Robert Louis Stevenson: An Anthology

by Kevin MacNeil

  Now, when Keawe was in the street, with the bottle under his arm, he began to think. ‘If all is true about this bottle, I may have made a losing bargain,’ thinks he. ‘But perhaps the man was only fooling me.’ The first thing he did was to count his money; the sum was exact—forty-nine dollars American money, and one Chili piece. ‘That looks like the truth,’ said Keawe. ‘Now I will try another part.’

  The streets in that part of the city were as clean as a ship’s decks, and though it was noon, there were no passengers. Keawe set the bottle in the gutter and walked away. Twice he looked back, and there was the milky, round-bellied bottle where he left it. A third time he looked back, and turned a corner; but he had scarce done so, when something knocked upon his elbow, and behold! it was the long neck sticking up; and as for the round belly, it was jammed into the pocket of his pilot-coat.

  ‘And that looks like the truth,’ said Keawe.

  The next thing he did was to buy a cork-screw in a shop, and go apart into a secret place in the fields. And there he tried to draw the cork, but as often as he put the screw in, out it came again, and the cork as whole as ever.

  ‘This is some new sort of cork,’ said Keawe, and all at once he began to shake and sweat, for he was afraid of that bottle.

  On his way back to the port-side, he saw a shop where a man sold shells and clubs from the wild islands, old heathen deities, old coined money, pictures from China and Japan, and all manner of things that sailors bring in their sea-chests. And here he had an idea. So he went in and offered the bottle for a hundred dollars. The man of the shop laughed at him at the first, and offered him five; but, indeed, it was a curious bottle—such glass was never blown in any human glassworks, so prettily the colours shone under the milky white, and so strangely the shadow hovered in the midst; so, after he had disputed awhile after the manner of his kind, the shop-man gave Keawe sixty silver dollars for the thing, and set it on a shelf in the midst of his window.

  ‘Now,’ said Keawe, ‘I have sold that for sixty which I bought for fifty—or, to say truth, a little less, because one of my dollars was from Chili. Now I shall know the truth upon another point.’

  So he went back on board his ship, and, when he opened his chest, there was the bottle, and had come more quickly than himself. Now Keawe had a mate on board whose name was Lopaka.

  ‘What ails you?’ said Lopaka, ‘that you stare in your chest?’

  They were alone in the ship’s forecastle, and Keawe bound him to secrecy, and told all.

  ‘This is a very strange affair,’ said Lopaka; ‘and I fear you will be in trouble about this bottle. But there is one point very clear—that you are sure of the trouble, and you had better have the profit in the bargain. Make up your mind what you want with it; give the order, and if it is done as you desire, I will buy the bottle myself; for I have an idea of my own to get a schooner, and go trading through the islands.’

  ‘That is not my idea,’ said Keawe; ‘but to have a beautiful house and garden on the Kona Coast, where I was born, the sun shining in at the door, flowers in the garden, glass in the windows, pictures on the walls, and toys and fine carpets on the tables, for all the world like the house I was in this day—only a storey higher, and with balconies all about like the King’s palace; and to live there without care and make merry with my friends and relatives.’

  ‘Well,’ said Lopaka, ‘let us carry it back with us to Hawaii; and if all comes true, as you suppose, I will buy the bottle, as I said, and ask a schooner.’

  Upon that they were agreed, and it was not long before the ship returned to Honolulu, carrying Keawe and Lopaka, and the bottle. They were scarce come ashore when they met a friend upon the beach, who began at once to condole with Keawe.

  ‘I do not know what I am to be condoled about,’ said Keawe. ‘Is it possible you have not heard,’ said the friend, ‘your uncle—that good old man—is dead, and your cousin—that beautiful boy—was drowned at sea?’

  Keawe was filled with sorrow, and, beginning to weep and to lament, he forgot about the bottle. But Lopaka was thinking to himself, and presently, when Keawe’s grief was a little abated, ‘I have been thinking,’ said Lopaka. ‘Had not your uncle lands in Hawaii, in the district of Kau?’

  ‘No,’ said Keawe, ‘not in Kau; they are on the mountainside—a little way south of Hookena.’

  ‘These lands will now be yours?’ asked Lopaka.

  ‘And so they will,’ says Keawe, and began again to lament for his relatives.

