Like many other hustlers of his
day and opportunity, old Steve Marrineal had married a shrewd little
shopgirl who had come up with him through the struggle by the slow,
patient steps described in many of our most improving biographies. As
frequently occurs, though it doesn't get into the biographies, she who
had played a helpful role in adversity, could not withstand affluence.
She bloated physically and mentally, and became the juicy and
unsuspecting victim of a horde of parasites and flatterers who swarmed
eagerly upon her, as soon as the rough and contemptuous protection of
her husband was removed by the hand of a medical prodigy who advertised
himself as the discoverer of a new and infallible cure for cancer, and
whom Mrs. Marrineal, with an instinctive leaning toward quackery, had
forced upon her spouse. Appraising his prospective widow with an
accurate eye, the dying man left a testament bestowing the bulk of his
fortune upon his son, with a few heavy income-producing properties for
Mrs. Marrineal. Tertius Marrineal was devoted to his mother, with a
jealous, pitying, and protective affection. This is popularly approved
as the infallible mark of a good man. Tertius Marrineal was not a good
man.
Nor was there any particular reason why he should be.
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