When Alice Told her Soul
This, of Alice Akana, is an affair of Hawaii, not of this day, butof days recent enough, when Abel Ah Yo preached his famous revivalin Honolulu and persuaded Alice Akana to tell her soul. But whatAlice told concerned itself with the earlier history of the thensurviving generation.For Alice Akana was fifty years old, had begun life early, and,early and late, lived it spaciously. What she knew went back intothe roots and foundations of families, businesses, and plantations.She was the one living repository of accurate information thatlawyers sought out, whether the information they required relatedto land-boundaries and land gifts, or to marriages, births,bequests, or scandals. Rarely, because of the tight tongue shekept behind her teeth, did she give them what they asked; and whenshe did was when only equity was served and no one was hurt.For Alice had lived, from early in her girlhood, a life of flowers,and song, and wine, and dance; and, in her later years, had herselfbeen mistress of these revels by office of mistress of the hulahouse. In such atmosphere, where mandates of God and man andcaution are inhibited, and where woozled tongues will wag, sheacquired her historical knowledge of things never otherwisewhispered and rarely guessed. And her tight tongue had served herwell, so that, while the old-timers knew she must know, none everheard her gossip of the times of Kalakaua's boathouse, nor of thehigh times of officers of visiting warships, nor of the diplomatsand ministers and councils of the countries of the world.So, at fifty, loaded with historical dynamite sufficient, if itwere ever exploded, to shake the social and commercial life of theIslands, still tight of tongue, Alice Akana was mistress of thehula house, manageress of the dancing girls who hula'd for royalty,for luaus (feasts), house-parties, poi suppers, and curioustourists. And, at fifty, she was not merely buxom, but short andfat in the Polynesian peasant way, with a constitution and lack oforganic weakness that promised incalculable years. But it was atfifty that she strayed, quite by chance of time and curiosity, intoAbel Ah Yo's revival meeting.Now Abel Ah Yo, in his theology and word wizardry, was as muchmixed a personage as Billy Sunday. In his genealogy he was muchmore mixed, for he was compounded of one-fourth Portuguese, one-fourth Scotch, one-fourth Hawaiian, and one-fourth Chinese. ThePentecostal fire he flamed forth was hotter and more variegatedthan could any one of the four races of him alone have flamedforth. For in him were gathered together the cannyness and thecunning, the wit and the wisdom, the subtlety and the rawness, thepassion and the philosophy, the agonizing spirit-groping and helegs up to the knees in the dung of reality, of the four radicallydifferent breeds that contributed to the sum of him. His, also,was the clever self-deceivement of the entire clever compound.When it came to word wizardry, he had Billy Sunday, master of slangand argot of one language, skinned by miles. For in Abel Ah Yowere the five verbs, and nouns, and adjectives, and metaphors offour living languages. Intermixed and living promiscuously andvitally together, he possessed in these languages a reservoir ofexpression in which a myriad Billy Sundays could drown. Of norace, a mongrel par excellence, a heterogeneous scrabble, thegenius of the admixture was superlatively Abel Ah Yo's. Like achameleon, he titubated and scintillated grandly between thediverse parts of him, stunning by frontal attack and surprising andconfouding by flanking sweeps the mental homogeneity of the moresimply constituted souls who came in to his revival to sit underhim and flame to his flaming.Abel Ah Yo believed in himself and his mixedness, as he believed inthe mixedness of his weird concept that God looked as much like himas like any man, being no mere tribal god, but a world god thatmust look equally like all races of all the world, even if it ledto piebaldness. And the concept worked. Chinese, Korean,Japanese, Hawaiian, Porto Rican, Russian, English, French--membersof all races--knelt without friction, side by side, to his revisionof deity.Himself in his tender youth an apostate to the Church of England,Abel Ah Yo had for years suffered the lively sense of being a Judassinner. Essentially religious, he had foresworn the Lord. LikeJudas therefore he was. Judas was damned. Wherefore he, Abel AhYo, was damned; and he did not want to be damned. So, quite afterthe manner of