The sight of Miss Milton in his doorway filled him with the same vague disgust that he had known on the earlier occasions at the Library. To-day she was wearing a white cotton dress, rather faded and crumpled, and grey silk gloves; in one of the fingers there was a hole. She carried a pink parasol, and wore a large straw hat overtrimmed with roses. Her face with its little red-rimmed eyes, freckled and flushed complexion, her clumsy thick-set figure, fitted ill with her youthful dress.
It was obvious enough that fate had not treated her well since her departure from the Library; she was running to seed very swiftly, and was herself bitterly conscious of the fact.
Ronder, looking at her, was aware that it was her own fault that it was so. She was incompetent, utterly incompetent. He had, as he had promised, given her some work to do during these last weeks, some copying, some arranging of letters, and she had mismanaged it all. She was a muddle- headed, ill-educated, careless, conceited and self-opinionated woman, and it did not make it any the pleasanter for Ronder to be aware, as he now was, that Brandon had been quite right to dismiss her from her Library post which she had retained far too long.
She looked across the room at him with an expression of mingled obstinacy and false humility. Her eyes were nearly closed.
"Good-afternoon, Canon Ronder," she said. "It is very good of you to see me. I shall not detain you very long."
"Well, what is it, Miss Milton?" he said, looking over his shoulder at her. "I am very busy, as a matter of fact. All these Jubilee affairs-- however, if I can help you."
"You can help me, sir. It is a most serious matter, and I need your advice."
"Well, sit down there and tell me about it."
The sun was beating into the room. He went across and pulled down the blind, partly because it was hot and partly because Miss Milton was less unpleasant in shadow.
Miss Milton seemed to find it hard to begin. She gulped in her throat and rubbed her silk gloves nervously against one another.
"I daresay I"ve done wrong in this matter," she began--"many would think so. But I haven"t come here to excuse myself. If I"ve done wrong, there are others who have done more wrong--yes, indeed."
"Please come to the point," said Ronder impatiently.
"I will, sir. That is my desire. Well, you must know, sir, that after my most unjust dismissal from the Library I took a couple of rooms with Mrs.
Ba.s.sett who lets rooms, as perhaps you know, sir, just opposite St. James"
Rectory, Mr. Morris"s."
"Well?" said Ronder.
"Well, sir, I had not been there very long before Mrs. Ba.s.sett herself, who is the least interfering and muddling of women, drew my attention to a curious fact, a most curious fact."
Miss Milton paused, looking down at her lap and at a little shabby black bag that lay upon it.
"Well?" said Ronder again.
"This fact was that Mrs. Brandon, the wife of Archdeacon Brandon, was in the habit of coming every day to see Mr. Morris!"
Ronder got up from his chair.
"Now, Miss Milton," he said, "let me make myself perfectly clear. If you have come here to give me a lot of scandal about some person, or persons, in this town, I do not wish to hear it. You have come to the wrong place.
I wonder, indeed, that you should care to acknowledge to any one that you have been spying at your window on the movements of some people here. That is a disgraceful action. I do not think there is any need for this conversation to continue."
"Excuse me, Canon Ronder, there _is_ need." Miss Milton showed no intention whatever of moving from her chair. "I was aware that you would, in all probability, rebuke me for what I have done. I expected that. At the same time I may say that I was _not_ spying in any sense of the word. I could not help it if the windows of my sitting-room looked down upon Mr. Morris"s house. You could not expect me, in this summer weather, not to sit at my window.
"At the same time, if these visits of Mrs. Brandon"s were all that had occurred I should certainly not have come and taken up your valuable time with an account of them; I hope that I know what is due to a gentleman of your position better than that. It is on a matter of real importance that I have come to you to ask your advice. Some one"s advice I must have, and if you feel that you cannot give it me, I must go elsewhere. I cannot but feel that it is better for every one concerned that you should have this piece of information rather than any one else."
He noticed how she had grown in firmness and resolve since she had begun to speak. She now saw her way to the carrying out of her plan. There was a definite threat in the words of her last sentence, and as she looked at him across the shadowy light he felt as though he saw down into her mean little soul, filled now with hatred and obstinacy and jealous determination.
"Of course," he said severely, "I cannot refuse your confidence if you are determined to give it me."
"Yes," she said, nodding her head. "You have always been very kind to me, Canon Ronder, as you have been to many others in this place. Thank you."
