The Numbered Account (18 page)

Down the track towards them came several men, steadying two enormous wooden sledges, whose upcurved runners slithered in the greasy mud; the sledges were piled high with household and dairying effects—churns, cooking utensils, mattresses, blankets, tools, and topping all two wireless sets. These last made Julia laugh.

‘Oh, that's the modern world,' Antrobus said. ‘Today the radio is an essential, even for cheese-making.' As they stood aside to let the clumsy sledges pass he greeted the men in a language incomprehensible to Julia; they laughed cheerfully as they replied.

‘What on earth were you talking to them?' the girl asked.

‘Berner-Deutsch—their
patois
. It's really more a very archaic form of German than anything else: for instance, instead of
gewesen,
for ‘been', they say
gesie,
taken direct from
sein,
the infinitive of “to be”—and they usually swallow the last consonant if they can. I rather love it—Germans think it hideous, of course.'

‘How did you learn it?'

‘I used to come here as a child—for “glands”—and played about with the peasant children. And I've gone on coming a good deal ever since.'

‘Oh yes—you climb, don't you?' By now they had reached the lip of the grassy hollow, and were on the broad track leading to the Faulhorn, and the great range opposite was again visible, glittering under the noonday sun. ‘Have you been up those?' she asked, gesturing at it.

‘Several of them, yes. The Jungfrau three times, the Eiger twice, the Mönch only once. And the Morgenhorn—do you see that very silver one? It's the first to catch the sunlight in the morning as you look up from Interlaken; that's why they call it that.'

‘Pretty,'Julia said. ‘Any others?'

‘Yes, the Lauterbrunnen Breithorn, right at the end of the row.'

‘The one that looks like a neolithic axe-head, only white?'

He laughed.

‘What a good comparison! Yes. I was only fifteen when I did that; it was my first real mountain.' He turned to her. ‘You've never climbed?'

‘No—it never came my way.'

‘You should,' Antrobus said, displaying the missionary spirit which is so strong in mountaineers. ‘I think you would—well, find the right things in it.'

They wandered slowly on along the Faulhorn path, talking as they went; crossing a low ridge they came suddenly on another of those patches of discoloured snow half-filling a grassy saucer, surrounded by the white crocuses as by a miniature snow-storm, held motionless three inches above the wintry turf.

‘That's what I wanted you to see,' the man said.

‘It's exquisite,' Julia responded. A little farther on they came to another hollow, whence the snow had altogether departed, but only recently; here the soldanellas were growing in hundreds, their foolish little fringed lilac bells, with such an odd look of tiny paper caps out of Christmas crackers, nodding over the brownish earth—Julia was enchanted. He told her then about the Faulhorn path—‘It's so broad and firm because it's really an old mule-track, probably dating back to the Middle Ages, by which goods were carried from Interlaken over to the Grosse Scheidegg, and so down to Rosenlaui or Grindelwald; in either case it was a short-cut in the summer months—saved miles.' They were so happy and easy together, there on the sunny mountainside, that Julia at last had the confidence to ask him, outright, what he was really up to? She felt she had to know—one mustn't lose one's heart to an enemy.

But the attempt was a failure, lightly and gaily as she did it—‘
Which
Mr. Monro are you really shadowing?' As he had done at Victoria he smiled, put a finger to his lip, and shook his head; then, serious all of a sudden, he took her hand and held it firmly. ‘My dear, I can't tell you,' he said, very gently. ‘Let it alone, please. I asked you just now, up there by the Turm, to sink Fatima and Bluebeard to the bottom of the lake. Whatever happens
later, for this one day, this one lovely day, do let us just be Julia and John.'

Her failure and his tenderness together quite overset Julia. She turned aside—she could not walk on, for he was still holding her hand in a firm clasp—both to conceal an unexpected stinging of tears in her eyes, and to think of an answer and then control her voice for it. He pressed her hand, watching her averted head, and pursued—‘ Can't you just say—“Yes, John,” and leave it at that?—for today?'

She took a moment or two over it—oh, how difficult! Her watch was on her free wrist, and she looked at it. Then she turned back to face him.

‘“We maun totter down, John”—we shall be late else,' she said.

