Part 35

It was a natural question to put. It was not an easy question to answer. What a man, under given muscular circumstances, could do, no person living knew better than Geoffrey Delamayn. Of what a man, under given social circumstances, could say, no person living knew less.

“Say?” he repeated. “Look here! say I’m half distracted, and all that. And--wait a bit--tell her to stop where she is till I write to her.”

Arnold hesitated. Absolutely ignorant of that low and limited form of knowledge which is called “knowledge of the world,” his inbred delicacy of mind revealed to him the serious difficulty of the position which his friend was asking him to occupy as plainly as if he was looking at it through the warily-gathered experience of society of a man of twice his age.

“Can’t you write to her now, Geoffrey?” he asked.

“What’s the good of that?”

“Consider for a minute, and you will see. You have trusted me with a very awkward secret. I may be wrong--I never was mixed up in such a matter before--but to present myself to this lady as your messenger seems exposing her to a dreadful humiliation. Am I to go and tell her to her face: ‘I know what you are hiding from the knowledge of all the world;’ and is she to be expected to endure it?”

“Bosh!” said Geoffrey. “They can endure a deal more than you think. I wish you had heard how she bullied me, in this very place. My good fellow, you don’t understand women. The grand secret, in dealing with a woman, is to take her as you take a cat, by the scruff of the neck--”

“I can’t face her--unless you will help me by breaking the thing to her first. I’ll stick at no sacrifice to serve you; but--hang it!--make allowances, Geoffrey, for the difficulty you are putting me in. I am almost a stranger; I don’t know how Miss Silvester may receive me, before I can open my lips.”

Those last words touched the question on its practical side. The matter-of-fact view of the difficulty was a view which Geoffrey instantly recognized and understood.

“She has the devil’s own temper,” he said. “There’s no denying that. Perhaps I’d better write. Have we time to go into the house?”

“No. The house is full of people, and we haven’t a minute to spare. Write at once, and write here. I have got a pencil.”

“What am I to write on?”

“Any thing--your brother’s card.”

Geoffrey took the pencil which Arnold offered to him, and looked at the card. The lines his brother had written covered it. There was no room left. He felt in his pocket, and produced a letter--the letter which Anne had referred to at the interview between them--the letter which she had written to insist on his attending the lawn-party at Windygates.

“This will do,” he said. “It’s one of Anne’s own letters to me. There’s room on the fourth page. If I write,” he added, turning suddenly on Arnold, “you promise to take it to her? Your hand on the bargain!”

He held out the hand which had saved Arnold’s life in Lisbon Harbor, and received Arnold’s promise, in remembrance of that time.

“All right, old fellow. I can tell you how to find the place as we go along in the gig. By-the-by, there’s one thing that’s rather important. I’d better mention it while I think of it.”

“What is that?”

“You mustn’t present yourself at the inn in your own name; and you mustn’t ask for her by her name.”

“Who am I to ask for?”

“It’s a little awkward. She has gone there as a married woman, in case they’re particular about taking her in--”

“I understand. Go on.”

“And she has planned to tell them (by way of making it all right and straight for both of us, you know) that she expects her husband to join her. If I had been able to go I should have asked at the door for ‘my wife.’ You are going in my place--”

“And I must ask at the door for ‘my wife,’ or I shall expose Miss Silvester to unpleasant consequences?”

“You don’t object?”

“Not I! I don’t care what I say to the people of the inn. It’s the meeting with Miss Silvester that I’m afraid of.”

“I’ll put that right for you--never fear!”

He went at once to the table and rapidly scribbled a few lines--then stopped and considered. “Will that do?” he asked himself. “No; I’d better say something spooney to quiet her.” He considered again, added a line, and brought his hand down on the table with a cheery smack. “That will do the business! Read it yourself, Arnold--it’s not so badly written.”