Elise, the Forester's Daughter
Directed by Walter EdwinElise's father was a guide in the great forests of lower Canada. Jean, the fiddler, loved her. Jean made his violin sing strange, wonderful things about the stars and the moon and the birth of dawn. When Elise was in proper mood, Jean's playing made her dream of sweet, desirable things, but when one of her bursts of perverse gaiety came upon her, she laughed at Jean and mocked him, hurting him more than she realized. And then Jack Hartopp came up from the city with his sister for the fall shooting. To Elise, Hartopp was a being from another world, a cultivated, superior being, godlike in contrast with the only person she knew. One day when her father was absent. Elise offered to guide Hartopp into the woods for the afternoon's shooting. Jean saw them going off together, and followed sadly, without exactly knowing why he did. As it happened, Hartopp firing at a low-flying woodcock, sent a charge of shot into Jean's arm. Dazed with pain, Jean crept off like a wounded animal, without letting them know he had been hit. He crawled as far as the road and fainted. Clara Hartopp, driving by in her machine, found Jean lying in the road and raced with him to the doctor. After that she took him to his home. Jean's wistful face and gentle manner touched the society woman, and she was very kind to the boy. When she left she gave him a flower, which Jean, deeply moved by her sympathy, pressed to his lips. Elise came upon him at this moment and in a passion of love and jealousy, took the flower from Jean's hand, and tore it to bits. Then she knelt beside him and sobbingly told him how very sorry she was for the way she had treated him.
Where to Watch Elise, the Forester's Daughter
