May tried to think what she would do if such a thing happened. Would she struggle and refuse to go, thus attracting the attention of everyone in the room, or would she go quietly and make her struggle with the man outside alone in the darkness? Her mind ran into a tangle of thoughts. It was true that Jerome Hadley had done something quite terrible to her, had tried to kill something within her, but after all she had surrendered to him. She had lain with the man—filled with fear, trembling to be sure—but the thing had been done. In a strange sort of way she belonged to Jerome Hadley and suppose he were to come and demand again that she submit. Could she refuse? Had she become, and in spite of herself, the property of the man?
With her head a whirlpool of thought May stared, half wildly, about. If in her own room in the Edgley house, and when she had hidden herself away by the willows by the creek, she had built herself a tower of romance in which she could live and from the windows of which she could look down upon life, striving to understand it, to understand people, the tower was now being destroyed. Hands were tearing at it, strong, determined hands. She had felt them as she sat in the surrey with Maud and the two grocers, outbound from Bidwell. Then as now she wondered why she had consented to come to the dance. Well, she had come because not to come would bring a disappointment to Maud Welliver, the only woman who had come in any way close to herself, and now she was at the dance and Maud had gone away, outdoors into darkness. She had gone away with a man and it had been understood that would not happen. There was the matter of the prince, her lover. It had been understood that, because of the prince, Maud would not leave her alone with another man, and she had left, had gone outdoors with a grocer and had left another grocer sitting beside May.
Hands were tearing at her tower of romance, the tower she had built so slowly and painfully, the tower in which she had found the prince, the tower in which she had found a way to live and to be happy in spite of the ugliness of actuality. Dust arose from the walls. An army of men and women, male and female Jerome Hadleys, were charging down upon it. There would be rape and murder and how could she, left alone, withstand them. The prince had gone away. He was now far, far away, and the invaders would clamor over the walls. They would throw her down from the walls. The beautiful hangings in the tower, the rich silken gowns, the stones from strange lands, all the treasures of the tower would be destroyed.
May had worked herself into a state of mind that made her want to scream. In the room the dance went on, the shrill voice of Rat Gould called off and the fiddles made dance music to which heavy feet scraped over rough boards. By her side sat Grocer Wilder, still talking of the K. of P. convention at Cleveland and May felt that, in coming to the dance, she had raised a knife that in a moment would be plunged into her own breast. She arose to go out of the room, out into the night, out of the sight of people—but for a moment stood uncertain, looking vaguely about. Then she sat heavily down. Grocer Wilder also arose and his face grew red. “I’ve made a break,” he thought. He wondered what he had said that had offended May. “Maybe she didn’t want me to smoke,” he told himself and threw the end of his cigar out through a window. The moment reminded him of many moments of his married life. It was like having his wife back, this feeling of having offended a woman, without knowing in just what the offense lay.
And then, through a door at the front, the six Bidwell young men came into the room. They had stopped outside for a final drink out of the bottles carried in their hip pockets and, the appetite for drink being satisfied, another appetite had come into the ascendency. They wanted women.
Sid Gould, accompanied by Cal Mosher, led the way into the dance hall. His face had become badly swollen during the drive north from Clyde and he walked uncertainly.
He walked directly toward May, who turned her face to the wall and tried to hide herself. She looked like a rabbit, cornered by dogs, and when she turned on her seat and half knelt, trying to hide her face, the rim of Lillian Edgley’s white dress hat struck against the wall and the hat fell to the floor. Trembling with excitement she turned and picked it up. Her face was chalky white.
Sid Gould was well known in the Edgley household. One summer evening, in the year before May’s mother’s death, he had got into a row with the Edgleys. Being a little under the influence of drink and wanting a woman he shouted at Kate Edgley, walking through the streets of Bidwell with a traveling man, and a fight had been started in which the traveling man blackened Sid’s eyes. Later he was taken into the mayor’s office and fined and the whole affair had given the Edgley men and women a good deal of satisfaction and had been discussed endlessly at the table. Old John Edgley and the sons had sworn they also would beat the ball player. “Just let me catch him alone somewhere, so I don’t get stuck for no fine, and I’ll pound the head off’n him,” they declared.