CHAPTER XXII.

THE TALISMAN.

Miriam Grey moved out of the shadows into the daylight that flooded in through the opening of the cave and paused by Grey’s side, while they both gazed and marvelled at the wondrous thing that was now made clear.

“It is Crystal herself,” said Grey, when he had partly recovered from his astonishment.

“Crystal!” cried his wife quickly; “that was our daughter’s name, but I tell you, dear, she died; she was drowned, and Te Makawawa himself buried her. I will call him and he will tell you the same.”

She went to the top of the marble steps and called, but there was no answer. The aged chief who would face warriors, even if they covered the whole earth, had now clearly fled to avoid either facing the woman with the stars in her eyes, or confronting a matter through which he did not see his way clear.

As he had obviously left me to tell the tale of his deception, perchance of his sin against the Bright One, I gathered my thoughts together and went forward.

“Miriam Grey,” I said, “when first I undertook the search for you, Te Makawawa told me the story of the child, which, of course, you know up to the point where he took the little body away to bury it beneath the _rimu_. The part of the story he kept from you is this. Your child Crystal revived in his arms; he did not bury her but sent her away with a band of Maoris, whose instructions were to leave her with the first pakeha they met. The first white man they found was your husband, who, nevertheless, up to a month ago did not know she was his own daughter.”

“Not until Warnock here----” began Grey, but he stopped as he turned towards his wife, for, as was natural, my words had moved her greatly. She now stood looking at Crystal with a tender light of motherhood on her gentle face.

“My darling child!” she said slowly and hesitatingly, as if still unable to comprehend it.

“My own mother!” cried Crystal quickly--she had no hesitation in the matter--and, like a bird, she flew to, and nestled in, her mother’s arms. And they stood for a moment in a close embrace.

Crystal held back her head, and, smoothing her mother’s glossy locks away from her brow, looked at her lovingly, saying with a sweet repetition:

“Mother! Mother! Mother! My own mother!”

As Miriam Grey looked again on the lovely face so near to hers, and saw the dark eyes gazing into her own, there came once more the expression of bewilderment and awe which I had seen at their first meeting in the Place-of-Many-Chambers. Could she not account for this perfect likeness to the stone, as I had done? Surely she did not think that Hinauri’s ancient spirit had come back in the flesh?

No sooner were these questions asked in my mind than they were answered in a way that mystified me. As the look of awe deepened on the mother’s face she spoke in hushed tones:

“I saw your image in the stone before I was a mother. ‘Out of the distant past I will come to you,’ you said, as you held out your arms to me from the stone. Is it possible that the ancient prophecy is fulfilled in this way?--that you are Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, who has returned according to her promise, out of the distant past? O dear and lovely one, your eyes gaze down on me from the beginning of the world.”

Crystal seemed to be attaching her mother’s words to the feelings of which she had once spoken to me--the feelings of a “long, long ago,” hidden in some inmost tomb of memory. She was silent; but I, not willing to admit this thing by my silence, and moreover, having another explanation, spoke my thoughts.

I said: “That Crystal is your daughter is beyond doubt; but it seems to me that in the matter of the perfect likeness there is an explanation other than the one of which you speak. Of two marvels we must choose the less. My explanation is this: you yourself created an image which, in moments of deep concentration, you saw as if within the stone. Then, as day by day you visualised it more clearly, striving to give it visible shape in the marble, your desire was realised not only on the lifeless stone, but also on the face and form of your unborn child. Your idea was made stone, why not flesh?”

“Warnock is right, my dear,” said Grey, “no one believes in previous existences nowadays.”

Miriam Grey turned to me, leaving Crystal listening to her father, as he attempted to uphold and justify his view.

“Mr. Warnock!” she said gently, touching my arm; “what you say explains only the means employed. I recognise the law that we become, more especially in our offspring, what we contemplate; yet would I say that this was merely the means by which Hinauri’s spirit clothed itself in flesh.” She had lowered her voice almost to a whisper, and now she drew me further aside. A breath of the rising wind wailed about the ancient crags as it swept the side of the mountain without. It awoke strange feelings in me, as I stood in that high cave where Hinauri had waited through the ages. “There are strange things in this ancient temple,” she resumed, “things which point to the possibility of beings, who lived when the temple was founded, returning to earth again.”

