CHAPTER VII

Next Morning

It must have been between nine and ten o’clock the next day when Bettina heard voices in the garden.

She was not fully awake; having slept but little during the night and only dozing fitfully since daybreak.

Except for the cold she had not suffered especial discomfort. During the early hours of the evening, accepting the inevitable result of her own action, Bettina had refused to allow herself to become frightened or miserable, as many girls would have done under the same circumstances. This was partly due to her own temperament, but perhaps more to her father’s influence and training. A poor boy, who had made his own way to a distinguished position, Senator Graham had long discussed with Bettina, with whom he was peculiarly intimate, the futility of wasting one’s energy against a set of unimportant circumstances which cannot be overcome.

So when darkness fell and the stars came out and Bettina found herself becoming lonely and unhappy, deliberately she had set about to overcome her mood. This could best be accomplished by thinking not of herself and the uneasiness she was causing Mrs. Burton and her Camp Fire friends, but by entertaining herself with an imaginary story. Having read so many stories recently the effort was not difficult.

So Bettina had pictured to herself a lady of the court of Queen Marie Antoinette, conceiving her as young, stately and reserved, with lovely fair hair, blue eyes and delicate features.

Indeed the heroine of Bettina’s self-told tale, as so often happens with the heroines of one’s imagination, bore a likeness to herself. But with the personal resemblance the analogy ceased.

In Bettina’s romance, Mademoiselle Elise Dupuy is the daughter of a poor French nobleman whose parents desire her marriage to a man of great wealth but far older than herself. Elise is one of the Maids of Honor at Queen Marie Antoinette’s court. Both the King and Queen are also anxious for her marriage, wishing to attach her fiancé to their service.

As the young French girl refuses the marriage she is banished from Court. Hoping she may reconsider her position Queen Marie Antoinette, who has an affection for her as well, has sent her to spend the winter months alone at the Little Trianon. She has a few servants to care for her, but no friends are allowed to see her and no letters are to be written her, save that now and then a letter from the Queen to ask if she has decided to submit her will to those in authority over her.

So strong was Bettina’s creative imagination and so frequent her habit of entertaining herself in secret with the stories that she hoped some day to write, that during the long hours of the night, her little French heroine became a real person to her.

She had a remarkably clear vision of Elise Dupuy walking alone in the Queen’s secret garden three centuries ago. Mam’selle Dupuy wore lovely flowered silk gowns and a flowing mantle and the picture hats which were the fashion of her day.

The point of Bettina Graham’s romance, wherein it differed from more conventional fiction, was that Elise Dupuy had no young lover who made her marriage distasteful.

Instead the young French girl desired to dedicate her life to the service of the women and children of France.

Recalling the past, one must remember that in the days of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the poor of France were starving. Among the nobility and wealthy classes there was no interest in their fate, until after the advent of the French revolution and the execution of the King and Queen.

Therefore, no one sympathized or believed in Elise Dupuy’s self imposed mission, which received no aid or support from her friends. In Bettina’s story, the young French girl, through the assistance of one of the servants at the Little Trianon, who is in accord with her, makes her escape from Versailles to Paris, and there begins her lifework among the poor.

The years pass on and Marie Antoinette is about to be beheaded. Her one friend now is Elise Dupuy, who is herself a working girl and beloved by the people and the leaders of the revolution.

Elise makes an effort to save the Queen but is unsuccessful.

One winter afternoon, returning to the secret garden near the Little Trianon, again she wanders about remembering and regretting her lost friend.

At first she is walking there alone, but later some one joins her, a young man who is her lover, a French workman, a printer by trade and a member of the Sans-Culotte.

At first he pleads vainly for Elise’s love, but in the end she agrees to their marriage, provided she is to be allowed to continue her work among the poor.

Afterwards as the young lovers walk about in the garden together, Bettina’s impressions became more confused.

Half a dozen times during the long night, while in the act of composing her story, Bettina had fallen asleep, only to awaken at intervals and go on with it. In her dreams the story had often grown strangely confused with her own personal experience.

Now, as a matter of fact, long after the coming of day, when first she heard human voices speaking close beside her in the garden, during the first few moments of waking, Bettina had still to struggle between the reality and her dream.

Several hours she had been half seated, half reclining on a small stone settee protected from the wind by evergreens. During the night she had often walked about at different periods of time in order to keep her blood in circulation.

Yet now, trying to rise and ask for aid and also to explain her presence in the garden, Bettina found herself scarcely able to move. She had not realized that she had grown so benumbed and cramped from her exposure to the winter night.

She made an effort to cry out, but found speech as difficult as movement. The voices which had sounded so nearby a short time before were growing less distinct. Unless she could attract some one’s attention immediately, she must remain an indefinite length of time, half frozen and half starved in the Queen’s garden. In all probability no one ever entered it save the gardeners who came in now and then to take care of it.

Bettina’s second effort to call for help was more successful.

The following instant she became aware of a puzzled silence. Then the voices addressed each other again, as if they were questioning their own ears.

