Summary
In a soot-softened town whose gas-lamps flicker like nervous eyelids, Henry Disney—clattering bottles at dawn, skin freckled with whey—becomes the reluctant axis on which an entire micro-society pirouettes. A solicitor, Phipps, part bloodhound, part mortician of bankruptcies, sniffs out the milkman’s dormant ducal bloodline and, together with his sister Laura—whose smiles arrive pre-mortgaged—hatches a matrimonial ambush: entomb the heir in silk before he senses the crown. Yet Disney’s marrow has already been sweetened by Ethel Hamilton, the borough’s comet of a debutante, whose wit crackles louder than her pearls. What follows is a gavotte of disguises, bruises, and bedroom farce: a staged beating, a captivity masquerading as convalescence, a midnight escape through terraced shadows, and finally the gilded trap of a ballroom where champagne giggles obscure the grind of social guillotines. When Ethel spurns the newly minted Duke for playing the parvenu, the chandeliers seem to blush; Disney, stripped of illusion, trudges back to his rattling milk cart, renouncing ermine for the clink of bottles. In the lavender hush of dawn, Ethel reappears, offering to sculpt him into a Duke worth loving—her terms, her curriculum, his heart re-delivered in a wagon smelling of clover and cowhide.
Synopsis
Henry Disney, a milkman residing in a small city, is discovered by Phipps, a lawyer, to be the heir to the title and fortune of the Duke of Walshire. Phipps and his sister Laura, being pressed for money and anxious to maintain their social position, conspire to arrange a marriage between the sister and the milkman before he knows that he is the Duke. Phipps has Disney assaulted and arranges to be near in order to rescue him and take him to the Phipps house. In the meantime, however, Disney has met Ethel Hamilton, one of the young social leaders of the town, and has fallen in love with her, although he doesn't dare to speak of his love on account of the great difference in their social positions. His love for Ethel, however, prevents him from falling victim to Laura's wiles, and he finally escapes from Phipps' house, where they are trying to keep him on the pretense that he is very ill. He then discovers that he is the Duke. The efforts of the milkman to be a Duke and to win the girl he loves lead to many humorous complications, and, finally at a ball which the milkman gives in honor of Ethel, his conduct so displeases her that she refuses his love and tells him very plainly that the social snobs who have been fawning upon him on account of his title have been making a fool of him. The milkman then begins to see a great light, and, after resenting an insult to Ethel by one of the snobs, takes occasion to tell them what he thinks of them. The dance breaks up in confusion and the milkman, sore at heart, sees that he is being used by the snobs, while they are making fun of him behind his back. He renounces his wealth and title and goes back to his milk route, where Ethel finds him. He agrees to do this on condition that Ethel will act as his instructor and teach him how to be a Duke. This she finally consents to do and he drives her home in the milk wagon, after an understanding between them which promises a happy ending to his love story.