humans, he squirmed and twisted to escape damnation.The day came when he solved his escape. The doctrine that Judaswas damned, he concluded, was a misinterpretation of God, who,above all things, stood for justice. Judas had been God's servant,specially selected to perform a particularly nasty job. ThereforeJudas, ever faithful, a betrayer only by divine command, was asaint. Ergo, he, Abel Ah Yo, was a saint by very virtue of hisapostasy to a particular sect, and he could have access with cleargrace any time to God.This theory became one of the major tenets of his preaching, andwas especially efficacious in cleansing the consciences of theback-sliders from all other faiths who else, in the secrecy oftheir subconscious selves, were being crushed by the weight of theJudas sin. To Abel Ah Yo, God's plan was as clear as if he, AbelAh Yo, had planned it himself. All would be saved in the end,although some took longer than others, and would win only tobackseats. Man's place in the ever-fluxing chaos of the world wasdefinite and pre-ordained--if by no other token, then by denialthat there was any ever-fluxing chaos. This was a mere bugbear ofmankind's addled fancy; and, by stinging audacities of thought andspeech, by vivid slang that bit home by sheerest intimacy into hislisteners' mental processes, he drove the bugbear from theirbrains, showed them the loving clarity of God's design, and,thereby, induced in them spiritual serenity and calm.What chance had Alice Akana, herself pure and homogeneous Hawaiian,against his subtle, democratic-tinged, four-race-engendered, slang-munitioned attack? He knew, by contact, almost as much as sheabout the waywardness of living and sinning--having been singingboy on the passenger-ships between Hawaii and California, and,after that, bar boy, afloat and ashore, from the Barbary Coast toHeinie's Tavern. In point of fact, he had left his job of NumberOne Bar Boy at the University Club to embark on his greatpreachment revival.So, when Alice Akana strayed in to scoff, she remained to pray toAbel Ah Yo's god, who struck her hard-headed mind as the mostsensible god of which she had ever heard. She gave money into AbelAh Yo's collection plate, closed up the hula house, and dismissedthe hula dancers to more devious ways of earning a livelihood, shedher bright colours and raiments and flower garlands, and bought aBible.It was a time of religious excitement in the purlieus of Honolulu.The thing was a democratic movement of the people toward God.Place and caste were invited, but never came. The stupid lowly,and the humble lowly, only, went down on its knees at the penitentform, admitted its pathological weight and hurt of sin, eliminatedand purged all its bafflements, and walked forth again uprightunder the sun, child-like and pure, upborne by Abel Ah Yo's god'sarm around it. In short, Abel Ah Yo's revival was a clearing housefor sin and sickness of spirit, wherein sinners were relieved oftheir burdens and made light and bright and spiritually healthyagain.But Alice was not happy. She had not been cleared. She bought anddispersed Bibles, contributed more money to the plate, contralto'dgloriously in all the hymns, but would not tell her soul. In vainAbel Ah Yo wrestled with her. She would not go down on her kneesat the penitent form and voice the things of tarnish within her--the ill things of good friends of the old days. "You cannot servetwo masters," Abel Ah Yo told her. "Hell is full of those who havetried. Single of heart and pure of heart must you make your peacewith God. Not until you tell your soul to God right out in meetingwill you be ready for redemption. In the meantime you will sufferthe canker of the sin you carry about within you."Scientifically, though he did not know it and though he continuallyjeered at science, Abel Ah Yo was right. Not could she be again asa child and become radiantly clad in God's grace, until she hadeliminated from her soul, by telling, all the sophistications thathad been hers, including those she shared with others. In theProtestant way, she must bare her soul in public, as in theCatholic way it was done in the privacy of the confessional. Theresult of such baring would be unity, tranquillity, happiness,cleansing, redemption, and immortal life."Choose!" Abel Ah Yo thundered. "Loyalty to God, or loyalty toman." And Alice could not choose. Too long had she kept hertongue locked with the honour of man. "I will tell all my soulabout myself," she contended. "God knows I am tired of my