BEYOND THE BAMBOO CURTAIN
Had John Quincy been able to see his Aunt Minerva at that moment, he
would not have been so sure that he could persuade her to fall in with
his plans. He would, indeed, have been profoundly shocked at the picture
presented by his supposedly staid and dignified relative.
For Miss Minerva was sitting on a grass mat in a fragrant garden in the
Hawaiian quarter of Honolulu. Pale golden Chinese lanterns, inscribed
with scarlet letters, hung above her head. Her neck was garlanded with
ropes of buff ginger blossoms twined with maile. The sleepy, sensuous
music of ukulele and steel guitar rose on the midnight air and before
her, in a cleared space under the date palms, Hawaiian boys and girls
were performing a dance she would not be able to describe in great
detail when she got back to Beacon Street.
Miss Minerva was, in her quiet way, very happy. One of the ambitions of
her life had been realized, and she was present at a luau, or native
Hawaiian feast. Few white people are privileged to attend this intimate
ceremony, but Honolulu friends had been invited on this occasion, and
had asked her to go with them. At first she had thought she must refuse,
for Dan was expecting Barbara and John Quincy on Monday afternoon. When
on Monday evening he had informed her that the _President Tyler_ would
not land its passengers until the next day, she had hastened to the
telephone and asked to reconsider her refusal.
And she was glad she had. Before her, on another mat, lay the remnants
of a dinner unique in her experience. Dan had called her a good sport,
and she had this evening proved him to be correct. Without a qualm she
had faced the queer food wrapped in brown bundles, she had tasted
everything, poi served in individual calabashes, chicken stewed in
cocoanut milk, squid and shrimps, limu, or sea-weed, even raw fish. She
would dream to-night!
Now the feasting had given way to the dance. The moonlight was tracing
lacy patterns on the lawn, the plaintive wail of the music rose ever
louder, the Hawaiian young people, bashful at first in the presence of
strangers, were bashful no longer. Miss Minerva closed her eyes and
leaned back against the trunk of a tall palm. Even in Hawaiian love
songs there is a note of hopeless melancholy, it touched her emotions as
no symphony ever could. A curtain was lifted and she was looking into
the past, the primitive, barbaric past of these Islands in the days
before the white men came.
A long, heart-breaking crescendo, and the music stopped, the swaying
bodies of the dancers were momentarily still. It seemed to Miss
Minerva's friends an opportune moment to depart. They entered the house
and in the stuffy little parlor, took leave of their brown, smiling host
and hostess. The baby whose arrival in the world was the inspiration for
the luau awoke for a second and smiled at them too. Outside in the
narrow street their car was waiting.
Through silent, deserted Honolulu they motored toward Waikiki. As they
passed the Judiciary Building on King Street the clock in the tower
struck the hour of one. She had not been out so late, Miss Minerva
reflected, since that night when a visiting company sang _Parsifal_ at
the Boston Opera House.
The iron gates that guarded the drive at Dan's house were closed.
Leaving the car at the curb, Miss Minerva bade her friends good night
and started up the walk toward the front door. The evening had thrilled
her, and she moved with the long confident stride of youth. Dan's
scarlet garden was shrouded in darkness, for the moon, which had been
playing an in-and-out game with the fast-moving clouds all evening, was
again obscured. Exotic odors assailed her nostrils, she heard all about
her the soft intriguing noises of the tropic night. She really should
get to bed, she knew, but with a happy truant feeling she turned from
the front walk and went to the side of the house for a last look at the
breakers.
She stood there under a poinciana tree near the door leading into Dan's
living-room. For nearly two weeks the Kona wind had prevailed, but now
on her cheek, she thought she felt the first kindly breath of the
trades. Very wide awake, she stared out at the dim foaming lines of surf
between the shore and the coral reef. Her mind strayed back to the
Honolulu she had known in Kalakaua's day, to that era when the Islands
were so naive, so colorful--unspoiled. Ruined now, Dan had said, ruined
by a damned mechanical civilization. "But away down underneath, Minerva,
there are deep dark waters flowing still."
The moon came out, touching with silver the waters at the crossroads,
then was lost again under fleecy clouds. With a little sigh that was
perhaps for her lost youth and the 'eighties, Miss Minerva pushed open
the unlocked door leading into the great living-room, and closed it
gently so as not to waken Dan.
An intense darkness engulfed her. But she knew her way across the
polished floor and set out confidently, walking on tiptoe. She had gone
half-way to the hall door when she stopped, her heart in her mouth. For
not five feet away she saw the luminous dial of a watch, and as she
stared at it with frightened eyes, it moved.
Not for nothing had Miss Minerva studied restraint through more than
fifty years. Many women would have screamed and fainted, Miss Minerva's
heart pounded madly, but that was all. Standing very still, she studied
that phosphorescent dial. Its movement had been slight, it was now at
rest again. A watch worn on some one's wrist. Some one who had been on
the point of action, but had now assumed an attitude of cautious
waiting.
Well, Miss Minerva grimly asked herself, what was she going to do about
it? Should she cry out a sharp: "Who's there?" She was a brave woman,
but the fool-hardiness of such a course was apparent. She had a vision
of that dial flashing nearer, a blow, perhaps strong hands at her
throat.
