Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Dec 1916)

CLASSIC ELSIE DISCOVERS THAT PERCY IS REALLY A FEATHERTOP IN DISGUISE her incantations seemed to the girl to be the hag-like spirit of Manhattan, creating the spineless Percys — the scarecrow dressed in his gaudy clothes and courting Polly Goodkin ; the scarecrow, gazing nonchalantly at his own vacuous, fearsome image, seemed to be Percy Morleigh and herself. She dropped the book, at last, with a crash — with revelation-wide eves and uncomfortably scarlet cheeks. Percy — Percy was the scarecrow — a silly, pumpkin-headed thing with weakling, straw-stuffed body and vaporing, fatuous mouth. Why, of course Percy was not a man — a man who did things red-bloodedly, healthily, virilely — like ■ — like Ward Roberts ! And they were all like that — the people for whom she had abandoned the real things — all pumpkin-headed, straw-stuffed, vaportongued — all puny little puppets dancing up and down and puling vacuous wit at the incantation of the witch, Manhattan. Perhaps they, too, like the scarecrow in “Feathertop,” would cease to be could some one hold to their smitten eyes the mirror of truth. For a long, long while Elsie sat, with the closed book on her lap, thinking the long, long thoughts of an awak ened soul and a newly beating heart. And in that hour her spirit returned to the flowers and communed with the gentle spirit of the father whose death she had caused. And her heart went back to her first love — the man who had offered her so eagerly his life and his work and his love. A moment later Aunt Sarah came into the room. “Plave you been reading?” she asked, seeing the book and Elsie's tear-stained face. Elsie told her what her legacy had brought her — “part of it,” she finished, ruefully, “too late.” And Aunt Sarah kist her and hugged her, and told her how glad she was and how sensible she thought her. Then she cleared her throat and wiped her eyes, and began, hurriedly: “My dear, dont you want to come on a trip home with us? We — are leaving — tomorrow.” Elsie sat up. “Tomorrow!” she exclaimed; “why, how is that?” “My dear, you know Fve been missing your uncle lately all the time, and today I discovered where he has been concealing himself. He has rigged up a room, on the top floor, like a schooner, and there I found him asleep in a hammock, with nautical pictures all around him and looking as comfy and as happy as he must have been when, as a little boy, he planned his lifetime out. Fve — Fve never had a in me — lying there. After all, he’s all Fve got. The sea and the island is his life, and I knew it when I took him 'for better or for worse,’ so I’m goin’ back; and, anyway, Elsie, Fm a mite sick of all this myself, tho you’ve been awfully good to me, dearie, and shown me the gayest time my old bones ever dreamed of. And we want you to have the money. But Fm kinder pinin’ for the swing o’ the hammocks, and the slosh o’ the sea, and the breadfruit trees, and the lagoons, and the black boys, and the cocoa palms — and we’ll be going home.” "If you go, then I go, too,” exclaimed Elsie; “I am just heart-sick of this life, and I am — oh, so sad.” The next day the Sarah Green set out on the long, lazy South Sea trip. And on board was a bronze-faced man with mighty sinews and eager, deeplit eyes. He seemed to keep in hiding from Elsie, but from his hiding-places he watched her every move. Elsie was standing on deck, looking sadly toward the rapidly retreating land. Suddenly a man crept up behind her, urged on by Aunt Sarah, who quickly disappeared. “Elsie !” he breathed. The girl turned sharply at the sound of that voice. “Ward!” she cried, cramming into it all that the world holds of longing and regret. “What is it going to be, FlowerGirl ?” Ward crushed her so close that she gasped for her answering breath. She looked over at plain Aunt Sarah, holding her captain’s hairy, grizzled hand, with a beatific expression o f countenance, and her yes filled with sudden tears. “WHAT IS IT GOING TO BE, FLOWER-GIRL?" child, my dear, but they say every “For better or for worse, Elsie good woman mothers the man she — whispered to her lover, a new tendershe loves. I guess I might as well ness thrilling her voice, “till death do mother him. He touched the mother us part.” (Forty-one)