House That Berry Built Read Online Free PDF Page A

Bel Air.
    We were halfway down this limb – ten minutes’ walk from Lally and ten minutes’ walk from Besse – when I glanced away from the valley and up to my left.
    “My word,” I said, thinking aloud. “But what a site for a house!”
    Though I say it, it was a good place. Though the ground rose more sharply later, the first two lynchet-meadows were none too steep. To the left, a lively rill fell down in leaps and scurries, to brawl through a culvert hidden beneath the road. To the right, some sixty yards up, a bluff rose out of the meadows – a cornice of rock and bracken, neighboured by stripling oaks. This seemed to swell out of the mountain in the most graceful way – a gentle reminder that the hills were older than the meadows and were not the work of men’s hands. At the foot of the bluff, the rock seemed to overhang, almost as if there was a grotto…
    There was a grotto.
    We left the road and slanted across the meadows, to find a dripping well that was sunk in the base of the cliff: tiny ferns made it an arras, and trees hung down their branches to give it shade, and cushions of little, wild blossoms that I had never seen were overlaying its ledges and turning such water as fed them into a delicate fringe.
    Jill was entranced – and had gone in over her ankles before I could draw her back: for the elegant meadow, below the foot of the bluff – it was as pretty a field as I ever saw – was watered day and night by the dripping well. Indeed, where it came to the road, an old stone trough had been let into its wall, to receive the surplus water and hold it for thirsty beasts. An ass was drinking there, as I helped my fair cousin down.
    Regardless of her condition, she led the way back up the road and surveyed the site.
    “Boy, it’s ideal.”
    I sighed.
    “I think it is,” I said. “And if anyone is mug enough to build there, he’ll have to cart all his water for nearly a mile.”
    “But the rill?”
    “Will be half its size in August: and though Berry was putting it high, it isn’t drinking water. You can’t get away from that.”
    “And the dripping well? I’m sure that’s pure, and I don’t believe it dries up.”
    “I agree. If you piped its burden across and then pumped it up, you might get enough to wash your face twice a day. There’s nothing doing, sweetheart. It’s one of those pretty dreams that one has to put up on the shelf; for a house without water to waste is a desolate place. It is the one thing that matters – water, I mean. Life is not worth living, if you’ve got to think before you turn on a tap.”
    With her eyes on the lovely site—
    “I suppose you’re right,” said Jill. “But it does seem meant.”
     
    Breakfast beneath the limes was most agreeable.
    My walk had made me hungry, and I was the only one eating when Berry appeared.
    His resigned expression insisted that something was wrong.
    “Darling,” said Daphne, “I’m sure you had a good night.”
    “Superb,” said her husband. “I was lulled to sleep by the waters over the earth. I wish I could go back to bed and have it again.” He glanced at the flawless heaven before he took his seat. “But all that good is undone. I suppose they haven’t connected the bath to the refrigerator by mistake. I mean, that would explain it.”
    “Five baths off the heater,” said Jonah, “is asking rather a lot.”
    “I only want one bath,” said Berry, selecting a piece of toast. “Just a little dash of warm water, in which to immerse my trunk. This morning there was nothing to choose between the taps. And this blasted rill is snow-broth. It goes clean through you. My large intestine’s quite numb.”
    “Are you suggesting,” said his wife, “that we should give up our baths?”
    “Certainly not,” said Berry. “I will have my women clean.”
    When order had been restored—
    “They’ll have to boil me water,” said Berry. “Boil it in a large vessel and carry it up when I call. Therèse can see