A PAROXYSM OF PASSION

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIII, Issue III, 21 July 1894, Page 60

A PAROXYSM OF PASSION

By

J. johnson Leak.

«HILIP D’Lanrbert and his bride sat upon the summit of the mountain, watching the fleecy mists float up from the depths of the valley. They had been married just five weeks, and the morrow would see the termination of a honeymoon which, they imagined, would be enshrined within their hearts for all time. There was a good deal of poetry within the hearts of these two married lovers. There was a good deal of romance which had not, as so often happens, terminated at the altar. They were still lovers. During the five weeks they bad been like the early socialists in that they had had everything in common. The past five weeks had tinted their whole future with a delightful roseate—so they, in their obtuseness, thought. * Well, Ethel, dear, we have seen many scenes during the last five weeks, but this will ever be remembered as the most beautiful. I wonder if the world has always been so enchanting. It seems to me that it has been so only for the past five weeks—at least it has been more entrancing during that interesting period.’ * What a dear, foolish husband you are, Philip,’ she replied, and her eyes looked upon him and spoke the endearing terms which her tongue could not utter just then. By and bye they bade a silent adieu to the place. They felt that they were parting from a spot which had exercised an influence for good upon their lives. Together they went down to the hotel and made preparations for their departure by the last train on the following night. But as evening came Philip was seized with an intense desire to see again the majestic hill and shadowed valley. He did not try to analyze this feeling. It seized him like a whirlwind ; it conquered him like a force too great to be combated. He went to the place alone. He was sitting there recounting every passage in the conversation on the previous day. He was intermingling the smoke from his Havana with the fleecy clouds which still curled np from the valley. This was the scene of yesterday, and he could never forget it. He was startled by the sound of e man scrambling up the side of the steep cliff. On turning, he was face to face with a tall, powerful stranger. There was a dreadful scowl upon fiis dark, handsome, but terrible face. Threateningly he advanced toward D’Lambert. * You vile, deceitful scoundrel 1’ he hissed. * I beg your pardon. lam afraid—at least I hope—you have made a mistake,’ retaliated the accused, with a somewhat amused, incredulous smile. * I have not made a mistake. Through hatred of you I have followed you over Europe during the last five weeks, and is it likely that I should make a mistake now that you, my dearest foe—the very incarnation of the devil which has devoured me—are in my dutches f * It is hardly likely, I must confess,’ replied D’Lambert, and a quiet smile still played upon his face. * But, if you have not made a mistake, will you please explain 1’ * Explain ? Ah, ha I The devil has got bis due at last 1’ and he broke out into a wild laugh which sounded awful as the echo reverberated up the silent vaHey. ‘Explain? Certainly. In one sentence. You have dangled your wealth before the eyes of a vain woman and have lured her into a marriage which has broken the heart of another to whom she had plighted her troth.’ The quiet smile instantly vanished from the face of D'Lambert. He did not any longer consider whether or not the man before him had made a mistake in accusing him. He had accused his wife as well as himself. He sprang at his wife’s accuser like a tiger. Though a peaceable man usually, he had been goaded into uncontrollable fury by the allegations of his unknown foe. There was a brief but terrible struggle on the edge of the precipitous cliff, which threatened to become the grave of one or both of the enraged combatants. Then there was an abject surrender on the part of the originator of the quarrel. D’Lambert was the first to rise. Surveying bis prostrate foe with stern contempt upon his face he cried, * Get up, you coward.’ The victim of this outburst of very natural wrath rose with a shamefaced expression. But once upon his feet his vindictive hate returned like a blast of hell-born passion. * You villain,* he cried, * at the proper time and in a proper manner, I’ll demand a gentleman’s satisfaction for this insult * * Yes, and I dare guarantee you will receive it,* hotly retorted D'Lambert. His quiet smile -bad vanished ; there was a look of terrible fury upon his face as he watched tris

unknown foe disappear within the shadow of a thick wood which skirts the Lake of Zurich.

