The Lighthearted Quest (41 page)

“Oh, I see. Now there are our lovers, in the far room; would you round them up, while I say Goodbye.”

“Dear child, must you go?” the old lady said, as Julia bent and kissed her.

“Darling Lady Tracy,
yes
—we've stayed a shameful time, but it was such a lovely party. Thank you and thank you.”

“Did you have any talk with Hugh?” Lady Tracy asked, with a bright glance.

“Yes, a splendid talk—all about Colin.”

“Ah, yes—how
amusing
that it is he who has been helping Hugh all this time. If only I had realised!—I could have helped you so much sooner, and you need not have got your face hurt,” said the old lady, putting up a hand and stroking Julia's forehead. “But you will always be beautiful—and a scar is so
interesting.”

Julia, though a little puzzled by the beginning of this speech, was still laughing when Major Torrens came up, shepherding Edina and Mr. Reeder. “Now where's my young aide?” he said, looking round.

“ ‘Here Sir! Here Sir! Here Sir! Here Sir!'—as they say at the opposition shop,” said Colin, emerging from a window-recess. They all made their farewells. “Heavens! We're the very last! How awful,” said Julia, as they crossed the hall. “Major Torrens, oughtn't someone to send Feridah to your aunt? She must be quite worn out.”

“Look,” was all he said—glancing back Julia saw that lovely veiled figure bending over her aged mistress, in the familiar caressing attitude.

Out on the windy concrete path, where the lantern-bearers still lingered—Moors always know whether the last guest has left a party or not; they probably count them—Hugh Torrens said—

“Now, who's going where? I have a car.”

“I'm meeting Angus at Purcell's before I go on to dine on the yacht,” said Colin, after a glance at his sister.

“Purcell's will do for us,” said Edina. Colin gave a nip to Julia's arm at the “us”. So to Purcell's they went—Torrens told Julia, rather abruptly, to sit beside him in front.

“Plenty of room in Mr. Smith's car, Charles!” she murmured in his ear as they drove away down the steep narrow street—he laughed explosively.

It was very late when they reached the bar; except for the Duke it was empty.

“My friends have gone on board to recuperate,” he said to Colin. “We will follow them in due course. But do everyone sit down and have a stirrup-cup first—indicate your particular form of stirrup, all of you.”

“The Mongols line their stirrups with cork,” said Torrens, sitting down beside Julia.

“Quite appropriate to cups, Hugh, corks. But am I right in assuming that we all go on with cocktails? Right—much wiser. Purcell, could we have six Martinis?” He turned to Julia. “And now that you have found your long-lost cousin—you may remember how cross you were when I suggested, in this very room, that that was what your charming presence here was in aid of—what are your plans? Are you going home, or will you come and cruise with us? My sickly friend is going back, so there is a cabin to spare.”

Julia was suddenly and unaccountably aware of a tension, at this question, in the man sitting beside her.

“Neither, Angus,” she said in her near-drawl. “I shall stay on for a bit. I can't
plaquer
poor old Mme La Besse just now, while her Cambridge expert is here—and besides I want to see all those coffins opened. I'm hoping to filch a pair of Phoenician ear-rings when no one is looking.”

“Devoted girl! I can only applaud, though I found your whiskered female employer
pen séduisante
to a degree. And our lovely Edina is setting out for the South to photograph camels, and make millions out of it,
n'est-ce-pas?
—so she can't come. Colin, are you tired of the sea?—or have you other commitments?”

“It's very good of you, Angus, but I'm going South with Edina.”

“But I thought Edina already had an escort,” said the Duke.

“Ah, but he can't talk Arabic—I shall cope with the camel-owners for her.”

Reeder was saying something inaudible to Edina—she nodded. He cleared his throat.

“I am allowed to say that Miss Monro and I are engaged to be married,” he announced. “You might as well all know it now as later.”

“No! What a surprise!”

“Angus, you're tight,” said Edina bluntly.

“Darling, at least I'm not
quarrelsome
drunk.”

Reeder ignored this exchange.

