House That Berry Built by Dornford Yates Read Free Book Online Page A

water…
    Berry emptied his glass and called to Carson for another bottle of beer.
    “I do take it,” he said. “I take it in my coffee and quite a lot of it goes to the preparation of my food. I probably swallow some when cleaning my teeth.”
    “Not that water,” said my sister. “The other. The – the thermal spring. The stuff that invalids drink. It’s warm and sulphurous.”
    “All right. You take it,” said her husband. “I’ve more respect for my stomach. I’m not going to insult it with a beverage reminiscent of rotten eggs.”
    “Roger says it’s not bad,” said Daphne, “and terribly good for the chest. He says, if you drink it, you never have a cold the next winter. And here it is, at our door.”
    “Have you entered the establishment?” said Berry. “And seen the vomitories?”
    My sister repressed a shoulder – which meant that she had.
    “You don’t have to use them,” she said. “They just give you your dose, and then you go out and sip it.”
    “If I’m going to be sick,” said Berry, “I’d rather—”
    “Be quiet,” said Daphne. “Nobody’s going to be sick. And they’re not vomi – vomidaries. They’re for gargling.”
    “The one day I was there,” said Berry, “there was a very large woman—”
    Shrieks of protest cut short the memory.
    “I know,” said Daphne. “It’s filthy. It oughtn’t to be allowed. But that doesn’t alter the fact that the water is beneficial. I think it’s absurd not to take it.”
    “My sweet,” said her husband, “for all I care, you can drink a gallon a day. I decline to be interested in an evil-smelling liquor which wells from the bowels of the earth. When you spoke of ‘the Lally water’, I thought you meant that exquisite crystal fount which serves the taps of Lally, the surplus of which runs in the gutters of Lally by day and night, while we, who live five hundred yards off, must have it dragged to our door in a donkey-cart. Now if we had that on tap – well, I shouldn’t drink it all the time, but if we ran out of beer, you never know.”
    It was about half-past two that Jill and Jonah and I strolled out of the meadow towards the forest-clad heights which were opposed to those upon which the road had been cut.
    Our way led past a toy barn: that this belonged to the meadow was very clear, for it was built against it, just under the lea of a rise.
    Where there is grass in the mountains, there is always a barn, substantially built, as a rule, with dry stone walls and a carefully slated roof. In the upper part, under the slates, the hay is stacked, while the lower part, unfloored, is used as a byre.
    Jonah spoke over his shoulder.
    “If I believed in camping, I think I should make an endeavour to buy this place. The barn and the meadow, I mean. Half an hour’s walk from Cluny…good shelter against rough weather, which you could elaborate…a bathing-pool at hand…and utter privacy.”
    I nodded.
    “You could spend five months of the year here. No doubt about that.”
    “Why don’t we do it?” said Jill.
    “Because, my sweet, I am too old for camping – unless I must. If I’ve got to do it, I will: but I like to get home to dinner, and a well-found bathroom suits me down to the socks. The lusts of the flesh get a grip, when you’re over a certain age. As you are ageless, you can’t appreciate that.”
    “Comfort first,” said Jonah, and left it there.
    We climbed for twenty-five minutes between the trees: then we bore to the right, to gain a broad ledge or plateau, commanding the gorge we had left. We were now high above the road on the opposite side – we could see a car crawling upon it, making its way towards Spain. Far below us lay the meadow, where Daphne was sitting by Berry, still fast asleep. Therèse was talking to her, but Carson was not to be seen.
    “Higher,” said Jill, relentlessly.
    Nearly an hour went by before we passed out of the forest on to a second plateau which fairly deserved that