A candle in the wind

by Mary Imlay Taylor

In the interval between the two expeditions much had happened. Overton had become an acknowledged force in the world of adventure, and Faunce was aware that he had set his heart on the one girl who had remained to both of them the sweetest and most charming reminder of their young days at Mapleton. That Diane, too, had outgrown their early environment and matured into a gracious and accomplished woman of the world seemed only fitting and natural; and Faunce knew, long before the ill-fated ship sailed from New York, that the young leader had left his heart behind him.

Faunce had felt a thrill of satisfaction, too, that under that supreme test he had not failed to keep his faith with his comrade and benefactor. Loving Diane himself, he had stood aside and left the field free to his rival. Whatever misunderstanding had obscured their parting, he had not been at fault. He had found some consolation, in the midst of his discomfiture, in the fact that he had demonstrated his own spiritual growth, and had proved to himself that he was now above those mean devices which, in his boyhood, had sometimes won for him immunity from punishment, or a reward that was not rightfully his.

The expedition had sailed amid the thunder of salutes from the war-ships in the harbor, and for the second time Overton followed the ill-omened star that led him toward the south pole. All these things came back to Faunce with fatal clarity as he leaned there, under the pallid October sky, his hand on the worn railing of the old bridge that he had crossed many a day on his way to school.

But at this point in his recollections—when the fated ship, brilliant with flags, receded slowly, like a fantom, into the mists which on that day had shrouded the Narrows—Faunce shuddered and passed his hand over his eyes. His reverie was broken. He could no longer recall the past without seeing the wraith that seemed to rise from the very mist over the brook and to shape itself before him, as it had shaped itself hundreds of times already, into a vision of Overton as he had seen him last.

There, in that secluded spot, under the fitful moon, that face—rugged, strong, beautiful with spiritual power—rose from the vapors. Faunce saw it as he had seen it last, stricken with the awful look of death, pallid and calm, a smile on the lips, the eyes closed. Solitudes, vast, white, inexorable, the peaks of blue ice, the mirage that mocked and deluded, only the shriek of the wind to break the silence that drove men mad.

That drove men mad! That was it! That must be what possessed him now, Faunce thought—madness!

He could never escape that vision, never quite cast it out. All the laurels he had won, the applause, the eager friendships that seemed to await him, were but empty mockery when he had only to close his eyes to find himself in the presence of that terrible vision, to feel the deadly chill strike again to his heart, to hear the howl of the wind on those polar wastes.

What had tempted him to go there a second time? What infatuation had led him to follow Overton? Faunce had never shared his leader’s enthusiasm, had never had his courage; but he had followed him like a little dog at the heels of a big St. Bernard, led by admiration rather than love, held by fear rather than zeal.

He remembered what he had just said to Diane—his assurance of his devotion to Overton; and it seemed to him now like an attempt on his part further to imperil his own salvation by deliberately deceiving her. Yet he had really loved Overton. It was his love for the dead man, the remembrance of his boyish gratitude, that was driving him on, goading him to misery.

Of what avail was the rescue that had brought him and his surviving comrades out of that frozen inferno, and had crowned him with the laurels that Overton had sought, if he could reap no reward, not even grasp the triumph of their success, their victory over a rival English expedition, without paying the price in a mortal agony that had all but extinguished the light in his soul? He had returned to find himself a hero, to be fêted and honored in New York and in Washington, to be mentioned with mingled envy and praise in London and Paris—and he could not sleep!