I remembered the Vile Tohungas and replied: “Yes, I have seen a granite image and its living replica--do you mean that?”

“The one who stands apart I mean,” she said. “His face is that of Ngaraki, and what is more, the meaning of that granite statue that gazes ever upwards through the dark is the meaning of Ngaraki’s life.”

I was silent, wondering if this could be. I recalled the other thing in favour of her belief--the resemblance that Cazotl had borne to the chief of the Vile Tohungas, not only in face, but in purpose. I did not speak of it, but I began to detect a deep underlying connection between things that seemed formerly to be isolated. The ancient traditions, the happenings of the past month, the more immediate revelations of that very day--all seemed to be woven together in a definite pattern, real and visible to my inner eyes. I realised that, given this belief of Miriam Grey’s, the whole matter was a unity such as is made by independent witnesses who speak the truth. I could now understand, too, Te Makawawa’s bewilderment and hopeless confusion in finding what he regarded as a discrepancy in this unity, viz.: that Hinauri seemed to have moved to life, while yet the image remained immovable. These thoughts, which take so long to write, passed through my mind while the woman before me was dwelling on her last words.

“Come here!” she said again, leading me into the darkness round a buttress which divided the cave into two apartments; “you have matches. I will show you one of the strange things this place contains--a thing which will prove, if anything can, whether my child is that ancient one reclothed in flesh.”

I struck a match, and she lighted a torch that stood upright in a crevice in a ledge of rock. By the glow of the clear-burning pineheart I glanced quickly round the place. The jagged stone walls were not of marble, but of fine granite, and the furthest ray of the torch revealed no closing in of the rocks overhead. Dim reaches and shadows I could see, but no roof--indeed, by the freshness and purity of the air alone it was evident that there was an outlet above. That was surely the way by which Kahikatea had first entered the cave. As I swept my eyes round the lower walls and floor of this inner apartment I saw that in former times it must have been the abode of some of the savage priesthood who had in turn guarded the sacred stone. Thick Maori mats were laid about the level floor. Maori spears occupied the recesses of the rocks, and _merés_ of jade rested on the ledges. Rich garments of dog’s-hair or woven flax hung from points upon the walls, and ranged around the place were the grotesquely carved wooden gods of the Maori, lolling their tongues and caressing their bodies with three-fingered hands, while their eyes of _paua_ shell glistened in the torchlight.

While I had been engaged in looking at these things Miriam Grey had withdrawn a little stone box from a part of the wall. With this in both hands she approached, and, saying it was heavy, bade me place it on the ledge where the torch blazed. I did so, and the light of the pineheart revealed the frosty glitter of gold dust. She plunged her hands into this and withdrew a curiously wrought circlet of gold, set with a large diamond at one part and with a brilliant sapphire at another.

“This,” she said in a whisper, “so legend tells, is Hinauri’s crown. The very ancient giant priests took it from the city which stood on the plain below, and, when they brought the queen to this cave, it was placed in this receptacle, where it has remained until now.”

I took it in my hands. This actual tangible relic of a bygone civilisation helped me to understand those emotions of “long, long ago,” about which Crystal had spoken. I looked at the circlet and then at the walls of granite, and a feeling of extreme age possessed me. Had I, too, perchance lived in that far time when Hinauri, the Bright One, had attempted to rule a violent people by the law of love? Had I been among her counsellors in that long ago--a man of humble aspect, nursing an unrequited love for his dark-eyed queen?

I cast out the thought, for my unrequited love for Crystal was a thing of which I could not yet think calmly,

“This,” I said, “conveys to my mind no proof except that it once had a wearer.”

“Wait,” she replied. “Tradition says it is a talisman whose virtue is restricted to the one for whom it was made. See! there are some characters engraven inside which are supposed to relate to this tradition. In times long since it pressed the brows of the ancient queen, and the legend runs that, on her return, it will not be until it is placed upon her head that she will recall the memory of her ancient life.”

