troubles—the dream of a possible friendship with some other woman grew more intense.
During the summer of that last year of her life in Bidwell a young woman from another town moved into a house on her street. Her father had a job on the Nickel Plate Railroad and Bidwell was at the end of a section of that road. The railroad man was seldom at home, his wife had died a few months before and his daughter, whose name was Maud, was not well and did not go about town with the other young women. Every afternoon and evening she sat on the front porch of her father’s house, and May, who was sometimes compelled to go to one of the stores, often saw her sitting there. The newcomer in Bidwell was tall and slender and looked like an invalid. Her cheeks were pale and she looked tired. During the year before she had been operated upon and some part of her internal machinery had been taken away and her paleness and the look of weariness on her face, touched May’s heart. “She looks as though she might be wanting company,” she thought hopefully.
After his wife’s death an unmarried sister had become the railroad man’s housekeeper. She was a short strongly built woman with hard grey eyes and a determined jaw and sometimes she sat with the new girl. Then May hurried past without looking, but, when Maud sat alone, she went slowly, looking slyly at the pale face and drooped figure in the rocking chair. One day she smiled and the smile was returned. May lingered a moment. “It’s hot,” she said leaning over the fence, but before a conversation could be started she grew alarmed and hurried away.
When the evening’s work was done on that evening and when the Edgley men had gone up town, May went into the street. Lillian was away from home and the sidewalk further up the street was deserted. The Edgley house was the last one on the street, and in the direction of town and on the same side of the street, there was—first a vacant lot, then a shed that had once been used as a blacksmith shop but that was now deserted, and after that the house where the new girl had come to live.
When the soft darkness of the summer evening came May went a little way along the street and stopped by the deserted shed. The girl in the rocking chair on the porch saw her there, and seemed to understand May’s fear of her aunt. Arising she opened the door and peered into the house to be sure she was unobserved and then came down a brick walk to the gate and along the street to May, occasionally looking back to be sure she had escaped unnoticed. A large stone lay at the edge of the sidewalk before the shed and May urged the new girl to sit down beside her and rest herself.
May was flushed with excitement. “I wonder if she knows? I wonder if she knows about me?” she thought.
“I saw you wanted to be friendly and I thought I’d come and talk,” the new girl said. She was filled with a vague curiosity. “I heard something about you but I know it ain’t true,” she said.
May’s heart jumped and her hands trembled. “I’ve let myself in for something,” she thought. The impulse to jump to her feet and run away along the sidewalk, to escape at once from the situation her hunger for companionship had created, almost overcame her and she half arose from the stone and then sat down again. She became suddenly angry and when she spoke her voice was firm, filled with indignation. “I know what you mean,” she said sharply, “you mean the fool story about me and Jerome Hadley in the woods?” The new girl nodded. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “My aunt heard it from a woman.”
Now that Maud had boldly mentioned the affair, that had, May knew, made her an outlaw in the town’s life May felt suddenly free, bold, capable of meeting any situation that might arise and was lost in wonder at her own display of courage. Well, she had wanted to love the new girl, take her as a friend, but now that impulse was lost in another passion that swept through her. She wanted to conquer, to come out of a bad situation with flying colors. With the boldness of another Lillian she began to speak, to tell lies. “It just shows what happens,” she said quickly. A re-creation of the incident in the wood with Jerome had come to her swiftly, like a flash of sunlight on a dark day. “I went into the woods with Jerome Hadley—why? You won’t believe it when I tell you, maybe,” she added.
May began laying the foundation of her lie. “He said he was in trouble and wanted to speak with me, off somewhere where no one could hear, in some secret place,” she explained. “I said, ‘If you’re in trouble let’s go over into the woods at noon.’ It was my idea, our going off together that way. When he told me he was in trouble his eyes looked so hurt I never thought of reputation or nothing. I just said I’d go and I been paid for it. A girl always has to pay if she’s good to a man I suppose.”
May tried to look and talk like a wise woman, as she imagined Lillian would have talked under the circumstances. “I’ve got a notion to tell what that Jerome Hadley talked to me about all the time when we were in there—in the woods—but I won’t,” she declared. “He lied about me afterwards because I wouldn’t do what he wanted me to, but I’ll keep my word. I won’t tell you any names but I’ll tell you this much—I know enough to have Jerome Hadley sent to jail if I wanted to do it.”
May watched her companion. To Maud, whose life had always been a dull affair, the evening was like going to a theatre. It was better than that. It was like going to the theatre where the star is your friend, where you sit among strangers and have the sense of superiority that comes with knowing, as a person much like yourself, the hero in the velvet gown with the sword clanking at his side. “Oh, do tell me all you dare. I want to know,” she said.
“It was about a woman he was in trouble,” May answered. “One of these days maybe the whole town will find out what I alone know.” She leaned forward and touched Maud’s arm. The lie she was telling made her feel glad and free. As on a dark day, when the sun suddenly breaks through clouds, everything in life now seemed bright and glowing and her imagination took a great leap forward. She had been inventing a tale to save herself but went on for the joy of seeing what she could do with the story that had come suddenly, unexpectedly, to her lips. As when she was a girl in school her mind worked swiftly, eagerly. “Listen,” she said impressively, “and don’t you never tell no one. Jerome Hadley wanted to kill a man here in this town, because he was in love with the man’s woman. He had got poison and intended to give it to the woman. She is married and rich too. Her husband is a big man here in Bidwell. Jerome was to give the poison to the woman and she was to put it in her husband’s coffee and, when the man died, the woman was to marry Jerome. I put a stop to it. I prevented the murder. Now do you understand why I went into the woods with that man?”
The fever of excitement that had taken possession of May was transmitted to her companion. It drew them closer together and now Maud put her arm about May’s waist. “The nerve of him,” May said boldly, “he wanted me to take the stuff to the woman’s house and he offered me money too. He said the rich woman would give me a thousand dollars, but I laughed at him. ‘If anything happens to that man I’ll tell and you’ll get hung for murder,’ that’s what I said to him.”
May described the scene that had taken place there in the deep dark forest with the man, intent upon murder. They fought, she said, for more than two hours and the man tried to kill her. She would have had him arrested at once, she explained, but to do so involved telling the story of the poison plot and she had given her word to save him, and if he reformed, she would not tell. After a long time, when the man saw she was not to be moved and would neither take part in the plot or allow it to be carried out, he grew quieter. Then, as they were coming out of the woods, he sprang upon her again and tried to choke her. Some berry pickers in a field, among whom she had been working during the morning, saw the struggle.
“They went and told lies about me,” May said emphatically. “They saw us struggling and they went and said he was making love to me. A girl there, who was in love with Jerome herself and was jealous when she saw us together, started the story. It spread all over town and now I’m so ashamed I hardly dare to show my face.”
With an air of helpless annoyance
