CHAPTER XV

An Intimate Conversation

“Do you like it here, Marguerite? Are you never lonely for the little room in the old house in Paris?”

Marguerite Arnot was seated before a window of a sunny room on the third floor of Miss Patricia’s house in Versailles. The walls were papered with a bright paper, the furniture covered in French chintz and on the table nearby were a heap of soft materials of many colors.

Marguerite was sewing on a piece of blue chiffon. She lifted her eyes from her work to smile on the younger girl beside her who was also occupied in the same fashion.

“Lonely, Julie, for the tiny quarters and the darkness and the dilapidated old house? No, cherie, I am never lonely for unlovely things. But sometimes I do feel lonely for you and for Paris, perhaps because I do not altogether belong here amid so many girls who are strangers to me and amid a greater luxury than I have ever known.”

With a little sigh half of regret and half of physical content, the girl dropped her sewing into her lap for a moment, to gaze admiringly about the charming room.

“I am beginning to enjoy the wealth and beauty and ease too much, Julie. I do not like even to confess to you how I shall regret having to return to the old struggle when the home here is closed and Miss Lord goes back to the devastated French country to continue the reclamation work there. That is what she looks forward to doing. This house was rented only for a season as a holiday place for herself and her friends. When summer arrives and the Peace Conference is probably over, I shall have to go back to the old life in Paris. Still, Julie, you need not look so unhappy! The life we lead is no more difficult for me than for you and indeed as I am older, it should be less so!”

Marguerite Arnot’s present companion was the young French girl, Julie Dupont, to whom the Camp Fire girls had been introduced some time before when Julie was living with a group of friends in a tiny apartment in Paris. During the past few days the young girl had been sharing Marguerite’s room in Miss Lord’s home in Versailles.

Upon learning that Julie, who had always been her devoted friend and admirer, had lost her position and was also ill, Marguerite had decided that she must return to Paris to care for her. Her other friends were too much occupied and Marguerite also understood they could scarcely afford for Julie to continue as a member of their household unless she were able to pay her share of the expenses.

Having saved a little money of her own from the generous sum Miss Patricia paid for her work, Marguerite felt able to bear the responsibility. There was no bond between her and Julie save one of affection, due chiefly to the younger girl’s ardent attachment, nevertheless Marguerite acknowledged its claim.

Miss Patricia, when Marguerite attempted to explain the situation, at first had declined positively to release her from her obligation. Afterwards Miss Patricia invited Julie to spend a few days with her friend while she recovered her strength.

Yet at present it appeared that the brief visit might lengthen indefinitely, Miss Patricia having since decided that Marguerite had too much sewing to accomplish alone and that Julie must remain to assist her.

It developed later that the young French girl’s illness had not been serious. Indeed Marguerite had suspected that it might have been partly due to design. So fervently had Julie desired to see her again, that the illness had doubtless been exaggerated in order to accomplish her purpose. Before this occasion Marguerite had reason to believe Julie’s methods in achieving her purposes were not always perfectly scrupulous.

Now the young girl shook her head with rather an odd expression on her face. It was a clever face and might have been a beautiful one save that it was too thin and sallow and almost too clever. It was perhaps the cleverness of a child who has had to depend too much upon her own resources with no family and few friends to feel an interest in her.

“I don’t see, Marguerite, why you speak of returning to Paris unless you like! The life is harder for you than for me for a number of reasons which we both understand without having to discuss them. Besides, I shall not go back unless you do. I shall always find some reason why we should continue to live together.”

If Marguerite Arnot was not especially pleased by this intimation, she merely smiled:

“I wonder if you would mind informing me, Julie, how I shall manage not to return to my former work in Paris? I certainly hope to be sufficiently fortunate to find persons there who will allow me to sew for them. You and I know no other trade and I don’t think either of us is about to inherit a fortune.”

With a quickness and dexterity, suggesting a kitten leaping at a ball, Julie, threading a fresh needle, plunged it into her sewing.

“No, you have not yet inherited a fortune, but you have had an old woman, said to be fabulously wealthy, take an immense fancy to you. I think, Marguerite, that unless Miss Lord does something really worth while for you, you will have managed very badly. She may make you her heiress.”

The older girl frowned.

“Don’t talk childish nonsense, Julie, as if you had only read fairy stories. Besides, you make us both appear very ungrateful. You must realize that Miss Lord cares more for Mrs. Burton than any one in the world. Moreover, there were seven other girls living in her home before her eyes ever rested upon me. Perhaps one of them would be equally willing to inherit her fortune. Vera Lagerloff is poor and Miss Patricia is particularly fond of her. Vera has told me she expects to remain with Miss Lord in France and return with her to the reclamation work. Besides I really do not think that Miss Patricia displays the slightest sign of surrendering her fortune to any one just at present. Let’s talk of something else.”

Holding up to the light the piece of blue chiffon upon which she was sewing, Marguerite studied it for a moment her attention absorbed by what she was doing.

Julie stopped her work to look at her.

The afternoon sun shone on the older girl’s heavy dark hair, revealing the pure oval of her face, her clear, white skin, the delicate pointed chin and large grey eyes.