soul andshould like to have it clean and shining once again as when I was alittle girl at Kaneohe--""But all the corruption of your soul has been with other souls,"was Abel Ah Yo's invariable reply. "When you have a burden, lay itdown. You cannot bear a burden and be quit of it at the sametime.""I will pray to God each day, and many times each day," she urged."I will approach God with humility, with sighs and with tears. Iwill contribute often to the plate, and I will buy Bibles, Bibles,Bibles without end.""And God will not smile upon you," God's mouthpiece retorted. "Andyou will remain weary and heavy-laden. For you will not have toldall your sin, and not until you have told all will you be rid ofany.""This rebirth is difficult," Alice sighed."Rebirth is even more difficult than birth." Abel Ah Yo didanything but comfort her. "'Not until you become as a little child. . . '""If ever I tell my soul, it will be a big telling," she confided."The bigger the reason to tell it then."And so the situation remained at deadlock, Abel Ah Yo demandingabsolute allegiance to God, and Alice Akana flirting on the fringesof paradise."You bet it will be a big telling, if Alice ever begins," thebeach-combing and disreputable kamaainas (old-timers) gleefullytold one another over their Palm Tree gin.In the clubs the possibility of her telling was of more moment.The younger generation of men announced that they had applied forfront seats at the telling, while many of the older generation ofmen joked hollowly about the conversion of Alice. Further, Alicefound herself abruptly popular with friends who had forgotten herexistence for twenty years.One afternoon, as Alice, Bible in hand, was taking the electricstreet car at Hotel and Fort, Cyrus Hodge, sugar factor andmagnate, ordered his chauffeur to stop beside her. Willy nilly, inexcess of friendliness, he had her into his limousine beside himand went three-quarters of an hour out of his way and timepersonally to conduct her to her destination."Good for sore eyes to see you," he burbled. "How the years fly!You're looking fine. The secret of youth is yours."Alice smiled and complimented in return in the royal Polynesian wayof friendliness."My, my," Cyrus Hodge reminisced. "I was such a boy in thosedays!""SOME boy," she laughed acquiescence."But knowing no more than the foolishness of a boy in those long-ago days.""Remember the night your hack-driver got drunk and left you--""S-s-sh!" he cautioned. "That Jap driver is a high-school graduateand knows more English than either of us. Also, I think he is aspy for his Government. So why should we tell him anything?Besides, I was so very young. You remember . . . ""Your cheeks were like the peaches we used to grow before theMediterranean fruit fly got into them," Alice agreed. "I don'tthink you shaved more than once a week then. You were a prettyboy. Don't you remember the hula we composed in your honour, the--""S-s-sh!" he hushed her. "All that's buried and forgotten. May itremain forgotten."And she was aware that in his eyes was no longer any of theingenuousness of youth she remembered. Instead, his eyes were keenand speculative, searching into her for some assurance that shewould not resurrect his particular portion of that buried past."Religion is a good thing for us as we get along into middle age,"another old friend told her. He was building a magnificent houseon Pacific Heights, but had recently married a second time, and waseven then on his way to the steamer to welcome home his twodaughters just graduated from Vassar. "We need religion in our oldage, Alice. It softens, makes us more tolerant and forgiving ofthe weaknesses of others--especially the weaknesses of youth of--ofothers, when they played high and low and didn't know what theywere doing."He waited anxiously."Yes," she said. "We are all born to sin and it is hard to growout of sin. But I grow, I grow.""Don't forget, Alice, in those other days I always played square.You and I never had a falling out.""Not even the night you gave that luau when you were twenty-one andinsisted on breaking the glassware after every toast. But ofcourse you paid for it.""Handsomely," he asserted almost pleadingly."Handsomely," she agreed. "I replaced more than double thequantity with what you paid me, so that at the next luau I cateredone hundred and twenty plates without having to rent or borrow adish or glass. Lord Mainweather gave that luau--you remember him.""I was pig-sticking with him at Mana," the other nodded. "We