The Beautiful and Damned
Mr. Haight was tall and bent and beetle-browed. He had been recommended
to Anthony as an astute and tenacious lawyer.
"I only know vaguely," answered Anthony. "A man named Shuttleworth, who
was a sort of pet of his, has the whole thing in charge as administrator
or trustee or something--all except the direct bequests to charity and
the provisions for servants and for those two cousins in Idaho."
"How distant are the cousins?"
"Oh, third or fourth, anyway. I never even heard of them."
Mr. Haight nodded comprehensively.
"And you want to contest a provision of the will?"
"I guess so," admitted Anthony helplessly. "I want to do what sounds
most hopeful--that's what I want you to tell me."
"You want them to refuse probate to the will?"
Anthony shook his head.
"You've got me. I haven't any idea what 'probate' is. I want a share of
the estate."
"Suppose you tell me some more details. For instance, do you know why
the testator disinherited you?"
"Why--yes," began Anthony. "You see he was always a sucker for moral
reform, and all that--"
"I know," interjected Mr. Haight humorlessly.
"--and I don't suppose he ever thought I was much good. I 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 feeble-mindedness through premature old age."
"But," objected Anthony, "his private physician, being one of the
beneficiaries, would testify that he wasn't feeble-minded. 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, feeble-mindedness 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 week end
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 high-ball 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
clientèle. 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 every one she knows,"
said Gloria to Anthony, "but she thinks every one 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 soupcon 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 to a deep russet gold; her slender body suggesting ever a
nymph running and dancing through Orphic groves. Masculine eyes, dozens
of them, followed her with a fascinated stare when she walked through a
hotel lobby or down the aisle of a theatre. Men asked to be introduced
to her, fell into prolonged states of sincere admiration, made definite
love to her--for she was still a thing of exquisite and unbelievable
beauty. And for his part Anthony had rather gained than lost in
appearance; his face had taken on a certain intangible air of tragedy,
romantically contrasted with his trim and immaculate person.
Early in the winter, when all conversation turned on the probability of
America's going into the war, when Anthony was making a desperate and
sincere attempt to write, Muriel Kane arrived in New York and came
immediately to see them. Like Gloria, she seemed never to change. She
knew the latest slang, danced the latest dances, and talked of the
latest songs and plays with all the fervor of her first season as a New
York drifter. Her coyness was eternally new, eternally ineffectual; her
clothes were extreme; her black hair was bobbed, now, like Gloria's.
"I've come up for the midwinter prom at New Haven," she announced,
imparting her delightful secret. Though she must have been older then
than any of the boys in college, she managed always to secure some sort
of invitation, imagining vaguely that at the next party would occur the
flirtation which was to end at the romantic altar.
"Where've you been?" inquired Anthony, unfailingly amused.
"I've been at Hot Springs. It's been slick and peppy this fall--more
_men!_"
"Are you in love, Muriel?"
"What do you mean 'love'?" This was the rhetorical question of the year.
"I'm going to tell you something," she said, switching the subject
abruptly. "I suppose it's none of my business, but I think it's time for
you two to settle down."
"Why, we are settled down."
"Yes, you are!" she scoffed archly. "Everywhere I go I hear stories of
your escapades. Let me tell you, I have an awful time sticking up
for you."
"You needn't bother," said Gloria coldly.
"Now, Gloria," she protested, "you know I'm one of your best friends."
Gloria was silent. Muriel continued:
"It's not so much the idea of a woman drinking, but Gloria's so pretty,
and so many people know her by sight all around, that it's naturally
conspicuous--"
"What have you heard recently?" demanded Gloria, her dignity going down
before her curiosity.
"Well, for instance, that that party in Marietta _killed_ Anthony's
grandfather."
Instantly husband and wife were tense with annoyance.
"Why, I think that's outrageous."
"That's what they say," persisted Muriel stubbornly.
Anthony paced the room. "It's preposterous!" he declared. "The very
people we take on parties shout the story around as a great joke--and
eventually it gets back to us in some such form as this."
Gloria began running her finger through a stray red-dish curl. Muriel
licked her veil as she considered her next remark.
"You ought to have a baby."
Gloria looked up wearily.
"We can't afford it."
"All the people in the slums have them," said Muriel triumphantly.
Anthony and Gloria exchanged a smile. They had reached the stage of
violent quarrels that were never made up, quarrels that smouldered and
broke out again at intervals or died away from sheer indifference--but
this visit of Muriel's drew them temporarily together. When the
discomfort under which they were living was remarked upon by a third
party, it gave them the impetus to face this hostile world together. It
was very seldom, now, that the impulse toward reunion sprang
from within.
Anthony found himself associating his own existence with that of the
apartment's night elevator man, a pale, scraggly bearded person of about
sixty, with an air of being somewhat above his station. It was probably
because of this quality that he had secured the position; it made him a
pathetic and memorable figure of failure. Anthony recollected, without
humor, a hoary jest about the elevator man's career being a matter of
ups and downs--it was, at any rate, an enclosed life of infinite
dreariness. Each time Anthony stepped into the car he waited