Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1914-Jan 1915)

TEE SILENT PLEA 63 Audrey was dressing to go out. The mother noted, anxious eyes unmissing, the girl's more than customary care. Every bright tress was noted, each lacy frill and gaudy ribbon received attention, and when she flounced from the room her every gesture breathed a high importance. A limousine, singularly incongruous in that neighborhood of trucks and a solitary antiquated car-line, stood at the curb. Audrey approached it confidently, and the man who greeted her raised his face to the revealing glare of the street-light. The Boss ! That coarsened face ; that oily, leering smile ; the touch, the obnoxious touch of his speaking hand ! Marie shuddered violently. She started to call — when the engine started, and the car rolled out of sight. The Boss and her girl, her foolish, pitiful, untaught girl! What could the end of it be? What would his power be over the little daughter hers no longer? She turned from the window as the door opened. It was Tom. He would help. Surely he could not see his little sister — something warned her that she could not go to him for help. "Tom," she said to him gently, laying her empty, yearning arms about his shoulders, "your sister — listen, dear " "I cant, mums!" The boy threw off her clasp. "Dont bother me now. I'm — I'm done — all in, I mean." "What is it— cant you tell me?" "Dont talk, mums; quit, or I'll end it all!" The horrid nightmare of that night remained vivid to Marie until the last breath she drew. She sank with her children to the blackest abyss, and knew that the city had won. It was all confusion, all strangeness and unbelievable shame and searing knowledge. Audrey came in, eyes ablaze, voice hysterical. She had gone to a cafe ; the Boss had involved himself in a brawl and had been killed at her very feet. While she sobbed and laughed her tragic story, Tom was accused of juggling accounts at the bank he worked in, and was arrested, guilt admitted on his frightened face. Marie stood alone, the ruins of her home crushing her beneath them. We are not tried beyond our actual strength. We may think we will break beneath the load, but we will only bend. Always, at the crucifying moment, some saving grace is given. To Marie, in her darkest hour following her boy's disgrace, came the remembrance of John Weirman. She had read of him not long ago. He had attained the political position of State senator, and she knew that be would help. His great, kindly heart would remember the sunshine years and feel for her now in her dark distress. Further than that — well, Marie did not admit the many times his face had come to her in the dragging, cheerless years. She did not admit that she longed, even now, for care and strength and rest. For her boy's sake she went to him and, self forgot, begged him for his help. John Wierman had been preparing a bill against widowed mothers' pensions. He had honestly not believed in them. When the woman he had loved his life thru came to him again and told him her life and the life of her children; when he saw, close to his heart, what the streets and the Home and the separation had done to those dear little ones of his remembrance, he saw his own fallacy. "Oh, John," the mother told him, "they have no chance — my babies, and others like them. Those Homes — hundreds of children, John, each one different, bent and broken under the same rule, fashioned into the same mould, angels and devils underneath " John took her hands tenderly. "Wonderful woman," he told her softly, "dear, dear woman! We'll save the boy; we'll introduce a new bill; we'll seek our happiness." And Marie bent her tired head against the heart that years could not swerve, nor age undo. John Wierman knew the Governor well, and Tom was set free. In that freedom the stain of the streets