  ‘No,’ said Lopaka, ‘do not lament at present. I have a thought in my mind. How if this should be the doing of the bottle? For here is the place ready for your house.’

  ‘If this be so,’ cried Keawe, ‘it is a very ill way to serve me by killing my relatives. But it may be, indeed; for it was in just such a station that I saw the house with my mind’s eye.’

  ‘The house, however, is not yet built,’ said Lopaka.

  ‘No, nor like to be!’ said Keawe; ‘for though my uncle has some coffee and ava and bananas, it will not be more than will keep me in comfort; and the rest of that land is the black lava.’

  ‘Let us go to the lawyer,’ said Lopaka; ‘I have still this idea in my mind.’

  Now, when they came to the lawyer’s, it appeared Keawe’s uncle had grown monstrous rich in the last days, and there was a fund of money.

  ‘And here is the money for the house!’ cried Lopaka.

  ‘If you are thinking of a new house,’ said the lawyer, ‘here is the card of a new architect, of whom they tell me great things.’

  ‘Better and better!’ cried Lopaka. ‘Here is all made plain for us. Let us continue to obey orders.’

  So they went to the architect, and he had drawings of houses on his table.

  ‘You want something out of the way,’ said the architect. ‘How do you like this?’ and he handed a drawing to Keawe.

  Now, when Keawe set eyes on the drawing, he cried out aloud, for it was the picture of his thought exactly drawn.

  ‘I am in for this house,’ thought he. ‘Little as I like the way it comes to me, I am in for it now, and I may as well take the good along with the evil.’

  So he told the architect all that he wished, and how he would have that house furnished, and about the pictures on the wall and the knick-knacks on the tables; and he asked the man plainly for how much he would undertake the whole affair.

  The architect put many questions, and took his pen and made a computation; and when he had done he named the very sum that Keawe had inherited.

  Lopaka and Keawe looked at one another and nodded.

  ‘It is quite clear,’ thought Keawe, ‘that I am to have this house, whether or no. It comes from the Devil, and I fear I will get little good by that; and of one thing I am sure, I will make no more wishes as long as I have this bottle. But with the house I am saddled, and I may as well take the good along with the evil.’

  So he made his terms with the architect, and they signed a paper; and Keawe and Lopaka took ship again and sailed to Australia; for it was concluded between them they should not interfere at all, but leave the architect and the bottle imp to build and to adorn that house at their own pleasure.

  The voyage was a good voyage, only all the time Keawe was holding in his breath, for he had sworn he would utter no more wishes, and take no more favours from the Devil. The time was up when they got back. The architect told them that the house was ready, and Keawe and Lopaka took a passage in the Hall, and went down Kona way to view the house, and see if all had been done fitly according to the thought that was in Keawe’s mind.

  Now the house stood on the mountainside, visible to ships. Above, the forest ran up into the clouds of rain; below, the black lava fell in cliffs, where the kings of old lay buried. A garden bloomed about that house with every hue of flowers; and there was an orchard of papaia on the one hand and an orchard of breadfruit on the other, and right in front, toward the sea, a ship’s mast had been rigged up and bore a flag. As for the
house, it was three storeys high, with great chambers and broad balconies on each. The windows were of glass, so excellent that it was as clear as water and as bright as day. All manner of furniture adorned the chambers. Pictures hung upon the wall in golden frames: pictures of ships, and men fighting, and of the most beautiful women, and of singular places; nowhere in the world are there pictures of so bright a colour as those Keawe found hanging in his house. As for the knick-knacks, they were extraordinary fine; chiming clocks and musical boxes, little men with nodding heads, books filled with pictures, weapons of price from all quarters of the world, and the most elegant puzzles to entertain the leisure of a solitary man. And as no one would care to live in such chambers, only to walk through and view them, the balconies were made so broad that a whole town might have lived upon them in delight; and Keawe knew not which to prefer, whether the back porch, where you got the land breeze, and looked upon the orchards and the flowers, or the front balcony, where you could drink the wind of the sea, and look down the steep wall of the mountain and see the Hall going by once a week or so between Hookena and the hills of Pele, or the schooners plying up the coast for wood and ava and bananas.

