Summary
A sepulchral manor on the Hudson, its library towers crammed with moldering folios, becomes the sarcophagus of Marcellus Holloway’s grief; while he decays among parchment ghosts, his daughter Penelope—half-savage colt and half-incipient femme fatale—gallops across meadows in open defiance of Sabbath stillness, her hair a black pennant snapping at propriety. Into this hothouse of repressed lament roll Mrs. Travers and her callow son Jimmy, bearing the virus of metropolitan polish: a gilded invitation to boarding-school corsetry where whispered rules replace thundering hooves. Penelope, allergic to whalebone etiquette, scandalizes dormitories with midnight laughter and cigarette perfume, until the telegraph of her father’s sudden death arrives like a guillotine. Back home she cocoons herself in crepe and candle-shadow, deaf to pleas, until Jimmy lures her out—ostensibly to heal, in truth to rekindle. At a soirée dripping with chandeliers and malice she locks eyes with the urbane, restless Mr. Rivers, a man already shackled to a porcelain-veneered wife whose smile calcifies at every flirtatious syllable. Golf-course afternoons morph into clandestine road-house nights, tires spitting gravel as saxophones moan; detectives, those mercenary angels of the Jazz Age, tail the entwined pair until the moment Rivers’ mask slips into predatory hunger and Penelope’s bravado dissolves in a dead faint. Jimmy bursts in, fists clenched like a knight errant in plus-fours; Rivers is hauled off, scandal brews, divorce papers name the innocent Penelope as co-respondent. In a final midnight confrontation she kneels before Mrs. Rivers, not to confess but to bare her bruised, unblemished truth; the wronged wife beholds the girl’s unfeigned terror, tears up the indictment, and together they return to the Travers’ lamplit porch where Jimmy folds Penelope into the first embrace that feels like home rather than rescue.
Synopsis
Marcellus Holloway, a rich widower, buries himself among his books and allows his only daughter, Penelope, to bring herself up. At the age of eighteen she was courageous and self-reliant, also self-willed and independent, with a disregard for the restraints of convention. She caused gossip by fishing on Sunday and galloping wildly about on her colt. An old friend, Mrs. Travers, and her son, Jimmy, visit them. Jimmy and Penelope become friendly. Mrs. Travers induces the father to allow Penelope to enter a fashionable boarding school with her daughter. Marjorie. At the school Penelope's behavior is not as dignified as it should be. Her father dies and Penelope refuses to see her friends or return to school. Jimmy finally persuades her to come and make his mother a visit. She goes and at a party in her honor meets Mr. and Mrs. Rivers and enjoys Rivers' company, causing his wife much anger. At the golf club she continues flirting and Jimmy remonstrates with her without success. Mrs. Rivers puts detectives on her husband's trail and they follow Rivers and Penelope to a roadhouse. On the way Jimmy joins them. They arrive just as Rivers is beginning to show his real self to Penelope and she faints. The detectives take Rivers away, while Jimmy goes to Penelope. Mrs. Rivers starts a divorce suit, naming Penelope as a co-respondent. Penelope goes to Mrs. Rivers and pleads with her. Mrs. Rivers sees she is innocent and returns with her to the Travers' home, where Jimmy takes her into his arms.
