Kaiuolani

The revolution had come and gone like an avalanche,—whence, no one knew; to what purpose, none foresaw,—leaving in the wake of its savage rush the bared intent and beaten hopes of but a few hours hence. An empire had gone down and lay shattered amid the heaps of debris that once served the felicities of a nation. Just why this had been, nobody knew; how done were an enigma: it all seemed so unlike reality; yet, an inspiration.

Looking out at the window, across the once respected but now invested lawns, a prisoner, Floyd Young’s hard-strained eyes caught sight of Bender, coming in the distance, and his face paled with contemplation.

“He seeks me out; I have committed myself to his schemes; what shall I do?—I have it: I’ll adapt myself: the queen must rule!”

The door opened and Bender slipped in, calm and aggressive. Young’s mind reverted to their last meeting, and then he thought of how easy it should be to comply with Norton’s demand—Bender had advised it, and were not liberty worth any price, that he might serve the state, in undoing the tangle his own folly had wrought?

The outcast minister, however, pressed hard, upon this occasion, in another direction.

“The committee of annexation has departed in earnest,” said he, trembling with overwrought concern.

Young looked into space.

“Yes; they are already well under way, and you can be sure that a republican administration will not be loath to listen.”

“Thank God——” began Young, unthinkingly.

“There is soon to be a change,” interceded the visitor, presuming to anticipate Young’s unspoken words.

“I didn’t say so, if inauguration day is not far off,” replied the other, coloring quickly.

“But you mean it; though the politics don’t suit you; and, I grant it’s hard for some to acknowledge virtue in expediency, however necessary,” said Bender, ignoring Young’s embarrassment and believing the germ to have taken root, forsooth, of its own accord.

Nor had either long to await the fulfillment of both predictions. Upon landing at Washington the committee found the retiring president ready to hear and recommend any measure that bore the ear-marks of national uplift, still more would the outgoing administration involve and encumber the incoming: their petition, therefore, received initiative in the appointment of a commissioner, Rand by name, duly empowered to proceed thence and investigate, thoroughly, on behalf of the American government.

A weighty mission this proved to be, launched in the worthy Rand’s opinion ostensibly for the purpose of whitewashing the dubious acts of a featherweight diplomat, but in reality with a view to fixing upon an adverse administration the odium (if such the public ear might descry) of having attempted to inaugurate a strange, new policy, as broad in scope as the reason lay deep.

March 4th came and with it a severely fashioned executive,—in the eyes of the committee,—ushered in as president of the nation and father of all its ills. A very great man, seemingly, and though they believed him as innocuous of harm as apt in desuetude their success for all they knew or could foretell depended upon none else’s sanction.

“Grant us a hearing,” they urged, time and again, upon the prophetic hesitator’s attention, until distraction bore hard upon their patience.

“The president begs to inform you that he is not yet fully advised,” as regularly came back for answer, at the hands of an over-polite and gaudily dressed secretary.

“Advised of what?” finally inquired the uninitiated committeemen, more indiscreet than republican.

“Of the expediency, I believe,” curtly replied the president’s spokesman, slipping the exuberance of a new-found assurance.

The chairman of the committee ventured to insist no further, at that time, believing discretion not the least part of diplomacy and tolerable forbearance no detriment even in the face of a new and unthought of democracy; and, what seemed more gratifying, had learned since his arrival at Washington that “expediency” under this sort of government could be made to cut both ways; especially as a subsidized press in the hands of a friendly faction apparently held absolute sway over both public morals and administrative opinions.

“Give this public expounder of private convenience time, only time, and his own strange politics shall have sooner, and unaided, wrought Hawaii’s annexation. The people are approachable, if not their executive,” said he, to his associate committeemen, in confidence.

This process, though, however flattering, proved difficult of ingrafting and slow with materialization: Kaiuolani wielded a readier weapon and, discreetly coming upon the scene not until the determined incumbent had of his own accord fully set upon undoing what a knowing predecessor of an opposing faith had subtilely launched, forthwith developed a more promising outlook.

The president had, only four years hence, ended a prosperous term and now looked upon his second election as little less than Godlike reverence. Having once served the nation faithfully and believing his renewed hold none other than prophetic the uncrowned veteran looked round for more satisfying fields of expression. Not in conquest, for age and circumstance dulled the heroic: he would that kings and queens pay their respect; the realms of these he held supreme.

“Convey to his honor, the president, Liliuokolani’s best respects, and say that Kaiuolani, bearing assurances as well from her majesty, queen of England, begs the favor of an early audience,” said Kaiuolani to the president, soon after, through a duly accredited spokesman, in consultation with the highly puffed and lowly bended secretary.

This would-be lordly underling’s high-pitched answer and hard-strained dignity rasped harshly upon the surprised messenger’s delicate sensibilities.

“Yes sir,” said he, “it is my duty, I might say privilege to inform you, on behalf of our most excellent and twice elected president to these United States, that he, in his official capacity, shall so soon as informed by me,—his very humble but widely respected secretary,—grant, with the greatest of pleasure, her royal highness, the well-known and, in America, highly thought of princess, Miss Kaiuolani, an audience.”

The clean-cut Britisher, Kaiuolani’s delegated friend and escort, a Mr. Jackson Best, did not tarry upon that occasion longer than necessary. He had been selected by Lord Xenoav and entrusted by the queen to accompany the princess on account of his especial fitness, and the bare possibility of encountering at the very outset of their mission such unheard of snobbery was more even than he, a hard-fisted merchant, had deigned anticipate.

They were there, however, to accomplish a purpose, and believing the president’s word final and supreme resolved upon facing the consequence of a meeting at the designated place, anent the innermost cover of the White House itself.

“Be seated,” grumbled the weighty executive, with a characteristic flourish of the hand and hard-fetched pretense at rising.

The startled princess responded as best she could, though at a significant distance, while her more dextrous aid and champion drew closer still to the would-be confidential host and otherwise determined patron.

“In behalf of a friendly nation, the princess thanks you for your splendid hospitality and magnanimous auspices,” said the witless Best, getting down to business, in excellent form and better tact. “No more flattering guarantee or positive assurance could be wished. It is seldom one meets with such cordiality, even among kings.”

“My mind is settled beyond peradventure on that score; no act of this government shall stand to mar the higher relations that I would internally and eternally foster and enjoy. Hawaii is a vested sovereignty, and the queen shall be reinstated, at any cost; though I would, without any—beg pardon—disrespect to Kaiuolani, the crown were a man’s inheritance. Woman can best serve God and the under weal by rearing her children and mending a husband’s pants: it is decreed, and so written. Am I not safe and sound there, neighbor?” queried the great man, quite unmindful of Kaiuolani’s scarlet cheeks and faraway, conscious look.

Momentarily her thoughts ran back to the time Floyd Young would have crowned her a like queen, the source of a brood and mother of his convenience, and then she wondered if all Americans were of a kind.

“No,” said she, to herself; “woman, too, has a voice, is as she ordains, serves a nobler God than man. I shall rise independent, and live as I would, dependent only upon a common fatherhood.”

Kaiuolani, thereupon, went her way, more than pleased with the splendid success thrust upon her; though she had rather have attained the same end by the aid of her own self-devised energies. There remained no doubt in her mind as to the president’s intentions; all the croakers in Christendom could not pry from his head a motion once securely set. His hand she believed incapable of deflection—the monarchy as good as restored.