Hearts and Flowers

Summary

Amid sun-bleached pastures where larks stitch the sky to the earth, Tom Landers—scion of stoic furrow-folk—loves the same lilting belle courted by Walter Terry, a rival whose ardor spills into brutality. One shove, a sandstone ledge, and a body vanishes into ravine-shadow; guilt becomes a locomotive that drags the farm boy to Manhattan’s chromium canyons. There, ticker-tape serpents promise Eden: a clerk’s stool at Grant & Co., first-flush market triumphs, the narcotic conviction that cornfield prudence can be outwitted by mere nerve. A thousand dollars—his parents’ mortgage salvation—migrates from maternal tin box to bear-market abyss; the telegrammed request for return is met only by silence denser than topsoil. Back home, Pa’s shotgun sneezes while he hunts; the widow faces the auctioneer's gavel. In the city, Tom intercepts a thief menacing Elsa Norman, porcelain heiress turned proto-flapper; gratitude buds into romance. Yet when Ma Landers—calico-clad, smelling of churned butter—appears at her son’s marble office, shame outbids affection; he banishes her to a fog-shrouded boarding house where wallpaper weeps. Penniless, she haunts the lobby like a ghost of agrarian conscience until Elsa’s violets offer fragile solace. Collapse follows: a faint on the sidewalk, chauffeured rescue, tenement confession. Elsa, reeling, buys the ancestral acreage and deeds it back to the matriarch; prodigal and philanthropist return to meadows rinsed by repentance. In a kitchen fragrant with lilacs and forgiveness, mother and son re-braid the torn fabric of blood; beyond the threshold, Elsa waits to till a future neither city nor soil but some uncharted hybrid.

Synopsis

Tom, the son of John and Mary Landers, an old-fashioned country couple is in love with a pretty country girl, who is also being courted by Walter Terry. Tom surprises the latter making violent love to her and, crazed with jealousy, strikes Walter and in the fight that ensues Tom accidentally pushes Walter over the edge of a cliff. Fearing that he had killed his rival, Tom leaves the farm for the city. Unable to secure a position there, he appeals to his mother, who sends him money. He finally secures a position with Grant and Co., stockbrokers. The Wall Street fever soon gets the better of him and he tries his luck in the stock market. Being successful in his first venture, he plans to make a fortune. He writes his mother informing her that he has an opportunity to go into a good business for himself and begs of her a loan of $1,000. The devoted mother having faith in Tom's promise of a speedy return of the money, takes the money which they had saved to pay off the mortgage on the farm. Tom loses it in speculations and is ashamed to reply to his mother's appeals for the promised return of the money. Meanwhile, Pa Landers is killed by an accidental discharge of his gun while out hunting. The poor widow is now unable to meet the payment of the mortgage and is forced to leave the old home. Miss Elsa Norman, a society girl in the city, is attacked by a thief, but is rescued by Tom and a close friendship is the result of this incident, which later develops into mutual love. Tom's mother arriving in the city visits him in his office. He is ashamed of her appearance and takes her to a boarding house in the suburbs and asks her not to call on him. Terribly hurt at the indifference of her son, she resolves never to annoy him again. Alone in her grief she is forced to move to a poor tenement house. She visits daily the lobby of Tom's office building, where she is seen one day by Elsa Norman, who in deep sympathy for the poor old woman gives her a bunch of violets, not knowing she is the mother of the man she loves. Ma Landers' money gone, she is in actual want and is overcome one day by weakness and faints in front of the building, where she is picked up by Elsa and her chauffeur and carried to her miserable lodging. There she tells her story to Elsa, who is horrified to learn that the old lady is Tom's mother; Elsa 'phones Tom to come at once and he is brought face to face with the terrible result of the neglect of his mother. Elsa touched by the heroic acceptance of the old lady's sad fate, purchases the old farm and presents it to her. Tom returns to the old homestead and in a touching love scene which follows Ma Landers forgives Tom, who wins back Elsa's love.