The Banker's Daughter

Summary

Bronson Howard’s 1914 melodrama detonates inside the gilded cage of Fifth Avenue salons, where champagne flutes clink louder than stock-ticker bells and a banker’s restlessness becomes the fuse for a six-year emotional war. Lawrence Westbrook—portrayed by William Bailey with the languid cruelty of a man who has mistaken sloth for sovereignty—squanders his empire on cotillions while his only child, Lillian (a luminous Kitty Baldwin), trades her birthright for the solvent scent of turpentine: she loves Harold Routledge, a pauper painter whose canvases burn with the colors he can’t afford to buy. Enter Count de Carojac, Raoul Walsh in silk gloves and serpent grin, a dilettante vampire who feeds on quarrels he engineers. One calculated waltz, a kiss planted like a branding iron, and the lovers fracture. Into this frost comes John Strebelow—Harry Spingler, sturdy as a cedar mast—who spirits the exhausted clan to a Maine wilderness where birch leaves flicker like green coins. A hunting mishap: blood on pine needles, Lillian’s fingers coaxing a bandage, and Strebelow’s heart slips its leash. Back in Manhattan, the bank teeters; marriage to Strebelow becomes the price of the Westbrook name. Lillian, honoring a death-bed maternal whisper, sacrifices her pulse for pedigree. Six winters pass. Paris, opalescent under gaslight: Strebelow, now husband and father, stumbles upon Harold—famous, bearded, still painting the woman he lost. The Count, ever the puppeteer, engineers an embassy insult; steel meets steel at dawn; Harold dies on dew-wet grass. Strebelow, avenging both cuckolded honor and slain friend, sends the Count to hell with a single shot. But the ghost of Harold lingers between husband and wife. Only the crayon-scrawled pleadings of little Natalie—Strebelow’s daughter—can rekindle embers. Aunt Fannie forges reconciliation letters; truth, like morning fog, dissipates again until one final maternal letter, read aloud by the child, knits the lovers forever.

Synopsis

Lawrence Westbrook, banker and club man, neglects his business for pleasure. His daughter, Lillian, is in love with Harold Routledge, a poor artist. The Count de Carojac also loves the banker's daughter. To make Harold jealous, Lillian flirts with the count, which causes a severe quarrel between the lovers. John Strebelow, a friend of the family, suggests that the tired banker and his family join him in a visit to his bunting camp in the Maine woods. While hunting, Strebelow injures his hand. Lillian, with the quick wit of a woman, washes and bandages the wound, awakening love within John Strebelow's heart. To save the name of Babbage and Westbrook, the banker pleads with his daughter to marry the rich John Strebelow. Loving Harold Routledge, but remembering the wish of her dying mother, she makes the sacrifice. Sis years later, Strebelow is living happily in Paris with his wife and child, Natalie. He meets Harold Routledge, now a famous artist, and invites him to call. The sight of Lillian awakens the old love. The count, seeing a chance to be revenged, insults Harold Routledge at a reception of the American Embassy. A duel is arranged in which Routledge is killed. Strebelow swears revenge upon the death of his friend, and for his wife's honor, later kills the Count de Carojac. The belief that his wife still loved Harold Routledge causes a separation between them. Strebelow tells of his great love for Lillian and vows to return as soon as Lillian proves that her love is true and sends for him. The sweet, imploring letters of his daughter, Natalie, bring a reconciliation between husband and wife, which is again broken, owing to Lillian's ignorance of the contents of these letters, which had been dictated by Aunt Fannie in the hopes of affecting this reconciliation. When the bonds of love seem to be broken again, Natalie shows Strebelow a letter written by her mother, the last appeal causing a final reunion.