The Lighthearted Quest

by

Ann Bridge

FOR
G. M., P. P., AND P. LE C.
IN GRATITUDE

This novel is pure fiction. Real places are mentioned, but none of the characters introduced is intended to bear any relation to an actual person, living or dead.

ANN BRIDGE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

I Simply can't think how to get hold of him,” said Mrs. Monro dolefully, leaning forward in her chair to poke unskilfully at the fire of rather damp logs, which hummed and sizzled faintly in the wrong sort of grate for wood.

“Have you advertised?” asked Mrs. Hathaway. As she spoke she picked up the tongs, arranged the logs better, and pushed some bits of bark from the log-basket in between them; then kneeling down she began to ply the bellows.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Monro, with a sort of weak pride. “In
The Times,
and the
Telegraph,
and the
Continental Daily Mail—
Edina said I ought to try that.”

“Quite right. And how long ago was that?” asked Mrs. Hathaway, continuing to blow the fire, in which the bark now began to burn rather more hopefully.

“Three weeks the Continental one, and five the others, and there's still not a word. But now that his Uncle's dead, Colin simply
must
come home—I can't run this great place alone.”

This was at least the eleventh time in the course of a single conversation that Mrs. Monro had said that her son Colin must return to run the property in Argyll, which would be, and indeed effectively now was, his. Since her husband's death her brother-in-law, Colonel Monro, had taken charge of it for his young nephew, but when he took pneumonia and died the crisis had arisen; and Mrs. Monro, as usual when a crisis arose, had sent for Mrs. Hathaway.

“When did Colin write last?” Mrs. Hathaway asked.

“Oh,
ages
ago; at least nine months. He is so naughty and unkind; it's really
wrong,”
said Colin's mother.

Mrs. Hathaway in her heart agreed, but she kept to the main issue.

“Where did he write from, then?”

“Let me think—was it Tangier, or Casablanca, or Cadiz?—or that place with the funny name? Wait—I'll look,” said Mrs. Monro, getting up and walking across the worn and faded carpet, with its hideous pattern of bunches of roses tied with ribbon on a black ground, to her cluttered Victorian escritoire, where papers bulged untidily from all the pigeonholes and lay piled in heaps, obstructing the drawers. She poked and pulled and peered ineffectually, while Mrs. Hathaway looked on with the mixture of pity and irritation which her friend always aroused in her.

“No, I can't find it. How tiresome,” said Mrs. Monro, stuffing papers back into quite different orifices from those whence she had removed them. She opened a drawer, muttering “This is only bills. Oh, no, here it is,” she exclaimed in triumph, and returned to her chair. “Look, it
is
from the place with the funny name—Cuter, I should call it, but Edina says it's pronounced Theeoota.” She handed the letter over.

Mrs. Hathaway read it with attention. It was short, and uninformative to a degree which to her suggested some form of deliberate concealment. The boat was all right, though they had had a spot of engine trouble; business had been fairly good; one of his partners had gone home—none of them was mentioned by name, Mrs. Hathaway noticed—but he and the others were well; the weather was splendid, and he was her loving son, Colin.

“Tell me again what exactly the ‘business' is,” Mrs. Hathaway said, folding up this unsatisfactory missive and handing it back.

“Selling oranges, or bananas,” said Mrs. Monro. “They go in and buy them in one place, and then sail off and sell them in another. I remember he said about eighteen months ago that they had done very well in Marseilles; that was what made Edina think of the
Continental Daily Mail,
because it's published in Paris.”

Mrs. Hathaway passed over this characteristic
non sequitur.

“I shouldn't have thought there was much profit to be made out of selling oranges round all those Mediterranean ports,” she said. “They grow them in Africa as well as in Spain, and even in that extreme south-west corner of France, I believe. And if he was going to pick up bananas he'd have to go right out to the Canaries. How big is the boat?—big enough for that?”

Of course Mrs. Monro had no idea how big the boat was. Edina might know, she said; but Edina was out seeing about draining those fields on McNeil's farm, that poor John had been so keen on—“It was standing over those wretched drainers, in the East wind, that made him ill and killed him,” said Mrs. Monro, beginning to dab at her eyes.

“Does Colin ever ask you for money now?” Mrs. Hathaway asked, ignoring her friend's all-too-easy emotion.

“No,” said Mrs. Monro, perking up and putting away her handkerchief. “That's the extraordinary thing. He did ask for three hundred pounds to help to buy the boat, right at the beginning—but since then he's never asked for a penny. So you see there
must
be money in selling oranges, Mary, whatever you say.” Mrs. Monro quite often caught the drift of more that was said than her friends ever expected her to, Mrs. Hathaway knew. She considered this last item in silence. For Colin not to ask for money for at least three years was, as his mother said, extraordinary; but nevertheless this business of orange—or banana—selling sounded strangely unconvincing.

“May I see the letter again?” she said, and having looked at it—“Does he never give any sort of address?” she asked. “This just says ‘Ceuta'.”

“No—that's all he ever says and I write
'Poste Restante,
Cadiz,' or whatever it is.”

“And he never says where he's going next, so that you could catch him with a telegram?”

