DIPLOMACY
"We are not foreigners; we are English; it is _you_ that are
foreigners."--An English Lady Abroad.
When Dr. O'Grady and Aurelle had succeeded, with some difficulty, in
obtaining a room from old Madame de Vauclere, Colonel Parker went
over to see them and was charmed with the chateau and the park.
France and England, he said, were the only two countries in which
fine gardens were to be found, and he told the story of the American
who asked the secret of those well-mown lawns and was answered,
"Nothing is simpler: water them for twelve hundred years."
Then he inquired timidly whether he also might not be quartered at
the chateau.
"It wouldn't do very well, sir; Madame is mortally afraid of
new-comers, and she has a right, being a widow, to refuse to billet
you."
"Aurelle, my boy, do be a good fellow, and go and arrange matters."
After much complaining, Madame de Vauclere consented to put the
colonel up: all her sons were officers, and she could not withstand
sentimental arguments for very long.
The next day Parker's orderly joined the doctor's in the chateau
kitchen, and together they annexed the fireplace. To make room for
their own utensils, they took down a lot of comical little French
articles, removed what they saw no use for, put the kettle on, and
whistled hymns as they filled the cupboards with tins of boot polish
in scientifically graded rows.
After adoring them on the first day, putting up with them on the
second, and cursing them on the third, the old cook came up to
Aurelle with many lamentations, and dwelt at some length on the sad
state of her saucepans; but she found the interpreter dealing with
far more serious problems.
Colonel Parker, suddenly realizing that it was inconvenient for the
general to be quartered away from his Staff, had decided to transfer
the whole H.Q. to the chateau of Vauclere.
"Explain to the old lady that I want a very good room for the
general, and the billiard-room for our clerks."
"Why, it's impossible, sir; she has no good room left."
"What about her own?" said Colonel Parker.
Madame de Vauclere, heart-broken, but vanquished by the magic word
"General," which Aurelle kept on repeating sixty times a minute,
tearfully abandoned her canopied bed and her red damask chairs,
and took refuge on the second floor.
Meanwhile the drawing-room with its ancient tapestries was filled
with an army of phlegmatic clerks occupied in heaping up innumerable
cases containing the history in triplicate of the Division, its men,
horses, arms and achievements.
"Maps" set up his drawing-board on a couple of arm-chairs;
"Intelligence" concealed their secrets in an Aubusson boudoir; and
the telephone men sauntered about in the dignified, slow, bantering
fashion of the British workman. They set up their wires in the park,
and cut branches off the oaks and lime trees; they bored holes in the
old walls, and, as they wished to sleep near their work they put up
tents on the lawns.
The Staff asked for their horses; and the animals were picketed in
the garden walks, as the stables were too small. In the garden
the Engineers made a dug-out in case of a possible bombardment.
The orderlies' football developed a distinct liking for the
window-panes of the summer-house. The park assumed the aspect
first of a building site and then of a training camp, and new-comers
said, "These French gardens _are_ badly kept!"
This methodical work of destruction had been going on for about a
week when "Intelligence" got going.
"Intelligence" was represented at the Division by Captain Forbes.
Forbes, who had never yet arrested a real spy, saw potential spies
everywhere, and as he was fond of the company of the great, he always
made his suspicions a pretext for going to see General Bramble or
Colonel Parker. One day he remained closeted for an hour with the
colonel, who summoned Aurelle as soon as he had left.
"Do you know," he said to him, "there are most dangerous things
going on here. Two old women are constantly being seen in this
chateau. What the deuce are they up to?"
"What do you mean?" gasped Aurelle. "This is their house, sir; it's
Madame de Vauclere and her maid."
"Well, you go and tell them from me to clear out as soon as possible.
The presence of civilians among a Staff cannot be tolerated; the
Intelligence people have complained about it, and they are perfectly
right."
"But where are they to go to, sir?"
"That's no concern of mine."
Aurelle turned round furiously and left the room. Coming across Dr.
O'Grady in the park, he asked his advice about the matter.
"Why, doctor, she had a perfect right to refuse to billet us, and
from a military point of view we should certainly be better off at
Nieppe. She was asked to do us a favour, she grants it, and her
kindness is taken as a reason for her expulsion! I can't 'evacuate
her to the rear,' as Forbes would say; she'd die of it!"
"I should have thought," said the doctor, "that after three years you
knew the British temperament better than this. Just go and tell the
colonel, politely and firmly, that you refuse to carry out his
orders. Then depict Madame de Vauclere's situation in your grandest
and most tragic manner. Tell him her family has been living in the
chateau for the last two thousand years, that one of her ancestors
came over to England with William the Conqueror, and that her
grandfather was a friend of Queen Victoria's. Then the colonel will
apologize and place a whole wing at the disposal of your
_protegee_."
Dr. O'Grady's prescription was carried out in detail by Aurelle with
most satisfactory results.
"You are right," said the colonel, "Forbes is a damned idiot. The old
lady can stay on, and if anybody annoys her, let her come to me."
"It's all these servants who are such a nuisance to her, sir," said
Aurelle. "It's very painful for her to see her own house turned
upside-down."
"Upside-down?" gasped the colonel. "Why, the house is far better kept
than it was in her time. I have had the water in the cisterns
analysed; I have had sweet-peas planted and the tennis lawn rolled.
What can she complain of?"
In the well-appointed kitchen garden, where stout-limbed pear trees
bordered square beds of sprouting lettuce, Aurelle joined O'Grady.
"Doctor, you're a great man, and my old lady is saved. But it appears
she ought to thank her lucky stars for having placed her under the
British Protectorate, which, in exchange for her freedom, provides
her with a faultless tennis lawn and microbeless water."
"There is nothing," said the doctor gravely, "that the British
Government is not ready to do for the good of the natives."