A candle in the wind

by Mary Imlay Taylor

“They went to play billiards, and I don’t know one ball from another,” he replied. “I told them I should wait for you.” He took the chair that Mrs. Price had vacated, and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the arms. “I wanted to speak to you alone.”

Diane looked up, and met his dark eyes bent on her with a melancholy and troubled gaze that sent a sad thrill of expectation to her heart. He meant to speak of Overton!

She said nothing. For a moment, indeed, she was quite incapable of speech. They both heard the distant click of the billiard-balls and her father’s deep voice speaking to Dr. Gerry.

“You know that I was with Overton—with Simon,” he said at last, “to the very end, and once or twice he—he talked to me of you.”

She looked up in surprise. She had felt that it was unlike Overton even to mention her name, so deep and almost sensitive was the reserve that he had always shown. Faunce met her look again, and this time his pale face flushed.

“I mean in the way that Overton always spoke of women—of his friends—with the truest and most chivalrous regard. He was not well; the climate broke him up before the end, and I think he had a feeling that he might not live to come back. One day, after we had to abandon the ship, he showed me some photographs he had—pictures that he had taken himself—and he asked me to remember, if anything happened to him, that he wished you to have them. He said that you had cared so much for the whole expedition, and had cheered him so often in those hard days when he thought he could never get the thing started. After he—after that awful time in the snow, I found the case he had shown me, and I brought it with me.” He stopped and put his hand in his pocket, producing a large, square envelope. “As soon as I got to New York I had the plates developed. A few were spoiled, but there are some here, and I’ve brought them to you to-night.”

As he spoke, he held out the package. Diane compelled herself to take it with outward composure, but her hands were shaking, and she could not meet his eyes.

“I can’t tell you how much I thank you!” she murmured, opening the envelope and looking over the pictures in order to hide her emotion.

There were only a few of them—studies of sea and sky, a familiar view of the ill-fated ship, a group of sailors, and some impressive views of frozen straits and giant icebergs. It was a meager glimpse of the world for which Simon Overton had laid down his life, but something in it, in his thought of her, of the things she would care to see, touched Diane to the soul. She restrained her tears with difficulty, and, although she continued to make a show of examining the prints, her eyes were too dim to see the details.

For a while Faunce was silent. He seemed to understand the emotion that prevented Diane from speaking. On the whole, he was thankful for it, since she did not have time to see the pain that distorted his own face. He felt that he was white and rigid, and that his eyes stared at the fire; but he had enough self-control to keep his hands steady on the arms of his chair, and after a while he commanded his voice.