The Leap of Despair
Summary
A marble-gray dawn unfurls across the stone balustrade of an imperial bridge where Countess Lilian, ennui incarnate, wagers her exquisitely useless life against the gasps of a jaded aristocracy. Astride the obsidian charger Phosphorus, she glides along the parapet’s knife-edge, velvet habit snapping like a bloodied flag; one misplaced hoof would hurl both rider and beast into the chasm’s hush. From the throng below, Albert Mariam—a speculator whose soul is mortgaged to mining scrip—watches this aerial saraband of flesh and will; Cupid’s arrow strikes amid the cordite tang of danger. Their whirlwind marriage is a champagne toast that sours when the market devours his fortune overnight. To stave off disgrace, Lilian signs a death-pact with a travelling cirque: she must recreate the very aerial spiral that killed her predecessor, a tightrope of cedar planks cantilevered over nothing, fireworks crackling like malevolent cherubs. Nightly she ascends, a pale comet against the canvas sky, while Albert’s gaze drifts to Lottie, the lithe funambulist whose ankles speak a more seductive dialect. On the season’s penultimate night, phosphor flares ignite the rigging; through the strobe she spies the lovers entwined in a box seat. Vertigo of the heart trumps altitude, horse and mistress plummet in a slow-motion avalanche of silk and sinew. Albert, suddenly remembering the marriage vow he had mislaid, claws through sawdust and sparks to cradle her broken halo. Months later, a telegram arrives: the mines gush auriferous rivers—wealth enough to gild their scars and resurrect a love that had already died twice.
Synopsis
Countess Lilian, bored and wearied with the dull monotony of her empty society life, seeks relief and recreation in the saddle upon her famous mount, Phosphorus. To win a wager, she rides this temperamental steed along the parapet of a high bridge, before crowds, who, awe-struck, see her dally with death. A misstep by the horse and she would have crashed earthward several hundred feet below. Albert Mariam sees the daring deed, and struck by her daring, contrives to meet her. Falling in love with each other, they marry. Soon after, Mariam's mining stocks become worthless. Ruin confronts him. To save their honest name, the Countess becomes a circus rider, contracting to perform an act in which the previous rider had been killed. The act is a big success, her horse walking up a spiral construction and being suspended in mid-air upon a swinging bridge, with Lilian in the saddle. Inconstant Albert becomes enamored of Lottie, a pretty tight-rope walker, and Lilian is neglected. Although suffering keenly, she perforce is obliged to adhere to her contract. One night she is called, and mounting her horse, does clever equestrian tricks. A host of clowns tumble into the ring and "assist" in the erection of the apparatus for the big event. Amid thrilling suspense the horse traverses the narrow planking, and after the heavy spiral climb, reaches the bridge. Then follows the flare and flash of the fireworks, the horse unmoved in their midst. The daring rider is about to end the act when she sees her husband and her rival in a stage box. Unnerved, despairing, she and the horse, with a sickening crash, fall to the tanbark floor. A rush to help the unconscious woman is headed by Albert, who forgets his butterfly passion for Lottie. Lilian is not beyond recovery, and some months later is convalescent. Albert, now a devoted husband, brings a flush of happiness to the pale cheek of the injured woman when he rushes in to tell her that gold having been discovered in the so-thought worthless mines, that he and she will have wealth to grace their reunited love.
