Told in a French Garden | Page 3

it, when he bought it at the death of my father--it was to settle with the rest of the heirs--we were eight then. They are all dead but me. But no, no one will ever pay that price, so I may as well let it go to my niece. She is the last. She doesn't need it. She has land enough. The cultivator has a hard time these days. It is as much as I can do to make the old place feed me and pay the taxes, and I am getting old. But no one will ever pay the price, and what will my brother think of me when the bon Dieu calls me, if I sell it for less than he paid? As for that, I don't know what he'll say to me for selling it at all. But I am getting old to live here alone--all alone. But no one will ever pay the price. So I may as well die here, and then my brother can't blame me. But it is lonely now, and I am growing too old. Besides, I don't suppose you want to buy it. What would a gentleman do with this?"
"Well," said the Doctor, "I don't really know what a _gentleman would_ do with it," and he added, under his breath, in English, "but I know mighty well what this fellow could do with it, if he could get it," and he lighted a fresh cigarette.
The keen old eyes had watched his face.
"I don't suppose you want to buy it?" she persisted.
"Well," responded the Doctor, "how can a poor man like me say, if you don't care to name your price, and unless that price is within reason?"
After some minutes of hesitation the old woman drew a deep breath. "Well," she said, with the determination of one who expected to be scoffed at, "I won't take a sou less than my brother paid."
"Come on, Mother," said the Doctor, "what did your brother pay? No nonsense, you know."
"Well, if you must know--it was FIVE THOUSAND FRANCS, and I can't and won't sell it for less. There, now!"
There was a long silence.
The Doctor and his companion avoided one another's eyes. After a while, he said in an undertone, in English: "By Jove, I'm going to buy it."
"No, no," remonstrated his companion, her eyes gazing down the garden vista to where the wistaria and clematis and flaming trumpet flower flaunted on the old wall. "I am going to have it--I thought of it first. I want it."
"So do I," laughed the Doctor. "Never wanted anything more in all my life."
"For how long," she asked, "would a rover like you want this?"
"Rover yourself! And you? Besides what difference does it make how long I want it--since I want it now? I want to give a party--haven't given a party since--since Class Day."
The Divorcée sighed. Still gazing down the garden she said quietly: "How well I remember--ninety-two!"
Then there was another silence before she turned to him suddenly: "See here--all this is very irregular-so, that being the case--why shouldn't we buy it together? We know each other. Neither of us will ever stay here long. One summer apiece will satisfy us, though it is lovely. Be a sport. We'll draw lots as to who is to have the first party."
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