The story
“The things which happen to people in early childhood are more than likely to have a singular influence over them in later life. Most of us do not realize this. We make a point of forgetting certain experiences—but this is just where, some persons claim, a mysterious, ‘sub-conscious’ self gets the better of us. This other self, they say, stores away our experiences like wax cylinder records. And years later, when circumstances jar them up, these buried impressions make us think and do strange things. Little Pauline Avon and Will Hallett, playing together long ago in Dr. Avon’s garden, knew nothing of theories of ‘psycho-analysis.’ Their world was filled with innocent romance, with the love of out of doors, of flowers and pets and games. Will had told Pauline that when he was a man he would surely marry her. And she had accepted this, as she accepted everything that he told her. Adam himself had not such simplehearted obedience from Eve. But always to the Eden of mortals, sooner or later, comes the serpent. And even Dr. Avon’s garden was not proof against the incursions of the historic Evil One. Only, this story being true, and punctiliously up to date, it was not Eve, but Adam who yielded to temptation, coming to him, of course, in the form of a fair creature of the opposite sex.
“Her name was Frances, and she was 17. It is doubtful whether at that time, she had any notion that she was the serpent. She could not help being tall and lily-like, like the ladies in the Book of Chivalry. She might, it is true, have dispensed with those trailing silken skirts, which rustled so deliciously across the grass. Such grandeur placed Pauline, in abbreviated ginghams, plainly at a disadvantage. Still, we must believe, that it was a complete surprise to Frances when nine-year-old William laid his heart at her feet. Frances always kept his note, written with evident effort with a blunt lead-pencil on a scrap of paper. It had amused and touched her deeply. But she told her little lover that she had given her promise already to Mr. John Pomeroy. A sense of personal dignity at stake saved Will from making a baby of himself. Grown men were always getting the better of little boys. He put Frances from his thoughts forever—and devoted himself assiduously to Pauline.
“Pauline, deep down in her heart, never quite forgave, nor forgot Frances. On her wedding day—conscious that her childhood rival was present—she was just a trifle less happy than a bride should be. But several years passed before she saw or heard of Frances again. Then they moved to the city where the Pomeroys lived. The gulf of years between a child of eight and a girl of seventeen is great. But between the wife of twenty-five and the young matron of thirty-four the difference in ages may be minimized. Pauline had lost her baby boy a few months before. Her grief had made her older. Frances’s charms were, perhaps, at their zenith. It was whispered, also, that she was not entirely happy with her husband. She took up William and his wife, socially.
“Little by little, the estrangement between the Pomeroys grew. Frances, unknown to most people, was losing her grip on health. The change affected her way of thinking. Trifles assumed, in her eyes, exaggerated proportions. The scrap of paper filled with William’s childish handwriting now seemed a document of subtle significance. Then, one day, Mrs. Pomeroy overheard her doctor tell her hired companion that their patient might not live long. Frances saw herself as a woman who had been cheated out of her birthright of love and happiness. William Hallett was leaving that day on a business trip to the West. She would follow him. She would fling herself upon his mercy.
“Perhaps never was a man so utterly taken aback as Hallett, when Frances, as the Chicago Limited pulled out of the station, poured out to him her passionate hallucinations. With a few stern words of denial, he silenced her and hurried back to the house of John Pomeroy. The note which the fleeing wife had left her husband was mysteriously intercepted. In an accident to the Limited Frances was killed. Some time later Pauline learned of the meeting on the train between her husband and the woman whom, always, she had instinctively hated. She left William. They were no longer young. Pride, however, would permit no reconciliation. But, mercifully, an odd human coincidence, before many years, flung these two together again. Time had whitened their hair and softened their hearts. In the love of their old age Pauline and William found again the Eden they had lost in youth.”
Summary from Reel Life · 17 July 1915
