Summary
A canvas of Edwardian twilight, The Gates of Gladness daubs its melodrama across a gilded family triptych: Myron, the prodigal brush-wielder, exiled from paternal marble halls into garret-shadowed penury; Roger, the velvet-gloved heir, clutching keys to baronial splendor while grief ossifies his marriage into sepulchral silence; Mary, the contested muse, whose pulse becomes the metronome of fraternal rivalry. Into this chiaroscuro slips Beth, a child-lamp glowing with prelapsarian candor, smuggled by Norah—the house’s beating conscience—into the mausoleum of Roger’s mourning. A single gun-crack later, innocence is punctured, blood seeps across Persian rugs, and the estate’s cold fortune thaws into fraternal restitution, letting candlelight reclaim the corridors.
Synopsis
Myron Leeds and his brother Roger are both in love with Mary, but when Myron wins her, his father disowns him. While Myron struggles as an artist to support his wife and little daughter Beth, Roger marries and settles into his father's sumptuous estate. Roger's maid Norah, concerned when the death of his little boy causes him and his wife to shut themselves off from all society, invites Beth to visit the estate posing as her niece. Beth endears herself to the couple, but Myron, driven to desperation by his poverty and his wife's ill health, decides to rob the estate. Roger hears that someone is breaking in, but in attempting to shoot the intruder, he wounds Beth instead. As a result of this unhappy incident, Roger resolves to share his fortune with his brother, and the family is reunited.
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