CHAPTER XXIII.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN.

Towards sunset I stood at the opening of the cave and looked down upon the rolling plain below, with the Lion Rock enclosing the little valley against the mountain wall. About the banks of the stream the afternoon sun, obscured from me by some crags that stood out upon my left, slumbered upon beds of moss, and all was hushed. Thistle-down floated along the slow currents of the air; gnats and bright-coloured beetles winged their way above the tops of the dreamy trees, while here and there a tui flashed out from the foliage to chase them in the sunlight. And in the bosom of the quiet was felt at intervals the single bell-like note of the korimako--a drop of liquid sound falling into the deep well of silence--the ping of some little heart of air bursting in a single throb of pure delight. These sights and sounds below were to me the points of a great hush which reigned beneath the cloudless sky, as if Nature, like a fair quietist, had fallen into a trance, yet having her blue eyes wide open.

As I leaned against the side of the cave’s mouth and gazed down upon the dreamy scene, the melancholy of it all laid hold upon me--that melancholy, I mean, which is at once the matrix of joy and sadness, and which, like beauty, is far within the eyes that see it, deep within the heart that feels it. In its atmosphere our souls may almost bridge vast gulfs of time and enclose far-sundered points in space.

It was so with me. I wished that those feelings which seemed to come to me out of the long-lost past might abide with me for ever, or I with them. Knowing them as the enemies of littleness, I loved them, not because they were mine, but because they were not. In this still air of melancholy the things of ancient night breathed at my side, and the things of to-day were set far back in the dim recesses of eld. The pre-Adamite city of the plain which Time had trodden in the dust was a present reality, but the murmur of my friends’ voices from the inner cave was a ghostly echo from a bygone age.

The silence deepened on my soul, the melancholy mood forgot itself, and the mellow poetry of “long ago” vanished like the glamour of a dream. “All things happen here and now,” I said, and the sound of my own voice disturbed the stillness. Time rolled itself out into ages. Space unfolded into vast stretches. The melancholy brooding of my dream returned, but with something added: a thread of fleeting memory connected with some old-world life. I tried to assure myself that it was a mere freak of the brain, which may be able to dress a present thought in the past tense in such a way as to deceive even its own father.

But it was in vain. I shall never forget the deep impression made upon me by my instantaneous dream that all things happen here and now. When it had passed I regarded it as the true waking state, and this other the dream into which I had slipped once more. An eternal dreamer dreaming non-eternal dreams had been aroused for a moment, and then had slept again with less reverence for the clumsy, sprawling consciousness of his dream. I had laid hold of some evidences of a life buried beneath the strata of memory: a monstrous tooth of an old-world passion, a blunted flint-head of some dart of high desire, a tablet inscribed with a deed of darkness, a clouded stone in labour with a gem for a sometime crown--these were unearthed at random as if from some pre-tertiary strata of recollection; and so I dreamed on and on into the past until, turning my head at a slight sound within, I saw a white figure advance from the shadows of the inner cave into the daylight, and pause on the spot where, with her giant priests around her, Hinauri, the Queen of the City of the Southern Cross, had set her feet. I passed my hand quickly across my brow and said to my senses, “Fools! it is merely a girl of to-day draped in the style of the queen of ancient night to cheat a Maori chief.” But these words did not multiply, for I saw at a glance that Crystal’s lovely face was full of those wistful dreams of long ago which had come to me. Her form was burdened as if with a sweet, but heavy sadness, and her head drooped, so that her long, black, rippling masses of hair enveloped her arms and shoulders like a shroud of darkness, in the depths of which was the veiled light of her eyes. She was abstracted and did not observe me as I passed before her gaze and found my way into the shadows of the inner cave, where Miriam and Grey were standing watching her.

“Is this to trick Ngaraki?” I asked of the former, with a return of my former scepticism.

“Hush!” she replied, “it is no trick. She is like one walking in her sleep. Within the unhewn marble I saw the queen of old stand like that in deep abstraction before she held out her arms to me and the future. It is no trick. In ten minutes Ngaraki will be here, and he shall judge if this is the one he has toiled and prayed for all his life.”

