The Numbered Account

_______________

ANN BRIDGE

Chapter

1 Glentoran

2 Gersau

3 Bellardon

4 Geneva

5 Geneva—the Palais des Nations

6 Beatenberg and the Niederhorn

7 The Schynige Platte

8 Merligen

9 Interlaken—the Clinic and the Golden Bear

10 Interlaken—the Golden Bear and the Gemsbock

11 Beatenberg and Interlaken

12 The Passes

13 The Aares-Schlucht

14 Beatenberg

15 Interlaken—the Clinic

16 Interlaken—Bellardon

17 Bellardon—Berne

Chapter 1
Glentoran

The red-funnelled
Flora Macdonald
sidled skilfully alongside the grey wet quay of the small West Highland port, watched by Edina Reeder, who also scanned the passengers waiting above the gangway; when she saw among them a tall elegant figure with a tawny-gold head she smiled and waved. Presently a porter in a seaman's jersey carried the luggage out and stowed it in a brandnew Land-Rover, while the two cousins kissed and exchanged greetings.

‘Philip and I thought you were never coming back to Glentoran,' Mrs Reeder said. ‘You haven't been up since our wedding, and that's nearly two years ago.'

‘I know. I was such ages in Portugal—both times. But it's heavenly to be back now.' As the car shot off from the harbour—‘This is a terrific machine,' Julia Probyn said. ‘Philip, I suppose?'

‘Oh yes, everything is Philip. You won't know Glentoran!' Edina replied. ‘When we got married Mother, in her most Early Christian Martyr way, suggested withdrawing to the little dower-house, but of course we didn't allow that—she's in the west wing. Philip has turned it into a self-contained flat, with a sub-flat for Forbes, horrid old creature! And we raked up Joanna—do you remember?—housemaid ages ago—to be cook; she makes just the sort of horrible food Mother likes, so it's all perfect.'

‘I thought the west wing used to be damp,' Julia said.

‘Ah, but not any more. Central heating throughout! I expect it's very bad for one, softening, and all that—but I must say it's exceedingly comfortable to be warm everywhere, after those awful wood fires. And Olimpia adores it, salamander that she is.'

‘Oh, you've still got Olimpia?'

‘Yes indeed. Between having a boiling hot bed-sitting-room,
and Philip to talk Spanish to her every day, I think she's settled for life—and of course her food is better than ever.'

‘It couldn't be
better
—it was always divine.'

‘Well it still is; more divine. Colin's here,' Mrs. Reeder then said. ‘He was delighted when you rang up to say that you were coming, because he's going off again fairly soon to the Middle East, or one of those troublesome places.'

‘Oh I
am
glad. What luck! Dear Colin.' Miss Probyn was devoted to her other cousin, Edina Reeder's young brother. ‘How is he?'

‘I fancy he's got something on his mind,' Edina said, slinging the Land-Rover round the curves of a steep hill under huge overhanging beeches, ‘but he hasn't uttered. I daresay he'll tell you.' As they reached the top of the hill and emerged into open country—

‘Goodness! You've ploughed that slope above Lagganna-Geoich!' Miss Probyn exclaimed. ‘It used to be all rushes. What
can
grow there?'

‘Winter wheat. It's all been drained—with the government grant, of course—and fenced, as you see.'

Indeed as they now entered on the Glentoran estate, evidences of prosperity and good husbandry appeared on all sides: strong pig-wire fences, Dutch barns, new iron gates painted red; so different from the beloved but rather derelict Glentoran that she had known all her life that Julia fairly gasped. ‘I can't think how you've got it all done in the time,' she said, after being shown three or four silage-pits, and a herd of pedigree Ayrshire cows.

‘Oh, Philip works all day and most of the night, and adores it. But I must say it's very nice to have some money to come and go on, and be able to treat the land properly. Wait till you see the hill-pastures, limed and re-seeded and all! Of course the subsidies don't nearly cover it, one has to dip into one's pocket all the time—but Philip says he'll be able to bring out a terrific, and quite true, loss on the property for income-tax for this year and next.'

Julia laughed, and returned to the subject of her cousin Colin.

‘What makes you think he has something on his mind?'

‘He mopes, and jerks his thumb.'

Many of the Monro family had the hereditary peculiarity of double-jointed thumbs, enabling them to turn that member downwards in a spectacular and quite horrible fashion; the operation made an audible creaking sound which was curiously sickening. Edina used this peculiar gift sparingly, being a calm person; but Julia was intensely familiar with it in Colin Monro, as a symptom of nervousness or worry.