wereat a two weeks' house-party there. But say, Alice, as you know, Ithink this religion stuff is all right and better than all right.But don't let it carry you off your feet. And don't get to tellingyour soul on me. What would my daughters think of that brokenglassware!""I always did have an aloha" (warm regard) "for you, Alice," amember of the Senate, fat and bald-headed, assured her.And another, a lawyer and a grandfather: "We were always friends,Alice. And remember, any legal advice or handling of business youmay require, I'll do for you gladly, and without fees, for the sakeof our old-time friendship."Came a banker to her late Christmas Eve, with formidable, legal-looking envelopes in his hand which he presented to her."Quite by chance," he explained, "when my people were looking upland-records in Iapio Valley, I found a mortgage of two thousand onyour holdings there--that rice land leased to Ah Chin. And my minddrifted back to the past when we were all young together, and wild--a bit wild, to be sure. And my heart warmed with the memory ofyou, and, so, just as an aloha, here's the whole thing cleared offfor you."Nor was Alice forgotten by her own people. Her house became aMecca for native men and women, usually performing pilgrimageprivily after darkness fell, with presents always in their hands--squid fresh from the reef, opihis and limu, baskets of alligatorpears, roasting corn of the earliest from windward Cahu, mangoesand star-apples, taro pink and royal of the finest selection,sucking pigs, banana poi, breadfruit, and crabs caught the very dayfrom Pearl Harbour. Mary Mendana, wife of the Portuguese Consul,remembered her with a five-dollar box of candy and a mandarin coatthat would have fetched three-quarters of a hundred dollars at afire sale. And Elvira Miyahara Makaena Yin Wap, the wife of YinWap the wealthy Chinese importer, brought personally to Alice twoentire bolts of pina cloth from the Philippines and a dozen pairsof silk stockings.The time passed, and Abel Ah Yo struggled with Alice for a properlypenitent heart, and Alice struggled with herself for her soul,while half of Honolulu wickedly or apprehensively hung on theoutcome. Carnival week was over, polo and the races had come andgone, and the celebration of Fourth of July was ripening, ere AbelAh Yo beat down by brutal psychology the citadel of her reluctance.It was then that he gave his famous exhortation which might besummed up as Abel Ah Yo's definition of eternity. Of course, likeBilly Sunday on certain occasions, Abel Ah Yo had cribbed thedefinition. But no one in the Islands knew it, and his rating as arevivalist uprose a hundred per cent.So successful was his preaching that night, that he reconvertedmany of his converts, who fell and moaned about the penitent formand crowded for room amongst scores of new converts burnt by thepentecostal fire, including half a company of negro soldiers fromthe garrisoned Twenty-Fifth Infantry, a dozen troopers from theFourth Cavalry on its way to the Philippines, as many drunken man-of-war's men, divers ladies from Iwilei, and half the riff-raff ofthe beach.Abel Ah Yo, subtly sympathetic himself by virtue of his racialadmixture, knowing human nature like a book and Alice Akana evenmore so, knew just what he was doing when he arose that memorablenight and exposited God, hell, and eternity in terms of AliceAkana's comprehension. For, quite by chance, he had discovered hercardinal weakness. First of all, like all Polynesians, an ardentlover of nature, he found that earthquake and volcanic eruptionwere the things of which Alice lived in terror. She had been, inthe past, on the Big Island, through cataclysms that had slackengrass houses down upon her while she slept, and she had beheldMadame Pele (the Fire or Volcano Goddess) fling red-fluxing lavadown the long slopes of Mauna Loa, destroying fish-ponds on thesea-brim and licking up droves of beef cattle, villages, and humanson her fiery way.The night before, a slight earthquake had shaken Honolulu and givenAlice Akana insomnia. And the morning papers had stated that MaunaKea had broken into eruption, while the lava was rising rapidly inthe great pit of Kilauea. So, at the meeting, her mind vexedbetween the terrors of this world and the delights of the eternalworld to come, Alice sat down in a front seat in a very definitestate of the "jumps."And Abel Ah Yo arose and put his finger on the sorest part of hersoul. Sketching the nature of God in the stereotyped way, butmaking the