House That Berry Built by Dornford Yates Read Free Book Online

Find It in Two Days’ Time
     
    The summer days went by, and the country about us tightened the spell it had cast. If ever we drove down to Pau, we were actually relieved to get back. Twice the clouds came down, to swathe Bel Air in their delicate folds of moisture for twenty-four hours. On the second occasion, the five of us walked in cloud halfway to the Col de Fer. By road, of course. The exercise acted like a cure. I never remember feeling fitter in all my life. And the music of the orchestra of waters we could not see was unforgettable.
    Old Rowley’s death was forgotten – or so it seemed. Jonah had written to Falcon, but the latter’s courteous acknowledgment had given no news.
    It was, I shall always remember, upon the first day of July that we took the two cars and drove to Paradise. This was one of the loveliest places we had found, and it lay perhaps thirty minutes from our front door.
    To reach it, we ran through Lally, turned to the right and on to the road to Pau: before we came to Nareth, we switched to the left, threading a thunderous gorge and taking the curling road which climbed by Cluny and Jules up to the Spanish frontier some twenty-five miles off. Some of the handsomest country lay this way, and he who left the road could have it all to himself. Once in a while, a tent would argue the presence of some enthusiast: sometimes a lonely angler fished some stream: but ninety per cent of the visitors stuck to the road, content to survey the prospects which we went up to and proved. But we were not visitors. Living among them, we had the freedom of the hills.
    We slowed through the village of Cluny, hanging on our heel at the Customs, to give our assurance that we were not bound for Spain: then we swept on up the gorge, for a short two miles. And there we left the road for a ramp on the left.
    Few would have marked this track, for the beeches grew thick about it, interlacing their boughs above it, as though to keep it hidden from curious eyes. Fewer still would have taken this track, for who could say that you could turn, when once you were down? And it was not a place up which to drive a car backwards… But turn you could, at the foot of the shadowed ramp; or you could berth your car there and, getting out, take your choice of the pleasances there displayed. Each was five minutes’ walk, and it always seemed strange to me that two so different havens should have lain side by side.
    Turn to the left, and you came to a blowing meadow of fine, sweet grass. It was very small, very retired, with oaks and chestnuts about it, to offer a grateful shade. It was a true mountain lawn; but it might have been plucked from the English countryside. Lying there, supine, by merely moving his eyes, a man could command on all sides the peaks of the Pyrénées, could mark their bulwarks and tell their glorious towers, observe their hanging forests and glancing falls, could doze and dream of beauty – and wake to find the truth more lovely still.
    Turn to the right, and you came to a little path which led some sixty feet down to the torrent’s bed. To more than its bed – to a natural bathing-pool. Fringed by a strip of sand, this actually shelved to a depth of eleven feet. In fact, for a third of the year, the torrent passed it by, detailing a waterfall to feed it and keep its burden running and ever fresh. Because it lay full in the sun, except in its depths, it was never cold as the torrent, while the burly rocks about it grew hot and gave off heat.
    Little wonder we gave such perfection the name of Paradise.
    This particular morning we spent at the pool, and I have a photograph still which Carson took. Watched by Jill and Therèse, Daphne and Berry are playing a game of backgammon upon the strand; Jonah is waist-deep in the water; and I am poised on a rock, about to dive.
    At one we adjourned to the meadow, and there, despite Berry’s misgivings, we ate our lunch.
    It was then that we spoke of the virtue of Lally’s