The man, in his turn, was plainly a little shaken by the quotation. ‘Oh!' That was all he said, but he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it before he let it go. ‘But really we maun totter up!—quite a long way,' he added, lightening the thing. ‘We mustn't keep your delightful friend waiting. What a charmer she is.'

As they walked back along the mediaeval mule-track and then up a short steep ascent to the hotel, Antrobus pursued the subject of Mrs. Hathaway, who had evidently taken his fancy. ‘Is she inquisitive too?' he presently asked.

‘That's not fair,' Julia said. ‘If I mayn't ask questions, nor may you!'

He laughed—‘So sorry.' Bu during lunch in the sunny glassed-in verandah of the hotel Julia got the impression that Antrobus was rather warily assessing Mrs. Hathaway. At one point she mentioned Gersau, and Herr Waechter.

‘Oh, you know him?' the man said. ‘Such a wonderful house—and what a patriarch!'

‘Well, if that is how you describe a childless widower,' Mrs. Hathaway observed, ironically.

Antrobus laughed, and they went on to discuss that so essentially Swiss thing, the long bourgeois pedigrees and the continuing industry and wealth, in the same families. ‘No “Death of a Class” here,' Antrobus said at length.

‘No. But don't you have to take neutrality into consideration?'
Mrs. Hathaway said. ‘The Swiss have escaped two wars, and therefore the penal taxation resulting from those wars. But if others had not fought, and died, and then been taxed almost out of existence, would Switzerland still be free, and able to revel in her neutrality? I have often thought that neutrality, like patriotism, is really not quite enough.'

Julia, who knew that Mrs. Hathaway had lost two sons in their late teens in World War I watched with closest interest to see how Antrobus would deal with this.

‘That is quite true,' he said carefully. ‘I was oversimplifying. But I still think that the social structure has something to do with it. The Swiss really only have two classes: peasants—who as a class are always immortal—and the
bourgeoisie
. In England we have at least four: the aristocracy; the upper-middle and professional class; the artisans; and again the peasants—whom we call ‘country-people'; and of these the first two are of course by far the most vulnerable.'

‘And possible the most valuable,' Mrs. Hathaway said, a little sharply. ‘No—of course true “peasants” always preserve their precious country values, in spite of the wireless.' She considered. ‘Perhaps a two-class society has a greater survival value,' she said slowly.

Julia put in her oar.

‘But surely in Bolshevik Russia, where they aimed at a “class-less society”, they're now busy creating a new aristocracy all over again, of technicians?'

‘A technocracy,' Antrobus corrected her. ‘Specialised knowledge has its uses, but there is nothing particularly good about it. The word
aristos
means “best”, don't forget.' Mrs. Hathaway was pleased; she laughed.

Julia was keeping an eye on the time, and on Mrs. Hathaway for signs of fatigue; they finished their meal rather hurriedly, and caught an early train down. Antrobus went with them as far as Breitlauenen, where he got out to walk down to Wilderswyl, hunting for flowers in the beech forests on the way. ‘I'll bring you anything amusing that I find,' he assured Mrs. Hathaway.

Julia had already procured, and carried round in her
handbag, a time-table of the Beatenberg buses. This showed her that they would have nearly an hour's wait in Interlaken, and as the Hotel zum Fluss was quite close to the Ost-Bahnhof, curiosity prompted her to suggest that they should fill in the pause by having coffee there, and then drive down to the West-Bahnhof for their bus. Mrs. Hathaway of course agreed; she liked her coffee after lunch, and in their haste they had missed this up at the Schynige Platte—so to the Fluss they went.

This charming hotel has two rather distinctive features. Opposite the entrance, but separated from it by a road where cars can pull up, is a raised terrace or garden shaded by chestnut-trees and set with tables, where light meals are served; also, for the convenience of passengers boarding or leaving the Lake of Brienz steamers, there is a side entrance giving access—as a discreet notice announces—to
Toiletten
for both ladies and gentlemen. Julia's party availed themselves of both; they ordered coffee on the terrace, visited the
Toiletten
while it was being made, and then returned to drink it. It was nice on the little terrace; even here the air was full of the scent of new-mown hay, and resounded with the song of blackbirds. (The Interlaken blackbirds sing more loudly and richly than any others in the world.) A steamer drew in to the quay, and as they watched the passengers disembark Julia thought of June, so lonely and ‘dull'—impulsively, she decided to ask for her in the hotel, and went in.