Her hand trembled on my arm, and I was silenced. I looked into her sweet face in the vague light, and saw there again my own strange dreams of “long ago.” At that moment the thunder of Kahikatea reverberated far away overhead. He was blasting the rocks to force a passage through the tunnels. Crystal heard the sound as if it had been a chord of music in her dream, for she raised her head, crossed her hands upon her bosom and stood there, rapt, serene, expectant. The daylight, now falling full upon her upturned face, revealed a pallor and a look of endless waiting which did not pass away, but remained unaltered, as if her spirit had flitted from her body and left them there. Minutes passed and she did not move. I called her name, but she did not hear. I stepped from the inner cave and stood before her. She did not see me. Her deep black eyes of night, wide open and full of mystery, seemed sad and tired of waiting through the ages, and upon her cheek, pale as the moon-face in the light of day, her long lashes cast heavy shadows of weariness. It was the beauty of the marble Hinauri, touched with the conscious stress of her long and lonely vigil. Awed and silent, I returned to the gloom of the inner cave to watch and wait.

Sunset was drawing near. The exact moment when the sun ray would strike in was known to the woman who had spent the best part of her life in this cave. “A few minutes more,” she whispered to me; “but it will not come before Ngaraki. He must be already approaching through the tunnels.”

I heard a slight movement in the darkness among the Maori gods, and was about to ask who was there, when Miriam clutched my arm and pointed towards the head of the marble stairs which led up into the cave. There, framed in the rugged archway, stood the tall figure of Ngaraki the Terrible, clad in his flowing robe--a magnificent Maori, whose flashing eye was hard to meet, whose proud, fierce, but noble bearing marked him out as a ruler of men. His eyes were fixed upon the white figure in the centre of the cave, standing where Hinauri had for ever stood. The thick tresses of hair that fell about the graceful form of his goddess were now jet black. He passed his hand across his eyes and hit his breast a sounding blow.

No, he was not dreaming. But was it a trick? Had Miriami blackened the statue’s hair?

He took quick strides and stood before the form in white. Ngha! the eyes were no longer dull, white stone, the parted lips were faintly red, and the cheeks, though white as death, were those of a living soul.

He stepped back with a stately gesture of heroic feeling, chanting in an awed and subdued voice:

“It is not Hingarae I see, Not Ihungarupaea, ’Tis Hinetuahoanga Standing there! The axe is sharpened, The axe unloosened by the sun, And now the tree which stifles Tane Shall be laid low.”

He ceased with the poetry of his fierce heart unspoken in his eyes, for at that moment Miriam Grey advanced from the shadows with the circlet of gold in her hands. Motioning Ngaraki to stand aside and be silent, she drew near and placed the talisman with its sparkling gems upon the head of the living image. As she did so the pallor and abstraction, the weariness and sadness, fell from the face and form of Crystal. She no longer drooped. The warm blood mounted to her cheeks and sparkled in her eyes. Power and stateliness came into her pose. She awoke. And at that instant the expected sun ray burst in, and the dazzling beauty of the Daughter of the Dawn was revealed.

In all my dreamings I had never dreamt of beauty as divine as that. My poor words fall on their faces in helpless confusion. Miriam Grey caught her breath and stepped back, the limit of human wonder upon her gentle face. The Maori chief stood erect, his eyes shining like stars, but his countenance motionless with a control that seemed more than human. Grey moved a sudden step forward, and, as I turned my head, I saw in the shadows beyond him the vague outline of a giant figure I knew. It was Kahikatea, standing with one hand on the buttress, his head bent forward to view the form of Hinauri in the sun ray. He had come

[image: images/img262.jpg caption: “AT THAT INSTANT THE EXPECTED SUN RAY BURST IN, AND THE DAZZLING BEAUTY OF THE DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN WAS REVEALED.”]

by the ‘way of the spider,’ and had arrived at a moment when he well might stand there speechless with amazement, shaken with the sudden realisation of desires which seemed impossible of fulfilment.

As the sunlight wrapped Crystal about with splendour, sparkling in the gems of the golden talisman, glistening on her raven tresses and close-girt raiment of white, a mysterious change came over her. She dropped her arms to her side and shivered slightly. Then the sweet longing deepened upon her form. The lovelight leapt into her glorious eyes as she gazed into the western sky. Yearning forward, she held out her arms to some vision which seemed to call her pure soul out of the depths to array itself in light upon her radiant face.

Surely this was no acting! None could imitate so faithfully the pose of longing and expectancy which had been so startling in the marble. No; as I gazed with all my soul, wonder forced the settled conviction into my mind that it was in reality Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, waking from her age-long trance. Reclothed in flesh, it was the ancient spirit of the pure one who, in a far-off period of the world’s unwritten history, had come down from the skies to rule the people by the Law of Love. A storm of deep feeling swept doubt from my mind and gave me clear-seeing eyes to view this thing. Hinauri had returned. The Daughter of the Dawn had taken up the thread of memory where she had dropped it in the ages that Time has buried in the Eternal Sea.

