Dr. Muriel Cass, as this welcoming committee turned out to be, knew that I was recently out of a hospital, and disappeared for a few moments to telephone for a doctor. When he arrived she said, “All we want of you is to give Mrs. Sanger something to keep her going. She’s got eight lectures to deliver.”
I felt like a poor old war horse being fed the last measure of oats. I had a horrible memory of two weeks of fog and rain and cold at Memorial Hospital in Hong Kong, and now here I was to die in Honolulu.
But Dr. Cass, an efficient, self-sacrificing manager, did the most amazing things for me. She ordered the telephone operator to switch every call to her. There I was, quite alone. Nobody could see me or even talk to me; I must conserve my strength for the meetings. Repeatedly she rushed me to and from halls, put me in cars, and trundled me off to bed. Really I was better after each lecture than I had been before. When I left Honolulu she herself was so worn out she had to take a vacation, but I was nearly well.
The hospitality and luxuriance of this Pacific paradise were almost indescribable. Hula-hulas at the hotels, bathing on the beaches, outriggers swooping in, the native women in great flowered Mother Hubbards twining leis, the songs they sang, the air of leisure and fun and play, these made Honolulu a city apart. It was the sounding board of the Orient, people going, people coming back, but all there to enjoy themselves.
In Honolulu I repacked and, to save space, stuffed Grant’s tiger skin in the trunk around my box of Darjeeling tea. When, four weeks later, I ripped off the cover at Willow Lake, it was reeking with camphor. I tried to aerate the leaves, dry them out, fumigate them with sunshine, but it remained moth ball tea. One package I had given away before I discovered the tragedy. Its receipt was ignored. No thank-you letter, no mention of it. The other friends to whom I had planned to present this choice gift had to go without.
I spent the summer at Willow Lake and in the winter, remembering Arizona from the time I had been there with Stuart, went out again in response to the summons of the desert. My husband and I found a house near Tucson of adobe, trimmed in blue. The mountains, not distant or aloof or towering over all, reached into the sky, but they were also somehow intimate, cupping the town gently on all four sides.
You settled there in the Catalina foothills and felt such a part of the whole. The first thing when you opened your eyes, before actual dawn, you beheld the gold and purple and then the entire sky break into color. In the evening the sunsets were reflected on the mountains in pink-lavender shades; sometimes the glow sprayed from the bottom upward, like the footlights of a theater, until the tips were aflame. Sunset vanished as quickly as sunrise, never lingering long.
When the marvel of spring came to the desert, you saw the cactus and the flowering, saw the brown floor change to delicate pale yellow, stood in awe of nature daring to live without water. You were reminded of the futility of wearing out your life merely providing food and raiment. Like the challenge of death, which so many of the people there were gallantly facing, the desert itself was a challenge.
Chapter Thirty-nine
SLOW GROWS THE SPLENDID PATTERN
“There is no force in the world so great as that of an idea when its hour has struck.”