The Beautiful and Damned F. Scott Fitzgerald (top novels to read TXT) 📖

didn’t go into business, you see. But I feel certain that up to last summer I was one of the beneficiaries. We had a house out in Marietta, and one night grandfather got the notion he’d come over and see us. It just happened that there was a rather gay party going on and he arrived without any warning. Well, he took one look, he and this fellow Shuttleworth, and then turned around and tore right back to Tarrytown. After that he never answered my letters or even let me see him.”

“He was a prohibitionist, wasn’t he?”

“He was everything⁠—regular religious maniac.”

“How long before his death was the will made that disinherited you?”

“Recently⁠—I mean since August.”

“And you think that the direct reason for his not leaving you the majority of the estate was his displeasure with your recent actions?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Haight considered. Upon what grounds was Anthony thinking of contesting the will?

“Why, isn’t there something about evil influence?”

“Undue influence is one ground⁠—but it’s the most difficult. You would have to show that such pressure was brought to bear so that the deceased was in a condition where he disposed of his property contrary to his intentions⁠—”

“Well, suppose this fellow Shuttleworth dragged him over to Marietta just when he thought some sort of a celebration was probably going on?”

“That wouldn’t have any bearing on the case. There’s a strong division between advice and influence. You’d have to prove that the secretary had a sinister intention. I’d suggest some other grounds. A will is automatically refused probate in case of insanity, drunkenness”⁠—here Anthony smiled⁠—“or feeblemindedness through premature old age.”

“But,” objected Anthony, “his private physician, being one of the beneficiaries, would testify that he wasn’t feebleminded. And he wasn’t. As a matter of fact he probably did just what he intended to with his money⁠—it was perfectly consistent with everything he’d ever done in his life⁠—”

“Well, you see, feeblemindedness is a great deal like undue influence⁠—it implies that the property wasn’t disposed of as originally intended. The most common ground is duress⁠—physical pressure.”

Anthony shook his head.

“Not much chance on that, I’m afraid. Undue influence sounds best to me.”

After more discussion, so technical as to be largely unintelligible to Anthony, he retained Mr. Haight as counsel. The lawyer proposed an interview with Shuttleworth, who, jointly with Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy, was executor of the will. Anthony was to come back later in the week.

It transpired that the estate consisted of approximately forty million dollars. The largest bequest to an individual was of one million, to Edward Shuttleworth, who received in addition thirty thousand a year salary as administrator of the thirty-million-dollar trust fund, left to be doled out to various charities and reform societies practically at his own discretion. The remaining nine millions were proportioned among the two cousins in Idaho and about twenty-five other beneficiaries: friends, secretaries, servants, and employees, who had, at one time or another, earned the seal of Adam Patch’s approval.

At the end of another fortnight Mr. Haight, on a retainer’s fee of fifteen thousand dollars, had begun preparations for contesting the will.

The Winter of Discontent

Before they had been two months in the little apartment on Fifty-Seventh Street, it had assumed for both of them the same indefinable but almost material taint that had impregnated the gray house in Marietta. There was the odor of tobacco always⁠—both of them smoked incessantly; it was in their clothes, their blankets, the curtains, and the ash-littered carpets. Added to this was the wretched aura of stale wine, with its inevitable suggestion of beauty gone foul and revelry remembered in disgust. About a particular set of glass goblets on the sideboard the odor was particularly noticeable, and in the main room the mahogany table was ringed with white circles where glasses had been set down upon it. There had been many parties⁠—people broke things; people became sick in Gloria’s bathroom; people spilled wine; people made unbelievable messes of the kitchenette.

These things were a regular part of their existence. Despite the resolutions of many Mondays it was tacitly understood as the weekend approached that it should be observed with some sort of unholy excitement. When Saturday came they would not discuss the matter, but would call up this person or that from among their circle of sufficiently irresponsible friends, and suggest a rendezvous. Only after the friends had gathered and Anthony had set out decanters, would he murmur casually: “I guess I’ll have just one highball myself⁠—”

Then they were off for two days⁠—realizing on a wintry dawn that they had been the noisiest and most conspicuous members of the noisiest and most conspicuous party at the Boul’ Mich’, or the Club Ramée, or at other resorts much less particular about the hilarity of their clientele. They would find that they had, somehow, squandered eighty or ninety dollars, how, they never knew; they customarily attributed it to the general penury of the “friends” who had accompanied them.

It began to be not unusual for the more sincere of their friends to remonstrate with them, in the very course of a party, and to predict a sombre end for them in the loss of Gloria’s “looks” and Anthony’s “constitution.”

The story of the summarily interrupted revel in Marietta had, of course, leaked out in detail⁠—“Muriel doesn’t mean to tell everyone she knows,” said Gloria to Anthony, “but she thinks everyone she tells is the only one she’s going to tell”⁠—and, diaphanously veiled, the tale had been given a conspicuous place in Town Tattle. When the terms of Adam Patch’s will were made public and the newspapers printed items concerning Anthony’s suit, the story was beautifully rounded out⁠—to Anthony’s infinite disparagement. They began to hear rumors about themselves from all quarters, rumors founded usually on a soupçon of truth, but overlaid with preposterous and sinister detail.

Outwardly they showed no signs of deterioration. Gloria at twenty-six was still the Gloria of twenty; her complexion a fresh damp setting for her candid eyes; her hair still a childish glory, darkening slowly from corn color