Still bathed in the glowing light she stood motionless, her arms outstretched to her vision. A little breath of wind sighed without, then came in at the opening of the cave and swayed the edge of her skirt till it revealed one sandalled foot. It rippled her raven tresses and caressed and pressed them gently about her form. Then her beauty became unearthly in its splendour. Her bosom heaved, her eyes sparkled with a holy light, and her parted lips uttered a cry of joy in an unknown tongue--strange, and wild, and sweet, like an echo of forgotten song. It thrilled the place with music for a moment; then the sun ray fled and bore it on its bosom away, through all the happy fields of space.

Hinauri’s arms fell to her side, and she turned to the chief, who stood silent. With a swift glance she scanned his stately form, and, when her eyes met his, a look of recognition came upon her face. In the half-bewildered way of one who is linking the memory of a dead past on to the living present, she said in even, solemn tones, speaking in the Maori tongue:

“I know thee. I know thy name. I know that of which thou art the meaning. Zun! my counsellor in an age gone by; the one who stood by me in the darkest hour of danger; but stooped from the high magic that I taught my priests--stooped, and sinned, and fell, to save me when all seemed lost. Lo! the gross image of myself--the stranded spar bound down with a stone!--whose was the splendid lie that gave that image to the Vile Ones to oppress, saying ‘This is Hia’s real self’? The lie was thine, O Zun! the substitution of the false for the true to save the sacred stone from their polluting hands. Misguided friend of long ago! thou hast suffered for love of me and still must suffer----”

She broke off suddenly, and my thoughts, which were recalling Ngaraki’s interpretation of the characters on the breast of the Twelfth Tohunga, found a sudden ending; for, at that instant, there came from the plain below a sound that shook the air. A sudden tramp of many feet as one, then silence and a short sharp yell, harsh and terrible, rending the silence like a savage spear thrust--these were the signs that told the first terrific movements of the Maori war-dance on the plain.

Ngaraki’s hand closed tightly on his _meré_, and he advanced one foot; but Hinauri’s eyes were sad, and her face sorrowful, as she mutely questioned him, while we all stood silently by in the shadows, feeling it was not for us to speak or act.

At length the fierce chief spoke:

“Hinauri has returned, and her people are ready to fight for her. Ngha! they will fight the whole world and drive them into the sea.”

The sound of the war-dance--evidently a sudden surprise to him--had half aroused his fierce nature, and for the moment his great joy could plan no higher tribute to his goddess than to fight for her. But in another moment he was recalled from his wild impulse, for Hinauri’s face grew sad beyond words as she answered:

“Zun--Ngaraki--my word is peace, not war; my rule by love, not violence. Ah! I have awaked too soon from my long sleep. Thou wert ever fierce and too ready to fight for me. Well did they call thee Terrible. But hear me, Zun--they may heed my words. If they would be my people they must live by the law of love and not by that of war. Go to them. Tell them that my message is peace, and stay their violence. They make war, not for me, but against me. Go with all speed, lest it be too late, _and thou return to look for me in vain_.”

The chief’s fierceness fell from him at these words, and there appeared upon his face a look of wondering worship, softening his aspect with the high poetry which lingers long in the heart of his race. He bowed his head in submission and moved to go. But Hinauri called him back.

“Ngaraki! Depart in peace: leave war and knife behind you!” She pointed to his weapons as she spoke, and there was a command in her voice and eyes.

The chief turned and laid his spear and _meré_ on the white dust before her, saying: “Not only his spear and _meré_ will the Maori lay at the feet of the Daughter of the Dawn, but his heart and life also. He was startled by the sound of war, and thought only of fighting for his queen. He will go to his people and tell them that the word of the Bright One is peace and love.”

He turned, and was about to descend the marble steps when his controlled emotions broke loose. Facing round he held forth his arms to her, while the answer to his lifelong prayers shone out upon his rugged face.

“The world is glad!” he cried; “no more shall Papanui’s daughters weep. Ihi-Ihi has come from the west. Hinauri has burst from her ancient tomb. By the magic of a woman has she burst her bonds. And now the long-sealed fountains of the Maori’s breast leap and dance and sparkle in the sun with music sweeter than the korimako’s joy. Ngha! I will hasten to my people: my heart is breaking with a mighty song.”

He hurried away, and his stately form was soon lost in the shadows below the stairway.

