Motion Picture Magazine, May 1914 (1914)

34 MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE Anna, daughter of the burgomeisterj five years before, and he found her no less desirable now as the woman, the wife, the mother. In fact, she was more to be coveted than in the past, for she was The Unattainable. The slight, inevitable gaucherie of the girl had blossomed tenderly, ex- quisitely into the luxuriant woman, and Ludwig desired the fulfillment even as he had desired the earlier promise. He set about gaining this desire, and the means, of attainment was Christian Marck, who might be seen smoking his satisfactory meer- schaum on deck at all hours of the day, with no apparent thought for the sea's gray mystery or his wife's gray eyes. He seemed all husband now-— the lover decently interred. Christian Marck did not find Amer- ica gold-paved to his hand. Thus has many a far-sea voyager turned his saddened eyes homeward, but Chris- tian did not do that. Two things sus- tained him in his flagging hope: his trusty meerschaum, and his trusty friend, Ludwig Kidder. For, from thf day when Anna had faced him with her dreaming eyes, Ludwig Bid- der had sedulously sought, and pa- tiently won, the friendship of Chris- tian Marck. And, with the almost passionate attachment for a compa- triot in a far land, Christian turned to the German and made him ever welcome. Times were very hard. Christian's trade of smith seemed superfluous in * a land of limousines and motor-trucks, and the old-time anvil fire had been almost entirely replaced by the more modern, decidedly pungent garage. The little shop he took in a small town adjoining the big city was dis- mally exclusive, and the only visitant was to the tiny rooms over the shop, where they lived—that visitant, Lud- wig Bidder. And there, over the unused work- shop, Ludwig brought the dream back to Anna's tired eyes—filled her heart with a new vision—fired her blood afresh. "Why must you live like this, lieb- chen—you and the little one?" the crafty one inquired; "it is not meant for a woman—this ceaseless grind— this dirty work. Come with me, and I will teach you to live again—I will show you life without the mop and pail." Anna was very weary of the mop and pail. Her pretty hands were reddened. Her back felt bent and tired. She saw herself growing faded, loveless, old. She saw the little Amelia growing into the same cheerless repe- tition^ And she shuddered. ''twill go," she whispered to Lud- wig the following night; "I will go, Ludwig—I and my little one—and may?the good God forgive us.'' Bomance is a fragile god—a tran- sient, fleeting thing of mist and dew. And only when we place his wraith- like, rosy feet on the firm pedestal of friendship, endurance and respect, may we hope for his abiding. To Anna Marck he had come twice, and twice had he died. The first time thru the onslaught of poverty, mun- daneness, stolidity; the second time he had been ruthlessly murdered by poverty and drink—not merely mun- dane, but distressful, tainted, shamed. When Ludwig Bidder had achieved his inglorious desire, the one tenacious cord in his fluctuating nature loosened and snapped. Gambling, to avoid the scandal of which he had come to America, asserted its sway. What, funds he had come supplied with dwindled away, and were not re- plenished, and, in his' weakness, he turned to- alcohol. When he died, broken,, dissipated, wretched, Anna and the little Amelia faced a world that turned its bleakest back. Her health was ruined by the ravages of repentance and despair, and she knew that she, too, was treading the last decline. The arrangements for Amelia to enter an orphanage were completed on the last, heart-breaking day. "My little one," she gasped, as the kindly matron came to take the child before the end should come; "oh, my little one, your wicked mother is go- ing away, and she prays God not to blame you—not to put my sins on