The Three Fates

by F. Marion Crawford

“This is the critic’s recipe for acquiring fame in letters!” exclaimed George.

“Fame in letters is a sort of stuffed bugbear. You can frighten children with it, but it belongs to the days of witches and hobgoblins. The object of literature nowadays is to amuse without doing harm. If you do that well you will be famous and rich.”

“You are utterly cynical to-day, Johnson. Are you in earnest in what you advise me to do?”

“Perfectly. Try everything. Offer your services to write anything. Among all the magazines and weeklies there is sure to be one that is in difficulties because it cannot get some particular article written. Don’t be too quick to say you understand the subject, if you don’t. Say you will try it. A man may get up almost any subject in six weeks, and it is a good thing for the mind, once in a long time. Try everything, I say. Make a stir. Let these people see you—make them see you, if they don’t want to. It is not time lost. You can use them all in your books some day. There is an age when it is better to wear out shoe-leather than pens—when the sweat of the brow is worth a dozen bottles of ink. Don’t sit over your desk yelping your discontent, while your real brain is rusting. Confound it all! It is the will that does it, the stir, the energy, the beating at other people’s doors, grinding up their stairs, making them feel that they must not lose the chance of using a man who can do so much, making them ashamed to send you away. Do you think I got to be where I am without a rough and tumble fight at the first? Take everything that comes into your way, do it as well as you know how, with all your might, and keep up a constant howl for more. They will respect you in spite of themselves.”

The pale young man’s steel-blue eyes flashed, the purple veins stood out on his white clenched hands and there was a smile of triumph in his face and a ring of victory in his voice. He had fought them all and had got what he wanted, by talent, by industry, but above all by his restless and untiring energy, and he was proud of it.

To George Wood, in his poverty, it seemed very little, after all, to be the literary editor of a daily paper. That was not the position he must win, if he would marry Constance Fearing.

CHAPTER VIII.

The summer passed quickly away without bringing any new element into George’s life. He did not reject Johnson’s advice, but he did not follow it to the letter. His instinct was against the method suggested by his friend, and he felt that he had not the assurance to follow it out. He was too sensitive and proud to employ his courage in besieging persons who did not want him. Nevertheless he found work to do, and his position was improved, though his writings still failed to attract any attention. He had imagined that there was but a step from the composition of magazine articles to the making of a book, but he soon discovered the fallacy of the idea, and almost regretted the old days of “book-tasting.”

Meanwhile, his thoughts dwelt much on Constance, and he adorned the temple of his idol with everything upon which, figuratively speaking, he could lay his hands. Strange to say, her absence during the summer was a relief to him. It made the weakness of his position and the futility of his hopes seem less apparent, and it gave him time to make at least a step in the direction of success. He wrote to her, as often as he dared, and twice in the course of the summer she answered with short letters that had in his eyes a suspicious savour of kindness rather than of anything even distantly approaching to affection. Nevertheless those were great days in his calendar on which these missives came. The notes were read over every morning and evening until Constance returned, and were put in a place of safety during the day and night.

George looked forward with the greatest anxiety to Miss Fearing’s return. He had long felt that her sister’s antagonism was one of the numerous and apparently insurmountable obstacles that barred his path, and he dreaded lest Grace’s influence should, in the course of the long summer, so work upon Constance’s mind as to break the slender thread that bound her to him. As regards Grace’s intention he was by no means wrong. She lost no opportunity of explaining to Constance that her friendship for George Wood was little short of ridiculous, that the man knew he had no future and was in pursuit of nothing but money, that his writings showed that he belonged to the poorest class of amateurs, that men who were to succeed were always heard of from boyhood, at school, at college and in their first efforts and that Constance was allowing her good nature to get the better of her common-sense in encouraging such a fellow. In short there was very little that Grace left unsaid. But though George had foreseen all this, as Grace, on her part, had determined beforehand upon her course of action during the summer, neither Grace nor George had understood the effect that such talk would produce upon her whom it was meant to influence. There was in Constance’s apparently gentle nature an element of quiet resistance which, in reality, it was not hard to rouse. Like many very good and very conscientious people, she detested advice and abominated interference, even on the part of those she loved best. Her attachment for her sister was sincere in its way, though not very strong, and it did not extend to a blind respect for Grace’s opinions. Grace could be wrong, like other people, and Grace was hasty and hot-tempered, prejudiced and not free from a certain sort of false pride. These were assuredly not the defects of Constance’s character, at least in her own opinion.