Amid the majestic silence of that scene Philip D’Lambert sat and pondered over this unexpected encounter with all the ugly circumstances and uglier suggestions which followed in almost ghastly order. Five minutes ago he had not an enemy in the wide world ; now he knew that he would have to fight with a fiend who had accused one who was dearest to his passionate heart. His eyes fell over the broad expanse of the lovely lake, which, under the warm caress of the bright sunlight, seemed like a quivering sheet of silver ; they wandered anxiously over the hills, the snow capped peaks of which seemed to pierce the bright blue of the heavens. Only yesterday he had viewed the same scene, and, as he held her hand and gazed into the luscious mysteries of her dark, fathomless eyes, he had cried in his enthusiasm, * This is the fairest scene of all.* Now, where were its intoxicating delights I Gone I gone 11 gone !! I and his voice grew, almost imperceptibly, into a prolonged groan. Vanished with the retreating form of the man who appeared to be the very incarnation of evil. After a long and sombre meditation he rose and glanced at the cigar which he still held between his fingers. The light has gone. It was but a trivial thing. At any other time he would have, struck another match, but now the expended light was ominous. Amid the whirlwind of his jealous passion he had paid not the slightest attention to this—the greatest of all masculine soothers. * Ethel false to a lover! Pshaw I She never had one before I met her I Really, it's too ridiculous to be vexed about. The fellow must be a mad fool 1’

This was the philosophy of his lips, but, as he walked down the steep pass to his hotel his heart was uttering a strong denial.

Then he plunged into the wood. This was the worst thing he could have done. The deep shadows overawed him. He fought against the eucroaching influences, but in that moment’s grim solemnity all his confidence in his wife’s maidenly fidelity vanished. He had given a truant attention to the voice of the deceiver. Little by little it allured him into a half belief in the weakness of all women. Up to half an hour ago his wife had been an angel to him. Now she was merely a woman—a woman subject to all the weaknesses which he roundlv attributed to the sex. Then the

probability of her having loved this man before he had met her seemed dear enough, and a step further—a very short step, too—led him to the belief that she might still love him, but had add herself for the wealth and social status which he had been able to give her. Assurance was made doubly sure by a recollection of a few trivid words which had fallen from the lipe of his wife soon after their marriage. * Oh, I love pretty things; pretty dresses, pretty houses, pretty hones. I think the gods made me to love these things. lam weak enough to prefer to die if I could not get them.’ Pretty commonplaces, and nothing more, these words had appeared to him when he sat and listened to them, but now they were the grim topstone to the gloomy fabric of suspicion which he had built. Everything was clear to him. as dear as the blue sky above, as transparent as the crystal water below. He looked up to the hills, and upon their scarred front his distempered eye read the indisputable proofs of his wife’s treachery to a love which in all probability, still lived ; he looked upon the bosom of the lake, and through its shadowed ripples read with fatal perception, in words of almost lurid red, * Thy wealth, not thy love won her.* He quickened his steps. Still the grim phantoms followed him. Their hideous forms still held terrible revelry around him. His quickened walk became a run. But still they kept him company. At last, exhausted by exertion, stricken by remorse, he threw himself upon the gnarled root of a tree and cried in his agony. * u this the end of all. O God t—if there is a God.’ Amid the fury of his remorse his mental faculty was shattered, his whole manhood was unmanned ; the purest white became the blackest black; the wife whom only an hour ago he had worshipped as a woman purer than the

angels appeared to him nothing more than a fair and beautiful trickster. When he reached his hotel he was late for dinner. He ascertained that his wife had been led in by *a foreign looking gentleman,’ as the clerk said, in reply to inquiries. Hastily he dressed, and walked into the dining hall. A score of ladies and gentlemen were seated at dinner, but two filled up the whole range of his vision. He reeled at the sight—his wife, robed in white silk, in smiling conversation with the man who had so strangely accosted him upon the cliffs. There was a frown upon his face—the first his wife had ever seen—as he took a vacant chair beside her. There was no room for the usual apology for his delay. His mind was too full for expressing the usual courtesies which often oil the wheels of life.