The daughter of the dawn

by William Reginald Hodder

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.