, Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole, affectionately known as Prince Cupid, a well-known figure in Washington, D. C., a dark, well-featured, medium-sized man in evening dress, handsome, but in my eyes quite eclipsed by the gorgeous creature at his side, pure Hawaiian like himself, his wife, the Princess Elizabeth. The bigness of her was a trifle overwhelming to one new to the physical aristocracy of island peoples. You would hesitate to call her fat—she is just big, sumptuous, bearing her splendid proportions with the remarkable poise I had already noticed in Hawaiian women, only more magnificently. Her bare shoulders were beautiful, the pose of her head majestic, piled with heavy, fine, dark hair that showed bronze lights in its wavy mass. She was superbly gowned in silk that had a touch of purple or lilac about it, the perfect tone for her full, black, calm eyes and warm, tawny skin. For Polynesians of chiefly blood are often many shades fairer than the commoners.
Under our breath, Jack and I agreed that we could not expect ever to behold a more queenly woman. My descriptive powers are exasperatingly inept to picture the manner in which this Princess stood, touching with hers the hands of all who passed, with a brief, graceful droop of her patrician head, and a fleeting, perfunctory, yet gracious flash of little teeth under her small fine mouth. Glorious she was, the Princess Kalanianaole, a princess in the very tropical essence of her. Always shall I remember her as a resplendent exotic flower, swaying and bending its head with unaffected, innate grace.