Julie then fell to sewing again more rapidly than before.

“Oh well, I don’t see why I am not allowed to say what I wish! There is no harm. You are always too afraid of realities, that is why I do not think, Marguerite, that you are suited to making your own way. But of course, any one who is as pretty as you are, is sure to marry fairly soon, so I suppose I need not trouble about your future!”

This time Marguerite Arnot, in spite of her annoyance, laughed.

“See here, Julie, what a ridiculous child you are. Some of the time you are so wise that one forgets you are only fourteen. Yet you are old enough to understand that I can never marry. In the first place even in ordinary times no French girl marries without her dot and I have nothing. Besides, the war has destroyed nearly a million and a half of our men. If I possessed a dowry perhaps I might some day marry a wounded soldier in order to care for him; I suppose a good many French girls will do this. I do not think I altogether envy them.”

“There are other men to marry beside Frenchmen. I heard the Camp Fire girls talking the other night and they declared no American ever expects his wife to have a dowry unless she happens to be extremely rich in her own right. Even when the parents are wealthy, they rarely give their daughters anything until their death. I have been thinking recently that perhaps a good many of our French girls may marry American soldiers. Indeed I know a few of them who expect to do this. I rather think I should like to marry an American!”

“Well, suppose you do not discuss the subject for another four or five years, Julie,” the other girl answered, perhaps a little primly. “So far as I am concerned I wish you would not talk of it at all.”

“Oh, very well, Marguerite Arnot, but it is because you care too much and not too little,” Julie responded. “What shall we talk about? I can’t sew without talking. Why not tell me all you have been able to find out about the Camp Fire girls? I don’t presume it is very much, but at least it will be enough for me to start on and I can find out the rest later.”

Marguerite sighed, shaking her head in a discouraged fashion.

“Julie, I wish you had known my mother for a few years of your life! She would have been able to teach you what I do not seem to succeed in accomplishing. Yet there are some things one cannot teach a human being, one ought to know them instinctively. And these are the things you so often do not know, Julie, that I can’t tell where to begin with you. But then you have never had any kind of training. Still I shall of course be happy to tell you what I know of the Camp Fire girls since it is only what they have wished me to know.”

Julie shrugged her thin little French shoulders.

“Don’t worry about me, Marguerite! If I never knew my own mother, I had a clever enough father until the war took him from me. So far as the Camp Fire girls are concerned I am not wishing to discover their secrets. You are not fair to me!”

“Then I am very sorry,” the other girl replied. “With whom shall I begin? Bettina Graham’s father is a United States Senator living in the city of Washington. Her mother is very beautiful and an old friend of Mrs. Burton’s. Bettina is not wealthy as Americans think of money, but she is wealthy of course as compared with us. Peggy Webster is Mrs. Burton’s niece, the daughter of her twin sister, and Peggy is engaged to marry the young American lieutenant, whom she knew long ago, when the Camp Fire girls spent a summer near the Arizona desert. I only know what Peggy told me of this herself. Her home is in New Hampshire, where her father owns a large farm. They are not wealthy, Peggy insists, although the young man whom she is to marry has a great deal of money in his family. Sally and Alice Ashton are sisters, unlike as they seem to be, and their father is a physician in Boston. Yvonne Fleury, you know, is a French girl and her parents are dead. She has only her brother left since the war, which killed her mother and younger brother. But you have heard all this before. She and Lieutenant Fleury own a château near the Marne. Mary Gilchrist is an only child and her father has an immense ranch somewhere in the west. Vera Lagerloff’s people are poor farmers. There, have I left out any one or told more than I should? I scarcely know, Julie. I am tired so you will have to let me be quiet for a little while. I know you have not the faintest understanding of half I have told you. How much United States geography did you ever study at school? I am ashamed of the mistakes I have been making recently.”

Not interested in her own ignorance but in her own wisdom, Julie for the moment made no response.

A few moments later, following a knock at the door, a trim French maid entered to say that Miss Patricia desired the two girls to stop their sewing and to go for a walk.

Really it was a puzzle to the various members of her household, the fashion in which Miss Patricia, although apparently occupied with a variety of other concerns, was at the same time able to keep a careful watch upon the welfare of every member of her household. If now and then she was something of a tyrant, at least she had the happiness of her subjects nearer her heart than was her own happiness.

Downstairs, Julie and Marguerite discovered Bettina Graham and David Hale waiting for them. Two or three of the other girls, with Dan Webster and Lieutenant Fleury, had gone on ahead.

“We are going to the park and have our walk there. I thought perhaps you would like to go with us,” Bettina Graham explained.

She turned to her companion.

“You see, Mr. Hale, since my escapade, the other girls in our household have had to suffer for my sins. We are no longer allowed to go any distance from home by ourselves.”

A quarter of an hour later, the little party reached one of the entrances to the great park.

It was now early springtime, the horse chestnut trees were beginning to show green spars on their gray branches, a few of the early shrubs were about ready to blossom.

The President of the United States had again returned to France and once more the peace sessions were holding daily meetings in Paris.

The great Palace of Versailles was still closed. Indoors, however, a spring cleaning was undoubtedly taking place, since the world was at present hopeful that the peace terms would soon be announced and the German envoys invited to France for the signing of the treaty.

