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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 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.
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.
It was long ere slumber came to them, and, if either dozed off, it would be to wake and find the other silently weeping in the dark, or, perhaps, to wake alone, the other having fled from the house and the neighbourhood of that bottle, to pace under the bananas in the little garden, or to wander on the beach by moonlight. One night it was so when Kokua awoke. Keawe was gone.
"You have done this for me?" she cried. "Ah, well, then what do I care!" and she clasped and wept upon him. "Ah, child!" said Keawe, "and yet, when I consider of the fire of hell, I care a good deal!" "Never tell me," said she; "no man can be lost because he loved Kokua, and no other fault. I tell you, Keawe, I shall save you with these hands, or perish in your company.
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.
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.
The principle on which those who condemn the conduct of Keawe rests is the purity of the blood of the royal stock, required by ancient usages, whose aim was to preserve the true nobility without alloy. Disdaining this rule, Keawe contracted numerous marriages, which gave him as mothers of his children women of low birth.
There was Kokua on the floor, the lamp at her side; before her was a milk-white bottle, with a round belly and a long neck; and as she viewed it, Kokua wrung her hands. A long time Keawe stood and looked in the doorway.
Away ahead of him he saw them blaze with his mind’s eye, and his soul shrank, and darkness fell upon the light. When Keawe came to himself a little, he was aware it was the night when the band played at the hotel.
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