A third time Bettina called, making another effort to move forward. Then she knew that some one must have heard her, because the footsteps which had been dying away a short time before were now approaching.

There was a figure in marble nearby, the figure of a Greek girl, and against this Bettina leaned for support, scarcely conscious of what she was doing.

The next moment two persons were standing within a few feet of her, both faces betraying an almost equal astonishment.

The one was an old Frenchman’s, evidently one of the park gardeners, since he had on his working clothes and the insignia of his occupation. His skin, which was weather beaten and wrinkled at all times, now seemed to crinkle into fresh lines through surprise and consternation.

“_Mon Dieu!_” he exclaimed, staring blankly and offering no further aid or suggestion.

His companion was a young man, whom, in spite of her exhausted condition, Bettina recognized at once as one of her own countrymen.

Instantly, whatever his secret astonishment, he came forward and without asking permission, slipped his arm through Bettina’s, having realized that she was hardly able to stand alone.

Yet he had seen an extraordinary picture he was not likely to forget. Against the background of an early winter morning landscape, her arm resting for support upon the arm of a piece of Greek statuary, was a young girl, almost as pale as the marble image.

Her eyes were a deep cornflower blue, her fair hair pushed up under her small fur hat, her lips and the tip of her nose blue with cold. Fortunately for her she wore a close-fitting long fur coat. Yet, in spite of her physical discomfort, she did not look especially disconcerted.

“I am afraid I am rather an unexpected apparition,” she began, speaking slowly and yet finding her voice growing stronger with each word. “Neither have I a very satisfactory explanation for my presence here in this garden, which I know tourists are not supposed to enter. But I was passing by yesterday and seeing an opening in the wall I came in here for a few moments. It is the old story with persons who are too curious. I was not able to find the gate afterwards and spent the night here alone. Will either of you be kind enough to show me the way out? I am afraid my friends have spent a very uncomfortable time because of my stupidity.”

Appreciating the kindness of his intention, nevertheless, Bettina drew her arm from her companion’s clasp, and turned to the French gardener.

She observed an expression in the old man’s face which made her glad of the unexpected presence of one of her own countrymen. The man’s look was undoubtedly troubled and suspicious, and a moment later Bettina was able to appreciate his discomfiture.

“You are looking tired; I am sorry to be compelled to doubt your story,” he responded, speaking in French and with a Frenchman’s innate courtesy.

Then he turned to the younger man.

“You understand my position, sir, I will not be doing my duty unless the young lady can prove that what she has just told me is true. Ever since the war began we have been forced to doubt every story. Now that the war is over until peace is actually declared, and afterwards maybe, France has got to be pretty careful to see that no harm comes to her again from her enemy. The old palace at Versailles is closed just at present, but the Germans are to sign the peace terms in the old Hall of Peace, and it wouldn’t look well if trouble should come to anybody here at Versailles. I have been a gardener in this park for something over a quarter of a century. The young lady must go with me to the proper authorities. They will understand what she has to say better than I can, though it is true she speaks the French language very well.”

Recognizing the justice of the old gardener’s point of view, in spite of her fatigue, Bettina nodded.

“Certainly, I will do whatever you think best. Only I am so very tired and cold and hungry, may I have something to eat and a chance to get warm before I try to talk to anybody?”

Then she turned to the young American.

“I wonder if you would be so good as to telephone my friends and tell them I am all right. I know they have been dreadfully worried about me and, although my story does sound rather improbable, I am sure I shall have no difficulty in proving it. If you will please call up Mrs. Richard Burton, 27 Rue de Varennes, I shall be deeply grateful. My name is Bettina Graham; my father is Senator Graham of Washington and I have been in France for some time helping with the reclamation work.”

“I say, Miss Graham, then I know your father slightly!” the young man exclaimed. “I have been living in Washington for several years, only for the past few weeks I have been in France as one of the unimportant members of the United States Peace Commission.

“My name is David Hale. Of course I will telephone your friends with pleasure, but I think you had best allow me to go along with you afterwards as perhaps I may be useful. I am boarding in Versailles at present because the hotels in Paris are so crowded and by a lucky chance I was allowed to pay a visit to the Queen’s secret garden this morning. I don’t have to go into Paris for several hours, not until the afternoon session of the Peace Commission.”

At this the old gardener, evidently relieved by the turn events had taken, started off, Bettina and her new acquaintance following.

A few feet further along, David Hale, added unexpectedly:

“See here, Miss Graham, you probably may not appreciate the fact, but I have seen you before. I was in Paris the day the armistice was signed, having been sent over to France on a special mission a little time before. On the morning of the great day an American woman, a friend of mine whose son had been killed fighting in France, asked me to place a bouquet on the statue of Alsace Lorraine in the Place de la Concorde. It is queer I should remember perhaps, but you were standing close beside the monument. I call this a piece of good luck.”

Bettina smiled, although not feeling in a particularly cheerful mood.

“I am sure the good luck is mine.”