“I realise that a week may seem rather quick work,” he pursued, in the very cultivated accents that had first struck Julia on the wet quay-side at the London Docks—“but since it was bound to happen anyhow, it seemed more sensible to settle it at once. It gives me a
locus standi”

Julia got up, sliding out with some difficulty past Torrens' knees, and gave her cousin a kiss. “Darling, how
lovely.
Bless you,” she said. She turned and took Reeder's hand. “It couldn't be nicer.”

“What did I tell you, right at the start?” he said.

“Yes, yes—how right you were.”

“As head of the family, I should perhaps say that this arrangement has my full approval,” Colin pronounced, with a fine display of young male pompousness, as he too shook Reeder by the hand.

“Edina, have you realised that he'll be able to talk Spanish to Olimpia every single day, so you'll always have the most miraculous food at Glentoran?” said Julia gaily.

“Yes. Olimpia is our Spanish cook, and she only functions properly after a dose of her own language,” Edina explained to Reeder.

“Oughtn't we to send Aunt Ellen a telegram?” Julia asked presently.

“Do you think so? At once?” Edina said, a little doubtfully.

“Yes, I do. There are she and poor Mrs. H. stewing and worrying away, when Colin's found, and you're engaged, and I'm perfectly fit again—as well as Angus—and the factor problem, I rather gather, is solved—or is it?” She glanced at Reeder.

“Yes. The new factor is engaged,” he said, grinning broadly in his beard.

“Well, then!—and here we all sit carousing, while they moulder! We
must,
Edina.”

“She's quite right,” Reeder said to Edina, with a certain brusque firmness.

“It'll have to be a jolly long telegram,” Colin observed.

It was fairly long. They compiled it there and then, with a good deal of laughter; everyone except Torrens signed it, and Reeder undertook to get it sent off that night. “Our agents can always make a signal.”

“Well, now that filial piety has done its part, and the electric telegraph is about to give its imprimatur to this happy arrangement, I think it should be drunk to in due form,” said the Duke. “Purcell, would you have any champagne?'

Purcell had champagne—moreover when it came to the
table and was poured out it was obvious that it had been in ice for some considerable time. Across her frosted glass Julia glanced towards Reeder—
“Sabe todo,”
she murmured. He laughed.

When the health of the pair had been duly drunk she said—

“I should like to propose another toast.”

“Whom to, dear? Me?” the Duke asked.

“No,
Angus. To Mr. Purcell, who seems to me to have been responsible, one way or another, for most of our happy endings.”

“I second that,” said Torrens.

“And I,” said Reeder.

From the first moment that she had set eyes on him Julia had always been fascinated by the play of expression in Purcell's face; but when they all six stood up—Angus Ross-shire and Edina manifestly a little mystified—and raised their glasses to drink his health, that half-negro mask surpassed itself—tears, unbelievably, stood in those surprising grey eyes. He came round from behind the bar, bent over Julia's hand and kissed it, murmuring,
“Con permiso.”

Over dinner at the Minzah Hugh Torrens and Julia had a tremendous clearing-up of what, on either side, lay behind the events of the last two months—always such a highly satisfying process to the participants. Hugh for instance learned how she had originally got onto the fact of the transfer of Colin's account to Casablanca, of Mr. Consett's
volte-face,
and Mr. Panoukian's highly suspicious behaviour; Julia, in fits of mirth, listened to exactly what poor Mr. St John (in code) had written about her. They got it straight, bit by bit, mightily enjoying themselves; but quite at the end Julia, still puzzled by Lady Tracy's enigmatic remarks as she said Goodbye, quoted them.
“Did
she know all along that Colin was working for you? And does she know what you are doing?”

“One never really knows
what
she knows!—almost always more than one thinks.”

“But I told her his name at the very beginning, when she promised to help me.”

“Ah, yes, but she forgets names—she's ninety-two remember. Did you tell her about the Bank, and all that?”

“Well, no, I didn't.” Julia did not feel it necessary to mention the reason for this, her desire to protect Mr. Consett.

“Ah, there you are. I feel pretty sure that if you had told her that it would have rung a bell, and she would have done something about putting you onto Colin, because she's absolutely enchanted with you—not so very surprising!”

“Yes, I'm sure Lady Tracy would always be perfectly straight, if she remembered,” said Julia—a little unsteadily under his words and his eyes.

