The Three Fates

by F. Marion Crawford

At first, he felt as though he were in a nightmare, in a dim labyrinth from which he had pledged himself to find an escape in a given time. His nerves, for the first time in his life, played him false. He grew suddenly hot, and then as suddenly cold again. Attempting to fix his imagination, monstrous faces presented themselves before his eyes in the dark, and he heard fragments of conversation in which there were long sentences that meant nothing. He lit a candle and sat up in bed, clasping his forehead with his long, smooth fingers, and beginning to feel that he knew what despair really meant.

This then was the result of years of preparation, of patient practice with the pen, of thoughtful reading and careful study. He had always felt that he lacked the imagination necessary for producing a novel, and now he felt sure of it. Johnson had told him that he was no critic, and he had believed Johnson, because Johnson was himself the best critic he knew. What then was he? A writer of short papers and articles. Yes, he could do that. How easily now, at this very moment, could he think of half a dozen subjects for such work, and how neatly he could put them into shape, develop them in a certain number of pages and polish them to the proper degree of brilliancy!

The morning dawned and found him still searching and beating his brain for a subject. As the light increased he felt more and more nervous. It was not in his nature to put off the beginning upon which he had determined, and he knew that on that day he must write the first words of his first book, or forfeit his self-respect for ever. There was an eminently comic side to the situation, but he could not see it. His dread of being ridiculous in the eyes of the woman he loved was great enough to keep him from contemplating the absurdity of his case. His sensations became intolerable; he felt like a doomed man awaiting his execution, whose only chance of a reprieve lay in inventing a plot for a novel. He could bear it no longer, and he got out of bed and opened his window. The fresh air of the May morning rushed in and suddenly filled the room with sweetness and his excited brain with a new sense of possibilities. He sat down at his table without thinking of dressing himself, and took up his pen. A sheet of paper lay ready before him, and the habit of writing was strong in itself—too strong to be resisted. In a few minutes that white sheet would be covered with words that would mean something, and those words would be the beginning of his book, of the novel he was about to write but of the contents of which he had not the remotest conception. This was not the way he had anticipated the commencement of the work that was to lay the first stone of his reputation. He had fancied himself sitting down to that first page, calm and collected, armed with a plot already thoroughly elaborated, charmed beforehand with the characters of his own invention, carried away from the first by the spirit of the action, cheered at every page by the certainty of success, because failure was to have been excluded by the multiplicity of his precautions. And here he was, without an idea in his brain or the least subject for an excuse, beginning a romance which was to be judged step by step by the person of all others most dear to him.

George dipped his pen into the ink a second time and then glanced at the calendar. It was the fifth of May.

“Well,” he said aloud, “there is luck in odd numbers. Here goes my first novel!”

And thereupon, to his own great surprise, he began writing rapidly. He did not know what was coming, he hardly knew whether his hero had black hair or brown, and as for the heroine, he had not thought of her at all. But the hero was himself and was passing a night of great anxiety and distress in a small room, in a small house, in the city of New York. The reason of his anxiety and distress was a profound secret as yet, because George had not invented it, but there was no difficulty in depicting his state of mind. The writer had just spent that very night himself, and was describing it while the sun was yet scarcely risen. He chuckled viciously as he drove his pen along the lines and wrote out the ready phrases that rushed into his brain. It was inexpressibly comic to be giving all the details of his hero’s suffering without having the smallest idea of what caused it; but, as he went on, he found that his silence upon this important point was lending an uncanny air of mystery to his first chapter, and his own interest was unexpectedly aroused.

It seemed strange, too, to find himself at liberty to devote as much space as he pleased to the elaboration of details that attracted his attention, and to feel that he was not limited in space as he had hitherto been in all he wrote. Of course, when he stopped to think of what he was to do next, he was as much convinced as ever that nothing could come of his attempt beyond this first chapter. The whole affair was like a sort of trial gallop over the paper, and doubtless when he read over what he had written he would be convinced of its worthlessness. He remembered his first fiery article upon the critics, and the wholesale cutting and pruning it had required before he could even submit it to Johnson. Then, however, he had written under the influence of anger; now, he was conscious of a new pleasure in every sentence, his ideas came smoothly to the surface and his own language had a freshness which he did not recognise. In old times he had studied the manner of great writers in the attempt to improve his own, and his style had been subject to violent attacks of Carlyle and to lucid intervals of Macaulay, he had worshipped at Ruskin’s exquisite shrine and had offered incense in Landor’s classic temple, he had eaten of Thackeray’s salt and had drunk long draughts from Dickens’s loving-cup. Perhaps each had produced its effect, but now he was no longer conscious of receiving influence from any of them. For the first time in his life he was himself, for better, for worse, to fail or to succeed. His soul and his consciousness expanded together in a new and intoxicating life, as he struck those first reckless strokes in the delicious waters of the unknown.

He forgot everything, dress, breakfast, his father, the time of day and the time of year, and when he rose from his seat he had written the first chapter of his novel. For some occult reason he had stopped suddenly and dropped his pen. He knew instinctively that he had reached his first halting-place, and he paused for breath, left the table and went to the window. To his astonishment the sun was already casting shadows in the little brick yard, and he knew that it must be past noon. He looked at himself and saw that he was not dressed, then he looked at his watch and found that it was one o’clock. He rubbed his eyes, for it had all been like a dream, like a vision of fairyland, like a night spent at the play. On the table lay many pages of closely-written matter, numbered and neatly put together by sheer force of habit. He hardly knew what they contained, and he was quite unable to recall the words that opened the first paragraph. But he knew the last sentence by heart, for it was still ringing in his brain, and strange to say, he knew what was to come next, though he seemed not to have known it so long as he held his pen. While he dressed himself the whole book, confused in its details but clear in its general outline, presented itself to his contemplation, and he knew that he should write it as he saw it. It would assuredly not be a good novel, it would never be published, and he was wasting his time, but it would be a book, and he should keep his promise to Constance. He went downstairs and found his father at luncheon, with a newspaper beside him.

“Well, George,” said the old gentleman, “I thought you were never going to get up.”

“I am not quite sure that I have been to bed,” answered the young man. “But I know that I have been writing since it was daylight and have had no breakfast.”