Free The Numbered Account by Ann Bridge Page B

form of life completely new to her, which she both admired and enjoyed. She got quite accustomed, when she went to the bathroom at 7 a.m., to seeing her hostess, in an enveloping check overall, with a cotton kerchief framing her beautiful face, pushing one of those heavy lead-weighted polishing pads on a long handle to and fro across the broad beechen planks on the wide landing, or rubbing up the walnut table and the other pretty pieces of old furniture which ornamented it with real beeswax, mixed with turpentine in a small earthenware jar; the same of course went on downstairs in the hall, the
salon
, the
salle à manger
and the Pastor’s study—and later in the bedrooms: theirs, hers, Marcel’s. In the house-work—which was usually finished soon after ten—Julia was never allowed to take any part except to make her own bed, and this only under protest; but in other ways she did what she could to help Germaine. She took plates and cups out of the Swiss version of the Dish-Master and stowed them in cupboards; she picked peas and shelled them, sitting under the arbour of pleached limes in the garden, and did the same for the broad beans; she gathered the first strawberries, weeded the borders, and propped up with twigs gathered from the rubbish-heap the superb white peonies which filled them. Sometimes, if she was in time, she laid the table for lunch.
    But these were morning occupations; in the afternoons the Pastor, whenever he could, took her out on his rounds to show her the country-side. This was green and gently rolling, with cherries ripening in the orchards and along the road-sides, and the usual Swiss air of good cultivation and prosperity; here and there were small blue lakes. The villages were often charming, as well as spotlessly clean, and one or two of the old towns—like Murtag, with its broad street of lovely arcaded buildings—beautiful to a degree. Julia felt ignorant and foolish, in that she had never heard of Murtag; nor had she realised that half the Canton was Protestant and half Catholic, as the Pastor now told her, pointing out the different churches in place after place—sometimes both in one village, more often a different form of worship in each settlement.
    But most of all she was interested by her host’s conversation. As with literature, where his work was concerned he was both intensely practical, and rather original in his views. His parish was vast and straggling, eighteen miles one way by twenty or more the other, and he scorched about it in a big Frégate. So Julia was surprised to hear him say one day, when they were discussing the problems confronting the modern world, that he regarded
l’auto
as the enemy of the good life.
    â€˜I should have thought a car was essential for you, simply to cover the ground,’ she protested.
    â€˜It depends on how usefully I cover it,’ he said. ‘WhenI walked, or even bicycled thirty kilometres to reason with my parishioners about their misdeeds, or to pray with them, they listened to me, for they felt that I had taken some trouble on their account; when I drive up in a car they do not pay half as much attention, and will almost interrupt my exhortations to ask what she will do at full stretch! It has completely altered their attitude, and our relationship.’
    â€˜Well, couldn’t you still bicycle about?’
    â€˜Miss Probyn, I am 60 years old—and the work grows from year to year, as the State impinges more and more on individual lives. I spend half my day now at my desk,
tracassé
by filling in forms, or helping others to fill in their forms, when thirty years ago I could spend all my time on my proper task, that of a shepherd of souls.
Les paperasses
are even more of an enemy of the good life than
l’auto!’
    But on the whole Jean-Pierre de Ritter was optimistic about the present, and the future, of religion.
    â€˜The eruption of evil in the world which the last