In the dark, Lucien made his way around the spiky palm bushes and up onto the trellised front porch of the Dole home. He knocked and Mrs. Dole came to the door.
“Good evening, ma’am. Is Judge Dole in?”
“Why, Lucien, what are you doing out so late?”
“I’d like to speak to the Judge.”
She held the door open wider and Lucien stepped inside.
“He’s in the parlor. Go on in.”
By lamplight, Judge Dole sat reading a book on the birds of North America. Seeing Lucien, he placed an envelope to mark his page and shut the cover.
“Lucien.” He nodded.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Judge Dole. But they want you to come over to the office to head this affair.”
Dole shook his head. “No, why won’t Thurston take it?”
“He’s sick in bed from working day and night since this whole thing started. Mr. Price has fallen sick and some others too. They need your help.”
Dole looked down at the book in his lap. A few moments passed before he set it on the table next to his chair and stood up.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go over.”
When they got to the Bishop Bank Building, there was no one around. The electric lampposts cast more shadow than illumination, mottling the dark sidewalk. Muted, plaintive ukulele music came from the direction of Cunha’s Saloon. Down toward Chinatown where most nights, sailors stumbled along with their arms around half-caste women, the streets were oddly quiet. As they trudged up to the second story landing, their footfalls sounded hollow on the wooden stairs and Dole thought revolution seemed a terrible, lonely business.
In Thurston’s waiting room, only eight of the thirteen members of the Committee of Safety were present. In the dim light, two men smoked cigars, the tips glowing, smoke curling up as they puffed. The rest sat silent. They perked up when Dole entered. He acknowledged the men with a “good evening,” and pulled up a chair.
“We want you to head the new government, Sanford,” one man said.
“So I heard,” Dole said. “Before we take this thing too far, gentlemen, and people get hurt, I’d like you to consider something.”
Lucien sat down in a chair against the wall, and one man put out his cigar in a sand-filled spittoon next to him on the floor.
“The Queen issued a proclamation that she’s done with the matter of a new constitution. Can’t we let this thing rest?”
A heavy-set, balding man with a long goatee spoke first. “We don’t believe she’ll let it rest. If we don’t dethrone her, there’s plenty in Honolulu that will. You hear the threats on her life all the time.”
Dole knew of those threats and thought, perhaps the Queen should be dethroned, if only for her own safety.
“Well, you men know the Hawaiians love their monarchs as much as we love our republics. Wouldn’t it make sense for the peace and security of the Kingdom to name Princess Ka‘iulani to succeed the Queen and have a Regency?”
Lucien felt the stir of indignation in the room. There were comments of ‘that won’t work,’ and ‘we’re tired of the monarchy; we don’t want anything more to do with it.’ A clean-shaven man with glasses and a slick part in his hair made the plea once more.
“We need you to head this thing, Judge. It’s got to be you or Thurston.”
Dole looked around at the men, now sitting up, agitated, tense. He knew there was no going back.
“Let me sleep on it, gentlemen. I’ll let you know in the morning.”
He rose to leave and Lucien jumped up.
“I’ll walk home with you, sir.”
On the way back, they passed a few blocks in silence. Finally Lucien spoke.
“Will you take the leadership, Judge?”
“I said I’d sleep on it.”
Lucien hesitated, his brow furrowed. “Do you mind if I tell you something?”
Dole glanced sideways at him. “What is it?”
“I don’t like the changes I’m seeing in Mr. Thurston.”
Dole kept walking, looking ahead. “What do you mean?”
“I know he’s fed up with the monarchy,” Lucien said. “But lately he’s revealed some things to me that make me think when he says he wants to ‘take care of it once and for all,’ he’s not just talking about dethroning the Queen. Judge –”
Lucien stopped and pulled at his arm. Dole turned to face him.
“— I think he’s trying to create a sense that the situation is violent so he can justify violence. If you don’t take the lead, sir, I fear what’ll happen to the Queen and those around her. I fear there’ll be a bloodletting if Thurston gets ahold of this.”
Dole stood with his arms hanging heavy at his sides. Not just his arms, his whole body felt heavy with the weight of change, the weight of tumbling history, colliding cultures, the weight of lies and deceit. Every time he read those articles in the newspaper describing Lili‘uokalani as a bloodthirsty, black savage pagan, his mind flashed back to the forests of Niihau. How she told him, her voice like a song, that the o’o birds were true Hawaiians because they needed flowers for their very life. He saw her sitting in his own parlor, discussing literature and music. He saw her speaking before the Legislature with grace and eloquence. He wanted to tell Lucien how the beauty of the Hawaiian women made him burn and their gentleness made him ache. How the sweetness of the native men’s attitude of “hail fellow well met” broke his heart. But there in the soft, tropical night scented with ginger blossoms, his taciturn New England blood prevailed.
“I said I’d sleep on it.”
Dole went home, but his sleep was fitful, disturbed. He dreamed of volcanic eruptions — red, burning, churning lava flowing to the sea turning to blood and hissing steam as it dropped over cliffs to meet the cold ocean. He woke up frightened and soaked with sweat.