A candle in the wind

by Mary Imlay Taylor

The doctor nodded in an absent way, taking up his pipe, which he had let go out, and emptying it, without again looking in the direction of his guest. In a subconscious way, however, he was recalling Faunce as he stood on the steps with Diane, young, handsome, flushed with hope.

“It’s all of it true, yet there’s more behind—more that I couldn’t tell. I never meant to tell it at all, but there’s something, some power inside of us, or above us, that drags things out. I don’t know what fiend it is, but it has pursued me night and day!”

“Some of us call it conscience,” remarked the doctor dryly.

“Call it by any name you choose, it has mastered me, broken me on the wheel!” Faunce paused again; then he collected his thoughts, and went on in a voice so level and cold that it seemed impossible that he was telling a story of his own life. “It’s true that we set out together, and it’s true that Rayburn died of exposure. By that time the storm had cut us off, and we were lost in that cruel wilderness of ice. We buried Rayburn in a drift, Overton repeating what he could remember of the burial service, the storm beating on us and the dogs howling against our feet. Then we pushed on. To stop was death, and we thought we could find the others. They were in the dugout, and had food enough; but we had been delayed by Rayburn, for Overton wouldn’t leave him until he was buried in the snow, and the blizzard had increased. In the midst of it Overton broke his ankle. We had only one sled, so I put him on it, and we pushed on. The food was gone—he had given the last of it to the dogs.

“About this time he began to get like Rayburn—out of his head. I suppose his leg pained him, and he was exhausted. The wind kept howling over the ice, and the cold had frozen straight through my clothing. It seemed to be in my bones, it numbed my very soul. I had no feeling except the desire to live, to escape! But I felt that I was going—going the way Rayburn had gone, the way Overton was surely going. I could feel a kind of madness creeping into my blood. I began to be afraid of death. There was nothing there but blinding ice and snow and the screech of the wind. It sounded as if the Furies were let loose. Once I thought I saw figures in the distance, that help was near; but it was the mirage, and I fancied I was going crazy. I saw, too, that Overton was failing fast. It came over me then that I should die, too, like that! We had to stop to rest the dogs, and I gave him the last pull out of my flask; but he lay in a stupor in the snow. The dogs began to howl. I was born in the country, and I’ve heard it said, when I was a boy, that a dog’s howl meant death. It made me furious, and I remember that I struck at the poor brutes. The cold was fiendish. I could scarcely breathe the freezing air. Overton became unconscious, and didn’t answer me.”

For a moment Faunce stopped, breathing hard.

“I was seized with a sickening fear,” he went on. “I shook—not with cold, but with terror. I tried to lift him on the sled again, but I was no longer strong enough, and it terrified me still more to find that my strength was failing. He was as helpless as a log of wood, and I heard the howl of the rising gale. If I stayed there, in twelve hours, in less than twelve hours, I should be like him, or worse! I couldn’t face it; it wasn’t human to face it!”

Faunce stopped again, and then went on in a monotonous voice:

“I didn’t look at him again. I got on the sled and made the dogs drag me away. I had to whip them; they didn’t want to leave him. We went a long way before we struck the trail, and as we did so another storm, worse than the first, broke; but the dugout was in sight, the men saw us, and I was saved.”

“And you left Overton out there—alone—in that waste—alive?”