CHAPTER XIV
Foundation Stones
Some days later a number of guests were entertained informally by Miss Lord at her house in Versailles. The trip into the French country had been depressing and if Miss Patricia’s ideas for future work in France were still a little far distant, this was not true with the plans of the Camp Fire girls.
For weeks they had been meeting other groups of girls in the city of Paris and interesting them in their program for establishing a French Camp Fire organization. They had written to the central organization in the United States asking them to get in touch with the French for a mutual exchange of ideas. Moreover, Mrs. Burton had also persuaded a woman of unusual charm and high position to take over the work of the French Camp Fire and become its first guardian.
But the group of girls who were invited by Miss Lord to her home at Versailles were the original group of poor French girls who were Marguerite Arnot’s friends.
Miss Patricia also suggested to Yvonne Fleury that she include her acquaintances in the same invitation.
“As a matter of fact, Yvonne,” she insisted, “if democracy is to be the order of the day, I don’t see why we should not try to practice it among the groups of Camp Fire girls. I’ve an idea poor girls may be more in need of just the help the Camp Fire can give than the rich. Also I would like to see a little more democracy practiced in our own household at the present time. You girls and Polly Burton must remember that I was once as poor a girl as one could find in the county of Cork and that is saying a good deal. No one need think I forget it! Now I have no mind to be spoiling any of you by our own fine living for the next few months. This is merely my way of celebrating the dawn of peace and perhaps of rewarding you girls for the sacrifices you made during the war. But if your friends, Yvonne, think they are too fine to meet Marguerite Arnot’s friends and to be members of the same Camp Fire group, then in faith I shall have nothing to do with them and never want them in my house! Of course you may do as you like, Yvonne. Don’t ask them to come here if you think they will object to meeting Marguerite, her friends or me. Neither be a telling of them that Polly Burton is a famous actress and so making them wish to come for that reason. A famous actress Polly may be, but she is often an obstinate and mistaken woman.”
Without allowing Yvonne opportunity to reply, which was altogether like her, Miss Patricia then withdrew.
Nevertheless, Yvonne thought she understood Miss Patricia’s point of view. She also recognized the difficulty which lay behind it.
Originally there had been a mild argument between Mrs. Burton and Miss Patricia on the question of introducing Marguerite Arnot into their Camp Fire family at Versailles. Mrs. Burton was not stupid enough to find fault with Marguerite’s occupation; she had always insisted that she had made her own living by acting from the time she was a young girl, and that therefore persons who felt a sense of superiority to other working women, must also feel superior to her. But she did consider that Miss Patricia had not sufficient knowledge of Marguerite Arnot’s character, or of her previous associations to have so soon invited her into their household. She should have waited until she learned to know her more intimately. There was a possibility that Marguerite herself might not be happy with them under the conditions Miss Patricia had arranged. Her presence might in some way affect the complete happiness of the Camp Fire girls.
But Miss Patricia had prevailed, and Yvonne was fairly well able to guess what she must have said to her adored but often thwarted friend.
“You yourself, Polly Burton, invited Yvonne Fleury into our Camp Fire family when you met on shipboard and knew nothing but what she chose to tell you of herself. You likewise extended the same invitation to Mary Gilchrist. I made no objection. Please remember that Marguerite Arnot is now my choice.”
And of course, since the house at Versailles was Miss Patricia’s and since Mrs. Burton’s objection had not been a serious one, Miss Patricia had had her way.
Up to the present time, Mrs. Burton would have been the first person to acknowledge that she had found no criticism in Marguerite Arnot’s behavior. Never had she showed the slightest effort to take advantage of Miss Patricia’s kindness. Moreover, Mrs. Burton, and each one of the Camp Fire girls, had personal reasons for being grateful to her. She had made several of the girls prettier clothes in the last few weeks than they had ever possessed in their lives.
And she always seemed to make a special effort in her work for Mrs. Burton.
So Yvonne went away to her room where she wrote notes asking her four girl friends, who formed the nucleus of another French Camp Fire unit, to luncheon on the following Saturday. She had sufficient faith to believe they would not feel as Miss Patricia had intimated and her faith was justified.
Mrs. Burton had invited as her guest, Madame Clermont, who had promised to take charge of the Camp Fire organization in France. Madame Clermont was in reality an American woman, but she had lived long in France and both looked and talked like a French woman, so that it was difficult not to think of her as one. As a matter of fact she had studied music in Paris for fifteen years and sung at the Opera Comique before marrying a Frenchman.
She and Mrs. Burton had known each other slightly for some time, but their acquaintance had developed into a friendship in the interest of the new Camp Fire movement for French as well as for American girls.
In the original plan for Miss Lord’s luncheon party, there had been no idea of including any masculine guests. As a matter of fact in a somewhat skilful fashion they invited themselves. But since Miss Patricia did not refuse to allow them to be present, she must really have desired their society.
