Lost in Darkness

Summary

A provincial spark of ingenuity, suddenly doused in metropolitan gold, flickers into a blinding conflagration: the young engineer, once content with soot-smudged blueprints, vaults from rickety scaffoldings to chandeliered salons where champagne trembles in crystal like liquid starlight. His promises to a shy bride—lace, pearls, a terrace overlooking the electric dusk—swell into gaudy triumphalism as patents rain sovereigns and investors genuflect. Yet affluence exhales a narcotic haze; a sleek pantheress of fashion slinks through velvet drapes, trading compliments for caresses, and the inventor’s gaze pivots from steadfast moonlight to the chromium glare of novelty. His wife, left clutching the echo of vows, retreats into candle-shadowed dignity, forgiving once, then again, until the Fates intervene with sulphur and fire: the workshop becomes a Vesuvius of glass and iron, a white-hot bloom that sears his retinas and leaves him groping through darkness thick as pitch. In that abyss the glamorous parasite attempts to pick the last coins from his scorched pockets before flitting away. Only the discarded spouse returns, veiled as a merciful stranger, bathing his blood-crusted eyelids with the same tenderness she once lavished on a penniless bridegroom. When vision miraculously creeps back—first as umber smears, then as sharp-edged dawn—he beholds the silhouette who never absconded, and the gilded mirage dissolves into the simple radiance of shared mortality.

Synopsis

A story which hinges upon the effect produced by the sudden accession to affluence of a comparatively poor man. A young engineer in a country town receives the good news of his appointment to an important position in a large city. His first impulse is to promise his young wife all sorts of luxuries in his new-found promotion. He becomes a rich and prosperous inventor and attracting the attentions of a young woman of fashion, neglects his young wife. This girl, however, is of a forgiving disposition and a reconciliation ensues. But the husband is disloyal and reverts to his fashionable enchantress. An explosion at his works blinds him. The wife in disguise engages herself as his nurse and the fashionable woman deserts him, not, however, before descending to the meanness of attempting to rob her blind victim of the remains of the money she had helped him dissipate. A fortunate restoration of his sight reunites him to his always forgiving wife.