“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 May arose. “Well,” she said, “I promised him I wouldn’t tell the name of the man he was going to murder or nothing about it and I won’t. I’ve told you too much as it is but you gave me your word you wouldn’t tell. It’s got to be a secret between us.” She started off along the sidewalk toward the Edgley house and then turned and ran back to the new girl, who had got almost to her own gate. “You keep still,” May whispered dramatically. “If you go talking now remember you may get a man hung.”
Chapter III
A NEW life began to unfold itself to May Edgley. After the affair in the berry field, and until the time of the conversation with Maud Welliver, she had felt as one dead. As she went about in the Edgley household, doing the daily work, she sometimes stopped and stood still, on the stairs or in the kitchen by the stove. A whirlwind seemed to be going on around her while she stood thus, becalmed—fear made her body tremble. It had happened even in the moments when she was hidden under the elders by the creek. At such times the trunks of the willow trees and the fragrance of the elders comforted but did not comfort enough. There was something wanting. They were too impersonal, too sure of themselves.
To herself, at such moments, May was like one sealed up in a vessel of glass. The light of days came to her and from all sides came the sound of life going on but she herself did not live. She but breathed, ate food, slept and awakened but what she wanted out of life seemed far away, lost to her. In a way, and ever since she had been conscious of herself, it had been so.
She remembered faces she had seen, expressions that had come suddenly to peoples’ faces as she passed them on the streets. In particular old men had always been kind to her. They stopped to speak to her. “Hello, little girl,” they said. For her benefit eyes had been lifted, lips had smiled, kindly words had been spoken, and at such moments it had seemed to her that some tiny sluiceway out of the great stream of human life had been opened to her. The stream flowed on somewhere, in the distance, on the further side of a wall, behind a mountain of iron—just out of sight, out of hearing—but a few drops of the living waters of life had reached her, had bathed her. Understanding of the secret thing that went on within herself was not impossible. It could exist.