The daughter of the dawn

by William Reginald Hodder

A wild thrill passed through me. In another moment I should have done a rash thing—indeed, in after years I often wished I had done that rash thing, that I had clasped that lovely one in my arms for a brief second and then been struck dead. But the lapse of half that time showed that the love-light was not for me. She raised her eyes, but not to mine, and said with sweet repetition, “My mother! My mother!”

With a slight start she recalled herself and turned to me.

“Do you know, I feel there is hardly anything I could not tell to you,” she said. “That was why I told you my dream, which I have never told to another living soul, not even to my father. And now, if, after what I said a minute ago, you would care to hear what I remember of last night I will tell you—but it is all very stupid.”

“If I think it is stupid I will say so,” I said.

Crystal seated herself upon the hammock, and, taking off her hat, placed it in her lap, where she proceeded to fasten the geranium-bloom among the other fresh flowers therein, as an excuse for keeping her eyes cast down in shyness at what she considered the stupidity of her story. I remained standing, for my suspense was keen, and I felt that I should understand it better than she did.

“Well,” she said, “I dreamed that I was sitting on a bank, when a black snake suddenly hissed and darted at my shoulder. The pain of the bite and the horror of the thing woke me, or I suppose I dreamed that it woke me, for what followed was exactly as if I had been awake, though of course it was nothing more than a vivid dream. Is it possible to dream that you are sitting up in bed, wide awake? It was very strange, but I thought that I was awake, and that I had lost all power to move. For a moment I listened to the thunder. Then I heard a voice—a peculiar, harsh, hollow voice, telling me that I must follow its directions, and be oblivious of all other things—for this, the voice, was the only thing. It may seem strange, but I did as it directed without the slightest hesitation. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to get up and walk downstairs in obedience to this ugly voice. Out of the house and across the lawn I followed it, until I came to the way that leads through the plantation. There for a moment I seemed to be at a loss. Then something—I cannot tell what, except that it was not the voice—must have stood in my way and held me, for, when I could again hear the only thing there was in the world, I was unable to follow, although I struggled to do so. At last the obstacle let me pass, and soon afterwards I caught up with the voice, which guided me back again into the house, where it told me that it had no further authority over me, and that other voices should command me for awhile. After that I heard it no more, and I have confused memories of taking a hot bath, with Jane and Mary fussing about me. Then I must have gone to bed, but I can remember nothing more till I awoke an hour ago. Was it not absurd? But some of it must have been real, for I did walk out into the garden.”

I reflected a moment before I spoke. Her memory evidently covered every inch of the ground. The pain in the shoulder, which must have been the prick of the negro’s dart discharged during the first flash of lightning after he gained her room; the falling under the influence of the poison a moment later; the hearing of the voice in the darkness, and the ready obedience to its suggestions; the struggling with an obstacle which was not the voice, but myself, and subsequently the finding of what she mistook for the voice and followed back to the house—these were the points of a story, the details of which must have taken place in the few minutes which elapsed between my missing the grotesque fragment in the burnt patch of scrub, and walking round the plantation to re-enter the grounds again through the opening where I had encountered the embodied “voice” and its would-be victim.

I glanced up from my rapid reflection, and, encountering Crystal’s smile at what she supposed was the absurdity of her story, said: “Your dreams affect me just as if you were recounting an adventure that had really taken place. Why do you make them so vivid?”

Then we both laughed the matter away.

Later in the evening I visited Tiki again, and found him sitting up with a puzzled expression on his face.