When the day breaks and the shadows flee away!-The Bible.
Jan Cuxson lifted Leonie’s face
to the light of the moon, and caught his breath at
the sight of the turned back eyes and drooping mouth.
This was the outcome of it all! This
was how she was left to him; saved from physical hurt
but with her mind for ever bound by the will of yon
dead priest. Hypnotised, mesmerised, to be under
the influence of the Goddess of Destruction until
her death; maybe to pass her life in the security
of a padded cell; she, his Leonie, his love, his wife-to-be.
He crushed her in fierce despair against
his heart as the ground moved gently under his feet,
and prayed aloud to his God to bring the riven walls
down upon them there in the moonlight, that in merciful
death the awful fate of his beloved might be lifted
from her.
The only answer to the desperate prayer
was silence and shadows enveloping them like a mantle,
and he lifted his stern face to the radiance of the
moon, with the light of battle in the grey eyes.
“I will find a way out, dear
heart,” he cried, as he turned her face gently
against his shoulder. “There is a way and
I will find it.” And he strode as hastily
as the masses of fallen stone would allow him towards
the door and the short path which would lead him to
the water’s edge and safety.
As he skirted the half of the fallen
altar which lay across the body of the priest, he
paused for a moment and looked down upon the man who
had won even in death.
As he looked the fingers of the out-flung
hands twitched, and a violent shiver shook the old
frame. Slowly, very slowly the gnarled old arms
were gathered in under the breast as inch by inch the
Hindu priest raised himself from the floor.
The lower limbs were hidden, crushed under the fallen
stone, and the old head hung down between the shoulders,
the grey hair tangled in a wreath of jasmin flower.
He lifted his face, and the dim old
eyes looked wistfully up into the grey ones staring
down at him out of the shadows.
“Thou hast conquered, sahib,
thou hast conquered in love,” he whispered.
“And she is safe, for behold my-my
power-has gone-from her.
I-even I-have not obeyed, and
my god-has destroyed me!”
Lifting his voice he cried aloud and died.
And as he died Leonie turned her face
from the shelter of her lover’s shoulder and
closed her eyes, and opening them again laughed sweetly
as she looked up into his face.
“You, Jan, you!
Why-whatever has happened, and-why-wherever
are we?” And he looked down into the sweet
face and laughed aloud, an exultant, ringing laugh
which was caught and echoed and re-echoed from the
dome until the place seemed filled with the sound of
happiness.
“There has been a bit of an
earthquake, dear, and you got hit on the head by a
piece of falling brick. See, sweetheart,”
and he swept the masses of hair together and twisted
it between her head and his coat, “turn your
face this way until I have you safely out of here,
it’s nice and soft, and shut your eyes, darling-
“Yes! but,” said Leonie,
as she turned her face as bidden and closed her eyes
with a sigh of great content, “but-but
how did we escape?”
“You were saved, dear!”
“Saved!-from what? By whom?”
She tried to turn her head, but he
held it pressed close against his heart.
“From death-dear heart!”
“And by whom-tell me-Jan-by
whom?”
Jan Cuxson paused a moment as he looked
across towards the still figure of Madhu Krishnaghar
stretched peacefully upon the ground.
“By the whitest man that has ever lived, dear!-by
him!”
And he turned without another word
and strode through the temple and out of the gates
to the narrow way which led to safety. And where
the trees met in an arch above his head he stopped
and looked back, and Leonie, turning her face, passed
her hand wonderingly over the tousled masses of her
hair and the silken drapery about her body.
“Where are we going to? Where are you
taking me?”
He shifted her completely into his
left arm, pulled at a golden slender chain round her
neck with his right hand, caught it in his strong white
teeth and wrenched it in two.
And he answered her as he flung the
jewelled cat’s-eye far out into the jungle.
“To Devon, beloved, to Devon and happiness!”
And as he closed her red mouth with
kisses the earth shook gently under his feet, and
the temple, with a terrific crash, caved in; burying
for ever the dead priest, the broken image of Kali,
the Goddess of Destruction, and Madhu Krishnaghar,
son of princes, her splendid Indian lover.