“Let us place it on Crystal’s head now,” I said quickly, making a movement towards the outer cave.

“No,” she returned, detaining me by the arm; “not now. At sunset to-night Ngaraki returns to sing his karakias before the statue. It is the time of the year when for a few days the sun-ray strikes in through a rift in the outstanding crags. We will remove and conceal the statue, and when he comes he will find Crystal posed in its place; then, while I place this circlet upon her head, he and the event shall decide if she be Hinauri or only my child.”

“If the talisman should have lost its power!” I objected.

“Then the tradition will not be of a piece with the general body of tradition which has been handed down within the ancient walls of this temple,” she said. “I have learned step by step, by proofs which I cannot show you now, that there is truth in these priestly traditions. I will tell you one thing briefly: in a circular recess in the side of the wall of the great abyss are the preserved heads of men who at various times have found their way into this mountain to destroy the sacred stone which was supposed to contain the form of the Pure One. The faces of these I have recognised by their resemblances to the faces of the Vile Tohungas of the Pit--the Destroyers of Women--and I believe firmly that the ancient brotherhood of sorcerers exists to this day, their initiates returning again and again in the flesh to work out their destiny. Even quite lately one found his way into the lower part of the mountain, but he escaped after nearly killing Ngaraki, whom I nursed for many days, thinking he would die.”

“If they had caught him what would they have done with him?” I asked.

“His head would now be hanging among the others, where it ought to be.”

I felt very thankful that I had not killed Ngaraki with that last bullet of mine, and still more thankful that my head was still on my shoulders. But I did not waste time in correcting her mistake. She concluded:

“That chamber of preserved heads, with many other things over which I have had ample time to think, has led me to believe in the traditions of this place, strange as they may appear to you of the outer world.”

I was silent, but in my silence I wished that I had kept the head of Cazotl to place among that gruesome collection.

At that moment Crystal, followed by Grey, came round the buttress.

“I want to kiss you again,” said she; “I have lived nearly sixteen years without a mother, and now I have found you I am so happy that I think I must cry.” She placed her arms round her mother’s neck, and drawing her down to a low ledge of rock near by, seated herself at her feet and buried her head on her lap and sobbed for very joy. Her mother placed one hand on Crystal’s hair, while Grey, seating himself beside her, took the other between both of his, and, leaving them thus, I walked back into the marble cave.

Again I stood before the statue of Hinauri and lingered over Crystal’s loveliness in stone. I felt a wild desire to kiss the beautiful cold lips, but I remembered that look of hers when she realised that Kahikatea loved her, and I held back. If ever a woman was pledged to a man Crystal was pledged to my friend. It was different now. I withdrew, and turned towards the opening.

This mouth of the marble cave was a little more than two yards in width, and nearly ten feet high. It admitted the lights of heaven on to the face of Hinauri. The outer surfaces of granite were worn by the age-long action of air and water, but the inner edges, of pure white marble, were accurately hewn with two parallel grooves, one on each side, similar to those down which a window might slide. Calling up the picture of the huge stone grating in the lower part of the temple, I remembered that the same grooves on a gigantic scale were there also. For a moment I wondered if these apertures were really so constructed in the first place that they could be barred with massive granite shutters. But it was useless to wonder, and I turned my attention to what was passing on the plain below, which was clearly visible to me as I advanced and stood in the opening.

On the left some outstanding crags shut out the view, but towards the right I could see, far below, the secluded valley, hemmed in against the mountain wall by the spur and the Lion Rock. On the further flank of the Lion was a small plateau of some forty yards square. On the one side of this was a precipice overlooking the plain, and, on the other, the open space was separated by a deep fissure from the thick bush that clothed the bases of the less precipitous mountains sloping off round the Table Land on the right. To this small plateau there led up a narrow path--a path which, as it ascended, became at one point so constricted by the steep precipice on its right and the yawning fissure on its left, that there was scarcely room for three men to stand abreast. The natural advantages of this position had been seen by the Maoris at a glance, and they had already set a high palisading round it, thus marking it for a stronghold. Scattered about on the yellow plain were small collections of rough dwellings--as many as might account for the presence of several hundred natives. And they seemed to be still flocking in, for, coming down off the spur of one of the rolling hills on the other side of the plain I saw a line of warriors.