  When they had viewed all, Keawe and Lopaka sat on the porch. ‘Well,’ asked Lopaka, ‘is it all as you designed?’

  ‘Words cannot utter it,’ said Keawe. ‘It is better than I dreamed, and I am sick with satisfaction.’

  ‘There is but one thing to consider,’ said Lopaka; ‘all this may be quite natural, and the bottle imp have nothing whatever to say to it. If I were to buy the bottle, and got no schooner after all, I should have put my hand in the fire for nothing. I gave you my word, I know; but yet I think you would not grudge me one more proof.’

  ‘I have sworn I would take no more favours,’ said Keawe. ‘I have gone already deep enough.’

  ‘This is no favour I am thinking of,’ replied Lopaka. ‘It is only to see the imp himself. There is nothing to be gained by that, and so nothing to be ashamed of; and yet, if I once saw him, I should be sure of the whole matter. So indulge me so far, and let me see the imp; and, after that, here is the money in my hand, and I will buy it.’

  ‘There is only one thing I am afraid of,’ said Keawe. ‘The imp may be very ugly to view; and if you once set eyes upon him you might be very undesirous of the bottle.’

  ‘I am a man of my word,’ said Lopaka. ‘And here is the money betwixt us.’

  ‘Very well,’ replied Keawe. ‘I have a curiosity myself. So come, let us have one look at you, Mr Imp.’

  Now as soon as that was said, the imp looked out of the bottle, and in again, swift as a lizard; and there sat Keawe and Lopaka turned to stone. The night had quite come, before either found a thought to say or voice to say it with; and then Lopaka pushed the money over and took the bottle.

  ‘I am a man of my word,’ said he, ‘and had need to be so, or I would not touch this bottle with my foot. Well, I shall get my schooner and a dollar or two for my pocket; and then I will be rid of this devil as fast as I can. For to tell you the plain truth, the look of him has cast me down.’

  ‘Lopaka,’ said Keawe, ‘do not you think any worse of me than you can help; I know it is night, and the roads bad, and the pass by the tombs an ill place to go by so late, but I declare since I have seen that little face, I cannot eat or sleep or pray till it is gone from me. I will give you a lantern and a basket to put the bottle in, and any picture or fine thing in all my house that takes your fancy;—and be gone at once, and go sleep at Hookena with Nahinu.’

  ‘Keawe,’ said Lopaka, ‘many a man would take this ill; above all, when I am doing you a turn so friendly, as to keep my word and buy the bottle; and for that matter, the night and the dark, and the way by the tombs, must be all tenfold more dangerous to a man with such a sin upon his conscience, and such a bottle under his arm. But for my part, I am so extremely terrified myself, I have not the heart to blame you. Here I go then; and I pray God you may be happy in your house, and I fortunate with my schooner, and both get to heaven in the end in spite of the Devil and his bottle.’

  So Lopaka went down the mountain; and Keawe stood in his front balcony, and listened to the clink of the horse’s shoes, and watched the lantern go shining down the path, and along the cliff of caves where the old dead are buried; and all the time he trembled and clasped his hands, and prayed for his friend, and gave glory to God that he himself was escaped out of that trouble.

  But the next day came very brightly, and that new house of his was so delightful to behold that he forgot his terrors. One day followed another, and Keawe dwelt there in perpetual joy. He had his place on the back porch; it was there he ate and lived, and read the stories in the Honolulu newspapers; but when anyone came by they would go in and view the chambers and the pictures. And the fame of the house went far and wide; it was called Ka-Hale Nui—the Great House—in all Kona; and sometimes the Bright House, for Keawe kept a Chinaman, who was all day dusting and furbishing; and the glass, and the gilt, and the fine stuffs, and the pictures, shone as bright as the morning. As for Keawe himself, he could not walk in the chambers without singing, his heart was so enlarged; and when ships sailed by upon the sea, he would fly his colours on the mast.