However, he showed no sign of either at luncheon, which took place rather late. In spite of all the external improvements, Glentoran within was its old shabby self, rather to Julia's relief—except for the genial all-pervading warmth from the central heating, and a newly-installed fitted basin with scalding hot water in her bedroom. Clearly Philip Reeder believed in spending his good money on useful, practical things rather than on aesthetic amenities; the drawing-room, to which she presently went down, had its old worn and hideous carpet, and the familiar faded cretonne covers. Here Philip gave her a stiff gin, and here also she encountered Colin and old Mrs. Monro, his and Edina's mother.

‘How nice to see you, Aunt Ellen,' Julia said, kissing her, and holding out a casual hand to Colin.

‘I can't think why you haven't been near us for so long,' Mrs. Monro said fretfully.

‘I've been abroad, you know.'

‘Everyone will go abroad—I can't think why. Mary Hathaway has gone abroad, when she might just as well have been here,' Mrs. Monro pursued, in a complaining tone. ‘She's gone to Switzerland, of all places.'

‘To stay with an old flame,' Edina put in. ‘Really old—about 80! He lives in Gersau, wherever that is.'

‘On the Lake of Lucerne,' Colin said.

‘Oh, you know-all! Mother, if you've finished your sherry let's go in, shall we? Julia, bring in your drink.'

Julia, instead, downed it. ‘I hate spirits at table.'

Over the meal Mrs. Monro resumed her grumbles.

‘I can't think why Mary should have wanted to go to Switzerland. I went there once, and I thought it a most horrid place—all mountains, really there's nowhere to walk on the flat. They took me into an ice-grotto, in some glacier, and it dripped down my neck. I think all that ice and snow about is most unhealthy.'

Philip Reeder, laughing, reminded his mother-in-law that large parts of Switzerland were far from any ice or snow, and really not much more mountainous than Argyll—round Lake Neuchâtel, for instance. Julia noticed a certain preoccupation in Colin's expression while the talk was of Switzerland, which left it when they turned to discussing local affairs; presently he addressed her in Gaelic, still spoken here and there in the district; they had both picked it up as children from the keepers and the boatmen, and he gave his rather high-pitched giggle of pleasure when, after a second's hesitation, she replied in the same archaic tongue. After that they talked in Gaelic across the table; this irritated old Mrs. Monro, who eventually protested—‘I was brought up to think it very ill-bred to talk in a language that others present cannot understand.'

‘They're not ill-bred, Mother; they're merely good linguists,' Edina told her mother. ‘So was father, he spoke Gaelic perfectly, the old people always tell me—“He had the Gahlic” is their phrase. You and I aren't linguists, worse luck for us; if we were, we could have learnt it.'

‘My dear, I never wished to learn such a useless language,' said old Mrs. Monro, with the complete finality of the rather stupid person.

After lunch Colin determinedly took Julia out to stroll in the garden; Philip went off to the farm and Edina, after returning her mother to the west-wing flat, settled down to some overdue correspondence about Girl Guides. Julia was struck afresh by what a little money—Philip's money—was doing to Glentoran: the lawns close-mown; the strangling brambles cut down from the immense species rhododendrons (brought back as seeds by Hooker himself from the Himalayas) along the banks of the burn; all the deadly growth of sycamore seedlings cleared out
from between the rare shrubs along the upper avenue.

‘Goodness, it is lovely to see this place being put to rights again,' she said.

‘Yes, I suppose so.' Colin sounded
distrait
, as though the improvement in what was really his own estate meant very little to him. Presently he stood still.

‘Julia'—he paused.

‘Yes?'

‘I know it's none of my business, but I'm so fond of him that it worries me—' he paused again, in obvious embarrassment.

‘Well?' Julia asked, guessing what was coming.

‘Well, how
do
things stand between you and Hugh?'

‘They don't stand at all,' Julia said, quite unembarrassed. ‘He asked me to marry him in Portugal, and I said No.'

‘Why on earth? He's such a splendid person.'

‘I just couldn't feel it the right thing to do—somehow he didn't seem the same in Portugal as he did in Tangier.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘What I say—and more than that I won't say, because I couldn't explain properly. I'm sorry about it, very, but there it is.'

‘Don't you think it's about time you stopped amusing yourself with men, and then turning them down?' Colin said crossly. ‘First it was that wretched Consett, though I admit he was a bit of a wet, and now it's Hugh—who certainly isn't wet.'