As an excuse she first asked the hall porter—who was bearded, fatherly, and chatty, the Swiss hotel version of the English family butler—if he could order them a horse-cab to catch the Beatenberg bus?

‘Yes, certainly'—in his rather peculiar brand of English. Then Julia asked if Miss Armitage was in?

The old man's expression changed instantly, and rather startlingly, to one of hostility and suspicion.

‘No. They left this morning.'

‘Oh, I am sorry. I'd hoped to see her. How was her foot? Any better?'

The old porter thawed a little at that.

‘Are you the lady who helped her up on the Niederhorn, and bandaged her foot? She said if you came I was to give you this'—he grubbed in his desk and brought out Julia's head-scarf.

‘Oh yes, that's mine. Thank you very much. But is her foot better?'

‘Ein wenig,
yes—she can walk a few steps, the poor child.' The porter's suspicion did not appear to attach to June, and Julia pursued this promising line. At that hour, in mid-afternoon, the hall was practically empty, the guests being either out on expeditions or sleeping off their midday meal upstairs.

‘I hope they did get a doctor to see her?' she said, putting anxiety into her voice. ‘This young man seemed to me to take her injury rather lightly.'

The porter scowled, and muttered something about a
frecher, ekeliger Kerl
(an insolent disgusting fellow) into his beard; aloud, and in English, he said, ‘Yes, Miss. The older gentleman told
me
to get a doctor, and I sent for Doktor Hertz; he is excellent; he has a fine Klinik in the town. I know everyone here; thirty years I am Portier in this hotel! So the Herr Doktor strapped up the foot, but he said she should use it as little as possible, and that he would look at it again tomorrow.'

The porter was now obviously in the full vein of gossip; Julia, delighted, continued to probe.

‘But now they have left? Oh, what a pity, since Dr. Hertz is so good. Did they leave an address? Though I have only met Fräulein Armitage once, I should like to know how she gets on.'

‘No, they left no address,' the porter said, scowling again. ‘They left hurriedly—and with good reason! Oh,
das kleine Fräulein
is all right—she is simply an innocent. But the others!'—he shrugged, with an expression of ineffable contempt. ‘Curious customers, if you ask me.'

Julia continued to pursue the June line.

‘Really? I should be sorry to think that this young lady was not with nice people—she told me that she had never left England before, and she is so young. Her mother is a
widow, too. Have you any idea why they left so hastily?'

The porter leant over his desk towards her, and spoke in a lowered tone.

‘The police came to enquire about them!'

‘No!' Julia professed the expected surprise.

‘Aber ja!
Of course they spoke with me,' the old man said importantly, ‘and I showed them the register with the names, and said that, as always, the passports had been sent to the Polizei—this is done in all hotels here. But then the police brought out a photograph and asked if I recognised it as that of the Fräulein Armitage? This is most unusual; in thirty years such a thing has never happened to me.'

‘And was it of her?' Julia asked, delighted at this evidence that her clipping from
Paris-Match
was being used.

‘Gewiss!
It was badly done, on shiny paper, but certainly it was this poor young lady's picture—though why the Polizei should seek
her,
I cannot understand. And while I was looking at it—here at this desk, where we stand—up comes Mister de Ritter himself to ask some question of me, and sees the photograph, and may have heard the questions asked by the police, for all I know.'

‘Good heavens! So then what happened?'

The porter was enjoying his dramatic recital.

‘Oh, I know my duties! It is not my business to give away our clients to the police, whatever I myself may think of them.
“Moment”
I say—and of Herr de Ritter I ask, “Yes, sir, what can I do for you?” He enquired of me then about the times of the steamer to Iseltwald, on the Brienzer-See; I gave them, and he wrote them down—ah, that is a cool one—while all the time the photograph of Miss Armitage lies on my desk, under his eyes. He looked well at it, and at the two police—though these were in
Zivil.'
(Julia knew that he meant plain clothes.) ‘And he thanked me, and went away.'