Spoils of Eden (8 page)

“He already thinks you’re respectable. It’s your lack of money and blood ties that keeps him aloof. I’ve told you a dozen times, Keno. There’s no way he’ll bless a marriage between you and Candace. Look at all I went through before Ainsworth would agree to a marriage with his Eden.”

“Yeah, and you a big Easton, too. And even a big missionary heritage.”

“Big, nothing. Not enough for Ainsworth until Parker Judson decided my slips would produce pineapples of gold. Then he suddenly decided I might be good enough for his granddaughter after all.”

“At least you were finally able to bargain with them.”

Rafe gazed out the door thoughtfully. “There’s still something sinister about the way my father died. I haven’t forgotten, and I plan to get the truth one day, even if someone big gets hurt. His death wasn’t an accident.”

“I always thought you were right about that, but it might be wiser to leave the ugly matter to God and go on with your life. You have a good future. Eden is bound to come awake one of these happy mornings and realize what she truly wants. She’s too smart a woman not to, if you want my opinion.”

Rafe kept silent. Eden was indeed intelligent and beautiful in his view. That she was devoted to principles he honored and admired didn’t mean that she would join him in marriage. Her desire to bring the hope of Christ to hopeless lepers stirred his heart and made him love her all the more. Considering the tragedy that had struck her mother Rebecca, he could fully understand her dedication. She was convinced of her calling, and he was willing to see her continue her work at Kalihi, even though it presented a great risk. The last thing he wanted was to become the foolhardy man who tried to end God’s calling on her life. And he desired the will of God for his own
life as well, even if it included a break in their engagement. “‘How can two walk together except they be agreed?’” he had quoted to her from the prophet Amos when he received his ring back.

He was also aware there was more on her mind than her work at Kalihi Hospital, and it was this more dangerous plan that worried him. Dr. Jerome had written her a poetic letter of his noble goal to open a research clinic at the Kalawao leper colony on Molokai, and he’d suggested she work with him, alongside his research assistant, Herald Hartley. Jerome had spoken of Herald in such glowing terms, it had become plain to Rafe that her father had plans to see Herald and Eden married. Such a union would fit perfectly into Jerome’s plans. Together, the three of them would find the cure for leprosy and rescue Rebecca from the dreaded final stages of the disease.

And Eden warmed to the letter like a fragile moth to a searing flame
.

Rafe respected Dr. Jerome’s dedication, but he had little confidence in his questionable research, most of it conducted over the past two years in China and India. Rafe also knew for a fact that Rebecca had long passed the early stages of leprosy, where even the faintest hope of a cure was possible—except if touched by Christ. Jerome was deceiving himself, which was tragic enough. But to draw Eden into his dream was even worse, for it was a dream that Rafe believed would end badly.

Rafe turned back to Keno, who was still talking. “I can’t teach, let alone
preach
. What if I forget what I planned to say?”

“You don’t need to memorize the entire message. You make notes and keep them in your Bible.”

“What if I drop the notes or get them in the wrong order or lose my glasses?”

“Since when do you need glasses?”

“That’s just it, pal. One never knows. I might need them tomorrow or even next week. Then what?”

Rafe frowned. “What does Candace see in you?”

Keno slapped a hand against his chest. “She sees a friend and the
handsomest hapa-haole in the islands! And the man she trusts.”

“Anything else?” Rafe asked dryly.

Keno pretended to think hard. He snapped his fingers. “It was I, Keno, who led her to know the Savior.”

“Yes, exactly.” He pushed a thumb against Keno’s chest. “That’s why you should listen to Ambrose. Become a Christian leader, and I’ll back you all the way.”

Keno looked at him askance. “And you? It was you, pal, who led
me
to the Lord. So you, too, should be a big pastor. I’ll be your assistant pastor. Yes, that’s the answer. That could work.”

“I’ll grow the best Kona coffee in the islands, produce the sweetest pineapples in the world, and have many sons with Green Eyes to help you around the church. I’ll keep one son in seven to carry on the plantations.”