stereotyped alive again with his gift of tongues inPidgin-English and Pidgin-Hawaiian, Abel Ah Yo described the daywhen the Lord, even His infinite patience at an end, would tellPeter to close his day book and ledgers, command Gabriel to summonall souls to Judgment, and cry out with a voice of thunder:"Welakahao!"This anthromorphic deity of Abel Ah Yo thundering the modernHawaiian-English slang of welakahao at the end of the world, is afair sample of the revivalist's speech-tools of discourse.Welakahao means literally "hot iron." It was coined in theHonolulu Iron-works by the hundreds of Hawaiian men there employed,who meant by it "to hustle," "to get a move on," the iron being hotmeaning that the time had come to strike."And the Lord cried 'Welakahao,' and the Day of Judgment began andwas over wiki-wiki" (quickly) "just like that; for Peter was abetter bookkeeper than any on the Waterhouse Trust Company Limited,and, further, Peter's books were true."Swiftly Abel Ah Yo divided the sheep from the goats, and hastenedthe latter down into hell."And now," he demanded, perforce his language on these pages beingproperly Englished, "what is hell like? Oh, my friends, let medescribe to you, in a little way, what I have beheld with my owneves on earth of the possibilities of hell. I was a young man, aboy, and I was at Hilo. Morning began with earthquakes.Throughout the day the mighty land continued to shake and tremble,till strong men became seasick, and women clung to trees to escapefalling, and cattle were thrown down off their feet. I beheldmyself a young calf so thrown. A night of terror indescribablefollowed. The land was in motion like a canoe in a Kona gale.There was an infant crushed to death by its fond mother steppingupon it whilst fleeing her falling house."The heavens were on fire above us. We read our Bibles by thelight of the heavens, and the print was fine, even for young eyes.Those missionary Bibles were always too small of print. Fortymiles away from us, the heart of hell burst from the loftymountains and gushed red-blood of fire-melted rock toward the sea.With the heavens in vast conflagration and the earth hulaingbeneath our feet, was a scene too awful and too majestic to beenjoyed. We could think only of the thin bubble-skin of earthbetween us and the everlasting lake of fire and brimstone, and ofGod to whom we prayed to save us. There were earnest and devoutsouls who there and then promised their pastors to give not theirshaved tithes, but five-tenths of their all to the church, if onlythe Lord would let them live to contribute."Oh, my friends, God saved us. But first he showed us a foretasteof that hell that will yawn for us on the last day, when he cries'Welakahao!' in a voice of thunder. When the iron is hot! Thinkof it! When the iron is hot for sinners!"By the third day, things being much quieter, my friend thepreacher and I, being calm in the hand of God, journeyed up MaunaLoa and gazed into the awful pit of Kilauea. We gazed down intothe fathomless abyss to the lake of fire far below, roaring anddashing its fiery spray into billows and fountaining hundreds offeet into the air like Fourth of July fireworks you have all seen,and all the while we were suffocating and made dizzy by the immensevolumes of smoke and brimstone ascending."And I say unto you, no pious person could gaze down upon thatscene without recognizing fully the Bible picture of the Pit ofHell. Believe me, the writers of the New Testament had nothing onus. As for me, my eyes were fixed upon the exhibition before me,and I stood mute and trembling under a sense never before so fullyrealized of the power, the majesty, and terror of Almighty God--theresources of His wrath, and the untold horrors of the finallyimpenitent who do not tell their souls and make their peace withthe Creator."But oh, my friends, think you our guides, our native attendants,deep-sunk in heathenism, were affected by such a scene? No. Thedevil's hand was upon them. Utterly regardless and unimpressed,they were only careful about their supper, chatted about their rawfish, and stretched themselves upon their mats to sleep. Childrenof the devil they were, insensible to the beauties, thesublimities, and the awful terror of God's works. But you are notheathen I now address. What is a heathen? He is one who betrays astupid insensibility to every elevated idea and to every elevatedemotion. If you wish to awaken his attention, do not bid him tolook down into the Pit of Hell. But present him with a