Then Hinauri, the daughter of Miriam Grey, turned to her mother with a strange blending of emotions upon her face. The dazzling glory of the ancient queen was now softened by the pure and tender light of a daughter’s love. She drew near to Miriam, and, placing her arms about her neck, folded her close, saying in a soft, low voice: “Mother! my mother! It is all clear to me now. I know myself; I know my name--it is written on the rocks that are buried beneath the dust of ages on the plain below, and upon the walls of this everlasting temple. Now I know the meaning of all my vague yearnings for some forgotten glory, some mellow splendour of the past, some memory of my ancient self. Now I know why the thought of ‘long, long ago’ brought tears to my eyes and yearning to my soul; and why I longed to fill the hearts of women with great thoughts and prayers, for it is by the high magic of Woman that my giants will come back. Look at me!” She stood away and held her arms aside, while there rested upon her face a perfect certainty that none could find a defect in her person. “Am I not as I came to you at the very first, perfect as the image that was reflected in the depths of your pure soul? Am I not the one who came to you and touched your highest thoughts with fire, who led your soul to the father of my choice? Yes, it was I that fanned that double flame with the breath of my desire. I gave my life to you and you preserved it by your constant prayers. Nay, more--I came to you because you were the only one in whom I could find myself. In your great love for what is pure and beautiful you held out all that belonged to me, and I came and took it, for it was mine to take as well as yours to give. And yet there are some who would say that I was not; that the full extent of this sign of power is that you fashioned me according to the model of your mind; that I was one with formless substance, and you moulded me to this form by the power of your imagination.”

She smiled and placed her arms again about her mother’s neck. Miriam Grey’s lifelong prayer for what is pure and beautiful was answered. She drew her child to her, and the beating of her heart against her daughter’s bosom spoke first. Then she said:

“You were the love that came to me out of the distant past--a ray of light from the golden skies of long ago. You are Hinauri, the Bright One, and yet--and yet you are my child.”

Her goddess stepped back, and again the dazzling regal beauty flashed out, but with a softened splendour, as she cried: “Ah! pure mother, whom I chose to be my guide! The stars in your eyes foretold my birth.” Her beauty changed to loveliness, and, as she drew nearer and continued, we in the shadows bent forward to catch her words, they were so low and tender: “Mother, sweet mother!”--she was nestling to Miriam’s bosom now--“if every woman mounted to the gates of heaven to find her child, and bore it from the skies sheltering it all the way, as you have done, there would be no more sorrow, no more death--only a coming and going of gods descending and ascending, from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven. For long ages men have been only half-born. Earthward-bound souls have striven with their mothers for whole and perfect expression in flesh, but Motherhood has fallen from its grandeur, and they have striven in vain. The Bright Ones ever come to earth, but when their witless mothers misconceive their power and beauty, what godlike likeness can they bear? Alas! that women should have forgotten that their ideals may rule the world. Alas! too, that they should caricature the gods. It is to restore Motherhood to its first sublimity and power that I have come, and the mystery of my coming is the ground-plan of a mighty race.”

Hinauri paused and placed her hand to her forehead, as if she feared her memory was flitting.

“Though I can recall the past,” she said sadly, “I have no knowledge of what my future is to be; yet I feel that this clear memory will not be mine for long. Before the world’s oblivion closes in upon me again I would search out and look upon certain things in this ancient place--symbols of constant love for the higher things of beauty, and symbols, too, of the downward progress of those Vile Ones who have made stepping stones of their dead selves to grosser and to grosser worship. And when we go down to work and pray in the world, should we not leave the pure white image here as a symbol of our higher selves, for ever holding out its arms to the glory of the future?”

I glanced at the shadowy figure of Kahikatea, half expecting that he would make some sign, but he stood motionless, straining forward, with one hand clutching a projection of the buttress. Obviously he was too thunderstruck by this fulfilment of his dreams to act, to move, to speak. I went to him, and grasping his hand, said:

“Your dream is fulfilled. Wait a little longer and you will understand.”

He answered by a silent pressure of my fingers. Then Grey and I, in answer to the wish we had heard expressed, brought forth the marble statue from the recesses of the inner cave and placed it in its former position. I remember noting that, as we stood away leaving it there, the sounds of the war-dance on the plain sounded louder and more furious; but all thoughts, all sounds were for the time set aside by what followed.

As Hinauri stood before the stone gazing for a moment upon the finest, loftiest expression of herself, I heard a deep breath taken in the shadows near me. Then a hand trembling with a bodyfull of excitement gripped my arm, and a voice whispered hoarsely, “God, Warnock--I understand!”