In the _marae_[25] of the fortified _pa_ on the Lion’s flank was a chief striding up and down haranguing a crowd of savages. By his wild gesticulations and the fury of his words, whose connected meaning I could not catch, he was evidently a violent savage with a violent idea. As I asked myself what that idea could be my eyes fell on another figure in the open space near him. I sprang up and ran to the part of the cave where I had seen Grey set down his field glasses. Returning with these I looked long and steadily at the other figure. Yes, it was the wizard negro. Another of his infernal reed tubes was in his hand, and it at once occurred to me that he had this turbulent Maori under his influence, hoping, through him, to use the whole savage force for his own purposes.

While this was going on a tall chief, white-headed, and clothed in a dog’s-hair war-cloak, strode out of the _pa_ and across the plain to meet the warriors, who were now banding themselves together on the level. He stopped them and then led them past the _pa_ to the strip of bush that skirted the mountains to the right. As far as I could judge, the chief was Te Makawawa and the warriors were of his own tribe. I watched the scene on the plain for more than an hour, and the conclusion I came to was that the Maoris were gradually dividing themselves into two camps--the one under Te Makawawa and the other under the turbulent chief, who was evidently ruled by the negro wizard. From a few words that I had caught of the chief’s harangue in the _pa_ I guessed that the wizard had depicted Ngaraki’s goddess as a pakeha, and had urged that the Maoris should rise in arms against such an imposture. In addition to this I saw clearly how the subtle wizard would erect another and a dark-skinned goddess on the pedestal and enlist their sympathies with her. Very gravely I noted how my fears had been only too well founded.

At length I rose and sought out Miriam Grey in the inner cave. The three were still sitting talking together in low tones, and I hesitated before disturbing them. But I felt that the matter was urgent.

“I’m afraid there will be a battle among the Maoris before long,” I said, standing before them. “They have arranged themselves into two hostile camps, and look as if they mean fighting.”

Miriam Grey rose to her feet.

“I knew it,” she said; “I knew there would be trouble, but Ngaraki would bring the tribes together. He has told them too much, and now they have the idea that they are to win their land back and drive the English into the sea. But Te Makawawa knows better. Is he there?”

“Yes,” I said. “He controls one camp, and another warlike chief who occupies the stronghold commands the other.”

“There may still be time when Ngaraki returns at sunset,” she said. “He will know nothing of it, for he will come by the secret entrance at the back of the mountain--the ‘way of the lizard’; but he will quiet them if Te Makawawa cannot. When he comes and sees what he shall see he will be like a thousand men, and at ordinary times he is terrible enough, for I have watched his face while he has chanted his karakias in this cave.”

Under Miriam’s direction Grey and I removed the statue from its place and concealed it among the wooden gods in the darkness of the inner cave. It appeared that this removal was only rendered possible by the fact that, some years before, Ngaraki, impatient at Hinauri’s delay, had, with great toil and by means of an old sword--apparently the gift of an early explorer to some ancestor of the Rangitane--found among the weapons in the inner cave, achieved the difficult task of sawing through the base of the statue, where it was in one piece with the marble floor. This was to loosen one more of the fetters of Hinauri, for, as he said, “How could she move to life when her feet were fast bound to the rock?” Thus the place where Hinauri had stood through the ages was now left vacant, so that her living image might stand there with her arms outstretched to the western sky, with the same loveliness of old upon her face, and the same age-long prayer upon her parted lips. This, Miriam maintained, was not a trick, but a test, for none knew as well as Ngaraki the form and features of his ancient goddess! None could say with him, “This is she for whom I waited, for whom I prayed and toiled my whole life long.”