At this hour of the afternoon the park was open to the public and a number of persons of varied nationalities were walking about, probably representatives to the Conference and their friends who had come out to Versailles because of the beauty of the spring afternoon.

As the three girls and David Hale entered the park near the Baths of Apollo, Bettina Graham slipped her arm through Julie’s, dropping a little behind in order that Marguerite and David should be able to walk together.

She had been talking to David Hale during their ride on the car and for a few moments while they were awaiting the other girls.

It had struck her that he had watched Marguerite Arnot with a good deal of interest and must therefore wish to be with her.

“Are you so familiar with the park here at Versailles that you have grown tired of it, Julie?” Bettina Graham asked. “I sometimes wonder if it interests French people as much as it does Americans. You have such wonderful parks in Paris as well! But come, let us stop here a moment and look at the view.”

A little distrustfully the young French girl regarded Bettina, having not the least understanding or appreciation of the American girl’s character, her generosity and straightforwardness.

Julie wished Marguerite to have the opportunity to talk with David Hale alone, since it fostered a certain idea she had been cherishing of late. Yet she did not wish altogether to lose sight of them.

“I have never been to Versailles until my visit to Miss Lord and I have never seen the park until this afternoon,” Julie answered a little sullenly.

It was impossible that the two girls should immediately understand each other, separated as they were by race, education and opportunities. Yet as Bettina was the older, the fault was perhaps hers.

Julie appeared to Bettina more of a child than she actually was, only too unchildlike in certain details, because of having had to depend too much upon herself. The younger girl’s personality was really not pleasant to Bettina and she had an odd distrust of her. But this she would not have confessed at this period of their acquaintance even to herself.

She especially hoped to be able to make friends with Julie, feeling that she would particularly like to interest her in the Camp Fire.

“Well, you could scarcely see the park at a more interesting time than this afternoon!” Bettina replied, feeling a little ashamed of the fact that it had not occurred to her that Julie had probably been too poor all her life even for this short excursion from Paris to Versailles.

The two girls were now at the end of the Royal Walk. Beyond them, between long avenues of budding trees, they were able to behold the great Palace, pale yellow in the afternoon sunlight. Nearby was a statue of the Car of Apollo, the Sun God, rising from an artificial lake, his car drawn by four bronze horses.

At this moment, Marguerite Arnot and David Hale were signaling to them. Julie and Bettina walked on toward the others.

This afternoon all the fountains in the park at Versailles were playing.

“Don’t you think, Mr. Hale, this is just as interesting a scene as any in the eighteenth century when all the fashionable world of Paris used to come out here? Still I should like to have seen the costumes of those days, the women in their hoop skirts and later in the fashions of the Empire, the men with their satin coats and knee breeches.”

The four of them were standing still at the moment Bettina made her little speech. She then turned to Marguerite Arnot.

“You see, Miss Arnot, Mr. Hale and I have both been reading a history of France in the eighteenth century which he was kind enough to lend me. That is why I am talking in this learned fashion. Perhaps you would like to read it later?”

Marguerite nodded, as David answered:

“Thought we had agreed, Miss Graham, that Versailles is more interesting at present than at any time in its history.

“I have been trying to recall a few lines of the verse you composed the other day: ‘Now one knows of the foolishness of kings, one learns a new respect for common things.’ Still one can but wonder if a new and democratic world will ever create any place as magnificent as this great park? Remember, you have promised me, if I can obtain the necessary permission, that you will go with me some afternoon to the Queen’s garden, where we had so unexpected an introduction to each other. You should have chosen a warmer night for your adventure. How lovely it must be when the flowers and shrubs are in bloom!”

Bettina flushed and laughed.

“Don’t talk of my adventure; I shall always be ashamed of my curiosity and my stupidity, also of being thought to be either an anarchist or a spy. Perhaps I shall not be able to keep my promise. Who knows whether I shall ever be allowed inside the little garden again!”

This afternoon Bettina was wearing a bright blue cloth coat with a collar of moleskin and a newly purchased French hat, which had the air of having been designed especially for her. Her eyes were clear and brilliant with interest in her companions and their extraordinary surroundings; her color was deeper than usual, her fair hair, suggesting the familiar phrase, encircled her small head like a crown.

Marguerite Arnot smiled, although not unconscious of the contrast between her own simple black costume and Bettina’s, and of the deeper contrast in their two lives.

“In spite of Miss Graham’s objection to kings, I believe her family and friends oftentimes call her ‘Princess’.”

This time Bettina really was embarrassed.

“Please don’t hold me responsible. I only owe that title to the fact that my father used to tease and flatter me by allowing me to play I was the little princess of the fairy stories we used to read together. No one has less right to the title!”

Weary of Bettina’s appearing the center of the attention, Julie now made an effort to draw her away.

“You promised to show me more of the gardens, Miss Graham. Please let us walk on toward the Fountain Gardens. Marguerite and Mr. Hale will follow or else we can come back here for them,” she pleaded.

During the remainder of the afternoon Julie managed to remain always with Bettina, keeping her separated from any intimate conversation with David Hale.