Then Hinauri spoke, and her words seemed to gather to themselves all the loving prayers that have risen from the lips of women since the human world began. The thrilling music of her voice struck some invisible but responsive harp-strings in the air of the silent cave, and the song of it went singing on and on, coalescing with the sweet tones that underlie the universe of women’s hearts--on and on until the Great Tohungas of the Earth quieted the music of their deeds to hear the strain, and, listening, to whisper: “Hush! we toil in vain. A woman prays and all is done. Gentle hands knock at the door of heaven, and the Sons of God come forth to walk among us”--on and on, a voice made universal, welling from the heart of every woman and falling on the ear of That-which-Listens in the throbbing heart of all. Her black eyes--dark with excess of light--were fired with all the intensity of a woman’s love, as she raised her arms and voice to the image that was to remain in the high solitudes of the mountain:

“My pure white Higher Self! I go down to the world, but thou must stand for ever gazing out into the future, thy very look a prayer for all that Heaven holds back. Pray on, pure self, and may thy prayer be ours. When we weak women of a darkened world lose heart, and almost fall into forgetfulness, then may we look up to the everlasting hills and see the age-long hope upon thy face, the vision of the Golden Age within thine eyes, and crystal purity upon thy brow. Symbol of ideal woman! In every deed may we live always in the silence of the age with thee, for thou art in the stillness, and the stillness is with beauty, and beauty is with God. Thine arms are raised in constant longing; thine eyes look forth into a further and a further sky. So may our arms be raised for ever; so may we look beyond the level of the earth and pray that we may always know that, far above the world’s loud roar, our pure white Higher Self stands ever as we might stand--clear seers of a pristine beauty, seekers of a further God and, like thee, crowned with precious gems of womanhood.”

She removed the circlet from her head, and, approaching the image, paused before it with the talisman in her hands.

“This will link thee and me together in one life, so that there shall be one spirit between us. For long ages have we been spoken of as one: let us so remain, and I, below upon the earth, will never stain thy glistening white, for all the holy blessings that have fallen on thee since the world began will fall on me and hold me up. So I remain while thou remainest, breathing this same pure air. Lo! in token that we are one life and one spirit, I place my crown upon thy brow.”

She raised it, but her eyes fell upon the characters engraven upon the inner surface, and, with hands arrested, she read aloud:

“_Thou, Hia, shalt return at the dawn of a new age, but ere the sun has shone twice upon this, thy crown, thou shalt withdraw into the sky._”

She paused, while this strange prophecy wrought a sadness very human on her face. Then she placed the circlet upon the head of the image.

Something now prompted me to lead the woman I loved to the man whose face she had seen in her dreams. Acting on this sudden impulse, I emerged from the shadows and said to the one so far above me, “He is there in the inner cave. He is there--my perfect man!”

As I pointed towards the buttress she turned her dark eyes on mine; her lips trembled, and her eyes burned with a light that was not for me. Then with a troubled and sorrowful sigh--yes, that sigh was for me--she said, “Wanaki! he was always mine.”

She moved slowly in the direction of my outstretched hand. She seemed to pause and flutter a moment on the verge of the shadows, then, with the same joyous cry in an unknown tongue that she had uttered in her vision, she flew to him, and, from the darkness, I heard her murmur his name, dwelling upon it as lovingly as her head now dwelt upon his breast.

“Kahikatea! Kahikatea!”

I turned and hastened down the marble steps, leaving Grey and his wife to make what they could of it. I would go out and kill someone--that negro wizard by choice--or be killed by someone, it mattered little. But at the thought of the Destroyer of Women--the Poisoner--I pulled up short in my chaos. Yes, everything mattered. From that evil source danger might still threaten the woman I loved. What meant the prophecy engraven on the talisman, that before the sun shone twice upon it she must withdraw into the sky? The other prophecies had been fulfilled, why not this? It was not fate. It could not be fate. It was a warning. Filled with a dread presentiment as dark as the utter darkness I passed through, I went down through the tunnels and reached the place to which we had climbed from the margin of the lake. The rope was still there, drawn up as I had left it, and the cataract was no longer thundering down from above. By this I knew that the hidden contrivance beneath the water had again been set in motion, and that both Te Makawawa and Ngaraki had passed out by the ‘way of the winged fish.’ For me there was no way but to descend by the rope, and when I stood on the margin of the lake below, I feared to leave the rope hanging there. Accordingly, I swung it over a projection near the recess where the torches were kept, so that no one could find it in the darkness.

When, a minute later, I passed out at the opening in the side of the mountain, the hideous yells of the savages beyond the Lion Rock told me that fierce battle was near, if it had not already begun.