When a Man Marries

Jimmy plans a divorce party for a small circle of fashionable friends, an occasion already awkward enough before family money enters the room. His wealthy aunt, Miss Caruthers, supports him but does not know that his marriage has ended. When she appears unexpectedly, the guests must help preserve the fiction that Jimmy still has a wife.

That improvised deception might last only an evening, but a suspected case of smallpox places the entire house under quarantine for a week. Anne, Betty Mercer, Max, Tom Harbison, and the other guests suddenly have no servants and no easy exit. Domestic tasks expose their habits, alliances, and irritations as sharply as the original marital charade.

Mary Roberts Rinehart keeps adding pressure from outside and within. Police and reporters threaten privacy, a burglar introduces a more immediate danger, and every new complication makes the false household harder to manage. The closed setting turns social performance into practical survival, with meals, sleeping arrangements, and explanations all capable of producing fresh disorder.

When a Man Marries draws comedy from people forced to inhabit the roles they usually delegate or merely pretend to play. The quarantine sustains the farce, but the sharper pleasure comes from watching privilege, romance, and reputation collide inside one crowded home.