Kaiuolani

The president’s instructions to his own carefully selected minister were generally thought to be unqualifiedly positive; so much so, that all factions and everybody closely identified expected thence to witness the hitherto undreamed spectacle of a monarch’s being restored to power by a supposedly unsympathetic form of government, a republic, the good and great United States.

Hawaiians chafed under the yoke. They would to a man have had done with it, and confidence in somebody or in some sort of government fairly restored; but Langdon for reasons unknown or unsuspected took it entirely upon himself as they thought unduly to prolong the agony.

The delay occasioned, also, no lesser a disappointment at Washington. Nobody doubted Langdon. He, like his kind, should have been only too glad to justify in the estimation of those who had given him a chance.

“Why such dillydallying? unnecessary on the one hand and dangerous at the best?” asked everyone of himself and of each other.

Langdon, however, had suddenly risen to both place and power; and had they but known at all some of the accidents attendant upon his arrival, and considered better the underlying traits which in him only typified the vast, unmeasured sentiment whence he sprang, there might have been less uncertainty at Honolulu and more subtle dispatch at home; for, without entire disencouragement, the committee of annexation remained quietly at work, and the aptly inclined overtaking minister had been, as well, met and advised by none other than the busy Miss Norton herself.

The charge laid against Kaiuolani by Bender, upon departing the closed quarters of Young, had so enraged the latter that he directly made bold to face any consequence and support with all his might the now tottering provisional government. Kaiuolani,—of whom his every love-thought burned deeper and more luridly,—though wholly innocent of as much as a hint at wrongdoing, still more the falsehoods concocted by a jealous suitor, was thence cast down and trampled as a thing unworthy his remotest concern.

“Away with love’s infantile lure! Ambition is the nobler half: release me of woman’s influence and I’ll build aim’s highest end,” threatened he, half aloud, just as the big iron key began again to rasp in the door.

Like a flash, dread uncertainty triumphed over self-willed resolve. Bender’s seemingly just warning had proven opportune, and fearful of consequences a kind of weirdly creeping realization pinned him coldly against the waging ironies of hinderless disadvantage.

“All is lost,” said he, vainly clutching at the sharpened steel which lay hidden and helpless in the sag of his illy buttoned and carelessly donned waistcoat.

“What is the matter now?” asked Martha Norton, with emphasis, as the looked-for gallant, turning meekly round, stared hard past and into space.

Young straightened up and slowly looked his tormentor humbly in the face. Underneath the dishevelled hair on his head an oozing brow disclosed a faint of red which, deepening into blush, revealed shamefully his innermost thoughts.

“I— I——” stammered he, reluctantly conscious of an unsurmised weakness.

“Oh, you needn’t mouth it, Colonel Young. There’s——”

“Pardon me: culprit, you mean; don’t you?”

“No, foolish man; neither culprit nor victim. You thought me a forerunner of harm; whereas, I am only bearer of righteous news: you are a free man. Now then; how about your backbone?”

“How in the name of——”

“Tut, tut; don’t ask vainly; you are at liberty, and that’s enough. The queen is not yet restored, and that is better. But seek, cheerily, and I’ll promise the best.”

Surveying the situation under the force of striven conscience, Young’s understanding broadened, and he should have thence ignored former resolve and courted occasion had not the heart held superior. Norton’s words rang true to life, as he had found it, and of the Graces were not Thalia greatest? Shere womanliness had saved him from possible disaster,—Harvenoiq’s skulking presence outside the barracks soon convinced him of as much,—and though none except Uhlrix and she knew exactly the manner of his release the logical sequence of forthcoming events disclosed plainly the reason: Norton still wanted a husband.

“My boy, you are foolish,” reasoned Gutenborj, with greater heat than wisdom, in a personal endeavor to swerve Young to further accommodation.

“I’ll admit that I have made mistakes, trying to follow as best I could your advice; it’s not too late, however, to attempt amends.”

“Nonsense! A broken dish is not worth the mending: restock with new, every time, young man, if you care to get on in this world or to occupy a front seat anywhere.”

“Philosophy and practice don’t always agree. Henceforth our paths lead in opposite directions.”

“Oh, very good; I guess your old man has enough to carry him—I trust you shall do as well.”

“Barring taste, I may.”

“The queen’s headsmen, you might better say.”

Young understood fully the import of his oldtime employer’s remark, and well knew that none quite so soon as he himself should or must fall under the restored Liliuokolani’s ban. That the queen was ethically and morally entitled to all she claimed or that had been proffered by a cognizant and obliging president, he duly conceded; that she would or could be reinvested at his hands with any further or greater authority than that enjoyed by Americans in America, he openly denied: in fact so impressed Uhlrix with the logic of the situation, if not the worth of his neck, that Langdon immediately found himself, under refusal of the marines, unable to do more than personally reason with the queen and officially await his superiors.

But Liliuokolani proved obdurate. She would not listen to immunity. These men whom Langdon plead to save had stirred the nation into disorder long before any foreign agency had found intervention either expedient or opportune, and whatever the occasion for her restoration the government must retain and possess the right to judge and dispose of its own disturbing elements or rehabilitation end in bitter failure.

No one appreciated the logic of Liliuokolani’s position more keenly than did Floyd Young, himself: if not the more aggressive the most essential in the wreaking of their immediate downfall. Yet life to him suddenly became a sacred reality; especially as his very probable exit under the proposed regime portended anything except that he held dearest—the heroic. With his elimination not a soul in authority rallied to monarchy’s support.

Kaiuolani had very wisely returned to England, there to reinforce the pressure she believed herself to have wrought upon the president.

Bender mysteriously dropped out of sight, and Norton egged the queen.

Patriotism inflamed America.

“What in God’s name shall be done?” plead the at last discordant Gutenborj, whose miserly dollars tilted woefully in the balance.

“Await results,” answered Langdon, coolly.

And they did more: they lagged with opportunity, breathless and stunned. In truth among them there was only one, if any, who rightly interpreted events.

The world, too, looked idly on; little dreaming that in that brief suspense the fleeting balancer of progress should so gain with momentum as to thresh and shape without a break or jar such elements of empire structure as kings and queens yet were want to see.

Here amid strength and loyalty, an alluring spark still smouldering in the hearts of sturdy patriots was rapidly fanning into flame. Americans, in America, for the first time were in fact challenged to do honor in foreign lands. The fires once started spread with the fury of a cyclone. Congress turned a deaf ear upon tradition and respected the voice of a new moulder. The press, if fanatical, had doomed republicanism: an empire, though embryonic as yet, was building to save democracy.