Keno whooped in laughter, and Rafe returned to the doorway, looking out at the mountaintops with their blue, green, and purple hues. Clouds were gathering, and there was the feel of more than the usual afternoon mist in the air. Right now, despite his finest intentions to show himself magnanimous toward Eden, he
was
angry. Angry that she had placed their lives on hold while she put Dr. Jerome ahead of him.

Rafe touched the diamond ring in his trouser pocket. He carried it around, still feeling emotional about his loss, yet knowing emotions would not solve his deep dilemma. He was a practical man, and his practicality always rose to the top. The ring was worth thousands of dollars. And she
had
worn it. For three weeks and five days … or was it six days? Well, she had worn it either way, and there had been tears in her soft green eyes when he had put it there, and tears when she had taken it off. He could still feel the warm splash of her tears against his wrist as she returned it to his palm and walked away. A ruddy mess!

Relish your freedom
, he told himself.
Get out of here, Easton. You need the cure! The sooner you get away, the better off you’ll be! Then, maybe in a couple of years … No. Forget it. Not again
. If he learned
to get over her, it would stay that way. Permanently.

“Yes,” Keno was saying, “it is time you mollified your wounds with salt water.” He stared at the map. “The sea!” He lifted his hands above his head. “The blessed sea. A strong ship. And a long,
long
voyage.”

Rafe laughed. “Stop staring at that map, will you?”

“Why should I stop when this wondrous map holds the answer to our misery?”

“You know what you remind me of?” Rafe gritted. “A
kahuna
. Gazing into the innards of a rotting
ahi
trying to figure out my future.” He walked to the table and tapped his finger on the outline of the Caribbean. “If I go back to French Guiana as Parker Judson wants, you’re not coming with me. Candace or no Candace, you’re staying with Ambrose.”

“Oh, no, pal. You and me are partners, remember? You’ll need plenty of help with another load of slips. You don’t know anything about nursing them down in the deep, dank hull, and I do. Then, as part of the bargain, you’ll stake me in my own plantation as we agreed.” Keno scowled. “But saying good-bye to Candie will be bad.”

Candie, was it? How the dour Ainsworth Derrington would bloat like a toad to hear a “Hawaiian boy” call his favorite niece, chosen from childhood for the golden crown of inheritance, “Candie”!

Rafe laughed. “Ah, we men are such fools. Poor, lovesick Keno.” He patted his head. “Your misery makes me feel better already.”

“As they say, misery loves company.”

Rafe was still smiling when he stepped outdoors to the barrel of water standing under a coconut palm. Scooping the chipped ladle into the water, he drank.
Did she really enjoy hurting him like this?
He tossed that self-pitying notion aside almost at once. He’d been raised to take it on the chin, not to whine and fuss. Eden wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. She was too innocent for that. But she
would
end up hurting herself. That was what bothered him the most. She didn’t think he understood her reasons for delaying marriage, but he did.
Very clearly.
Too
clearly, actually. In many ways she was still a little girl working through the hurts of childhood. She wanted what she’d been denied—a close, loving relationship with her father. She would have him at last, or so she told herself, and she wouldn’t allow anything or anyone to interfere. Right now, Rafe himself had become the “other man” by demanding she be his alone.

Eden was wise in so many things, yet she refused to see that her father was like a drowning man. Rafe feared that once Jerome discovered he could not cure his wife, he would pull Eden under the waves with him.

The secret no one else appeared to understand was that Dr. Jerome blamed himself for Rebecca’s sickness. When Rafe was a boy, he had heard Jerome and his father, Matt, arguing about Rebecca Stanhope, as she was then called. Matt said something like, “You’ll end up taking her from the Royal Hawaiian School to work with lepers, and the day will come when she’ll end up one of them.” Strangely, she had.

Keno folded the old map, whistling. “We will survive. We are already on our way to recovery. As soon as we feel the pitch and roll of the ship, the water slapping on its sides, and the smell of salty wind, we will be healed.”

“That’s the old spirit,” Rafe said. “Run up the flag and beat the drums.” Absently he removed the coconut shell canteen hanging by a strap from the tree. Then he noticed Keno staring down the narrow road. Rafe followed his gaze.

A woman was driving a familiar buggy along the track in the direction of the bungalow. The horse and buggy belonged to Ambrose, and the woman … was Eden. He could recognize her anywhere, the nurse’s uniform, the red cross, the toss of her dark hair shimmering in the wind beneath her hat.

