The Three Fates

by F. Marion Crawford

“Well, Mr. Winton Wood,” answered Mr. Popples, “the fact is, I do happen to remember, by the merest chance. The fact is, to be honest, quite honest, Mr. Craik does not buy your books. But he reads them.”

“Borrows them, I suppose,” observed George.

“Well, not that, exactly, either. The fact is,” said the bookseller, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, “Mrs. Sherrington Trimm buys them and sends them to him. He buys mostly valuable books,” he added, as though apologising for Mr. Craik’s stinginess.

“Thank you, Mr. Popples,” said George, laughing for the third time, and turning away.

“Oh, not at all, Mr. Winton Wood. Anything, anything. Walking this mor——”

But George was already out of the shop and the bookseller did not take the trouble to pronounce the last syllable, as he readjusted his large spectacles and took up three or four volumes that lay on the edge of the table.

“It cannot be said,” George thought, as he walked on, “that I am very much indebted to Mr. Thomas Craik—not even for ten per cent on one dollar and twenty-five.”

George would have been very much surprised to learn that the man who would not spend a dollar and a quarter in purchasing one of his novels had left him everything he possessed, and that the document which was to prove his right was reposing in that Indian cabinet of Mrs. Trimm’s, which he had so often admired. It seemed as though Totty had planned everything to earn his gratitude, and he was especially pleased that she should have made her miserly brother read his books. It showed at once her own admiration for them and her desire that every one belonging to her should share in it.

Having nothing especial to do until a later hour, George thought of going to see Constance and Grace. They had only been in town two days, but he was curious to know whether Mrs. Bond had begun to look like herself again, or was becoming more and more absorbed in her sorrow as time went on. He had not been to the house in Washington Square since the first of May, and so many events had occurred in his life since that date that he felt as though he were separated from it by an interval of years instead of months. The time had passed very quickly. It would soon be three years since he had first gone up those steps with his cousin one afternoon in the late winter. As he approached the familiar door, he thought of all that had happened in the time, and he was amazed to find how he had changed. Six months earlier he had descended those steps with the certainty that the better and sweeter part of his life was behind him, and that his happiness had been destroyed by a woman’s caprice. It had been a rough lesson but he had survived the ordeal and was now a far happier man than he had been then. In the flush of success, he was engaged to marry a young girl who loved him with all her heart, and whom he loved as well as he could. The world was before him now, as it had not been then, when he had felt himself dependent for his inspiration upon Constance’s attachment, and for the help he needed upon his daily converse with her. If his heart was not satisfied as he had once dreamed that it might be, his hopes were raised by the experience of self-reliance. It had once seemed bitter to work alone; he had now ceased to desire any companionship in his labours. Mamie was to be his wife, not his adviser. She was to look up to him, and he must make himself worthy of her trust as well as of her admiration. He would work for her, labour to make her happy, to the extreme extent of his strength, and he would be proud of the part he would play. She would be the mother of children, graceful and charming as herself, or angular, tough and hardworking as he was, and he and she would love them. But there the relation was to cease, and he was glad of it. He owed much to Constance, and was ready to acknowledge the whole debt, but neither Constance herself, nor any other woman could take the same place in his life again. Least of all, she herself, he thought, as he rang the bell of her house and waited for admittance. In the old days his heart used to beat faster than its wont before he was fairly within the precincts of the Square. Now he was as unconscious of any emotion as though he were standing before his own door.

Grace received him alone in the old familiar drawing-room. She happened to be sitting in the place Constance used to choose when George came to see her, and he took his accustomed seat, almost unconscious of the associations it had once had for him.