The Doctor waved the old woman away. Her keen eyes watched too sharply. Then, with their elbows on the table, they had a long and heated argument. Probably there were more things touched on than the garden. Who knows? At the end of it the Divorcée walked away down that garden vista, and the old woman was called and the Doctor took her at her word. And out of that arrangement emerged the scheme which resulted in our finding ourselves, a year later, within the old walls of that French garden.
Of course a year's work had been done on the interior, and Doctor and Divorcée had scoured the department for old furniture. Water had been brought a great distance, a garage had been built with servants' quarters over it—there were no servants in the house,—but the look of the place, we were assured, had not been changed, and both Doctor and Divorcée declared that they had had the year of their lives. Well, if they had, the place showed it.
But, as Fate would have it, the second night we sat down to dinner in that garden, news had come of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand-Charles-Louis Joseph-Marie d'Autriche-Este, whom the tragic death of Prince Rudolphe, almost exactly twenty-four years and six months earlier to a day, had made Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary—and the tone of our gathering was changed. From that day the party threatened to become a little Bedlam, and the garden a rostrum.
In the earlier days it did not make so much difference. The talk was good. We were a travelled group, and what with reminiscences of people and places, and the scandal of courts, it was far from being dull. But as the days went on, and the war clouds began to gather, the overcharged air seemed to get on the nerves of the entire group, and instead of the peaceful summer we had counted upon, every one of us seemed to live in his own particular kind of fever. Every one of us, down to the Youngster, had fixed ideas, deep-set theories, and convictions as different as our characters, our lives, our callings, and our faiths. We were all Cosmopolitan Americans, but ready to spread the Eagle, if necessary, and all of us, except the Violinist, of New England extraction, which means really of English blood, and that will show when the screws are put on. We had never thought of the Violinist as not one of us, but he was really of Polish origin. His great-grandfather had been a companion of Adam Czartoriski in the uprising of 1830, and had gone to the States when the amnesty was not extended to his chief after that rebellion, Poland's last, had been stamped out.
As well as I can remember it was the night of August 6th that the first serious dispute arose. England had declared war. All our male servants had left us except two American chauffeurs, and a couple of old outside men. Two of our four cars, and all our horses but one had been requisitioned. That did not upset us. We had taken on the wives of some of the men, among them Angéle, the pretty wife of one of the French chauffeurs, and her two-months-old baby into the bargain. We still had two cars, that, at a pinch, would carry the party, and we still had one mount in case of necessity.
The question arose as to whether we should break up and make for the nearest port while we could, or "stick it out." It had been finally agreed not to evacuate—yet. One does not often get such a chance to see a country at war, and we were all ardent spectators, and all unattached. I imagine not one of us had at that time any idea of being useful—the stupendousness of it all had not dawned on any of us—unless it was the Doctor.
But after the decision of "stick" had been passed unanimously, the Critic, who was a bit of a sentimentalist, and if he were anything else was a Norman Angel-lite, stuck his hands in his pockets, and remarked: "After all, it is perfectly safe to stay, especially now that England is coming in."
"You think so?" said the Doctor.
"Sure," smiled the Critic. "The Germans will never cross the French frontier this time. This is not 1870."
"Won't they, and isn't it?" replied the Doctor sharply.