Summary
A gilded cage of propriety rattles when Beatrix Vanderdyke—Manhattan’s most luminous spendthrift—slips through its bars at dusk, chasing the acrid perfume of turpentine into Sutherland Yorke’s garret. Their nocturnal pas de deux becomes front-page tinder; to smother the blaze she impulsively drapes the soot of her reputation round the shoulders of Pelham Franklyn, a diffident financier whose pulse beats in 3/4 time rather than the era’s frantic rag. The two strangers-in-name-only sign a counterfeit marriage compact, seeding a vineyard of lies that ripens on the gossip pages. A yacht, meant to be stage-set for their performance of bliss, drifts into Atlantic fog while anonymous ink—Yorke’s bilious postcards—washes up at cliff-side mansions, eroding the mortar of their masquerade. Returned to city marble and gaslight, Pelham finds the artist bleeding from a husband’s bullet; with death’s candle guttering, Yorke inks contrition. Pelham, now ardent convert from pretense to passion, spirits Beatrix past the three-mile limit where admiralty law loosens its collar and a captain’s pen can weld what once was forgery into matrimony’s ironclad covenant.
Synopsis
Irresponsible young heiress Beatrix Vanderdyke creates a scandal with her indiscreet visits to artist Sutherland Yorke. To extricate herself, Beatrix claims that she was actually visiting Pelham Franklyn, who has an apartment in the same building and to whom, she states, she is secretly married. Pelham, an old friend, is dumbfounded by the news but continues the ruse for Beatrix's sake. That night, he accompanies his new bride to her bedroom, but after alarming her, announces that she is quite safe and retreats. After the marriage announcement is published in the paper, the couple is compelled to continue their deception, finally taking an enforced honeymoon cruise on Pelham's yacht. Meanwhile, Yorke has been sending anonymous letters to the family which cast doubt upon the marriage. Upon returning from his honeymoon, Pelham, who has fallen in love with his bride, discovers this and goes to Yorke's apartment, arriving just as the scoundrel has been shot by a jealous husband. Before dying, Yorke writes an apology to Beatrix. Pelham then kidnaps Beatrix, and the two are married at sea.
