The Walls of Jericho

Summary

A Queensland sheep-magnate turned Mayfair millionaire, Jack Frobisher, drifts through gilded drawing-rooms like a restless ghost, his antipodean fortune bankrolling the crumbling grandeur of a titled dynasty. He bankrolls a marquis, bankrolls a wife who treats matrimony as an extended bridge tournament, bankrolls his own slow suffocation under chandeliers and inherited portraits. Into this perfumed mausoleum rolls Hanky Bannister, another colonial Croesus, fresh off a steamer that still smells of merino wool; together they become unwitting saviors and hostages to a bloodline that has already pawned its honor but keeps the receipt for appearances. Cards are dealt in candle-lit boudoirs where an earl palms aces as casually as he pockets a government subsidy; flirtations are traded like promissory notes, post-dated and never honored. When Frobisher finally roars—voice raw with rum and righteousness—the brittle social architecture cracks like sugar glass: a titled seducer is forced to read aloud his own perfumed lies, an aristocratic damsel sees her marriage of convenience unmasked as a merger of liabilities, and the marble staircases echo with the thud of covenant-breaking footsteps retreating toward the colonies. By the time the couple steam away from Tilbury, London’s drawing-rooms have become a ghost town of unpaid debts and unspoken apologies, the walls of Jericho lying flat beneath a confetti of dishonored IOUs.

Synopsis

Jack Frobisher, a sheep farmer in Queensland, has returned to England a millionaire, bought his way into the inner circle of Vanity Fair, married the daughter of a marquis, and settled in Mayfair, with a country house outside, a shooting box in Scotland, and a yacht on the "Solent." Having accepted the patronage of a titled family, he is forced to lend money to his father-in-law, and having fallen in love with a society woman, he becomes a witness of the vacuous amusements of the smart set. He settles her score when she is a very heavy loser at bridge and watches her flirtations with fashionable idlers in general and with a contemptible rake, Harry Dallas, in particular. The return of Hanky Bannister, one of his Australian pals, and a millionaire like himself, opens the way for a patrician intrigue for the enrichment of the marquis' family by the marriage of Lady Lucy Derenham. Frobisher is unable to interest Eva, his wife, or her relations in his schemes for making a good use of his money in the erection of sanitary dwellings in the East End, and he is disgusted with the tendencies of fashionable life and anxious to keep his friend, Bannister, out of a marriage similar to his own. A sympathetic friend Lady Westerby, tells him that she is disappointed in finding him so tame a bear, and assures him that he has only to shout and the walls of Jericho will fall flat. At the marquis' house during a ball, and a game of bridge in Lady Alethea Frobisher's boudoir, during which one of her titled players cheats, wins a lot of money and suddenly discovers that he has an engagement and must go. The most serious flirtation of the smart wife ends in a declaration of love by Harry Dallas, which is interrupted by the gloomy, serious husband. The trumpets of rams' horns are blown, and the Australian shouts before the Jericho of smartness. The battle opens when Frobisher insists upon helping the titled brother-in-law to marry a girl whose honor his been compromised and to make a fresh start in the colonies. The Marquis is angry over the Australian interference with family coat of honor, and Lady Alethea attempts to reduce the rebel to submission by sarcastic flings at his tiresome virtue. The trumpets sound again when Frobisher attempts to prevent a marriage between his sister-in-law and the infatuated Bannister by telling him how heartless and mercenary she is, and there is another blast when the rake, Harry Dallas, is compelled to read to the indignant husband a love letter written to the wife. The Walls of Jericho are rent asunder and thrown down when Frobisher announces that he will sell his property in England and go back to Queensland with his wife and child. The welkin rings when this social Joshua guarding the ark of the covenant of manhood shouts in trumpet tones, "I have enough of these companions of yours, these wretched sexless women who do nothing but flirt and gamble. I've had enough of their brainless, indecent talk, where everything good is turned into ridicule and each word has a double meaning. I've had enough of this existence of ours, in town and country, where all the men make love to their neighbors' wives. I'm done with it. done with it all." Furious as is the onslaught, Lady Alethea offers stubborn resistance and refuses to surrender. Later, with the mediation of Lady Westerby, before a reconciliation can be effected and Frobisher enabled to carry her off to Queensland. By that time the Walls of Jericho are indeed fallen flat.