Kaiuolani

Upon arriving in America a second time, though absent but a few short weeks, it seemed as if some overpowering influence, something larger, more effective and evasive than humans could or should know and comprehend had seized upon and changed the fate of government.

All this appeared to Kaiuolani as in a trance.

At San Francisco,—her place of landing,—the newspapers set their headlines with type bigger and blacker than any she had theretofore seen. The shout of freedom everywhere arose from hardset lips. The very activities on the streets portended larger unrealized claims.

“In heaven’s name, what sort of license do these people want? I know of no place on earth where men are not privileged to do right. Certainly at my small birthplace such a thing as bondage is unknown—never was. Then why this clamor about liberty? there lies a deeper wellspring than Hawaii,” said Kaiuolani, half-consciously, as the vitally suggestive, comfortably appointed, pulsating train, in which she rode, swiftly carried her over land and water, across voiceless wastes and round unresponsive heights, toward an endlessly enervating destiny.

Answering to will-call alone, the newly inspired, perchance reasonably dissatisfied princess leaned back in the car seat, and looking out at the window contemplated the possibilities of such a horde should ambition overstep the bounds of individual interest and self-contended place. To what purpose might not such a people awaken; or, in fact, heights attain.

The dawn seemed wrapped and fettered with an endless chain of unrealized possibilities, yet a faint light began to break the gloom as sometimes distant hope gratifies a stricken conscience, and Kaiuolani resolved to meet and determine as best she knew her little part and place.

“I think,” said she, barely listening to the trend of an inner thought, “I deign fairly see America’s rising orb—scarcely entering, boldly disclosing an inseparable, if inherited horizon: no agency without or factor within appears to reveal an attendant magnitude or attraction sufficient to check or alter one whit her humanly transcendant march down through the welkin of a divinely provisioned nebula: thriving in a field as boundless as fertile, push has made him what he is, and the same energies, directed and inspired heroically, would drive his empire on and over the crackling bones of a pinched and scarce-knowing world’s autocracy. Americans wax supreme.”

What in the conflict might her own dire land do best? Better lay its hopes and aspirations as kindling to the spark that portended conflagration.

The serpent coiled, its forked tongue lipped, and fixed gaze bewildered: Kaiuolani stood motionless and her enticer willed his prey.

“I came a seeker: the matchless bounty that lures, claims me, rivets self a hostage. My God, what is the charm! Whence my haven? How reach the sublime?”

At Washington the streets were thronged; idle men lauded themselves into headless armies, marching from everywhere, apparently ineffective, upon the capitol; a few, with brows knitted or eyes beaming, gathered in orderly fashion—these Kaiuolani observed to emerge with pleasing expression; the president roared and backed, at bay: none bore him confidence, not a man or faction heeded his advice; the whole machinery of state seemed ready to break—Kaiuolani paused at the threshold, level heads adjusted the values, the old ship made ready to head-on, and the larger thought loomed in the foreground.

Away, back in Hawaii, where only a short week hence all the possibilities of life, as opened to her, apparently centered in a single purpose, Floyd Young hotly forged toward the same enlarged idea, though the craft in which he launched should prove a leaking hulk, already sighted and fairly prepared to sink and drift in the foremost runner’s wake.

At Norton’s hands Gutenborj had furnished the funds and Chairman Cole the occasion to raise him to a respectable leadership under the auspices of a lingering provisional government.

Uhlrix became his friend—the need of it stared Young in the face: just what prompted the former to hold the marines at his beck and call, in the face of orders from Washington, they both seemingly intended a sophisticated public to surmise, if interested.

A few stragglers from the disbanded Rifles once more enlisted on provision of pay; there were some missionaries more enthusiastic than discreet, but the rest of Young’s five hundred came from—no one claimed to know.

The little band stood organized and equipped. A strange signal sounded from afar, and their commander springing into the stirrups, as on another day, ordered the advance.

The American flag came down.

Strange pickets quickly surrounded the place, and those filled with the pride of country or inspired by reverence to deplore an abuse abhorred, turned their backs or hung the head in disgraceful accord.

The marines, attending the flag lowering, retired into camp, and Young grappled with opportunity.

At last he stood master; Gutenborj had for the first time committed himself; unconsciously assumed the aggressive: without intending as much had tied hand and foot to measures and responsibilities he would dodge; Young looked keenly deep into the situation, and drove hard ahead under an only too subtle advantage.

Cole alone, of those at hand whose station or interests warranted, dared offer resistance to the fired-up general’s growing ambition.

“Would you make yourself dictator?” meekly queried the conscience-stricken chairman, confronting advisedly at last his newly risen adjutant.

“I would make you president, had you the courage to take advantage of a very great need,” declared Young, candidly.

Slow of comprehension, Cole did not grasp at once quite the meaning of that reply. He had taken the relegated young colonel, of doubtful proclivities, into his confidence and as a progressionist reinvested him with both rank and authority, not at all in consequence of any particular respect for his personality or hold upon the future, but solely because in him and through him he conjectured the readiest means with which to break down local antagonisms, discreetly or otherwise standing in the way of final annexation to the United States.

It was this latter thought, and that only, which had in the first instance prompted him to accept a chairmanship so fraught with possibilities: to that end and no other he would now make any concession, bend every energy.

“Very well,” said he, after a time, having reasoned long but well the probable consequences; “I am at your service.”

The intelligence wrung out of Young, apropos that final word, more than justified Cole’s surprising concession; there was no alternative; armies rule.

That night a special issue of the Ware Wizzard Wise disclosed an astounding bit of intelligence, published a call for delegates to a new kind of national convention; Norton, too, had felt the hand of mastery, and begun to utilize the powers of larger love. Uhlrix ordered the last of the marines on board his flagship—there seemed no further need or advisability of their lending assistance—the whites, under the forced encouragement of Gutenborj, flocked to Young’s support, and the constitution—an altogether new one—suddenly sprang into possible reality. Aristocracy had stopped short of restitution, and the Republic rose instead.