She took a tentative step, and then another. Now, surely, the dial would
stir again. But it remained motionless, steady, as though the arm that
wore it were rigid at the intruder's side.
Suddenly Miss Minerva realized the situation. The wearer of the watch
had forgotten the tell-tale numerals on his wrist, he thought himself
hidden in the dark. He was waiting for her to go on through the room. If
she made no sound, gave no sign of alarm, she might be safe. Once beyond
that bamboo curtain leading into the hall, she could rouse the
household.
She was a woman of great will power, but it took all she had to move
serenely on her way. She shut her lips tightly and accomplished it,
veering a bit from that circle of light that menaced her, looking back
at it over her shoulder as she went. After what seemed an eternity the
bamboo curtain received her, she was through it, she was on the stairs.
But it seemed to her that never again would she be able to look at a
watch or a clock and find that the hour was anything save twenty minutes
past one!
When she was half-way up the stairs, she recalled that it had been her
intention to snap on the lights in the lower hall. She did not turn
back, nor did she search for the switch at the head of the stairs.
Instead, she went hastily on into her room, and just as though she had
been an ordinary woman she closed her door and dropped down, trembling a
little, on a chair.
But she was no ordinary woman, and in two seconds she was up and had
reopened her door. Her sudden terror was evaporating; she felt her heart
beat in a strong regular rhythm again. Action was what was required of
her now, calm confident action; she was a Winterslip and she was ready.
The servants' quarters were in a wing over the kitchen, she went there
at once and knocked on the first door she came to. She knocked once,
then again, and finally the head of a very sleepy Jap appeared.
"Haku," said Miss Minerva, "there is some one in the living-room. You
must go down and investigate at once."
He stared at her, seeming unable to comprehend.
"We must go down," amended Miss Minerva.
"Wikiwiki!"
He disappeared, and Miss Minerva waited impatiently. Where was her
nerve, she wondered, why hadn't she seen this through alone? At home, no
doubt, she could have managed it, but here there was something strange
and terrifying in the very air. The moonlight poured in through a small
window beside her, forming a bright square at her feet. Haku reappeared,
wearing a gaudy kimono that he often sported on the beach.
Another door opened suddenly, and Miss Minerva started. Bah! What ailed
her, anyhow, she wondered. It was only Kamaikui, standing there a
massive figure in the dim doorway, a bronze statue clad in a holoku.
"Some one in the living-room," Miss Minerva explained again. "I saw him
as I came through."
Kamaikui made no reply, but joined the odd little procession. In the
upper hall Haku switched on the lights, both up-stairs and down. At the
head of the stairs there was a brief pause--then Miss Minerva took her
rightful place at the head of the line. She descended with a firm step,
courageous and competent, Boston at its best. After her followed a
stolid little Jap in a kimono gay with passionate poppies, and a
Polynesian woman who wore the fearful Mother Hubbard of the missionaries
as though it were a robe of state.
In the lower hall Miss Minerva did not hesitate. She pushed on through
the bamboo curtain and her hand--it trembled ever so slightly--found the
electric switch and flooded the living-room with light. She heard the
crackle of bamboo behind her as her strange companions followed where
she led. She stood looking curiously about her.
There was no one in sight, no sign of any disturbance, and it suddenly
occurred to Miss Minerva that perhaps she was behaving in a rather
silly fashion. After all, she had neither seen nor heard a living thing.
The illuminated dial of a watch that moved a little--might it not have
been a figment of her imagination? She had experienced a stirring
evening. Then, too, she remembered, there had been that small glass of
okolehau. A potent concoction!
Kamaikui and Haku were looking at her with the inquiring eyes of little
children. Had she roused them for a fool's errand? Her cheeks flushed
slightly. Certainly in this big brilliant room, furnished with
magnificent native woods and green with many potted ferns, everything
seemed proper and in order.
"I--I may have been mistaken," she said in a low voice. "I was quite
sure--but there's no sign of anything wrong. Mr. Winterslip has not been
resting well of late. If he should be asleep we won't waken him."
She went to the door leading on to the lanai and pushed aside the
curtain. Bright moonlight outside revealed most of the veranda's
furnishings, and here, too, all seemed well. "Dan," Miss Minerva called
softly. "Dan. Are you awake?"
No answer. Miss Minerva was certain now that she was making a mountain
out of a molehill. She was about to turn back into the living-room when
her eyes, grown more accustomed to the semi-darkness, noted a rather
startling fact.
Day and night, over Dan's cot in one corner of the lanai, hung a white
mosquito netting. It was not there now.
"Come, Haku," Miss Minerva said. "Turn on the light out here."
Haku came, and the green-shaded lamp glowed under his touch. The little
lamp by which Dan had been reading his evening paper that night when he
had seemed suddenly so disturbed, and rushed off to send a letter to
Roger in San Francisco. Miss Minerva stood recalling that incident, she
recalled others, because she was very reluctant to turn toward that cot
in the corner. She was conscious of Kamaikui brushing by her, and then
she heard a low, half-savage moan of fear and sorrow.
Miss Minerva stepped to the cot. The mosquito netting had been torn down
as though in some terrific struggle and there, entangled in the meshes
of it, she saw Dan Winterslip. He was lying on his left side, and as she
stared down at him, one of the harmless little Island lizards ran up his
chest and over his shoulder--and left a crimson trail on his white
pajamas.