Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

“Saints preserve us, Mr. Moray,” came the voice of the cook, Rosaleen, from the kitchen doorway, behind him, “it’s gettin’ pie-eyed you’ll be in nothin’ flat, swillin’ of the craytchur like that! What’s befallen you, this lovely day?”

With her on one side of the bare dining table, him on the other, Milo sat and drank and told her all of it, from start to the immediate present. She heard him out in silence, only pursing her lips and frowning when he spoke of his nights of unhallowed copulation with Irunn and again on the occasion when he roundly cursed the priest, for his meddling and his threats. Not until he was done did the old woman speak.

“Och, poor Mr. Moray, it’s pitying you I am. That Miss Irunn, why she must be daft, clear off her knob. What kind of a married life could she expect to have with a man she had so shamefully trapped into it with lies and all? Bad enough it is that she lied to you and to her poor parents and forged your name to a letter of proposal, then gave it to her father, but to lie and all to a holy priest of God, och, how terrible a woman she is who always gave the appearance of being good and so very proper. Herself will have thirteen kittens with plush tails when it’s hearing of it she is.”

Even as Milo opened his mouth to speak in protest at this planned violation of his impulsive confidence, Rosaleen raised her hand.

“She must know, soon or late, Mr. Moray, sure and you can see that? It’s better, I’m thinkin’, that she hear it from first me and then you than from Miss Irunn or this Jerry priest or … or others. As for the rest, it was good advice that the Jew doctor was givin’ you, I thinks, I do. But just take all the time you find yourself needin’ to get ready to-leave; when she’s heard it all, herself won’t be heavin’ you out, though she may well throw that Miss Irunn onto the streets, where the schemin’, connivin’ strumpet belongs. To be sneakin’ around of nights and crawl naked into the bed of a decent, sleepin’ man to try to make him marry her, Holy Mither save us, that’s scandlous, it is, I say!

“And don’t you be worryin’ none about the police comin’ here and haulin’ you in unawares, Mr. Moray. My late husband, Jimmy O’Farrell, God bless his soul, was a sergeant on the force. Twenty-four years in harness, he was, and I still have more nor a few of the boyos as friends. I’ll just be puttin’ out the word and I’ll know wheniver a warrant comes out for you, and you’ll be knowin’ as soon as I do, too.”

Some hour and a half after that night’s dinner, there was a knock on Milo’s door and he opened it to see Maggie O’Shea, still in her white uniform, lacking only her cap. “Mr. Moray, we two must talk of the matter you discussed with Rosaleen this afternoon. Now, while the others are down in the parlor listening to the radio, is a good time. I have just hung up the telephone after ringing up and talking with Father Rustung, and I want your version of these shocking events from your lips. I feel that as the worst happened under my roof, I have that right, at least.”

Maggie seated herself in the single chair and let him tell it in his words, in his order of events and at his own pace of speech. As he fell finally silent, the stout woman sighed and shook her graying head.

“I don’t really know just whom to believe in this story matter, Mr. Moray. I’ve known Irunn Thorsdottar much longer, of course, since she was in training, in fact, but you have always seemed an honest, decent, truthful man to me … and clearly to dear Rosaleen, too. She’s carrying on like your sworn champion, and she’s a proven good judge of character.

“Your story of this mess and how it developed exactly contradicts many parts of Father Rüstung’s version of the same events, but then, of course, he got his facts or fables from Irunn.

“You swear to me that you never, at any time, under even the most intimate of circumstances, drunk or sober, asked her to be your wife, Mr. Moray?”

“Yes, I certainly do, Mrs. O’Shea. She was the first and the only one who ever discussed marriage, and I’ve told her until I was blue in the face that I just am in no position or frame of mind to marry her or anyone else, now. But still, she kept harping on that same tired subject, trying to get me to go with her to Wisconsin to meet her folks.”

Maggie frowned then, her lips thinning and her eyes narrowing. “And yet, Mr. Moray, both Father Rüstung and the jeweler whose name he gave me, Izaak Plotkin, confirm that you bought for Irunn a diamond engagement ring. Had you forgotten that?”

Milo’s voice rose in exasperation. “Now, damn it, Mrs. O’Shea, Irunn picked out that ring herself, put a deposit on it and left it with that jeweler for enlargement of the band. When she left for Wisconsin so suddenly, she gave your husband, Pat, a note asking me to pick it up,for her and promising to pay me back for the cost of it. I did pick it up; it’s here, in my lockbox. Engagement ring, hell— I’ll wring the neck of that bitch when I get my hands on her!”

“Oh, no you won’t, not in my house, Mr. Moray,” said Maggie bluntly, in hard, no-nonsense tones. Then she asked, “Can you prove any of what you just told me, Mr. Moray? Everyone but you—Father Rüstung, Izaak Plotkin, my husband, Pat, and most of the rest of the household and Irunn’s family’s—is under the impression that she is your intended bride.”

Milo sighed, hearing disbelief of him in the woman’s tone. “The only scrap of evidence I have in regard to my verity, Mrs. O’Shea, is the note that Irunn left with your husband when she left here, last week. She said in a postscript that I should burn it. Now I can see why she wanted it burned, and I’m damned glad I didn’t. Here, I’ll show you.”

When he had dragged the strongbox from its place beneath his bed and unlocked it, he handed the satin ring box and the envelope containing the handwritten note to Maggie, along with the receipt for monies paid and the dated record of the transaction on which he had insisted.

After reading everything thoroughly, opening the box, removing the ring and examining the bauble critically, it was Maggie who this time sighed and shook her head.

“Please accept my full and complete apology, Mr. Moray,” she said slowly, soberly and contritely. “Knowing Rosaleen and her intuition as well as I do of old, knowing that she instantly believed you with no shred of evidence in your favor presented her, I should have believed her and you, too. It’s a devilish web that the young woman has woven about you, and Dr. Osterreich may well be right that your only choices are either to do what she wants, marry her, or leave the state.

“Knowing, as we do now, of the enormity of the evil and the soul-damning sin of which she has proved herself capable, were I a man, I’d want no part of her; you seem to feel just that way, too. So I guess you must leave Illinois, for even if you are innocent of the breach-of-promise charge, you admit to being guilty of fornication, which is a mortal sin and a legal crime, as well, though not often invoked, I must admit, in these modern times, anyway. If they tried to lock up everyone guilty of fornication and adultery, I doubt they could build reformatories fast enough to put them all in.

“So, have you decided yet where you’re going to go? No, wait, don’t tell me, I don’t really think I should know.”

As he slumped in his train seat on his way to Indianapolis, Indiana, Milo looked to be asleep, but he was not. Rather was he thinking back to the night of Irunn Thors-dottar’s return to the O’Shea house from Wisconsin, when all pure hell broke loose and some hard truths were finally voiced.

A taxicab had deposited Irunn at the front door at about eight p.m., while Maggie and those of the household not working night shift were seated around the radio console in the parlor and Pat was facing Milo over the chessboard. Aware that Maggie disliked being disturbed when a favorite program was being broadcast, the returnee had climbed the stairs with her bag after only the briefest of greetings to the household in general.