A candle in the wind

by Mary Imlay Taylor

“Yes, I think I do; but if I were you, I’m certain that I should know. I mean, if I were going to marry the man I loved, I’d be sure that the sun was shining behind that cloud!”

Diane slowly and carefully unwrapped the tissue that enclosed an ancient Venetian vase. It was a beautiful thing in design and workmanship, but she made no comment on its perfection as she set it carefully down on the table.

“But I’m not sure,” she confessed softly.

Fanny had now reached the limit of her endurance, and her silence left Diane free to pursue her own train of thought. It was this, perhaps, which led her, later on, to her talk with her father.

XVI

It was the night before her wedding, and the judge, after a long day of busy arrangements, which had included a settlement of business matters with Faunce, at last found himself at rest in the old armchair beside his study fire. He had been too occupied and too ambitious to forward the fortunes of his future son-in-law to feel that the moment was drawing nearer and nearer when he must give up his daughter; but now, alone at his own fireside, he remembered that, and was amazed at the rush of keen regret that softened his mood.

Diane was very dear to him. He had been a busy man, a man beset with cares and ambitions, but the girl, who had come to him instead of the son for whom he had prayed, held a warm place in his heart. He would miss her—he confessed that to himself, with a kind of pride in his own tenderness. He had, indeed, planned to keep her near him, to set his son-in-law on the path that he had already made a beaten track to political success; but Diane herself had held Faunce to his infatuation—she was actually leading him in this wild venture in the antarctic seas.

Vaguely, but with a certain pride of blood, Judge Herford began to recognize the instinct of race in her. She had sprung from a long line of adventurers on sea and land. A Herford had been with Sir Francis Drake; a Herford had fought at Marston Moor; a Herford had followed the star of empire westward across wintry seas and founded the family fortunes in the colonies. The judge himself had retrieved the losses of his father and his grandfather, and now, in his strong middle age, saw himself nearly at the top rung of the ladder he had set himself to climb. He could afford to take the future in an easier frame of mind, to slacken his gait a little, but he had lacked a son to follow in his footsteps. His fancy, fixing itself on Faunce, on the brilliant promise that seemed to dawn in the young man’s career, began to build new castles in the air.

He felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that he had furthered Arthur Faunce’s fortunes, and had been a factor in the making of the marriage that was to take place on the morrow. Faunce was neither so famous nor so wealthy as the judge could have wished, but he was young, able, and already surrounded with the heroic halo of his hardships and his services to science and his country.

In a recent public address an eminent man had said that America was proud of mothering such sons as Overton and Faunce. That Arthur was placed second seemed, after all, a graceful tribute to the dead, and Faunce had succeeded now to the full leadership in place of Overton. On the whole, the judge felt satisfied and even happy. Thoughts of tenderness and regret added only a gentler shading to a mood that might otherwise have been too unctuous and self-satisfied.