Summary
In George D. Baker’s 1917 cinematic tapestry, the narrative initiates with a visceral betrayal: William Baldwin, a merchant reduced to a hollow shell by the machinations of his partner John Blaisdell, is met with a cruelty so profound it borders on the mythological—a five-dollar bill inscribed with the command to purchase a firearm for self-destruction. This catalyst propels Baldwin and his daughter, Nan, into the frozen purgatory of the Yukon. Following her father’s inevitable demise, Nan undergoes a chrysalis-like transformation into 'Nightingale Nan,' the siren of the dance halls. Faced with the realization that her sole inheritance—a claim on Bear Creek—is a barren void, she orchestrates a desperate, high-stakes gambit, offering herself as the prize in a card game to escape her desolate reality. The victor, a bearded enigma wielding a pair of deuces, secures her freedom for a thousand dollars a card, yet binds her with a Faustian I.O.U. to be redeemed at the zenith of her future success. Half a decade later, Nan has ascended to the operatic heavens as Mlle. Nanon Boldini, captivating the elite of Milan and New York. When she encounters Blaisdell once more, she constructs a sophisticated apparatus of vengeance, utilizing the burgeoning technology of the telephone to eavesdrop on his corporate infidelities and engineer his ruin. Yet, at the moment of her cold triumph, the specter of the Alaskan debt reappears via two fateful deuces slipped beneath her door, forcing a return to the primeval North where the identity of her creditor and her lover finally coalesce in a resolution of romantic predestination.
Synopsis
William Baldwin, ruined in business by his partner John Blaisdell, implores Blaisdell's aid and receives in answer a five-dollar bill inscribed with "Spend this for a gun and use it on herself." Hopelessly, Baldwin and his daughter Nan go to the Yujon, where the father dies and Nan earns a living in a rough dance hall where as "Nightingale Nan" she is the miners' idol. When she discovers that the little claim on Bear Creek, the only thing her father has left her, is worthless, at first she collapses; then she becomes defiant and tells the miners who have been forcing their attentions upon her that they may have her, the lucky man to be the winner in a card-game, she to take the money won in the game and go away to seek fame and fortune. A bearded stranger wins the game with a pair of deuces and pays her $1,000 a card, and she leaves with him for her cabin. Once there, however, she repents her rash bargain, and implores him to release her, offering the money in return. He makes her sign an I.O.U. for herself, promising to pay the debt at any future time that he sees fit. "You'll win success," the stranger tells her, "but in the hour of your greatest triumph I shall claim you, and you must return." She leaves on this condition. Nan's voice wins success for her all over the world. Five years later, as Mlle. Nanon Boldini, she is the reigning operatic queen at La Scala, Milan, then comes to the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, to make her American debut in "Lucia di Lammermoor." Her success is instantaneous. Two of the most important patrons of the opera house, business rivals John Blaisdell and James Van Brunt, are united in their admiration of Mlle. Boldini, and obtain an introduction. When Nan discovers the identity of Blaisdell, the man who ruined her father, she quietly plans his downfall. She encourages his attention, even at the risk of displeasing a young stranger with whom she has fallen in love. She refuses an offer of marriage from the man who won her heart, telling him of her promise made under amazing conditions to a man in Alaska five years ago. That promise, she tells him, must be fulfilled, no matter how great the sacrifice she makes in doing so. Inviting Blaisdell to her apartment to dinner, she has a telephone connection so arranged that James Van Brunt, at his downtown office with the receiver at his ear, hears Blaisdell's answers to the carefully prepared questions Nan asks, betraying all his business secrets. As Blaisdell falls across the table in a drunken stupor, after having told everything, Nan's triumph is complete. It is at this moment that two fateful cards, the deuces with which the Alaskan won his game, are thrust under the door, and Nan falls fainting. The next day she prepares for her journey to the Northland, ready to pay the price of her five years' freedom. The man she loves insists on accompanying her. Going to her little cabin, she finds it sumptuously furnished. As she turns to her lover in surprise, he places on the table a crumpled "I.O.U." then tears it in two, giving her the pieces. As the realization slowly dawns on Nan that the man she has learned to love is the bearded stranger of so long ago, she fits the two pieces of the "I.O.U." back together, presents them to him, and creeps into the arms of her stranger-lover.