calabash ofpoi, a raw fish, or invite him to some low, grovelling, andsensuous sport. Oh, my friends, how lost are they to all thatelevates the immortal soul! But the preacher and I, sad and sickat heart for them, gazed down into hell. Oh, my friends, it WAShell, the hell of the Scriptures, the hell of eternal torment forthe undeserving . . . "Alice Akana was in an ecstasy or hysteria of terror. She wasmumbling incoherently: "O Lord, I will give nine-tenths of my all.I will give all. I will give even the two bolts of pina cloth, themandarin coat, and the entire dozen silk stockings . . . "By the time she could lend ear again, Abel Ah Yo was launching outon his famous definition of eternity."Eternity is a long time, my friends. God lives, and, therefore,God lives inside eternity. And God is very old. The fires of hellare as old and as everlasting as God. How else could there beeverlasting torment for those sinners cast down by God into the Piton the Last Day to burn for ever and for ever through all eternity?Oh, my friends, your minds are small--too small to grasp eternity.Yet is it given to me, by God's grace, to convey to you anunderstanding of a tiny bit of eternity."The grains of sand on the beach of Waikiki are as many as thestars, and more. No man may count them. Did he have a millionlives in which to count them, he would have to ask for more time.Now let us consider a little, dinky, old minah bird with one brokenwing that cannot fly. At Waikiki the minah bird that cannot flytakes one grain of sand in its beak and hops, hops, all day loneand for many days, all the day to Pearl Harbour and drops that onegrain of sand into the harbour. Then it hops, hops, all day andfor many days, all the way back to Waikiki for another grain ofsand. And again it hops, hops all the way back to Pearl Harbour.And it continues to do this through the years and centuries, andthe thousands and thousands of centuries, until, at last, thereremains not one grain of sand at Waikiki and Pearl Harbour isfilled up with land and growing coconuts and pine-apples. Andthen, oh my friends, even then, IT WOULD NOT YET BE SUNRISE INHELL!Here, at the smashing impact of so abrupt a climax, unable towithstand the sheer simplicity and objectivity of such artfulmeasurement of a trifle of eternity, Alice Akana's mind broke downand blew up. She uprose, reeled blindly, and stumbled to her kneesat the penitent form. Abel Ah Yo had not finished his preaching,but it was his gift to know crowd psychology, and to feel the heatof the pentecostal conflagration that scorched his audience. Hecalled for a rousing revival hymn from his singers, and steppeddown to wade among the hallelujah-shouting negro soldiers to AliceAkana. And, ere the excitement began to ebb, nine-tenths of hiscongregation and all his converts were down on knees and prayingand shouting aloud an immensity of contriteness and sin.Word came, via telephone, almost simultaneously to the Pacific andUniversity Clubs, that at last Alice was telling her soul inmeeting; and, by private machine and taxi-cab, for the first timeAbel Ah Yo's revival was invaded by those of caste and place. Thefirst comers beheld the curious sight of Hawaiian, Chinese, and allvariegated racial mixtures of the smelting-pot of Hawaii, men andwomen, fading out and slinking away through the exits of Abel AhYo's tabernacle. But those who were sneaking out were mostly men,while those who remained were avid-faced as they hung on Alice'sutterance.Never was a more fearful and damning community narrative enunciatedin the entire Pacific, north and south, than that enunciated byAlice Akana; the penitent Phryne of Honolulu."Huh!" the first comers heard her saying, having already disposedof most of the venial sins of the lesser ones of her memory. "Youthink this man, Stephen Makekau, is the son of Moses Makekau andMinnie Ah Ling, and has a legal right to the two hundred and eightdollars he draws down each month from Parke Richards Limited, forthe lease of the fish-pond to Bill Kong at Amana. Not so. StephenMakekau is not the son of Moses. He is the son of Aaron Kama andTillie Naone. He was given as a present, as a feeding child, toMoses and Minnie, by Aaron and Tillie. I know. Moses and Minnieand Aaron and Tillie are dead. Yet I know and can prove it. OldMrs. Poepoe is still alive. I was present when Stephen was born,and in the night-time, when he was two months old, I myself carriedhim as a present to Moses and Minnie, and old Mrs. Poepoe carriedthe lantern. This