New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1919-07-13
By Virginia Tracy

j
.xactlv one idea. This is inferred in
The title, and every infection of every
.cene, subtitle and closeup reaffirms
and brands it in. This idea is that
Mary McNeill is saint, martyred in
marriage.
Would any one like to know how the
nicture proves this? Just what hap
mems to Mary7 And how does the saint
endure her martyrdom?
Well, in the first place, Mary does
have a highly disagreeable father.
This father forces her to marry the
villain while the man she loves is ex-
ploring the North Pole. Just the luck
Of so clinging girl as Mary to love an
explorer! The villain is, as Mary says,
a "libertine," eager to spend her money
on an adventures. But if you ask
how, after all, Mary's father could pos
sibly force her to marry him, we must
answer that we don't know. She never
attempts to defy the tyrant with a job
as typist or telephone girl, nor does
it ever occur to her that, even in her
Ophelia-like helplessness, at least she
herself might her Quietus make by just
falling into the river. No, when it
comes down to being made outrageously
uncomfortable at home or marrying the
libertine, Mary chooses the libertine
And we all pity her. For, to this day,
Ophelia comes welcome and privileged
into our sympathies, being limp but
lovely. The whole village pities her
and she certainly looks most beautiful
in her wedding dress, and the exquisite
acting of her during the ceremony and
the expression on the lower lip of
Theodore Roberts, as the father, goes
a long way toward justifying anything
she does. Then the libertine bears her
of. And the audience thrills and
shivers and thinks, "Now for it'll" And
martyrdom is in the air.
And there it stays.
For by the mere ceremony of mar
riage Mary is changed from Ophelia
into q character beside whom Lady
Macbeth would have been shrinking
and procrastinating person. When her
husband comes to her room and starts
to kiss her, Mary, feeling instinctively
that he is apt to attempt such lib
erty, and wrapping herself in her flow
. ing draperies to her very thront, is
ready to repulse him. Whereupon the
husband says: "Well, if you feel like
this about it we will be we'd in name
only" And Mary wraps herself in her
draperies to the tip of her nose and
locks her door. We hope nobody sup
poses that Mary brightens up at all
over this capitulation of the husband
or shows any weak relaxing in disdain.
She knows her business as martyred
saint too we'll for that.
Mary and her husband in name only
60 to Cairo, where she accompanies him
to the races with the expression Of 9
stained glass window on a cloudy day
There the husband meets his advent
uress and Mary meets her explorer, the
husband wickedly becoming more cheer
full and Mary saintily becoming more
martyred. That night Mary and the
explorer sit out in the moonlight, and
he holds her hand and leans his head
with the hottest tenderness upon her
hair. In this attitude they look up and
behold the husband leaning his head
with the utmost villany toward his
adventures and kissing her. And
Mary and the explorer leap to their
feet and stand glaring at each other
awestruck with what Mary has suf-
fered and with the wickedness of the
world
The husband, seeing himself discov-
cred, leaves for India next morning
taking his adventures with him
Whereupon Mary decides to live her
own life, draws off her wedding ring
throws 1t out of the window and takes
holier VOW in the arms of her true
love; thus another lap in her sanity
martyrdom is passed.
But the explorer must return imme-
diately to the North Pole, and as the
English divorce law requires the vii
lain to add blows to irfdelity, Mary
with great force of character, retires
to the south of France, where she car
get divorce for mere infdelity, and
bear the explorers child in peace
Here, after the baby is born, Mary's
wicked father bursts in upon her, try
Ing to insult and bully her into giving
up her child and going back to her hus
band, and Mary, quite properly, puts
him straight out of the house, lower liz
and all. Her disposition has, indeed
been growing more and more precipi
tate, and when she reads in the morn
iEg paper that piece of the explorers
ship has been picked up and that all or
board are probably lost she does not
wait for so much as the evening edi
ton, but instantly buys her mourning
and, taking her child in her arms
plunges at one desperate step from
France to England and the depths Of
poverty.
What became Of the money upoi
which. up to the moment OF tina
plunge. Mary had been living in sucf
charming style in France? Perhaps
she spent it all on the mourning
otherwise. since she must have mad