On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales | Page 5

over the islands. She sighed pleasantly and
observed: "All our husbands have done well by us with what we
brought them."
"And happily . . . " Martha agreed, then suspended her utterance with
suspicious abruptness.
"And happily, all of us, except Sister Bella," Bella forgivingly
completed the thought for her.
"It was too bad, that marriage," Martha murmured, all softness of
sympathy. "You were so young. Uncle Robert should never have made
you."
"I was only nineteen," Bella nodded. "But it was not George Castner's
fault. And look what he, out of she grave, has done for me. Uncle
Robert was wise. He knew George had the far-away vision of far ahead,
the energy, and the steadiness. He saw, even then, and that's fifty years
ago, the value of the Nahala water-rights which nobody else valued
then. They thought he was struggling to buy the cattle range. He
struggled to buy the future of the water- -and how well he succeeded
you know. I'm almost ashamed to think of my income sometimes. No;
whatever else, the unhappiness of our marriage was not due to George.
I could have lived happily with him, I know, even to this day, had he
lived." She shook her head slowly. "No; it was not his fault. Nor

anybody's. Not even mine. If it was anybody's fault--" The wistful
fondness of her smile took the sting out of what she was about to say.
"If it was anybody's fault it was Uncle John's."
"Uncle John's!" Martha cried with sharp surprise. "If it had to be one or
the other, I should have said Uncle Robert. But Uncle John!"
Bella smiled with slow positiveness.
"But it was Uncle Robert who made you marry George Castner," her
sister urged.
"That is true," Bella nodded corroboration. "But it was not the matter of
a husband, but of a horse. I wanted to borrow a horse from Uncle John,
and Uncle John said yes. That is how it all happened."
A silence fell, pregnant and cryptic, and, while the voices of the
children and the soft mandatory protests of the Asiatic maids drew
nearer from the beach, Martha Scandwell felt herself vibrant and
tremulous with sudden resolve of daring. She waved the children away.
"Run along, dears, run along, Grandma and Aunt Bella want to talk."
And as the shrill, sweet treble of child voices ebbed away across the
lawn, Martha, with scrutiny of the heart, observed the sadness of the
lines graven by secret woe for half a century in her sister's face. For
nearly fifty years had she watched those lines. She steeled all the
melting softness of the Hawaiian of her to break the half-century of
silence.
"Bella," she said. "We never know. You never spoke. But we wondered,
oh, often and often--"
"And never asked," Bella murmured gratefully.
"But I am asking now, at the last. This is our twilight. Listen to them!
Sometimes it almost frightens me to think that they are grandchildren,
MY grandchildren--I, who only the other day, it would seem, was as

heart-free, leg-free, care-free a girl as ever bestrode a horse, or swam in
the big surf, or gathered opihis at low tide, or laughed at a dozen lovers.
And here in our twilight let us forget everything save that I am your
dear sister as you are mine."
The eyes of both were dewy moist. Bella palpably trembled to
utterance.
"We thought it was George Castner," Martha went on; "and we could
guess the details. He was a cold man. You were warm Hawaiian. He
must have been cruel. Brother Walcott always insisted he must have
beaten you--"
"No! No!" Bella broke in. "George Castner was never a brute, a beast.
Almost have I wished, often, that he had been. He never laid hand on
me. He never raised hand to me. He never raised his voice to me.
Never--oh, can you believe it?--do, please, sister, believe it--did we
have a high word nor a cross word. But that house of his, of ours, at
Nahala, was grey. All the colour of it was grey and cool, and chill,
while I was bright with all colours of sun, and earth, and blood, and
birth. It was very cold, grey cold, with that cold grey husband of mine
at Nahala. You know he was grey, Martha. Grey like those portraits of
Emerson we used to see at school. His skin was grey. Sun and weather
and all hours in the saddle could never tan it. And he was as grey inside
as out.
"And I was only nineteen when Uncle Robert decided on the marriage.
How was I to know? Uncle Robert talked to me. He pointed out how
the wealth and property of Hawaii was already beginning to pass into