“Still living?”
“I have every reason to believe that your wife Miriam is still alive——” I paused, wondering if in his oblivion he had married again, and if, perhaps—it was a painful thought—the woman of his choice was at present the head of his household. His face, wrought with nervous emotion, told me nothing of this kind; and if I had not paused he would have interrupted me in his excitement.
“Thank Heaven!” he said, striking the table with his fist, and rising from his seat to pace the carpeted floor; “thank Heaven I have never married again. And my daughter—speak, sir—my daughter?”
“Was left at your hut fifteen years ago while you were asleep by the fire.”
He stopped in his pacing to and fro on the other side of the table and faced me with a countenance from which all traces of excitement had fled. Slowly a fine light began to burn in his brown eyes. Like a man walking in his sleep, he felt his way round the table, and, seating himself again in his chair, said in a deep, hushed voice, which had a strange ring of sweetness in it: “Crystal Grey my own child—the mother whom she has led me to love above all other women—my—own—wife. I, I, Warnock!”—he started from his chair again—“can you prove this? Quick! or I shall go mad; man, it is more than I ever dared to dream.”
Then, as clearly as I could, I laid before him the facts which the reader already knows, telling the story of Te Makawawa, but, in accordance with our understanding with the old chief, omitting all mention of the legend of Hinauri and the statue in the marble cave. As I proceeded I strengthened point by point with evidence derived from my own adventures in the mountain, with the carved piece of wood, which I handed him across the table, and with that part of Kahikatea’s adventure which involved no mention of the sacred stone.
“It is strange,” he said, when I had finished; “but for the last seventeen years, which is the only part of my life that I know, there has passed scarcely a day without some flitting reminiscence of giant rocks, with an additional dream-glimpse of something which has always eluded me. In the midst of my work, or perhaps when I am in conversation with someone, I will suddenly see in my mind’s eye a woman’s face—ah! very often that woman’s tender face—then a patch of grey rock, a smooth white stone, or a gigantic crag against the blue sky; but, beyond that, nothing, except a vague consciousness of some long chain of events which will not disclose themselves.”
When I continued my tale, and concluded with the statement of Te Makawawa’s express condition that when I returned with the child he would inquire of his ancestors concerning the whereabouts of Miriam Grey, but not before, Dreamer Grey’s eyes sparkled with purpose and resolve.
“We will go, Warnock,” he said, “we will go, the three of us together, and find my wife, if she is still alive.”
“The three of us?” I said. “You, I, and——?”