Free The Lighthearted Quest by Ann Bridge

thought, if
Ebb and Flow
had the guts to print anything which in the least reflected on English labour.
    Almost the moment they tied up a very obvious Englishman in a trilby hat had come aboard, and disappeared into the Captain’s cabin; he presently re-emerged, accompanied by Captain Blyth, who brought him up to Julia and made one of his little formal introductions:
    â€œMiss Probyn, this is our agent, Mr. Bond; Mr. Bond, this is our passenger, Miss Probyn. Mr. Bond has a letter for you, Miss Probyn”—and the agent, after shaking hands, gave Julia a letter addressed in Geoffrey Consett’s familiar hand, simply to ‘Miss Julia Probyn, M.S.
Vidago,
Casablanca’. To her surprise it bore no stamp or post mark.
    â€œOh, thank you. How did this come, Mr. Bond?”
    â€œIt was sent down by hand to the office—from one of the Banks, I believe.”
    Julia bore it away to her cabin and read it. Like Casablanca, the letter was not at all what she expected. In the first place itwas typewritten. Mr. Consett began by explaining that to make sure of its reaching her he had sent it with a covering one to Mr. Lynch at the Banque Anglo-Morocaine, telling him that she was on the
Vidago
—“then he can contact the agents and get it to you at once.” “Sensible creature,” Julia commented approvingly. But for the rest of the letter she had no approval at all—she read it, frowning, with mounting vexation.
    â€œI made enquiries in the quarter I spoke of,” Mr. Consett wrote, “but I think you had better leave that line of enquiry alone. As you know, banks are not allowed to divulge any particulars about their clients’ accounts to third parties—it is like the seal of the confessional; and though the Bank of England is practically a Government department since it was nationalised, that rule holds for it too. I regret now very much that I made the suggestion at all—it was foolish of me. My only excuse is that at the time I was thinking of something else.” The letter ended very formally—
    â€œYours ever
Geoffrey Consett.”
    â€œDictated,” said Julia angrily. “All official rubbish!” She picked up the envelope from the sofa beside her, intending to crumple it up and throw it into the wastepaper-basket which she had forced Andrews to extract for her from the Chief Steward—she felt a need to crumple and throw something—when she noticed that there was another sheet in the envelope; this was written in Geoffrey’s hand.
    â€œOh, darling, you know what I was thinking of that last evening—
you!
I do wish you hadn’t gone away; London really
is
a desert without your beautiful blank foolish face in it. And anyhow, even if you do find your second or third cousin, or whatever he is, I doubt if he will come home quite as soon as you or his family would wish—Edina may have to sacrifice her magnificent salary, so much larger than mine, for a bit longer! But whatever you do don’t start your Irish bank-clerkchum snooping round—I do implore you to leave the whole thing alone, from the banking angle.”
    â€œOne for me, one for the file!” said Julia contemptuously. Poor Geoffrey—he was so frightful when he went all official. “Divulge!” she muttered disgustedly, looking at the typewritten letter again. Then she re-read the P.S. Taken together, the two letters made her smell a rat. If Geoffrey didn’t like Reeder’s friend in the bar at Tangier,
sabe todo,
he knew a good deal more than he was willing to say, even to her. Now quite intelligent young women like Julia often develop a peculiar and really irrational remorselessness towards young men who are their self-professed slaves, but with whom they are not yet in love; she was unreasonably vexed with Mr. Consett for his official caution and propriety. She sat in her snug little cabin, that she had become so fond of, smoking and