A candle in the wind

by Mary Imlay Taylor

Leaving the highroad and climbing to the summit of a little hill, he stood looking down upon the distant city, shrouded in fog and cloaked in blinding snow, until its lights seemed to blend into gigantic arches and semicircles, like broken rainbows in a bank of vapor. It was a familiar spectacle; he had seen it often before, but never in an aspect quite like this.

The strange effect of the lights in the sky, together with the snowflakes that were driving into his face and whitening his arms and shoulders, recalled the frozen wastes of the polar ice-fields, the curtain of deathlike fog that hung over those bleak solitudes. He remembered Diane’s words, her faith in his high endeavor, her hope that he would complete his task and win, at last, a certain claim to the glory that was now but the fallen mantle of a greater man.

He must go back! He recalled the impulse that had been so overwhelming, the keen desire to return. It had seemed to him sometimes as if unseen hands had grasped him and were drawing him back to those haunted seas. Diane had voiced his feeling; she, too, had urged him to go.

But now, alone in the night, he fell into one of his bitter moments of revulsion. The whole thing filled him with horror. It was strange, he told himself, that she should so insist upon it. It was unlike a woman to bid her lover go into such perils. He began to believe that she did not love him—it was Overton still who stood between! Jealousy laid hold of him and rent him.

A prey to contending feelings, he turned and fought again with the gale, plunging on into the drifting snow. She had told him that she loved Overton. He was second in her heart, second in the great expedition, second in the very honors he had won!

Yet—a shudder ran through him—what right had he to be jealous of Overton? What right had he, indeed, to any honor, or to high repute, or to Diane’s love? An hour before he had lifted the cup of life to his lips and tasted joy; now he was draining the bitter dregs in a spiritual agony that laid bare his own soul.

He saw his course, as he had followed it in the long year that was drawing now to its close; and it was plain to him why the thought of it had haunted him night after night, even when he had tried to shut it out, until insomnia had driven him to the verge of madness. Like Orestes, he had been pursued by the Furies; but no tribunal of the gods would release him from their clutches. He could never sleep again without the deadly poison of some narcotic stealing into his veins.

He had walked blindly, without following the road, and he was almost out of his reckoning when, through the white folds of the storm, he saw the outlines of the Gerry house set low and solid amid its clustering cedars. A light burned in two windows in the rear, showing that Dr. Gerry was still up, keeping his usual vigil in his study. The fact that the rest of the house was dark suggested that the household slept, and that the doctor was alone.

Faunce paused in his struggle with the wind and stood staring at the light. Again he was swept with an unaccountable impulse to cry aloud for help, to strip the veil from his soul, after the manner of those desperate ones who snatch at the wild hope that some other mortal may be able to apply a panacea that shall stay the devouring agony, heal the secret wound, before the sufferer bleeds to death.

As he stood there, uncertain, torn by his fears and his doubts, voices seemed to speak to him in the fury of the elements. As the storm beat upon him, he felt an unseen presence pressing against his garments. The Furies again pursued him!