Summary
A baroque lattice of steel rails and human fault lines, The Return of Mary begins with the vanishing of a porcelain-skinned toddler into the smoke of progress itself: Mary Denby, heir to a railroad empire, is swallowed by the iron maw of a nation on the move. Fourteen years later the same rails crack open, a locomotive bleeds fire, and the company’s pet engineer, Graham, is shackled as sin-eater for the catastrophe. From the wreckage emerges a near-grown Mary—sun-bleached, nameless to herself—returned by a guilt-crippled kidnapper who once swapped her for his own dead child. The tycoon father, John Denby, clutches this resurrected ghost while his collegiate son Jack feels the tug of something older than blood. In the flicker of nickelodeon light we learn that Mary’s true parentage has been a movable feast: Graham, the broken engineer, raised her behind bars after his vengeful fireman orchestrated the original snatch-and-switch. The dead infant in the cradle, the living girl in the prison-yard—both become currency in a moral economy that only marriage can redeem. The final shot is not a kiss but a transaction: Jack weds the girl who was once his sister, sealing the railroad’s future over a breakfast-table contract.
Synopsis
Mary, the three-year-old daughter of John Denby, a railroad president, is kidnapped, and all trace of her is lost. Fourteen years elapse. There has been a terrible wreck on Denby's road and Graham, the engineer, is made the scapegoat. In spite of the fact that he merely obeyed orders, he is sent of to prison. Mary is returned to Denby, the kidnapper explaining that he stole her when his own little daughter was killed, but that now he feels he must return her to her parents. Denby's son, Jack, finds himself strangely attracted to the girl. He procures Graham's release, believing him to be blameless, and Mary tells that Graham is the man she has always known as "father." Graham confesses she is his daughter and that Mary was really kidnapped by his fireman in revenge for fancied wrongs. The child died and the confession enabled Graham to provide for Mary's care during his prison term. Denby is distracted at the idea of losing Mary, but young Jack solves the problem by marrying her.
