Summary
In this evocative 1917 Vitagraph production, Bertha Gilman emerges as a figure of stoic pragmatism, tethered to the domestic gravity of her mother’s provincial hostelry until she captures the eye of Marshall Haney. Haney, a rough-hewn sovereign of the gambling halls, pledges to discard his dice and transition into a life of mineral-rich leisure, drawing from a staggering hundred-thousand-dollar annual yield from his mining claims. However, the transition from vice to respectability is baptized in blood when a disgruntled, fleeced miner shoots Haney shortly after he liquidates his gaming interests. The subsequent narrative arc traces a trajectory of martyred devotion; Bertha weds the shattered man and nurses him through a grueling convalescence that leaves him permanently infirm. Their relocation to the opulent heights of Colorado Springs serves as the backdrop for an agonizing romantic complication when Bertha encounters the virtuous Ben Fordyce. As a quartet of souls—the crippled gambler, his yearning wife, the honorable Fordyce, and his terminally ill fiancée Alice—embark on an eastward rail journey, the film dissects the excruciating friction between moral fealty and visceral desire. The resolution arrives not through scandal, but through a profound, self-annihilating altruism, as Haney, perceiving himself as the sole obstruction to his wife’s happiness, orchestrates a final, fatal ascent into the thin mountain air.
Synopsis
Bertha Gilman, helping her mother run a small hotel, is courted by Marshall Haney, gambler and saloonkeeper. She promises to marry him if he will give up his gambling habit and live on the income of $100,000 which he receives yearly from the mines he honestly acquired. A miner who has been fleeced of his money in the gaming hall after Haney sells out shoots Haney. Bertha and Haney are married, and she nurses him back to health, though he remains badly crippled. They move to Colorado Springs, and buy a magnificent home. Later Bertha meets Ben Fordyce, an honorable young man, engaged to Alice Heath, a consumptive. Haney and his wife go east at the same time that Ben takes his affianced wife back. The four travel on the same train, and during the trip Ben and Bertha become more attached to each other. Both, however, remain loyal to their trusting ones. In the east Bertha's longing for Ben becomes almost unbearable. Her husband, noting her morose condition and being apprised of the cause of it by Alice just before she dies, suggests to his wife that they return to their home in Colorado Springs. So that he might bring happiness to the two young lovers, Haney whose heart is weak, deliberately climbs a mountain. As he reaches the top he dies, and Bertha and Ben realize as they gaze upon the body of Haney what a great sacrifice he has made that their lives might become one.
