Sherwood Anderson

by Collected Stories- Winesburg, Ohio, The Triumph of the Egg, Horses

  As for Lillian—before the incident with Jerome Hadley, she continually talked of her sister. In Norwalk, Fremont, Clyde and the other towns she visited she had many friends. Men liked her because, as they often said, she was a woman to be trusted. One could talk to her, say anything, and she would keep her mouth shut and in her presence one felt comfortably free and easy. Among her secret associates were members of churches, lawyers, owners of prosperous businesses, heads of respectable families. To be sure they saw Lillian in secret but she seemed to understand and respect their desire for secrecy. “You don’t need to make no bones about it with me. I know you got to be careful,” she said.

  On a summer evening, in one of the towns she was in the habit of visiting, an arrangement was made. The man with whom she was to spend the evening waited until darkness had come and then, hiring a horse at a livery stable, drove to an appointed place. Side curtains were put on the buggy and the pair set forth into the darkness and loneliness of country roads. As the evening advanced and the more ardent mood of the occasion passed, a sudden sense of freedom swept over the man. “It is better not to fool around with a young girl or with some other man’s wife. With Lillian one does not get found out and get into trouble,” he thought.

  The horse went slowly, along out of the way roads—bars were let down and the couple drove into a field. For hours they sat in the buggy and talked. The men talked to Lillian as they could talk to no other woman they had ever known. She was shrewd and in her own way capable and often the men spoke of their affairs, asking her advice. “Now what do you think, Lil’—if you were me would you buy or sell?” one of them asked.

  Other and more intimate things crept into the conversations. “Well, Lil’, my wife and I are all right. We get along well enough, but we ain’t what you might speak of as lovers,” Lillian’s temporary intimate said. “She jaws me a lot when I smoke too much or when I don’t want to go to church. And then, you see, we’re worried about the kids. My oldest girl is running around a lot with young Harry Garvner and I keep asking myself, ‘Is he any good?’ I can’t make up my mind. You’ve seen him around, Lil’, what do you think?”

  Having taken part in many such conversations Lillian had come to depend on her sister May to furnish her with a topic of conversation. “I know how you feel. I feel that way about May,” she said. More than a hundred times she had explained that May was different from the rest of the Edgleys. “She’s smart,” she explained. “I tell you what, she’s the smartest girl that ever went to the high school in Bidwell.”

  Having so often used May as an example of what an Edgley could be Lillian was shocked when she heard of the affair in the berry field. For several weeks she said nothing and then one evening in July when the two were alone in the house together she spoke. She had intended to be motherly, direct and kind—if firm, but when the words came her voice trembled and she grew angry. “I hear, May, you been fooling with a man,” she began as they sat together on the front porch of the house. It was a hot evening and dark and a thunder storm threatened and for a long time after Lillian had spoken there was silence and then May put her head into her hands and leaning forward began to cry softly. Her body rocked back and forth and occasionally a dry broken sob broke the silence. “Well,” Lillian added sharply, being determined to terminate her remarks before she also broke into tears, “well, May, you’ve made a darn fool of yourself. I didn’t think it of you. I didn’t think you’d turn out a fool.”

  In the attempt to control her own unhappiness and to conceal it, Lillian became more and more angry. Her voice continued to tremble and to regain control of it she got up and went inside the house. When she came out again May still sat in the chair at the edge of the porch with her head held in her hands. Lillian was moved to pity. “Well, don’t break your heart about it, kid. I’m only an old fool after all. Don’t pay too much attention to me. I guess Kate and I haven’t set you such a good example,” she said softly.

  Lillian sat on the edge of the porch and put her hand on May’s knee and when she felt the trembling of the younger woman’s body a sharp mother feeling awakened within her. “I say, kid,” she began again, “a girl gets notions into her head. I’ve had them myself. A girl thinks she’ll find a man that’s all right. She kinda dreams of a man that doesn’t exist. She wants to be good and at the same time she wants to be something else. I guess I know how you felt but, believe me, kid, it’s bunk. Take it from me, kid, I know what I’m talking about. I been with men enough. I ought to know something.”

  Intent now on giving advice and having for the first time definitely accepted her sister as a comrade Lillian did not realize that what she now had to say would hurt May more than her anger. “I’ve often wondered about mother,” she said reminiscently. “She was always so glum and silent. When Kate and I went on the turf she never had nothing to say and even when I was a kid and began running around with men evenings, she kept still. I remember the first time I went over to Fremont with a man and stayed out all night. I was ashamed to come home. ‘I’ll catch hell,’ I thought but she never said nothing at all and it was the same way with Kate. She never said nothing to her. I guess Kate and I thought she was like the rest of the family—she was banking on you.”

  “To Ballyhack with Dad and the boys,” Lillian added sharply. “They’re men and don’t care about anything but getting filled up with booze and when they’re tired sleeping like dogs. They’re like all the other men only not so much stuck on themselves.”

  Lillian became angry again. “I was pretty proud of you, May, and now I don’t know what to think,” she said. “I’ve bragged about you a thousand times and I suppose Kate has. It makes me sore to think of it, you an Edgley and being as smart as you are, to fall for a cheap one like that Jerome Hadley. I bet he didn’t even give you any money or promise to marry you either.”

  May arose from her chair, her whole body trembling as with a chill, and Lillian arose and stood beside her. The older woman got down to the kernel of what she wanted to say. “You ain’t that way are you, sis—you ain’t going to have a kid?” she asked. May stood by the door, leaning against the door jamb and the rain that had been threatening began to fall. “No, Lillian,” she said. Like a child begging for mercy she held out her hand. Her face was white and in a flash of lightning Lillian could see it plainly. It seemed to leap out of the darkness toward her. “Don’t talk about it any more, Lillian, please don’t. I won’t ever do it again,” she pleaded.

  Lillian was determined. When May went indoors and up the stairway to her room above she followed to the foot of the stairs and finished what she felt she had to say. “I don’t want you to do it, May,” she said, “I don’t want you to do it. I want to see there be one Edgley that goes straight but if you intend to go crooked don’t be a fool. Don’t take up with a cheap one, like Jerome Hadley, who just give you soft talk. If you are going to do it anyway you just come to me. I’ll get you in with men who have money and I’ll fix it so you don’t have no trouble. If you’re going to go on the turf, like Kate and I did, don’t be a fool. You just come to me.”

  * * *

  In all her life May had never achieved a friendship with another woman, although often she had dreamed of such a possibility. When she was still a school girl she saw other girls going homeward in the evening. They loitered along, their arms linked, and how much they had to say to each other. When they came to a corner, where their ways parted, they could not bear to leave each other. “You go a piece with me to-night and to-morrow night I’ll go a piece with you,” one of them said.

  May hurried homeward alone, her heart filled with envy, and after she had finished her time in the school and, more than ever after the incident in the berry field—always spoken of by Lillian as the time of her 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 jo
b 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 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.