She looked at him almost as severely as he had looked at her. "I will be as brief as possible. I will not hide from you that I have never forgiven Archdeacon Brandon for his cruel treatment of me. That, I think, is natural. When your livelihood is taken away from you for no reason at all, you are not likely to forget it--if you are human. And I do not pretend to be more nor less than human. I will not deny that I saw these visits of Mrs. Brandon"s with considerable curiosity. There was something hurried and secret in Mrs. Brandon"s manner that seemed to me odd. I became then, quite by chance, the friend of Mr. Morris"s cook-housekeeper, Mrs. Baker, a very nice woman. That, I think, was quite natural as we were neighbours, so to speak, and Mrs. Baker was herself a friend of Mrs. Ba.s.sett"s.
"I asked no indiscreet questions, but at last Mrs. Baker confessed to both Mrs. Ba.s.sett and myself that she did not like what was going on in Mr.
Morris"s house, and that she thought of giving notice. When we asked her what she meant she said that Mrs. Brandon was the trouble, that she was always coming to the house, and that she and the reverend gentleman were shut up for hours together by themselves. She told us, too, that Mr.
Morris"s sister-in-law, Miss Burnett, had also made objections. We advised Mrs. Baker that it was her duty to stay, at any rate for the present."
Miss Milton paused. Ronder said nothing.
"Well, sir, things got so bad that Miss Burnett went away to the sea.
During her absence Mrs. Brandon came to the house quite regularly, and Mrs. Baker told us that they scarcely seemed to mind who saw them."
As Ronder looked at her he realised how little he knew about women. He hated to realise this, as he hated to realise any ignorance or weakness in himself, but in the face of the woman opposite to him there was a mixture of motives--of greed, revenge, yes, and strangely enough, of a virgin"s outraged propriety--that was utterly alien to his experience. He felt his essential, his almost inhuman, celibacy more at that moment, perhaps, than he had ever felt it before.
"Well, sir, this went on for some weeks. Miss Burnett returned, but, as Mrs. Baker said, the situation remained very strained. To come to my point, four days ago I was in one evening paying Mrs. Baker a visit. Every one was out, although Mr. Morris was expected home for his dinner. There was a ring at the bell and Mrs. Baker said, "You go, my dear." She was busy at the moment with the cooking. I went and opened the hall-door and there was Mrs. Brandon"s parlourmaid that I knew by sight. "I have a note for Mr. Morris," she said. "You can give it to me," I said. She seemed to hesitate, but I told her if she didn"t give it to me she might as well take it away again, because there was no one else in the house. That seemed to settle her, so telling me it was something special, and was to be given to Mr. Morris as soon as possible, she left it with me and went.
She"d never seen me before, I daresay, and didn"t know I didn"t belong to the house." She paused, then opening her little eyes wide and staring at Ronder as though she were seeing him for the first time in her life she said softly, "I have the note here."
She opened her black bag slowly, peered into it, produced a piece of paper out of it, and shut it with a sharp little click.
"You"ve kept it?" asked Ronder.
"I"ve kept it," she repeated, nodding her head. "I know many would say I was wrong. But was I? That"s the question. In any case that is another matter between myself and my Maker."
"Please read this, sir?" She held out the paper to him, He took it and after a moment"s hesitation read it. It had neither date nor address. It ran as follows:
DEAREST--I am sending this by a safe hand to tell you that I cannot possibly get down to-night. I am so sorry and most dreadfully disappointed, but I will explain everything when we meet to-morrow.
This is to prevent your waiting on when I"m not coming.
There was no signature.
"You had no right to keep this," he said to her angrily. As he spoke he looked at the piece of paper and felt again how strange and foreign to him the whole nature of woman was. The risks that they would take! The foolish mad things that they would do to satisfy some caprice or whim!
"How do you know that this was written by Mrs. Brandon?" he asked.
"Of course I know her handwriting very well," Miss Milton answered. "She often wrote to me when I was at the Library."
He was silent. He was seeing those two in the new light of this letter. So they were really lovers, the drab, unromantic, plain, dull, middle-aged souls! What had they seen in one another? What had they felt, to drive them to deeds so desperate, yes, and so absurd? Was there then a world right outside his ken, a world from which he had been since his birth excluded?
Absent-mindedly he had put the letter down on his table. Quickly she stretched out her gloved hand and took it. The bag clicked over it.
"Why have you brought this to me?" he asked, looking at her with a disgust that he did not attempt to conceal.
"You are the first person to whom I have spoken about the matter," she answered. "I have not said anything even to Mrs. Baker. I have had the letter for several days and have not known what is right to do about it."
"There is only one thing that is right to do about it," he answered sharply. "Burn it."
"And say nothing to anybody about it? Oh, Canon Ronder, surely that would not be right. I should not like people to think that you had given me such advice. To allow the Rector of St. James" to continue in his position, with so many looking up to him, and he committing such sins. Oh, no, sir, I cannot feel that to be right!"