His eyes narrowed. Unplugging the coconut, he took a swallow—and spat it out, choking and coughing and tossing the canteen aside!

Keno dove to save the liquid from draining out.

“What is that?” Rafe choked.

“My new invention … made from rotting pineapples.”

“It’s rotten, all right.”

“I’ve been experimenting,” Keno said proudly, putting the stopper back. “If I could make a pineapple wine—an
innocent
wine, you understand—”

“Innocent wine!”

“And, well, convince old P. J. to market it in San Francisco, I’ll become rich. Then I’ll win Makua Ainsworth’s respect. Money will do it every time. You said so yourself. He’ll let me marry Candace.”

Rafe shook his dark head wryly. “Forget what I said about taking Ambrose’s place. You need to go back to the foot of the mourner’s bench.”

“What! I’m saved in three tenses, pal. Past, present, and future. And I’ll learn to say them in Greek too.”

“If Ambrose finds out you’re making wine with rotten pineapples, hoping to get rich, he’ll bar the door on Monday nights. And your Aunt Noelani will keep you in back doing the dishes.”

Keno looked worried. “You think I made it too strong?” He looked at the coconut shell.

“You’ve got to be kidding, Keno,” he said hoarsely. “That stuff is poison.”

Keno slapped his forehead. “Of course! That’s it.
Poison!
Horticultural poison for the bugs eating the pineapple slips—don’t you see? That’s even better!”

Rafe shook his head and let his marveling gaze drift from the coconut to the road. “Eden’s coming.”

Keno looked down the track. “Sure enough. I’ll get rid of this,” he said, nodding at the coconut, “and I vow to quit the rotting pineapple business.” He burst into the bungalow, returning a few moments later with a bowl of Kona coffee. “This should clear the poison. Drink it up, pal, and I’ll keep her busy.”

“I can deal with her,” Rafe growled. He drank the coffee, pushed the bowl against Keno’s chest, glaring, then entered the bungalow.
He snatched his shirt from the peg and slipped it on, followed by his beat-up Panama hat, then went to his horse.

Keno folded his arms across his chest. “She’s just as smitten as you are,” he said cheerfully. “She just doesn’t know it.”

“Brilliant deduction.”

What had caused her to come see him after two long months?
Surely not love
, he thought cynically.

Somehow, I have an uneasy feeling about this
…

E
den saw in the distance perhaps a hundred men, digging, cultivating, and planting. Most were of Chinese ancestry, but there was a second group off to themselves, which she recognized as Japanese. Having grown up around Grandfather Ainsworth’s massive sugar plantation, she was used to seeing men working. They came from China and Japan of their own will, signing contracts to work for a certain wage and a certain length of time. When the contracts ended, many of them set up their own little shops in Chinatown and other neighborhoods. Others continued working in agriculture. Ambrose would reach out to the various language groups, begin tiny assemblies of believers, and train them to reach their own people.

She could see the green shoots of pineapple plants growing abundantly and assumed the French Guiana pineapple variety had taken to its new home.

Pulling the horse and buggy to one side of the road, she stopped. Across the sun-drenched acreage she fixed her gaze on the lone
shady oasis, a singular palm-thatched bungalow. “Like Jonahs gourd,” she thought with a smile.

Rafe stood outside the bungalow door, while Keno rushed about, in and out of the bungalow, but she couldn’t tell what he was doing. It was clear they had seen her, so she remained in the buggy. A moment later Rafe went to untie his horse. Mounting, he settled his hat lower and rode slowly to meet her, the wind ruffling his shirt.

She clutched the leather reins tightly. Meeting Rafe again after their stormy parting two months ago was in itself stressful, but representing the Board with the kind of news she had on Kip was certain to bring a tropical storm.

She noticed his masculine looks that at times made her uneasy, even though she knew they shouldn’t. There was no sin in a fine appearance. It was what one did with the God-given asset. What she admired most about Rafe were the Christian principles he adhered to in keeping himself under discipline. She respected him for his restraint. She had never seen Rafe use his appearance to take advantage of vulnerable women. Such could not be said of her Uncle Townsend.