The Three Fates 1

The Three Fates 1

The Three Fates

 

Author: F. Marion Crawford

CHAPTER I.

Jonah Wood was bitterly disappointed in his son. During five and twenty

years he had looked in vain for the development of those qualities in

George, which alone, in his opinion, could insure success. But though

George could talk intelligently about the great movements of business in

New York, it was clear by this time that he did not possess what his

father called business instincts. The old man could have forgiven him

his defective appreciation in the matter of dollars and cents, however,

if he had shown the slightest inclination to adopt one of the regular

professions; in other words, if George had ceased to waste his time in

the attempt to earn money with his pen, and had submitted to becoming a

scribe in a lawyer’s office, old Wood would have been satisfied. The

boy’s progress might have been slow, but it would have been sure.

 

It was strange to see how this elderly man, who had been ruined by the

exercise of his own business faculties, still pinned his faith upon his

own views and theories of finance, and regarded it as a real misfortune

to be the father of a son who thought differently from himself. It would

have satisfied the height of his ambition to see George installed as a

clerk on a nominal salary in one of the great banking houses. Possibly,

at an earlier period, and before George had finally refused to enter a

career of business, there may have been in the bottom of the old man’s

heart a hope that his son might some day become a financial power, and

wreak vengeance for his own and his father’s losses upon Thomas Craik or

his heirs after him; but if this wish existed Jonah Wood had honestly

tried to put it out of the way. He was of a religious disposition, and

his moral rectitude was above all doubt. He did not forgive his enemies,

but he sincerely meant to do so, and did his best not to entertain any

hope of revenge.

 

The story of his wrongs was a simple one. He had formerly been a very

successful man. Of a good New England family, he had come to New York

when very young, possessed of a small capital, full of integrity,

industry, and determination. At the age of forty he was at the head of a

banking firm which had for a time enjoyed a reputation of some

importance. Then he had married a young lady of good birth and

possessing a little fortune, to whom he had been attached for years and

who had waited for him with touching fidelity. Twelve months later, she

had died in giving birth to George. Possibly the terrible shock weakened

Jonah Wood’s nerves and disturbed the balance of his faculties. At all

events it was at this time that he began to enter into speculation. At

first he was very successful, and his success threw him into closer

intimacy with Thomas Craik, a cousin of his dead wife’s. For a time

everything prospered with the bank, while Wood acquired the habit of

following Craik’s advice. On an ill-fated day, however, the latter

persuaded him to invest largely in a certain railway not yet begun, but

which was completed in a marvellously short space of time. In the course

of a year or two it was evident that the road, which Craik insisted on

running upon the most ruinous principles, must soon become bankrupt. It

had of course been built to compete with an old established line; the

usual war of rates set in, the old road suffered severely, and the young

one was ruined. This was precisely what Craik had anticipated. So soon

as the bankruptcy was declared and the liquidation terminated, he bought

up every bond and share upon which he could lay his hands. Wood was

ruined, together with a number of other heavy investors. The road,

however, having ceased to pay interest on its debts continued to run at

rates disastrous to its more honest competitor, and before long the

latter was obliged in self-defence to buy up its rival. When that

extremity was reached Thomas Craik was in possession of enough bonds and

stock to give him a controlling interest, and he sold the ruined railway

at his own price, realising a large fortune by the transaction. Wood was

not only financially broken; his reputation, too, had suffered in the

catastrophe. At first, people looked askance at him, believing that he

had got a share of the profits, and that he was only pretending poverty

until the scandal should blow over, though he had in reality sacrificed

almost everything he possessed in the honourable liquidation of the

bank’s affairs, and found himself, at the age of fifty-seven, in

possession only of the small fortune that had been his wife’s, and of

the small house which had escaped the general ruin, and in which he now

lived. Thomas Craik had robbed him, as he had robbed many others, and

Jonah Wood knew it, though there was no possibility of ever recovering a

penny of his losses. His nerve was gone, and by the time people had

discovered that he was the most honest of men, he was more than half

forgotten by those he had known best. He had neither the energy nor the

courage to begin life again, and although he had cleared his reputation

of all blame, he knew that he had made the great mistake, and that no

one would ever again trust to his judgment. It seemed easiest to live in

the little house, to get what could be got out of life for himself and

his son on an income of scarcely two thousand dollars, and to shut

himself out from his former acquaintance.

 

And yet, though his own career had ended in such lamentable failure, he

would gladly have seen George begin where he had begun. George would

have succeeded in doing all those things which he himself had left

undone, and he might have lived to see established on a firm basis the

great fortune which for a few brief years had been his in a floating

state. But George could not be brought to understand this point of view.

