“That is precisely it. Miriam Grey, so said the solicitors, showed extraordinary signs of genius as a sculptress.”
At the last word my host stared at me with a dreamy look in his eyes. Had I touched upon the peculiar point of his madness?
“A sculptress!” he said slowly, and gazed for a full half-minute into the fire, while I watched him. Then, as I did not break the silence, he resumed: “Yes, there is a Te Makawawa, I know him well; there is a Table Land not far from here and a mountain near it; and, from what you have shown me, a woman who is a sculptress is held a prisoner there.”
He rose from his chair and paced up and down the small hut with his brows let down in deep and perplexed thought. “Strange—very strange. But she must be a sculptress of very great genius if——” He paused abruptly in his pacing the floor.
“Look here!” he said, casting off his abstraction, “if you will accept my poor hospitality I can put you up for the night, and then, in the morning, I will go with you to old Te Makawawa’s pa.”
I saw from his manner that he knew, or thought he knew, something about the matter, and asked simply, “Have you an idea?”
He looked down at me, then passed his hand over his brow in perplexity; finally, smoothing back his wayward mane, he faced the question and said frankly:
“My idea is a dream that I had a year or more ago—a very absurd dream, but, nevertheless, one so vivid and clear in all its details that it had, and still has, a strange effect upon me. That dream sometimes appeals to me as if it were the raison d’être of my existence in this solitude. And yet again, sometimes I think that my dream was an actual experience, but I have no proof that it was. Wanaki! all men who live alone in the bush as I do are more or less mad. But that word of yours, ‘sculptress,’ has given me an idea that after all I may not be as mad as I thought. If, to-morrow, old Te Makawawa can throw any light upon what has long perplexed me, then I will discuss my dream with you, as it may possibly have some bearing on the whereabouts of the woman you seek; to-morrow, not now, for, uncorroborated, it would appear to you so wild and strange, so obviously the vagary of an unhinged mind, that you might hesitate to accept my hospitality.”
As he fixed his fine eyes upon me and smiled, I realised that the fact of his being puzzled by the strangeness of his dream argued for his sanity; and if, indeed, his mind was really unhinged, it was upon some sublime point, some noble idea, having an uncommon object, full of the deep poetry that burned in those eyes.
As I returned his gaze and his smile I felt drawn towards him with feelings of a sudden friendship, and it was in accord with these feelings that in my mind I wrote him down a splendid madman.