The Three Fates

by F. Marion Crawford

Tom Craik cared very little what George did, provided he did something. What he most regretted was that he could not possibly be present to enjoy the surprise he had planned. It amused him to think out the details of his future. If, for instance, George took to drinking and gambling, losing and wasting at night what he had laboured hard to earn during the day, what a moment that would be in his life when he should be told that Tom Craik was dead, and that he was master of a great fortune. The old man chuckled over the idea, and fancied he could see George’s face when, having lost more than he could possibly pay, his young eyes heavy with wine, his hand trembling with excitement, he would be making his last desperate stand at poker in the quiet upper room of a gambling club. He would lose his nerve, show his cards, lose and sink back in his chair with a stare of horror. At that moment the door would open and Sherry Trimm would come in and whisper a few words in his ear. Tom Craik liked to imagine the young fellow’s bound of surprise, the stifled cry of amazement that would escape from his lips, the doubts, the fears that would beset him until the money was his, and then the sudden cure that would follow. Yes, thought Tom, there was no such cure for a spendthrift as a fortune, a real fortune. To make a man love money, give it to him all at once in vast quantities—provided he is not a fool. And George was no fool. He had already proved that.

There was something satanic in Mr. Craik’s speculations. He knew the world well. It amused him to fancy George, admired and courted as a literary lion, but feared by all judicious mammas, as only young, poor and famous literary lions are feared. How the sentimental young ladies would crowd about him and offer him tea, cake and plots for his novels! And how the ring of mothers would draw their daughters away from him and freeze him with airs politely cold! How two or three would be gathered together in one corner of the room to say to each other that two or three others in the opposite corner were foolishly exposing their daughters to the charms of an adventurer, for his books bring him in nothing, my dear, not a cent—Mr. Popples told me so! And how the compliment would be returned upon the two or three, by the other two or three, with usurious compound interest. Enter to them, thought Craik, another of their tribe—what do you think, my dears? Tom Craik left all that money to George Wood, house, furniture, pictures, horses and carriages—everything! Just think! I really must go and speak to the dear fellow! And how they would all be impelled, at the same moment, by the same charitable thought! How they would all glide forward, during the next quarter of an hour, impatient to thaw with intimacy what they had lately wished to freeze with politeness, and how, a little later, each would say to her lovely daughter as they went home—you know Georgey Wood—for it would be Georgey at once—is such a good fellow, so famous and yet so modest, so unassuming when you think how enormously rich he is. Is he rich, mamma? Why, yes, Kitty—or Totty, or Dottie, or Hattie, or Nelly—he has all Tom Craik’s money, and that gem of a house to live in, and the pictures and everything, and your cousin—or your aunt—Totty is furious about it—but he is such a nice fellow. There would not be much difficulty about getting a wife for the “nice fellow” then, thought Thomas Craik.

And one or other of these things might have actually happened, precisely as Thomas Craik foresaw if that excellent and worthy man, Sherrington Trimm had not unexpectedly fallen ill during the spring that followed George Wood’s first success. His illness was severe and was undoubtedly caused by too much hard work, and was superinduced by a moderate but unchanging taste for canvas-backs, truffles boiled in madeira and an especial brand of brut champagne. Sherry recovered, indeed, but was ordered to Carlsbad in Bohemia without delay. Totty found that it was quite impossible for her to accompany him, considering the precarious state of her brother’s health. To leave Tom at such a time would be absolutely heartless. Sherrington Trimm expressed a belief that Tom would last through the summer and perhaps through several summers, as he never did a stroke of work and was as wiry as hairpins. He might have added that his brother-in-law did not subsist upon cryptograms and brut wines, but Sherry resolutely avoided suggesting to himself that the daily consumption of those delicacies was in any way connected with his late illness. His wife, however, shook her head, and quoting glibly three or four medical authorities, assured him that Tom’s state was very far from satisfactory. Mamie might go with her father, if she pleased, but Totty would not leave the sinking ship.

“Till the rats leave it,” added Mr. Trimm viciously. His wife gave him a mournfully severe glance and left him to make his preparations.

So he went abroad, and was busy for some time with the improvement of his liver and the reduction of his superfluous fat, and John Bond managed the business in his stead. John Bond was a very fine fellow and did well whatever he undertook, so that Mr. Trimm felt no anxiety about their joint affairs. John himself was delighted to have an opportunity of showing what he could do and he looked forward to marrying Grace Fearing in the summer, considering that his position was now sufficiently assured. He was far too sensible a man to have any scruples about taking a rich wife while he himself was poor, but he was too independent to live upon Grace’s fortune, and as she was so young he had put off the wedding until he felt that he was making enough money to have all that he wanted for himself without her aid. When they were married she could do what she pleased without consulting him, and he would do as he liked without asking her advice or assistance. He considered that marriage could not be happy where either of the couple was dependent upon the other for necessities or luxuries, and that domestic peace depended largely on the exclusion of all monetary transactions between man and wife. John Bond was a typical man of his class, tall, fair, good-looking, healthy, active, energetic and keen. He had never had a day’s illness nor an hour’s serious annoyance. He had begun life in the right way, at the right end and in a cheerful spirit. There was no morbid sentimentality about him, no unnecessary development of the imagination, no nervousness, no shyness, no underrating of other people and no overrating of himself. He knew he could never be great or famous, and that he could only be John Bond as long as he lived. John Bond he would be, then, and nothing else, but John Bond should come to mean a great deal before he had done with the name. It should mean the keenest, most hardworking, most honest, most reliable, most clean-handed lawyer in the city of New York. There was a breezy atmosphere of truth, soap and enterprise about John Bond.

Before going abroad Sherrington Trimm asked Tom Craik whether he should tell his junior partner of the existence of a will in favour of George Wood. Mr. Craik hesitated before he answered.

“Well, Sherry,” he said at last, “considering the uncertainty of human life, as Totty says, and considering that you are more used to Extra Dry than to Carlsbad waters, you had better tell him. There is no knowing what tricks that stuff may play with you. Let it be in confidence.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Trimm. “I would rather trust John Bond than trust myself.”

The same day he imparted the secret to his partner. The latter nodded gravely and then fell into a fit of abstraction which was very rare with him. He knew a great deal of the relations existing between Constance and George Wood, and in his frank, lawyer-like distrust of people’s motives, he had shared Grace’s convictions about the man, though he had always treated him with indifference and always avoided speaking of him.

There are some people whose curiosity finds relief in asking questions, even though they obtain no answers to their inquiries. Totty was one of these, and she missed her husband more than she had thought possible. There had been a sort of satisfaction in tormenting him about the will, accompanied by a constant hope that he might one day forget his discretion in a fit of anger and let out the secret she so much desired to learn. Now, however, there was no one to cross-examine except Tom himself, and she would as soon have thought of asking him a direct question in the matter as of trying to make holes in a mill-stone with a darning-needle. Her curiosity had therefore no outlet and as her interest was so directly concerned at the same time, it is no wonder that she fell into a deplorably unsettled state of mind. For a long time not a ray of light illuminated the situation, and Totty actually began to grow thin under the pressure of her constant anxiety. At last she hit upon a plan for discovering the truth, so simple that she wondered how she had failed to think of it before.