  So time went by, until one day Keawe went upon a visit as far as Kailua to certain of his friends. There he was well feasted; and left as soon as he could the next morning, and rode hard, for he was impatient to behold his beautiful house; and, besides, the night then coming on was the night in which the dead of old days go abroad in the sides of Kona; and having already meddled with the Devil, he was the more chary of meeting with the dead. A little beyond Honaunau, looking far ahead, he was aware of a woman bathing in the edge of the sea; and she seemed a well-grown girl, but he thought no more of it. Then he saw her white shift flutter as she put it on, and then her red holoku; and by the time he came abreast of her she was done with her toilet, and had come up from the sea, and stood by the track-side in her red holoku, and she was all freshened with the bath, and her eyes shone and were kind. Now Keawe no sooner beheld her than he drew rein.

  ‘I thought I knew everyone in this country,’ said he. ‘How comes it that I do not know you?’

  ‘I am Kokua, daughter of Kiano,’ said the girl, ‘and I have just returned from Oahu. Who are you?’

  ‘I will tell you who I am in a little,’ said Keawe, dismounting from his horse, ‘but not now. For I have a thought in my mind, and if you knew who I was, you might have heard of me, and would not give me a true answer. But tell me, first of all, one thing: Are you married?’

  At this Kokua laughed out aloud. ‘It is you who ask questions,’ she said. ‘Are you married yourself?’

  ‘Indeed, Kokua, I am not,’ replied Keawe, ‘and never thought to be until this hour. But here is the plain truth. I have met you here at the roadside, and I saw your eyes, which are like the stars, and my heart went to you as swift as a bird. And so now, if you want none of me, say so, and I will go on to my own place; but if you think me no worse than any other young man, say so, too, and I will turn aside to your father’s for the night, and tomorrow I will talk with the good man.’

  Kokua said never a word, but she looked at the sea and laughed.

  ‘Kokua,’ said Keawe, ‘if you say nothing, I will take that for the good answer; so let us be stepping to your father’s door.’

  She went on ahead of him, still without speech; only sometimes she glanced back and glanced away again, and she kept the strings of her hat in her mouth.

  Now, when they had come to the door, Kiano came out on his verandah, and cried out and welcomed Keawe by name. At that the girl looked over, for the fame of the great house had come to her ears; and, to be sure, it was a great temptation. All that evening they were very merry together; and the girl was as bold as brass under the eyes of her parents, and made a mock of Keawe, for she had a quick wit. The next day he had a word with Kiano, and found the girl alone.

  ‘Kokua,’ said he, ‘you made a
mock of me all the evening; and it is still time to bid me go. I would not tell you who I was, because I have so fine a house, and I feared you would think too much of that house and too little of the man that loves you. Now you know all, and if you wish to have seen the last of me, say so at once.’

  ‘No,’ said Kokua; but this time she did not laugh, nor did Keawe ask for more.

  This was the wooing of Keawe; things had gone quickly; but so an arrow goes, and the ball of a rifle swifter still, and yet both may strike the target. Things had gone fast, but they had gone far also, and the thought of Keawe rang in the maiden’s head; she heard his voice in the breach of the surf upon the lava, and for this young man that she had seen but twice she would have left father and mother and her native islands. As for Keawe himself, his horse flew up the path of the mountain under the cliff of tombs, and the sound of the hoofs, and the sound of Keawe singing to himself for pleasure, echoed in the caverns of the dead. He came to the Bright House, and still he was singing. He sat and ate in the broad balcony, and the Chinaman wondered at his master, to hear how he sang between the mouthfuls. The sun went down into the sea, and the night came; and Keawe walked the balconies by lamplight, high on the mountains, and the voice of his singing startled men on ships.

  ‘Here am I now upon my high place,’ he said to himself. ‘Life may be no better; this is the mountain top; and all shelves about me toward the worse. For the first time I will light up the chambers, and bathe in my fine bath with the hot water and the cold, and sleep alone in the bed of my bridal chamber.’

  So the Chinaman had word, and he must rise from sleep and light the furnaces; and as he wrought below, beside the boilers, he heard his master singing and rejoicing above him in the lighted chambers. When the water began to be hot the Chinaman cried to his master; and Keawe went into the bathroom; and the Chinaman heard him sing as he filled the marble basin; and heard him sing, and the singing broken, as he undressed; until of a sudden, the song ceased. The Chinaman listened, and listened; he called up the house to Keawe to ask if all were well, and Keawe answered him ‘Yes’, and bade him go to bed; but there was no more singing in the Bright House; and all night long, the Chinaman heard his master’s feet go round and round the balconies without repose.