Saving an Innocent
The Master of her Mistoi
The Master of the Garden
»»
THE PENALTY OF LOVE
=CAST =
HERBERT GRAY Wheeler Oakman
JOHN LEWIS Frank M. Clark
BESSIE HARRINGTON Bessie Eyton
HfcK MOTHER Eugenie Bessei'ei
HER FATHER Jack F. McDonald
GLADYS Gertie Ryan
Br
ra
A PLAY of thoughtless man's perfidy and trusting woman's
ruin in an environment idyllic—a picture of nature strongly
incarnadined in modernity, yet harking back to the purity,
iimplicity and symbolism of scriptural times—is "The Master of
he Garden." Bessie Harrington, born and raised on a country
:state, loves to linger under an ancient oak. There she played as
i child and then in young womanhood the romance of her life
mddenly blossomed with joy and then withered in bitterness.
She little realized that this retreat was to symbolize for her the
I Tree of Knowledge. In her girlhood days, she had dozed the
happy hours away, dreaming in its shade, and there came Herbert
Gray, the son of a neighboring estate owner, who brought Bessie
| her first love. To these young people, innocent to the ways of
5 world, wisdom only came after the girl had lost the pearl of
great price, and the young man realized his own mistake of im-
uosity. Prior to that they had not dreamed that love could
I compass or end in wrong,—but then, as Adam and Eve of old
| with their eyes opened fled from Eden, so these young people
re suddenly awakened to the enormity of their trespass again:
iety.
rial,
■uel
K'l.l
man blamable, so when poor little Bessie fled back to her
ind her father and mother learned the truth, it scorched
iwordly souls with its fiery trial, and in the first outburst
of indignation and humiliation, the father ordered his dazed daughter from his sight in a way that aroused all of her dormant pride
ind filled her with immeasurable bitterness. In the cold gray
I dawn of the next morning, with a few belongings, she wended her
way through the garden beyond the shadow of the ancient oak,
| and stepped into the half-hidden world outside. Just as she is
lit to make this step, a dissolve shows the figure of "The One
i died to save mankind," approaching her in a spirit of kind-
ss, and counseling her to put aside the sinful pride that is driving her away. But Bessie was too deeply mortified even to listen
to Divine Counsel and hurried away to lose herself and her shame
in the shadows of a great city.
The gathering years made a vast difference in the life of
Herbert Gray, a rising barrister, who has forgotten his "youthful
t piccadillos" and is respected of his neighbors and eminent in his
profession, now married and settled. Alas, for the poor weak
WRITTEN BY
LANIER BARTLETT
PRODUCED BY
COLIN CAMPBELL
AT
The Selig Studios
Los Angeles, Cal.
U. S. A.
TWO
REELS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
woman. She had drifted down the Great White Way, and while
triumphant as a beauty in the glare of its lights she had fallen, |
but she still had that sense of superiority that sustained her i
a queen in the underworld. She had left Paradise, but her inm
soul had not yielded up its inherent goodness, and new she a!
hored herself and her environments. One night, in her own go
geous sin-decked parlors, she reads in one of the papers, a eulogy I
of Herbert Gray, "the famous lawyer," and then she thinks the
contrast of her own wasted, ruined life and his selfish love—hei
heritage of woe. Then flashes into the picture the slender figure
of a young girl, an innocent stranger, who has been inveigled I
into this gorgeous resort, under the impression that it is a school
for acting. —And now comes a supreme moment in the life of
this queen of her scarlet kind,—a great stroke of goodness when |
she determines to save this girl from the life she herself has 1
i blackmail his
: the millionaire who j
indicted and at the
ke his case. He de-
ing that the
e produced,
, of her cla:
SECOND REEL
Somehow or other, justice has found o
trapped this little girl. He is arrested an
last moment Herbert Gray is called in to
termines to fight the prosecution on the basi
of the underworld is tryii
shows the court with Gray to the for<
an in Black," the chief witness in th
he may prove that she, like all other women of her class, lead |
her sort of life from choice and not from circumstance. The
woman who saved the girl, approaches deeply veiled and the
court orders her to lift her veil and speak. She does so, and
Herbert Gray finds himself face to face with Bessie Harrington,
his own victim. Gray collapses completely. Thereupon the prosecuting attorney leaps to his feet and demands of the witness
whether she ever knew him. To save his reputation and the feelings of his innocent wife and children, she denies even acquaintance with him. Bessie is led away from the room, but she has
triumphed, as the case goes against the millionaire.
Shattered and despondent from her experience, now isolated
even from her scarlet associates, she wanders the streets alone
until she sees the open door of a church with people coming in
and going out. She enters timidly, falls to her knees, and poufs
out her soul in prayer. Her physical suffering has been great,
and she has taken an overdose of laudanum. Presently she is
discovered by the priest, kneeling there peacefully in the dusky I
twilight, and the empty vial drops from her hand as the priest
lifts her face to the light. Then follows a death-dream dissolve,
in which the scarred soul of the erring one is seen fleeing from I
the cohorts of sin back again to the garden of innocence, and the
old tree in her home of earthly -Paradise. Again the Master of
the Garden appears and welcomes her and she flies to receive His
blessing, and then fades away into the depths of the garden.—So
Paradise for her has been regained.
