The Three Fates

by F. Marion Crawford

“Yes. You are a most charming person to live with. How in the world did you know that I wanted to be alone yesterday, and that I wanted you to come with me to-day?” George laughed. “Do I not always ask you to come with me in precisely the same tone? Do I not always look as though I wanted you to come? How do you always know?”

Mamie was conscious that she blushed even more than she usually did when she was momentarily embarrassed. Indeed, the blush had two distinct causes on the present occasion. She had at first been delighted by the compliment he had paid her, and then, immediately afterwards, when he explained what he meant, she had felt her shame burning in her face. On the previous day, as on the present afternoon, she had blindly followed her mother’s advice, given by an almost imperceptible motion of the head and eyes that had indicated a negation on the first occasion and assent on the second. She was silent now, and could find no words with which to answer his question.

“How do you do it?” he asked again, wondering at her embarrassment, and slackening the pace at which he rowed, for they were in a boat together towards sunset.

Mamie’s eyes suddenly filled with hot tears and she hid her face with her small hands.

“Why, Mamie dear, what is it?” George asked, resting on his oars and leaning forward.

“O George,” she sobbed, “if you only knew!”

CHAPTER XVII.

George did not forget Mamie’s strange behaviour in the boat, and he devoted much time to the study of the problem it presented. To judge from the girl’s conduct alone, she must be in love with him, and yet he did not like the idea and took the greatest pains to keep it out of his mind. He was not in the humour in which it is a pleasant surprise to a man to discover unexpected affection for himself in a quarter where he has not expected to find it. Moreover, if he had once made sure that Mamie loved him, he would probably have thought it his duty to go away as quickly as possible. Such a decision would have deprived him of much that he enjoyed and it was desirable in the interests of his selfishness that it should be put off as long as possible.

At that time George began to feel the desire for work creeping upon him once more. During a few weeks only had it been in his power to put away the habit of writing, and to close his eyes to all responsibility. Those had been days when the whole world had seemed to be upside down, as in a dream, while he himself moved in the midst of a disordered creation, uncertainty, like a soulless creature, without the capacity for independent action nor the intelligence to form any distinct intention from one moment to another. He took what he found in his way without understanding, though not without an odd appreciation of what was good, very much as Eastern princes receive European hospitality. He was grateful at least that his life should be made so smooth for the time, for he was dimly conscious that anything outwardly rough or coarse would have exasperated him to madness. He believed that he thought a great deal about the past, but when he attempted to give his meditations a shape, they would accept none. In reality he was not thinking, though the mirror of his memory was filled with fleeting reflections of his former life, some clear and startlingly vivid, others distorted and broken, but all more or less beautified by the shadowy presence of a being he had loved better than himself, and from whom he was separated for ever.

With such a man, however, idleness was as impossible as the desire for expression was irresistible. Since he had written his first book, and had discovered what it was that he was born to do, he had taken up a burden which he could not lay down and had sworn allegiance to a master from whom he could not escape. Not even the bitter and overwhelming disappointment that had come upon him could kill the desire to write. He was almost ashamed of it at first, for he felt that though everything he loved best in the world were dead before him, he should be driven within a few weeks to take up his pen again and open his inner eyes and ears to the play of his mind’s stage.