secret has been one of my sins. It has kept mefrom God. Now I am free of it. Young Archie Makekau, who collectsbills for the Gas Company and plays baseball in the afternoons, anddrinks too much gin, should get that two hundred and eight dollarsthe first of each month from Parke Richards Limited. He will blowit in on gin and a Ford automobile. Stephen is a good man. Archieis no good. Also he is a liar, and he has served two sentences onthe reef, and was in reform school before that. Yet God demandsthe truth, and Archie will get the money and make a bad use of it."And in such fashion Alice rambled on through the experiences of herlong and full-packed life. And women forgot they were in thetabernacle, and men too, and faces darkened with passion as theylearned for the first time the long-buried secrets of their otherhalves."The lawyers' offices will be crowded to-morrow morning,"MacIlwaine, chief of detectives, paused long enough from storingaway useful information to lean and mutter in Colonel Stilton'sear.Colonel Stilton grinned affirmation, although the chief ofdetectives could not fail to note the ghastliness of the grin."There is a banker in Honolulu. You all know his name. He is 'wayup, swell society because of his wife. He owns much stock inGeneral Plantations and Inter-Island."MacIlwaine recognized the growing portrait and forbore to chuckle."His name is Colonel Stilton. Last Christmas Eve he came to myhouse with big aloha" (love) "and gave me mortgages on my land inIapio Valley, all cancelled, for two thousand dollars' worth. Nowwhy did he have such big cash aloha for me? I will tell you . . ."And tell she did, throwing the searchlight on ancient businesstransactions and political deals which from their inception hadlurked in the dark."This," Alice concluded the episode, "has long been a sin upon myconscience, and kept my heart from God."And Harold Miles was that time President of the Senate, and nextweek he bought three town lots at Pearl Harbour, and painted hisHonolulu house, and paid up his back dues in his clubs. Also theRamsay home at Honokiki was left by will to the people if theGovernment would keep it up. But if the Government, after twoyears, did not begin to keep it up, then would it go to the Ramsayheirs, whom old Ramsay hated like poison. Well, it went to theheirs all right. Their lawyer was Charley Middleton, and he had mehelp fix it with the Government men. And their names were . . . "Six names, from both branches of the Legislature, Alice recited,and added: "Maybe they all painted their houses after that. Forthe first time have I spoken. My heart is much lighter and softer.It has been coated with an armour of house-paint against the Lord.And there is Harry Werther. He was in the Senate that time.Everybody said bad things about him, and he was never re-elected.Yet his house was not painted. He was honest. To this day hishouse is not painted, as everybody knows."There is Jim Lokendamper. He has a bad heart. I heard him, onlylast week, right here before you all, tell his soul. He did nottell all his soul, and he lied to God. I am not lying to God. Itis a big telling, but I am telling everything. Now Azalea Akau,sitting right over there, is his wife. But Lizzie Lokendamper ishis married wife. A long time ago he had the great aloha forAzalea. You think her uncle, who went to California and died, lefther by will that two thousand five hundred dollars she got. Heruncle did not. I know. Her uncle cried broke in California, andJim Lokendamper sent eighty dollars to California to bury him. JimLokendamper had a piece of land in Kohala he got from his mother'saunt. Lizzie, his married wife, did not know this. So he sold itto the Kohala Ditch Company and wave the twenty-five hundred toAzalea Akau--"Here, Lizzie, the married wife, upstood like a fury long-thwarted,and, in lieu of her husband, already fled, flung herself tooth andnail on Azalea."Wait, Lizzie Lokendamper!" Alice cried out. "I have much weightof you on my heart and some house-paint too . . . "And when she had finished her disclosure of how Lizzie had paintedher house, Azalea was up and raging."Wait, Azalea Akau. I shall now lighten my heart about you. Andit is not house-paint. Jim always paid that. It is your new bath-tub and modern plumbing that is heavy on me . . . "Worse, much worse, about many and sundry, did Alice Akana have tosay, cutting high in business, financial, and social life, as wellas low. None was too high nor too low to escape; and not until twoin