The Three Fates

by F. Marion Crawford

“Tom Craik is dying,” he said at last, looking at his father’s face.

There was an almost imperceptible quiver in the strong hands that held the book. A very slight colour rose in the massive grey face. But that was all. The eyes remained fixed on the page, and the angle at which the volume was supported did not change.

“Well,” said the mechanical voice, “we must all die some day.”

CHAPTER VI.

The world was very much surprised when it was informed that Thomas Craik was not dead after all. During several weeks he lay in the utmost danger, and it was little short of a miracle that he was kept alive—one of those miracles which are sometimes performed upon the rich by physicians in luck. While he was ill George, who was disappointed to find that there was so much life in his enemy, made frequent inquiries at the house, a fact of which Mr. Craik took note, setting it down to the young man’s credit. Nor did it escape the keen old man that his sister Totty’s expression grew less hopeful, as he himself grew better, and that her fits of spasmodic and effusive rejoicing over his recovery were succeeded by periods of abstraction during which she seemed to be gazing regretfully upon some slowly receding vision of happiness.

Mrs. Sherrington Trimm was indeed not to be envied. In the first place all immediate prospect of inheriting her brother’s fortune was removed by his unexpected convalescence; and, secondly, she had a suspicion that in the midst of his illness he had made some change in the disposition of his wealth. It would be hard to say how this belief had formed itself in her mind, for her husband was a man of honour and had scrupulously obeyed Craik’s injunction to be silent in regard to the will. He found this the more easy, because what he liked least in his wife’s character was her love of money. Having only one child, he deemed his own and Totty’s fortunes more than sufficient, and he feared lest if she were suddenly enriched beyond her neighbours, she might launch into the career of a leader of society and take up a position very far from agreeable to his own more modest tastes. Sherry Trimm was an eminently sensible as well as an eminently honourable man. He possessed a very keen sense of the ridiculous, and he knew how easily a woman like Totty could be made the subject of ridicule, if she had her own way, and if she suddenly were placed in circumstances where the question of expenditure need never be taken into consideration. She had rarely lost an opportunity of telling him what she should do if she were enormously rich, and it was not hard to see that she confidently expected to possess such riches as would enable her to carry out what Sherry called her threats.

On the other hand Mr. Trimm’s sense of honour was satisfied by his brother-in-law’s new will. There is a great deal more of that sort of manly, honourable feeling among Americans than is dreamed of in European philosophy. Europe calls us a nation of business men, but it generally forgets that we are not a nation of shopkeepers, and that if we esteem a merchant as highly as a soldier or a lawyer it is because we know by experience that the hands which handle money can be kept as clean as those that draw the sword or hold the pen. In strong races the man ennobles the occupation, the occupation does not degrade the man. If Thomas Craik was dishonest, Jonah Wood and Sherrington Trimm were both as upright gentlemen as any in the whole world. It was not in Jonah Wood’s power to recover what had been taken from him by operations that were only just within the pale of the law, because laws have not yet been made for such cases; nor was it Sherrington Trimm’s vocation to play upon Tom Craik’s conscience in the interests of semi-poetic justice. But Trimm was honourable enough and disinterested enough to rejoice at the prospect of seeing stolen money restored to its possessor instead of being emptied into his wife’s purse, and he was manly enough to have felt the same satisfaction in the act, if his own circumstances had been far less flourishing.

But Totty thought very differently of all these things. She had in her much of her brother’s nature, and the love of money, which being interpreted into American means essentially the love of what money can give, dominated her character, and poisoned the pleasant qualities with which she was undoubtedly endowed. She had, as a natural concomitant, the keenest instinct about money and the quarter from which it was to be expected. Something was wrong in her financial atmosphere, and she felt the diminution of pressure as quickly and as certainly as a good barometer indicates the approaching south wind when the weather is still clear and bright. It was of no use to question her husband, and she knew her brother well enough to be aware that he would conceal his purpose to the last. But there was an element of anxiety and doubt in her life which she had not known before. Tom Craik saw that much in her face and suspected that it was the result of his recovery. He did not regret what he had done and he made up his mind to abide by it.

Meanwhile George Wood varied the dreariness of his hardworking life by seeing as much as possible of the Fearings. He went to the house in Washington Square as often as he dared, and before long his visits had assumed a regularity which was noticeable, to say the least of it. If he had still felt any doubt as to what was passing in his own heart at the end of the first month, he felt none whatever as the spring advanced. He was in love with Constance, and he knew it. The young girl was aware of the fact also, as was her sister, who looked on with evident disapproval.

“Why do you not send the man away?” Grace asked, one evening when they were alone.