“No. He really is very naughty and unkind,” said Mrs. Monro, beginning to sniff and fumbling for her handkerchief
again. “He used to at first, now I come to think of it; but he hasn't now, for a long while.”

A gong boomed through the house, announcing lunch; the two ladies went downstairs, past windows on which rain beat violently, borne on a westerly gale. The fire in the dining-room was worse than that in the sitting-room upstairs, and the deaf and immensely aged butler who crept round on flat feet, handing rather surprisingly good food, somehow added to the general sense of depression—obviously, Mrs. Hathaway thought, it would be useless to try to make him get up a good fire.

“What is this cook you have?” she asked, as a flaked pastry
vol-au-vent,
full of some meat heavily flavoured with garlic, succeeded a delicious omelette.

^“
Oh, isn't she awful? She's a Spaniard, and one can't say a word to her,” said Mrs. Monro. “She
will
put all these flavourings in, and I can't stop her, because she can't understand.”

“I think her food is frightfully good,” said Mrs. Hathaway. “May I have some more of this?” She got up, the aged butler having retired.

“Oh, yes, do, if you can bear it. Forbes hates her food—he makes her grill him a chop every day.”

“Forbes always was a silly old ass,” said Mrs. Hathaway, tucking into her second helping of garlic. “You're frightfully lucky, Ellen, to get food like this. But why on earth does she stay up here?—your cook? I should have thought a Spaniard would have frozen to death.”

“Oh, she likes having the Macdonald's chapel just next door; she goes to Mass there every single morning. Ronan Mac-donald talks a little Spanish too, and she likes that—but he won't translate for
me,”
said Mrs. Monro resentfully.

There was a sound of dogs scuffling and being rebuked in the hall outside; after a pause the door opened and Edina Monro came in, a tall girl with very dark straight hair cut
close to her head, grey eyes, and a dead-white skin—she wore cream-coloured corduroy slacks and a blue seaman's jersey.

“Is there some lunch for me? I had to come in, it's too wet for the men to go on,” she began—“Oh, Mrs. Hathaway, it's nice to see you. Did you have an awful trip?”

“It was a bit rough coming round Ardlamont Point, but I don't mind that,” said Mrs. Hathaway, getting up, with the manners of her generation, to shake hands with the girl. “How are you, Edina? You look well.”

Miss Monro in fact did look well; there was nothing unhealthy about her intensely white skin, to which not even hours out of doors in a howling gale gave the faintest tinge of colour.

“Thank you; yes, I am very well,” said Edina, as she spoke going over and pressing the bell after a brief inspection of the food on the side-table. “Plenty, I see,” she muttered, “thank God for Olimpia.—Yes, this revolting climate is in fact incredibly healthy,” she said to their guest, pulling up a chair and sitting down beside her. “Forbes, get me a very
hot
plate, and then come and lay me a place,” she said, as the butler appeared at the door, a resentful expression on his old face. “And tell Olimpia that we shall want coffee.”

“Dear, we don't need coffee after lunch,” said Mrs. Monro.

“Oh, yes, we do—I see you hadn't ordered it, even for your poor friend after her long journey! Really, Mother, you are barbarous.”

“I'm sure Forbes doesn't like the way you speak to him,” said Mrs. Monro, changing her ground.

“No, why should he? But he does what I tell him, which is more than he does for you,” her daughter replied tranquilly—“Spoilt, lazy old bastard.” Mrs. Hathaway could not restrain a tiny laugh; she liked Edina very much.

“Well, he is, you know,” the girl said, encouraged by the laugh. “But at least one doesn't have to carry in trays, or wash up, thank God.”

A
crême brûlé,
faultlessly made, followed the
vol-au-vent;
Mrs. Hathaway, accustomed to the mutton-and-milk-pudding rigours which normally prevailed at Glentoran, mentally echoed Edina's thanks to her Creator for the Spanish cook. Over the coffee, which the girl made Forbes bring up to the sitting-room, the subject of finding Colin again arose.

“Mother, you'd better go and rest; it's past your time,” said Edina, after Mrs. Monro had recapitulated at some length most of what she had said to her guest before lunch—“I made you late, I know, but off you go. You'll be wretched this evening if you don't have it.” And with a sort of kindly firmness she hustled her parent off, finding her book and spectacles for her.

“There—now we can talk,” the girl said with satisfaction, returning to the fire, on which she placed two or three more logs. “It is good of you to come up,” she said. “Poor Mother is in a frightful state.”

“That's very understandable,” said Mrs. Hathaway. “But Edina, tell me one thing—how much good would Colin be at running this place, even if you could get him back?”

“Oh, you know, I think he might manage all right. He didn't do too badly at Cambridge, or at Cirencester. He's capable enough; it's just that he likes changing—he doesn't seem to care about sticking to one thing.”

“He would have to stick to this,” said Mrs. Hathaway. “The land is one thing that can't be left to itself.”

“Well, he might, now. There wasn't much point in his sticking up here while Uncle John was running it perfectly, and loving doing it.”

Mrs. Hathaway meditated.

“You wouldn't take it on yourself, Edina?” she presently asked. “Robertson was singing your praises all the way from the pier: ‘Miss Edina gets a grup on things,' he said,” she added smiling.