Read Online The Numbered Account by Ann Bridge - Free Book Online

numerous chairs and settees were all stiff and rather upright—there was nothing to lounge in. On the walls were some rather attractive portraits in pretty old frames, covering, Julia guessed, at least the last three hundred years—several of them bore a striking resemblance to her host. Jean-Pierre de Ritter was a man of medium height, but he gave the impression of being small, partly because he was so excessively lightly built, with very fine narrow feet and hands; partly because ofthe squirrel-like rapidity of all his movements. He was handsome; clean-shaven, with merry brilliantly-blue eyes under a massive forehead, the only big thing about him; and this peculiar combination of figure and feature was repeated all round the room, on the panelled white-painted walls, looking out from dimly gilt frames in a variety of dress that spanned the centuries.
    â€˜We will not talk about my god-daughter until this evening,’ he said at once. ‘I have to go the moment after
déjeuner
to the Court at Lausanne, to give evidence in a most distressing case—probably murder, a thing so rare with us.’
    Julia of course said the evening would do perfectly. She looked hopefully round for drinks, after her early start; but none were in evidence, and none were offered. Her host asked suddenly—‘Do you speak French? Easily?’
    â€˜Yes, very easily.’
    â€˜Then we shall speak French. It is simpler for me, and even more so for Germaine; she is French, a French Protestant from the Loire valley, where as you probably know there are a number of Protestant communities.’
    Julia didn’t know—however, French they talked at lunch, to the manifest relief of her hostess. It was all highly political and intellectual, and Julia was quite unable to answer many of her host’s questions on what the English thought about the raid on the Rumanian Legation in Berne, the suicide of the Swiss Chief of Police, Dr. Adenauer’s attitude to NATO, and the value of the activities of Moral Rearmament in Morocco. His own remarks on these and other subjects were shrewd, witty, and at the same time restrained—Julia remembered that Herr Waechter had called him a brilliant man. When he left at the end of the brief meal he already commanded Julia’s respect.
    In the afternoon Henriette, one of the married daughters, arrived in a station-wagon with the whole of her weekly wash, to be done in the vast
Pharos
in the ex-scullery. In theory she merely used her mother’s washing-machine; in fact Germaine did all the actual work, pouring in thesoap-powder and bestowing the linen; then rinsing and taking-out while Henriette, in the garden, kept a maternal eye on her two pretty little girls and her toddler son of 2, and did a little desultory weeding. She too talked, endlessly and very well, to Julia, who had undertaken to pick the spinach for supper; crouched over the hot crumbly earth between the rows of succulent green plants, Miss Probyn tried to make reasonably intelligent responses about the works of Kafka and Romain Rolland, and Gon-zague de Reynolde’s
Qu’est-ce que l’Europe?
This last she had read—and praised, throwing leaves into a basket as she spoke; Henriette was pleased.
    â€˜Oh, I am glad!—for really he was a formidable writer. But later he became rather Fascist, and I think annoyed the English.’
    â€˜Yes—I remember that he wrote some terrible nonsense about the Italians and
Mare Nostrum
and all that,’ Julia said, rising to her feet and moving two steps further along the green rows. ‘But that didn’t prevent
Qu’est-ce que l’Europe?
from being a splendid book.’
    Henriette, much encouraged, asked if Miss Probyn admired Rilke? ‘You know that his
belle amie
lived at Sierre, and he visited her daily?’
    Julia didn’t know—she felt rather out of her depth in the rarefied intellectual atmosphere of La Cure. She had