His youthful recollections were connected with monetary disaster, and

his first boyish antipathies had been conceived against everything that

bore the name of business. What he felt for the career of the

money-maker was more than antipathy; it amounted to a positive horror

which he could not overcome. From time to time his father returned to

the old story of his wrongs and misfortunes, going over the tale as he

sat with George through the long winter evenings, and entering into

every detail of the transaction which had ruined him. In justice to the

young man it must be admitted that he was patient on those occasions,

and listened with outward calm to the long technical explanations, the

interminable concatenation of figures and the jarring cadence of phrases

that all ended with the word dollars. But the talk was as painful to him

as a violin played out of tune is to a musician, and it reacted upon his

nerves and produced physical pain of an acute kind. He could set his

features in an __EXPRESSION__ of respectful attention, but he could not help

twisting his long smooth fingers together under the edge of the table,

where his father could not see them. The very name of money disgusted

him, and when the great failure had been talked of in the evening it

haunted his dreams throughout the night and destroyed his rest, so that

he awoke with a sense of nervousness and distress from which he could

not escape until late in the following day.

 

Jonah Wood saw more of this peculiarity than his son suspected, though

he failed to understand it. With him, nervousness took a different form,

manifesting itself in an abnormal anxiety concerning George’s welfare,

combined with an unfortunate disposition to find fault. Of late, indeed,

he had not been able to accuse the young man of idleness, since he was

evidently working to the utmost of his strength, though his occupations

brought him but little return. It seemed a pity to Jonah Wood that so

much good time and so much young energy should be wasted over pen, ink,

paper, and books which left no record of a daily substantial gain. He,

too, slept little, though his iron-grey face betrayed nothing of what

passed in his mind.

 

He loved his son in his own untrusting way. It was his affection,

combined with his inability to believe much good of what he loved, that

undermined and embittered the few pleasures still left to him. He had

never seen any hope except in money, and since George hated the very

mention of lucre there could be no hope for him either. A good man, a

scrupulously honest man according to his lights, he could only see

goodness from one point of view and virtue represented in one dress.

Goodness was obedience to parental authority, and virtue the imitation

of parental ideas. George believed that obedience should play no part in

determining what he should do with his talent, and that imitation,

though it be the sincerest flattery, may lay the foundation for the most

hopeless of all failures, the failure to do that for which a man is best

adapted. George had not deliberately chosen a literary career because he

felt himself fitted for it. He was in reality far too modest to look

forward from the first to the ultimate satisfaction of his ambitions.

His lonely life had driven him to writing as a means of expressing

himself without incurring his father’s criticism and contradiction. Not

understanding in the least the nature of imagination, he believed

himself lacking in this respect, but he had at once found an immense

satisfaction in writing down his opinions concerning certain new books

that had fallen into his hands. Then, being emboldened by that belief in

his own judgment which young men acquire very easily when they are not

brought into daily contact with their intellectual equals, he had

ventured to offer the latest of his attempts to one editor and then to

another and another. At last he had found one who chanced to be in a

human humour and who glanced at one of the papers.

 

“It is not worthless,” said the autocrat, “but it is quite useless.

Everybody has done with the book months ago. Do you want to earn a

little money by reviewing?”

 

George expressed his readiness to do so with alacrity. The editor

scribbled half a dozen words on a slip of paper from a block and handed

it to George, telling him where to take it. As a first result the young

man carried away a couple of volumes of new-born trash upon which to try

his hand. A quarter of what he wrote was published in the literary

column of the newspaper. He had yet to learn the cynical practice of

counting words, upon which so much depends in dealing with the daily

press, but the idea of actually earning something, no matter how little,

overcame his first feeling of disgust at the nature of the work. In time

he acquired the necessary tricks and did very well. By sheer

determination he devoted all his best hours of the day to the drudgery

of second class criticism, and only allowed himself to write what was

agreeable to his own brain when the day’s work was done.

 

The idea of producing a book did not suggest itself to him. In his own

opinion he had none of the necessary gifts for original writing, while

he fancied that he possessed those of the critic in a rather unusual

degree. His highest ambition was to turn out a volume of essays on other

people’s doings and writings, and he was constantly labouring in his

leisure moments at long papers treating of celebrated works, in what he

believed to be a spirit of profound analysis. As yet no one had bestowed

the slightest attention upon his efforts; no serious article of his had

found its way into the press, though a goodly number of his carefully

copied manuscripts had issued from the offices of various periodicals in

the form of waste paper. Strange to say, he was not discouraged by these

failures. The satisfaction, so far as he had known any, had consisted in

the writing down of his views; and though he wished it were possible to