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On the Makaloa Mat
by
“You know we were notorious as poor feeders,” Bella laughed lightly enough. “It was many a mile on either side from Nahala to the next roof. Belated travellers, or storm-bound ones, would, on occasion, stop with us overnight. And you know the lavishness of the big ranches, then and now. How we were the laughing-stock! ‘What do we care!’ George would say. ‘They live to-day and now. Twenty years from now will be our turn, Bella. They will be where they are now, and they will eat out of our hand. We will be compelled to feed them, they will need to be fed, and we will feed them well; for we will be rich, Bella, so rich that I am afraid to tell you. But I know what I know, and you must have faith in me.’
“George was right. Twenty years afterward, though he did not live to see it, my income was a thousand a month. Goodness! I do not know what it is to-day. But I was only nineteen, and I would say to George: ‘Now! now! We live now. We may not be alive twenty years from now. I do want a new broom. And there is a third-rate coffee that is only two cents a pound more than the awful stuff we are using. Why couldn’t I fry eggs in butter–now? I should dearly love at least one new tablecloth. Our linen! I’m ashamed to put a guest between the sheets, though heaven knows they dare come seldom enough.’
“‘Be patient, Bella,’ he would reply. ‘In a little while, in only a few years, those that scorn to sit at our table now, or sleep between our sheets, will be proud of an invitation–those of them who will not be dead. You remember how Stevens passed out last year–free-living and easy, everybody’s friend but his own. The Kohala crowd had to bury him, for he left nothing but debts. Watch the others going the same pace. There’s your brother Hal. He can’t keep it up and live five years, and he’s breaking his uncles’ hearts. And there’s Prince Lilolilo. Dashes by me with half a hundred mounted, able-bodied, roystering kanakas in his train who would be better at hard work and looking after their future, for he will never be king of Hawaii. He will not live to be king of Hawaii.’
“George was right. Brother Hal died. So did Prince Lilolilo. But George was not ALL right. He, who neither drank nor smoked, who never wasted the weight of his arms in an embrace, nor the touch of his lips a second longer than the most perfunctory of kisses, who was invariably up before cockcrow and asleep ere the kerosene lamp had a tenth emptied itself, and who never thought to die, was dead even more quickly than Brother Hal and Prince Lilolilo.
“‘Be patient, Bella,’ Uncle Robert would say to me. ‘George Castner is a coming man. I have chosen well for you. Your hardships now are the hardships on the way to the promised land. Not always will the Hawaiians rule in Hawaii. Just as they let their wealth slip out of their hands, so will their rule slip out of their hands. Political power and the land always go together. There will be great changes, revolutions no one knows how many nor of what sort, save that in the end the haole will possess the land and the rule. And in that day you may well be first lady of Hawaii, just as surely as George Castner will be ruler of Hawaii. It is written in the books. It is ever so where the haole conflicts with the easier races. I, your Uncle Robert, who am half-Hawaiian and half-haole, know whereof I speak. Be patient, Bella, be patient.’