the morning, before an entranced audience that packed thetabernacle to the doors, did she complete her recital of thepersonal and detailed iniquities she knew of the community in whichshe had lived intimately all her days. Just as she was finishing,she remembered more."Huh!" she sniffed. "I gave last week one lot worth eight hundreddollars cash market price to Abel Ah Yo to pay running expenses andadd up in Peter's books in heaven. Where did I get that lot? Youall think Mr. Fleming Jason is a good man. He is more crooked thanthe entrance was to Pearl Lochs before the United States Governmentstraightened the channel. He has liver disease now; but hissickness is a judgment of God, and he will die crooked. Mr.Fleming Jason gave me that lot twenty-two years ago, when its cashmarket price was thirty-five dollars. Because his aloha for me wasbig? No. He never had aloha inside of him except for dollars."You listen. Mr. Fleming Jason put a great sin upon me. WhenFrank Lomiloli was at my house, full of gin, for which gin Mr.Fleming Jason paid me in advance five times over, I got FrankLomiloli to sign his name to the sale paper of his town land forone hundred dollars. It was worth six hundred then. It is worthtwenty thousand now. Maybe you want to know where that town landis. I will tell you and remove it off my heart. It is on KingStreet, where is now the Come Again Saloon, the Japanese TaxicabCompany garage, the Smith & Wilson plumbing shop, and the Ambrosialee Cream Parlours, with the two more stories big Addison LodgingHouse overhead. And it is all wood, and always has been wellpainted. Yesterday they started painting it attain. But thatpaint will not stand between me and God. There are no more paintpots between me and my path to heaven."The morning and evening papers of the day following held an unholyhush on the greatest news story of years; but Honolulu was half a-giggle and half aghast at the whispered reports, not always baselyexaggerated, that circulated wherever two Honoluluans chanced tomeet."Our mistake," said Colonel Chilton, at the club, "was that we didnot, at the very first, appoint a committee of safety to keep trackof Alice's soul."Bob Cristy, one of the younger islanders, burst into laughter, sopointed and so loud that the meaning of it was demanded."Oh, nothing much," was his reply. "But I heard, on my way here,that old John Ward had just been run in for drunken and disorderlyconduct and for resisting an officer. Now Abel Ah Yo fine-toothcombs the police court. He loves nothing better than soul-snatching a chronic drunkard."Colonel Chilton looked at Lask Finneston, and both looked at GaryWilkinson. He returned to them a similar look."The old beachcomber!" Lask Finneston cried. "The drunken oldreprobate! I'd forgotten he was alive. Wonderful constitution.Never drew a sober breath except when he was shipwrecked, and, whenI remember him, into every deviltry afloat. He must be going oneighty.""He isn't far away from it," Bob Cristy nodded. "Still beach-combs, drinks when he gets the price, and keeps all his senses,though he's not spry and has to use glasses when he reads. And hismemory is perfect. Now if Abel Ah Yo catches him . . . "Gary Wilkinson cleared his throat preliminary to speech."Now there's a grand old man," he said. "A left-over from aforgotten age. Few of his type remain. A pioneer. A truekamaaina" (old-timer). "Helpless and in the hands of the police inhis old age! We should do something for him in recognition of hisyeoman work in Hawaii. His old home, I happen to know, is SagHarbour. He hasn't seen it for over half a century. Now whyshouldn't he be surprised to-morrow morning by having his finepaid, and by being presented with return tickets to Sag Harbour,and, say, expenses for a year's trip? I move a committee. Iappoint Colonel Chilton, Lask Finneston, and . . . and myself. Asfor chairman, who more appropriate than Lask Finneston, who knewthe old gentleman so well in the early days? Since there is noobjection, I hereby appoint Lask Finneston chairman of thecommittee for the purpose of raising and donating money to pay thepolice-court fine and the expenses of a year's travel for thatnoble pioneer, John Ward, in recognition of a lifetime of devotionof energy to the upbuilding of Hawaii."There was no dissent."The committee will now go into secret session," said LaskFinneston, arising and indicating the way to the library.GLEN ELLEN, CALIFORNIA,August 30, 1916.
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