Summary
In a mansion lacquered with gilt but starved of warmth, three luminous children flicker like candles in an abandoned chapel—Marion with her raven ribbon, Fred with pockets full of marbles and bruised knees, the baby cooing at chandeliers no one bothers to dim. Their parents orbit separate suns: Howard Trayne, a magnate who signs contracts the way mortals breathe, and his wife, a society comet trailing champagne vapor across ballroom ceilings. A governess, brittle as old parchment, becomes the unwilling axis of their universe; when the infant tumbles from her distracted arms, the crack of bone on parquet reverberates through dynastic corridors, detonating the marriage like a powder keg wrapped in lace. The estate is bisected by divorce papers—Fred exiled with the cash-register heartbeat of his father, Marion shipped to a boarding school where fog devours the tennis courts each dawn. Years calcify into silhouettes: Fred expelled for brawling under gas-lamps, disowned beside a river that smells of rust and last chances; Marion fleeing a seducer who promises Paris but leaves her penniless on a rain-slick pier, veil snagged like a surrender flag. Their reunion is no soft-focus miracle—two strangers sharing blood and wreckage—yet they cobble a raft from splinters, disappear into the American night just as their repentant parents, prodded by match-making friends, clasp hands over tea that tastes of ash and too-late. The camera lingers on an empty nursery rocking chair; the swing creaks, though no wind enters.
Synopsis
Howard Trayne and his wife are too busy to spend time with their three beautiful children. Trayne is preoccupied with business to the detriment of his home life, while his wife has turned to the social whirl for diversion, leaving the children to the care of a governess. The death of the younger child, due to the carelessness of the nurse, leads to divorce, the father taking the boy Fred while Mrs. Trayne keeps Marion. Fred is sent to college and Marion to boarding school while the parents seek their own diversions. Expelled for a saloon brawl, Fred is disowned by his father. Deserted by the man with whom she eloped, Marion is about to commit suicide as an alternative to a life of shame when Fred finds her and together they begin a new life. Meanwhile, Trayne and his wife are reunited through the efforts of friends, but their children are lost to them forever.
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