And
while she chanted her mele, the old crone's shrewd fingers lomied
or massaged Bella's silk-stockinged legs from ankle and calf to
knee and thigh.
Both Bella's and Martha's eyes were luminous-moist, as the old
retainer repeated the lomi and the mele to Martha, and as they
talked with her in the ancient tongue and asked the immemorial
questions about her health and age and great-great-grandchildren--
she who had lomied them as babies in the great house at Kilohana,
as her ancestresses had lomied their ancestresses back through the
unnumbered generations. The brief duty visit over, Martha arose
and accompanied her back to the bungalow, putting money into her
hand, commanding proud and beautiful Japanese housemaids to wait
upon the dilapidated aborigine with poi, which is compounded of the
roots of the water lily, with iamaka, which is raw fish, and with
pounded kukui nut and limu, which latter is seawood tender to the
toothless, digestible and savoury. It was the old feudal tie, the
faithfulness of the commoner to the chief, the responsibility of
the chief to the commoner; and Martha, three-quarters haole with
the Anglo-Saxon blood of New England, was four-quarters Hawaiian in
her remembrance and observance of the well-nigh vanished customs of
old days.
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