A candle in the wind

by Mary Imlay Taylor

He was sorry that he had been so sharp with her, he began to perceive that the trouble had gone deeper than he thought. Or that man, Faunce, had worked upon her—the judge’s choler rose up in his throat again and nearly choked him. He sat down at his table and tried twice to write a letter to Faunce, a letter that should be a quietus, and then, thinking better of it, he tore the sheets into fragments and tossed them into his waste-paper basket.

Meanwhile, Diane, having reached her own room, locked the door with shaking hands. It seemed to her that she had spent all her strength in this conflict of wills, that it had cost her much to resist her father. And yet——?

She recalled the moment when she had lifted the pen, when she had almost signed that paper, with a shudder. It was true that the whole attitude of her mind had broken down. She had seen herself on the brink of separation from her husband because of Overton!

She stood now, just inside her own door, motionless, her unseeing eyes fixed on the window opposite. The long swaying bough of a tree swept across her vision of the sky, and it seemed to her that the leaves trembled and quivered as if some unseen hand had set them to shaking, as an unseen power had set her own heart to trembling at the thought of her own act. Had she fled from her husband—not because she abhorred his deed, but because she loved Overton? The thought was hideous, unbelievable!

Diane lifted her hot hands and pressed them against her eyes, to shut out the light. In the darkness she could think. She tried to recall all the old arguments that had seemed so plausible, that Faunce himself had destroyed her faith in him, that he had hurled her idol down from its pedestal. But she could not; she began to see that there was no argument that she could use to wholly excuse her act. Faunce had confessed to her, he had told her the truth, it was his plea for mercy, for forgiveness, and she had only thought of Overton. But now, in the solitude of her own room, in this moment when even her father had failed her, she felt her spiritual isolation. There was no one on earth who could help her solve the problem of life that confronted her but the man she had married. The bond was unbroken, neither her will, nor the cribbling of lawyers could break it, for a power greater than these had laid hold of her soul. She felt again the strength of it, the invisible power that wrestled with her.

She walked slowly across her room again to the window and knelt down, resting her hands on the sill, and looking out toward the western sky. The sun had set and above the red cloud at the horizon she discerned a solitary star, keen and white and quivering, a spearhead of glory. She lifted her face toward it, the soft wind stirring the tendrils of hair on her white forehead, and touching her feverish cheeks and lips.

Gradually, silently, with infinite beauty, the afterglow touched the soft sky with all the colors of rose and violet, and the earth below sank gently and deeply into the shadow, as if it had dropped from sight. It seemed to Diane that, in that silence, in the tenderness, the infinite beauty of that moment between sunset and twilight, the spiritual struggle ceased. A new thought came to her, or rather her inner consciousness shaped itself into a concrete form. She realized that she stood on the edge of an abyss while the power that had held her back had been within her own soul, hidden deep in her heart, at the mainspring of life itself. She was a woman, it was her province to build up and not to break down, she saw it now with a spiritual insight that sent a shudder through her—she had so nearly forgotten it! So nearly failed to fulfill the destiny that had come down to her through the ages. To-day when she had been with Overton, when she had heard his impassioned plea, when she had almost signed the paper that was to separate her from her husband, she had suddenly awakened from her dream. The tie that bound her to Arthur Faunce was the primitive bond of all the ages. She had chosen him, he was her husband. What could her father do? What could Overton, or any other man do? “Those whom God hath joined together,” the words came to her with a new meaning, a meaning which shook her to her soul. For surely no man could put them asunder! The tie was too deep, it was rooted now in her heart, and she knew it. It was as deep as the instinct which was awakening slowly but surely within her, the primal instinct of life, of mating time, of the birds of the air, of the lioness calling to her mate in the jungle.

Diane lifted her eyes slowly and steadily toward that keen star. It seemed to her that it penetrated the mists that had obscured her soul, as the star of old which guided the wise men to the cradle in the manger. The star was guiding her, too, guiding her into the tender mists and the soft glory of an unknown but beautiful land. Tenderness was born in her at last, a tenderness new and beautiful—as the beginnings of life in the springtime, the budding of flowers, and the song of the bird to its mate. Alone on her knees in the twilight, Diane lifted her soul to that distant star, the thought of Overton passed away from her, the struggle ceased, even her father and his anger were forgotten, she remembered only her husband, and the eternal purposes of the Creator who had made them man and woman in the Garden of Eden.

XXXIV

It was not until he got a clear look at Arthur Faunce’s face under the strong light of the reading-lamp that Dr. Gerry realized the full effect of the crisis, moral and physical, upon the younger man. The old doctor had come in to New York on business connected with his practise, and in the evening, on his way to the station, he had looked up the apartment-house from which Faunce had phoned to him on more than one occasion. He had found him alone, completing his arrangements for the departure of the expedition to the south pole. Faunce had been glad to see him, had furnished some cigars and a light, and the two men sat on opposite sides of the table, both facing the open windows that looked out over a crowded thoroughfare not far from the heart of the city.