The House of Pride | Page 7

the silence that followed, during which Percival Ford coolly considered his next utterance.
"You remember that first time I came to school and the boys ducked me?" he asked. "Why did you take my part?"
The half-brother smiled bashfully.
"Because you knew?"
"Yes, that was why."
"But I didn't know," Percival Ford said in the same dry fashion.
"Yes," the other said.
Another silence fell. Servants were beginning to put out the lights on the lanai.
"You know . . . now," the half-brother said simply.
Percival Ford frowned. Then he looked the other over with a considering eye.
"How much will you take to leave the Islands and never come back?" he demanded.
"And never come back?" Joe Garland faltered. "It is the only land I know. Other lands are cold. I do not know other lands. I have many friends here. In other lands there would not be one voice to say, 'Aloha, Joe, my boy.'"
"I said never to come back," Percival Ford reiterated. "The Alameda sails tomorrow for San Francisco."
Joe Garland was bewildered.
"But why?" he asked. "You know now that we are brothers."
"That is why," was the retort. "As you said yourself, everybody knows. I will make it worth your while."
All awkwardness and embarrassment disappeared from Joe Garland. Birth and station were bridged and reversed.
"You want me to go?" he demanded.
"I want you to go and never come back," Percival Ford answered.
And in that moment, flashing and fleeting, it was given him to see his brother tower above him like a mountain, and to feel himself dwindle and dwarf to microscopic insignificance. But it is not well for one to see himself truly, nor can one so see himself for long and live; and only for that flashing moment did Percival Ford see himself and his brother in true perspective. The next moment he was mastered by his meagre and insatiable ego.
"As I said, I will make it worth your while. You will not suffer. I will pay you well."
"All right," Joe Garland said. "I'll go."
He started to turn away.
"Joe," the other called. "You see my lawyer tomorrow morning. Five hundred down and two hundred a month as long as you stay away."
"You are very kind," Joe Garland answered softly. "You are too kind. And anyway, I guess I don't want your money. I go tomorrow on the Alameda."
He walked away, but did not say good-bye.
Percival Ford clapped his hands.
"Boy," he said to the Japanese, "a lemonade."
And over the lemonade he smiled long and contentedly to himself.

KOOLAU THE LEPER
"Because we are sick they take away our liberty. We have obeyed the law. We have done no wrong. And yet they would put us in prison. Molokai is a prison. That you know. Niuli, there, his sister was sent to Molokai seven years ago. He has not seen her since. Nor will he ever see her. She must stay there until she dies. This is not her will. It is not Niuli's will. It is the will of the white men who rule the land. And who are these white men?
"We know. We have it from our fathers and our fathers' fathers. They came like lambs, speaking softly. Well might they speak softly, for we were many and strong, and all the islands were ours. As I say, they spoke softly. They were of two kinds. The one kind asked our permission, our gracious permission, to preach to us the word of God. The other kind asked our permission, our gracious permission, to trade with us. That was the beginning. Today all the islands are theirs, all the land, all the cattle--everything is theirs. They that preached the word of God and they that preached the word of Rum have fore-gathered and become great chiefs. They live like kings in houses of many rooms, with multitudes of servants to care for them. They who had nothing have everything, and if you, or I, or any Kanaka be hungry, they sneer and say, 'Well, why don't you work? There are the plantations.'"
Koolau paused. He raised one hand, and with gnarled and twisted fingers lifted up the blazing wreath of hibiscus that crowned his black hair. The moonlight bathed the scene in silver. It was a night of peace, though those who sat about him and listened had all the seeming of battle-wrecks. Their faces were leonine. Here a space yawned in a face where should have been a nose, and there an arm-stump showed where a hand had rotted off. They were men and women beyond the pale, the thirty of them, for upon them had been placed the mark of the beast.
They sat, flower-garlanded, in the perfumed, luminous night, and their lips made uncouth noises and their throats rasped approval of Koolau's speech. They were creatures who once had been men and women. But they were men and women