The telegram composed in Purcell's Bar in Tangier reached Glentoran the following afternoon. Mrs. Hathaway and Mrs. Monro had been out calling on old Lady Monteith, and since Forbes was too deaf to hear anything on the telephone, and Olimpia knew no English, the post-mistress flagged the car as it passed through the village, and handed the envelope in at the window. “Grand news for Mistress Monro about Miss Edina,” she said, beaming.

Mrs. Monro fingered the envelope, which was unusually fat, as the car turned into the drive.

“Why about Edina? Why not about Colin?” she said, rather fretfully

“Try opening it to see,” said Mrs. Hathaway, displaying her usual patience with her poor friend.

“Oh—well, here we are at the house—let's go indoors first,” said Mrs. Monro, struggling incompetently to disentangle herself from the rug before the chauffeur could come round to remove it. “Forbes, tea in the morning-room,” she said, as the old man appeared on the steps. And indeed it was only in the morning-room, a small apartment next to the dining-room—with faded chintzes and a fire as bad as all the other fires at
Glentoran—that at last, putting on her spectacles, she opened the telegram.

“I can't make head or tail of it,” she said, still fretfully, having done so. “And why should Angus Ross-shire sign it? You read it, Mary”—and she handed the sheets to Mrs. Hathaway. At last that much-enduring lady read—

COLIN FOUND SAFE WELL HAS GOOD JOB STOP JULIA QUITE RECOVERED SCAR WON'T BE MUCH STOP NEW PERMANENT FACTOR ENGAGED WHO SPEAKS SPANISH NAME PHILIP REEDER STOP EDINA IS ENGAGED TO HIM STOP FIANCES AND JULIA RETURN IN ABOUT A MONTH COLIN'S RETURN INDEFINITE BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER NOW STOP EVERYTHING PERFECT ALL VERY HAPPY AND ALL WRITING STOP BEST LOVE FROM COLIN EDINA JULIA HUMBLE SALUTATIONS PHILIP REEDER STOP ELLEN I ENTIRELY REPEAT ENTIRELY APPROVE

ROSS-SHIRE.

“Can
you
understand it?” Mrs. Monro asked, as her friend turned back to the beginning again.

“Oh, yes, Ellen.”

“But can Edina be going to marry a factor? What an awful idea.”

“That's only a joke,” said Mrs. Hathaway. “That tiresome old Sir Robert Reeder of Otterglen had a son called Philip who went away to sea; he was a godson of an old aunt of Mollie Ross-shire's and she left him all her money the other day—no doubt that's why Angus approves so much!” Mrs. Hathaway added, with an amused smile.

“But if he's so rich, why should he take a job as factor, Mary?”

“That's just their nonsense—I expect they all drafted it over drinks,” said Mrs. Hathaway astutely. “Don't you see, Ellen, if young Reeder marries Edina
he
can run the place—that's all they mean.”

“Then they should have said so. But why isn't Colin
coming home? It's him I wanted to see,” said poor Mrs. Monro, beginning to hunt in her bag for her handkerchief.

“He's bound to come home for the wedding—he'll have to give Edina away,” said Mrs. Hathaway, with compassionate cheerfulness. “And you see they say he has a good job, too.
And
that precious Julia's lovely face won't be spoilt,” she added, half to herself. “Look, Ellen, take off your hat and sit down quietly, and let's draft an answer before the Post Office shuts.”

“Oh, well, if you think we ought to,” said Mrs. Monro, putting away her handkerchief—the two ladies were sitting concocting their telegram when Forbes came in wheeling a trolley, surmounted by a vast silver tray, with the tea.

“Forbes, Miss Edina is engaged to be married,” said Mrs. Monro.

“Yes, Mistress Monro, so I heard. To a very rich gentleman, who speaks Spanish. Yon cook is highly delighted,” said Forbes with respectful contempt, as he left the room.

Mrs. Hathaway laughed. Then she glanced out of the window. Daffodils in thousands were just coming into flower under the chestnut-trees beyond the rather unkempt lawn, where the ground fell away to the noisy river; great scarlet rhododendrons bloomed above an untidy growth of saplings on the further slope; over all stood the silent outline of the hill. So much beauty, so long neglected—it was good to think that it would be cared for again at last.

She returned, happily, to composing the telegram.

This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

Copyright © 1956