Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Aug 1919)

...•Ka A: The Hope Chest Fictionized by Janet Reid from the Scenario of M. M. Stearns, based on Mark Lee Luther’s story published by the Woman’s Home Companion IF you are in, say your twenties, and are of the sterner sex, you have heard of the B. & S. Sweetshops — and you haven’t heard of them because of their edible sweets, either. You have heard of them, you have visited them, because of the tempting femininities fantastically set forth to seduce the eye. You have entered to come away clutching, according to your means, epicurean boxes of epicurean sugar contrivances, and you have left behind not only a goodly portion of your purse, but likewise of your heart. Some one, it might have been B and it might have been S, or it might have been the two together, hit upon the happy idea that sugar confections should be set forth by feminine confections, and thereby made some cool and casual millions They made of their shops palaces of delight, with bon-bons that were fantasies of sugar and girls made of rose-leaves and dreams. Then they flung open their doors, and the youths flocked in like bees to a honeyed hive. What happens to the least happens likewise to the greatest. It happened to Tom Ballantine, whose doting male parent was the B. in B. & S. A capital B at that. Likewise was he the promulgator of the Great Idea. “Only employ beauties,” he told his managers ; “Brinkleys, Gibsons, JJarrison Fishers — dreams, you understand. Make it sweet enough to the eye and to the tooth, and the boys’ll come . . . they’ll come . . . and come to stay.” Never a rule but it works both ways. Never do we make one that we expect to apply to ourselves or to those who belong to But one boy certainly came — and came to stay That boy was Tom Ballantine, only son, only hope, pride and pervading spirit of his father’s life. But it was a Ballantine trait — to work prodigiously and to love prodigiously. Life had deprived Tom Ballantine of the need of working. It had not, and could not, deprive him of the need of loving. Money can buy the form of love, it cannot buy the need of it. Tom Ballantine had heard, at college, with some amusement of what he called “Dad’s new advertising.” Knowing his confreres, he accredited the “governor” with some perspicuity. No doubt many a longforgotten, juvenile sweet tooth would once more become prominent. Pretty soft, having beautiful girls gathered for one. Dad was become something of a philanthropist. It became rumored about that of all the B. & S. Sweetshops, 'the big one at Atlantic City was the most delectable, in many ways. Tom Ballantine went down to the Marlborough for a brief trip after his strenuous year and, nonchalantly, dropped into the B. & S. one peculiarly balmy afternoon, merely for the unaccustomed want of something better to do. It was an exceedingly balmy afternoon, as he was ever after to recall. The air was warm with spring and strong of salt, and as he entered the B. & S. it swam before him with the sweetness of flowers and the delicacies of extracts of perfume. Altogether, Tom Ballantine had a sense of the impending, tho what could impend by merely entering one of his father’s stupidly commercial string of blatantly advertised stores was more than he could reason. But then, he didn’t reason. It was not a day for reasoning. It was a day for drifting ... a day for . . . loving . . . This idea came to him, and his young face crimsoned, and his young pulses hammered and, because he was so unaccountably stirred, he stood rather stupidly in the rose-tiled center of his father’s shop, and something — some one — wafted up to him and made the perfumes all about him sigh and bestir themselves . . . and all at once he knew w'hy he had had these thoughts . . why he had come . . . why the air was as it was . . . just why he had been born . . . I cant describe those next moments. I dont need to — if you are young. Nor even if you are old in years but never have forgotten. That soft fever . . . tender delii'ium . . . eyes meeting eyes . . . and clinging . . . swift breaths . . . chaotic words . . . moments fleeter than thoughts . . . eternities in moments . . . Nor even that twilight, sitting very close together on the dimming boardwalk, eyes shining out of the gloaming, breaths struggling with the fanning air, and “I love you” summing up the total of existence, past, present and to be . . . soft laughter . . . softer tears . . . stuff o’ dreams . . . the poignant, tender mystery of youth in its first love . . . I can tell you that when they separated that night they had decided to be married the next day. He said: “I cant live without you, Sheila ... I cant ... I cant ...” She said: “I love you more than any one has ever loved before !” And they held each other close while the night grew wild above them, and the surf soughed and drew away at their feet, and when they kist, more wildly than the night, their faces were wet with a saltier stuff than the sea. They were unutterably happy. And it was all unutterably beautiful. A miracle had come upon them, and they were set apart. The next morning Sheila didn’t go to the B. & S. Sweetshop. Tom had told her not to go there again. And she had the curious feeling that she wanted to be by herself, wanted to think, to realize it, to believe in it. She found that she couldn’t, that her mind shied away from it as from something past all thinking. After a while she came to a small vaudeville theater, and abruptly she came back to realities. Lew Pam was billed there, and Lew Pam was her Daddy. There is a great deal of difference in being one’s father and one’s Daddy. Lew Pam might be said not to have made good as regards the world in general— in the loving heart of his “little girl” he had made more than good. Sheila didn’t remember much about her mother, save that she had taught school, had been a lady, and had left her small daughter an exquisite old hope chest, quaintly and beautifully carved and filled with fairy garments woven of the translucences of moonlight, the ephemeralness of stardust, priceless, timeless exquisitudes. ■ (Thirty-three)