The Volunteer

Summary

A luminous child of celluloid, accustomed to the klieg-lit pandemonium of World-Film’s back-lots, is exiled to a hush-gray Pennsylvania farmhouse where the clocks tick only to the cadence of ‘thee’ and ‘thou.’ Madge Evans, marquee prodigy, arrives freighted with satin bows and city swagger, yet the Quaker air—thick with penitential silence—strips her of glamour as wind peels paint. Grandfather Timothy, granite-carved patriarch whose Bible is holstered like a cudgel, doles out affection with eyedropper stinginess; Grandmother Tabitha, spectral in dove-linen, rustles through rooms like parchment. Their son Jonathan—tall, restless, a living question-mark—aches for khaki and cannon-smoke, but the elder’s pacifist dogma shackles him to barn and plow. Madge, half-urchin, half-angel, insinuates herself into the old man’s granite seams through pranks, psalm-whispered lullabies, and the unwitting alchemy of need. When Jonathan finally bolts to war, the familial fault-line ruptures: disownment pronounced in a single quivering candle-lit syllable. Later, the town’s bijoux flickers with Madge’s newest photoplay; the Quaker, slipping in like a penitent thief, beholds his descendant transfigured into silver-screen seraph—tears solder the breach. In that darkened cathedral of flicker-light, dogma dissolves; he pens contrition to the daughter he once banished, sealing the envelope with a tremor that feels like resurrection.

Synopsis

Madge Evans, World Film Corp. juvenile star, is sent to her Quaker grandparents, Timothy and Tabitha Mendenhall, when her father and mother go to serve in World War I. After bidding farewell to the World stars, Madge goes to her grandparent's home where she experiences stern discipline. Jonathan Mendenhall, her uncle, is anxious to enlist, but is forbidden by his father, whose religion opposes fighting. Madge creeps into the old Quaker's heart by degrees, but he maintains unrelenting discipline in the household. Jonathan comes of age, enlists despite his father's opposition, and is disowned. When Madge's latest picture comes to town, the child implores her grandfather to take her to see it, but he refuses. Timothy secretly visits the theater, however, and is completely won over by Madge's acting. A change takes place in the old Quaker's nature as he praises Madge, forgives his son and writes to Madge's mother, whom he had cast out when she married against his will, to be sure and bring her husband back safe.