Greater love hath no man.-The
Bible.
There was a shout from the doorway
leading to the secret places of the temple as Cuxson,
covered with blood and dust, half-crazed with horror,
paused for a moment as he took in the awful picture
before him.
Leonie, with her hair almost sweeping
the ground, lay half clothed and seemingly dead in
the arms of a native, whose face was a picture of
triumphant love for all to see; and a wild-eyed priest
beat his breast before the horrible image of the terrible,
all powerful Goddess of Destruction.
He sprang forward with another shout,
which was lost in the shriek and crash of the raging
elements.
For even as he moved there was a terrific
roar as of tons of exploding dynamite, and a shriek
of wind as it tore through the building, blowing out
the little flickering lights, leaving the place pitch
black save for the steady light of the full moon.
Then he swayed like a drunken man
as the floor rose in a great wave and yet another,
heaving the flags this way and that, cracking and
splitting in every direction as it subsided.
“Leonie!” he shouted,
though no sound could be heard above the appalling
din. “Leonie! Leonie!”
He saw her lying in a pool of moonlight
as though asleep, and near her knelt the native, with
arms outstretched above her, sheltering her.
There was a moment of complete dead
silence, and then with a tearing, rending sound the
dome and the temple walls split from top to base; and
with a thundering crash the great block of stone upon
which was carved the image of Kali the Terrible split
in two, toppled over and fell upon the kneeling priest.
Herds of screaming beasts hurled themselves
through the riven walls and fled across the temple
floor, fighting blindly to escape. Monkeys in
hundreds scrambled over the mounds of fallen bricks,
chattering and calling like lost, frightened children;
a tiger with one bound landed noiselessly a few feet
from those two in the moonlight, half reared with
a short coughing roar and bounded as noiselessly away.
And God alone knows what saved the three from instant
death among the tottering ruins.
The power of Love perchance.
The son of princes sheltering the
girl slowly, oh! slowly straightened himself, when
a prolonged silence seemed to indicate the end of the
greatest earthquake that ever swept the Sunderbunds
Jungle.
Blood streamed from the side of his
head, battered in by a broken fragment of the high
altar that had been hurled through the air; his left
shoulder was in splinters, crushed by the collapse
of the roof which must have killed Leonie if he had
not covered her with his body; blood spouted from
some great severed artery in the arm which seemed to
hang by a thread from the splintered shoulder; yet
was his face aglow with light and love, and his eyes
afire with happiness as he raised a tawny tress of
hair and pressed it to his lips.
He was dying, quickly, yet he turned
his head and smiled at the sound of Jan Cuxson’s
boots scrambling over the impeding heaps of stone.
For one second only the torture of the sacrifice
required of him flared in the soft brown eyes; and
then in the pride of his great race, and with an effort
of will beyond all telling, he put his unbroken arm
round the woman he loved so well, lifted her, got
somehow to his feet, and walked, aye! walked steadily
across the few yards which separated him from the
white man.
Cuxson, not realising his terrible
plight, with eyes only for the woman he loved,
wrenched Leonie from his hold and swept her from head
to foot with frantic eyes.
“What have you done to her?”
he demanded fiercely. “Before the earthquake
what did you do to her? Tell me-or
by God I’ll-
He stopped the bitter words in time
to save himself from everlasting remorse.
For Madhu Krishnaghar suddenly straightened
his battered body, and looked the white man in the
eyes.
“She is safe, O white man, safe
and unharmed. Take her, keep her-carry
her by the-the short road without the-the
temple gates-to-happiness, I
give her-to-you-because
I-I love-her-for
ever!”
There was a moment’s terrible
silence in which the two men stood divided, yet united,
in their great love for the one woman.
The native of India put his hand to
his forehead and salaamed before the woman for whom
he had sacrificed all, then turned slowly around towards
the place where the image of his god had so lately
stood.
“Kali!” he called, and
his young voice was as the clashing of golden bells
at sunset. “Kali! Mother of all-I
come!”
And unwitting of the great reward
awaiting those who attain everlasting peace through
the victory of the greater love, he crashed face downwards,
dead, upon the flower-strewn floor, and passed for
ever into the safe keeping of the one and only God.