“Will that do?”
“It is fine. But is it strong enough? Won’t you insert ‘quickly’?”
“All right. ‘Please proceed quickly.’”
“And is ‘should return’ strong enough? Won’t you say ‘must return’?”
Trench reflected. “‘Should’ seems to me better, but I am glad to defer to
your judgment. It now reads:
“Please proceed quickly Tashkent Grand Hotel inform Saadi child
expected October must cable Elsie intention of returning. Am
cabling expenses.”
“That is splendid, Dr. Trench. Splendid! And you are splendid to do this
for Elsie. I shall sleep in peace to-night.”
Then she took out Elsie’s letter to Saadi, and wrote on it _Aux soins de
Dr. Jaffer_, and departed. She posted the letter and went home happy,
having missed a day at the University.
Trench bestirred himself to get five hundred dollars after banking hours.
Anybody else would have left that part of the work till next day. But he
happened to know the name of Jaffer’s bank in Peshawar, and he gathered
from one Halsted merchant and another till he had the required sum. By
half-past four the message had gone, and by six the money.
At dinner Trench was somewhat preoccupied. He had no intention of telling
the boys that Saadi was married, but he greatly desired to know whether
Saadi had ever dropped any word about acquaintances in Tashkent. Luck was
with him, and he was spared the need of questioning. Chat, the quietest
of men, was full of a certain charming experience and had to tell of it.
“Wu, I have the honour of the acquaintance of a great lady, such as we
call a _burra mem_. She must be one of what Americans call the four
hundred, a—” he stopped. It had occurred to him that he had been guilty
of a breach of manners.
“Well,” said Wu, “what is the rest?”
“Nothing, Wu. I do not wish to make a break or some such thing.”
Trench smiled. “He is showing a fine professional spirit, Wu. The lady
is probably a Miss Bridgman who was here this afternoon. Finish the
sentence, Chat.”
“I have forgotten it.”
“The phrase,” said Wu, “was four hundred, a—. A very curious phrase. It
belongs in Tashkent.”
“What’s that?”
“Gospitalnaya, 400a. It is the address of a specialist in filaria. Prince
Saadi gave me the numero.”
Trench said no more, but rested on that slender accident. Before he slept
he wrote a letter to Jaffer, instructing him to call at Gospitalnaya,
400a, as soon as he arrived in Tashkent. Also he enclosed the Cetinje
telegram. Perhaps Jaffer could think of some more odd sentences like
Ameen’s.
That night he lay awake for hours, living over the events of the
afternoon, and never once did it occur to him that his brain was
repeating them like a machine. If he had loved her with all his heart
before, he loved her beyond measure now, for his heart seemed suddenly
to have dilated. As he dozed off, he saw no reason why he should not ask
her to marry him. And then, rousing himself with great effort, he said
to himself that moments of emotional expansion must not be allowed to
interfere with long settled convictions grounded in reason.
He would try to think of her impersonally. A woman was only a light and
hollow endoskeleton, cancellated for the attachment of muscles; a somatic
envelope of certain germ cells; a creature of osmosis; a bag of sols and
gels; a cluster of reflexes; a bunch of tropisms. But—he was calling her
names! Such terms St. Anthony would have used, had he known them. Such
terms a jealous husband might employ in his absurdest outbursts.
A modern man, frankly recognising the facts of sex, must be more
courteous. He would grant her exquisite, with adjustments more delicate
than those of ions, and pressures more subtle than those of light. But it
was no go. She refused to be a mechanism. She declined to be reduced to
her lowest terms. She remained Edith, and doubly dear.
Well, he could not formulate all those old arguments every time nature
thrilled in him. He could only remember that the arguments were there and
not to be disregarded, save at his peril.
At his peril. At his peril. But Trench was asleep—like a soldier on the
picket line.