Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Aug 1919)

MOTION PICTURE * further — not to go away without first going straight to Tom’s parents. ‘‘Honeymoons can wait a week or two,” he told her, ‘‘you kiddies are so young. The old folks cant wait ... I know ... I know ...” And because she knew that he did, Sheila insisted upon going direct from the ministerial presence to the paternal one. Both Father Ballantine and Mother Ballantine ran strictly according to type. They grasped the fact that their boy — was it only yesterday that he had graduated from knee-breeches? — their boy was married — and that the designing female who had so ensnared him had been a salesgirl in their employ — and that was enough. Father waxed profane, choleric and, finally, completely unintelligible, and mother fainted, with all the skill and dexterity of a long practitioner. After restoratives due and undue, sputtered explanations and frantic flappings of huge paws from Tom, a peculiar, arresting stillness from Sheila, order evolved out of chaos. Father discovered that the girl was distractingly pretty, and, at least ostensibly, a “lady.” Mother took note that she was dressed with a complete lack of everything save a surprising taste and delicacy. Both of them began to assume a human expression. The final upshot of a rather distraught conclave was that the ‘‘bad children” (said with reproving emphasis) were f o r ^ v e n — but that Tom must take his senior year at Harvard, and Sheila must On the night before .she left school for good, she knelt by the hope chest and tried to visualize the mother she had never Twilight, sitting very cltise together on the dimming boardwalk, e\es shining out of the gloaming, breaths struggling with the fanning air, an “I lo^■e vou, ” ‘hiheila remembered all about her father. Little things like the tender w ay he had tucked her lean and shivering little body into strange, hotel beds, heard her, with a mother’s patience, stumble thru her prayers, brought her crude, impossible toys, decorated her Xmas tree, sacrificed for her and greatly loved her. Kittle things . . . but big enough to break the heart of pity when the warm hearts who do them are no more. Lew' Pam had decided to be “no more” for Sheila as soon as she was moderately well schooled and independent. He knew his own failing. He knew that he had not, and never would, make gpod. He knew that he could never be an object of jiride to the beautiful woman his “little girl” had growm to be. There were times when he felt glad her mother had died. Her disappointment in him would have been a. frightful thing to him. Sheila was a lady, and the world w'ould find it out. Lew Pam believed in the world. He thought it pretty much on the level. He believed in it if it hadn’t altogether believed in him. Xevertheless, when Sheila came to him, last night, an aftermath of glory on her young and glorious face, came to him and told him that the son of the B in B. & S. had asked her to marry him, go aw'ay with him, that she loved him . . .oh, hard . . . Lew Pam took his second-rate, not-much-account ^elf and promjitly and for all time shelved it. “You mustn’t bring me in,’’ he commanded, some of the long-ago, very occasional “Daddy” peremptbriness in hi^ voice; “if you are hapy)y, / am happy. If you’re not, I’m not. 'Nkni'i-e going to have a harU enough time as it is, little girly, just because \<)u took money for 'clling his goods from the B. of B. & S. I’ve heard Ballantine is a mighty square sort of I'odger — but — this kid is Ins only son — and — he lint going to fall for it, face down, Sheila honey. W’ith a .slapstick comedian playing cheap circuits for a pop . . . nix, kiddie, nix !” Sheila didn’t pay any attention to her father's description of himself. She paid attention to his plea for his own happiness thru hers. .She knew that he would gloat and hug to his .diiny chest the fact that Itis girl, his Sheila, was the daughter-inlaw of the moneyed “B.” He would feel that, in a sense, he had made good — with her. at least. Probably, if she forsw'ore love now, she and he would just drift along with their sort of scummy little current, with their rancid little coterie, and neither of them would know' an instant of anything save regret and the dull care of semi-poverty. And then . . . last night swept over her with its warm breath of the salt of the sea . . . the promise ... its unutterable promise . . . and she turned to Lew Pam a face so poi,gnant with tenderness that the comedian rubbed his eyes and sniffled in his nose. So this — this — was his little girl ! Before they parted he admonished her (Thirty-fovr)