After meeting Sally Ashton so unexpectedly in the streets of Paris, Dan Webster had returned home with them for the evening, but later had received official permission to spend several weeks with his sister, Peggy Webster, and his aunt, Mrs. Burton, in the interval before going home to the United States.
Dan was ill from starvation and from his long confinement in a German prison. Mrs. Burton therefore thought it best that he secure a room in their immediate neighborhood and have his meals with them.
This arrangement did not please Miss Patricia, who appreciated the embarrassment of including one young man in a family of girls. However, as Dan was Mrs. Burton’s nephew and assuredly needed care, she had made no protest.
Later, as usual Miss Patricia had devoted herself to spoiling Dan rather more than any one else.
On the day of her luncheon it was Dan who pleaded that Aunt Patricia allow him to appear. Otherwise he was sure he must suffer with hunger through a long winter day. No food to be had at any restaurant could compare with Miss Patricia’s. As Miss Patricia agreed with him in this and her own housekeeping was one of her vanities, Dan had been the entering masculine wedge into the luncheon party.
The fact that Dan Webster must not be the only man present, had been Lieutenant Fleury’s plea. Besides, he and Miss Patricia were such old friends, after his visit to her at her farmhouse on the Aisne, that Lieutenant Fleury had protested he could not endure to be cut off from Miss Patricia’s society for a single day.
Hearing of Dan’s and Lieutenant Fleury’s good fortune, David Hale had simply looked at Miss Patricia with such unuttered reproach, that she really did weaken to the extent of inviting him.
“Young man, I presume you think one more guest cannot make any difference when I have already asked twice as many people as my house can accommodate. You are mistaken. Nevertheless, come along to lunch if you like. No one will have enough to eat, but I would have you on my conscience if you should feel hurt at being left out. Not that you would have the faintest right to be hurt, David Hale. You are absolutely nothing to any of us except a new acquaintance.”
After arguing that he was really a great deal more to her than a mere acquaintance, but that Miss Patricia was so far unwilling to acknowledge it, David Hale appeared at the hour of the luncheon with as much cheerfulness as if he had been the most sought after of all the guests.
Following a buffet luncheon, at which the three young men had proved themselves extremely useful in helping to serve the guests, who could not be seated at the table, they were invited to go away until after a meeting of the Camp Fire.
At the present moment it was four o’clock in the afternoon and the Camp Fire ceremony had ended.
The girls were talking together in small groups, Miss Patricia was not in the room, Mrs. Burton and Madame Clermont were arranging for an engagement for the theatre in Paris.
“I wonder if you would mind singing for us?” Mrs. Burton asked. “Please don’t if it would trouble you. But I’ve an idea no one of the girls here has ever heard so beautiful a voice as yours!”
Madame Clermont smiled.
“Of course I shall love to sing. As a matter of fact I have been wounded that you have not asked me before. So it does not require one half that Irish flattery of yours to persuade me! Have you any of your Camp Fire music here with you?”
The next half hour the Camp Fire girls listened for the first time in their lives to the Camp Fire music sung by a great artist.
In the meantime Miss Patricia wandered back into her drawing room, bringing with her the three young men whom she had found in hiding in her little private sitting room on the second floor of the house.
Later Miss Patricia asked for the final song. Madame Clermont had just announced that she could sing but one more song.
“Then do sing something more adapted to your voice. This Camp Fire music is fanciful and pretty, but it is intended for young girls and not for you,” Miss Patricia commented with her usual directness.
“Hasn’t some one written a song of peace? We have heard enough of the Hymn of Hate for the past four years?”
Madame Clermont, who evidently understood and was amused by Miss Patricia’s plain speaking turned at once to answer.
“No, Miss Patricia, I have not yet learned a new hymn of peace. We must wait until peace actually arrives before the great song of it can be written. But I would like you to give me your opinion of a song I have just set to music. The verses I found in a New York newspaper and think very wonderful. They tell the story of the visit of a King to France in the old days and then of the coming of our President. I hope you may at least admire the poem as much as I do, even though I may have failed with the music.”
Madame Clermont’s voice was a mezzo soprano with a true dramatic quality. Into her present song she put the emotion which France and America had been sharing in the past few weeks.
The Old Regime
The banners breast the boulevard,
The crowds stretch gray and dim;
The royal guest nods lightly toward
The folk that cheer for him.
The King sets out his troops to show
The envoy speaks him fair;
His eye, it never wavers from
From the soldiers marching there.
Oh, its gold lace and blue lace
And troops in brave array;
And it’s your heart and my heart
Must bleed for it some day.
The Hostess-Queen is fair tonight,
Her pearls burn great and dim;
The visitor bows low upon
The hand she proffers him.
The King’s old crafty counselors
Sit at the banquet late,
Their secret compact safely signed
And sealed with seals of State.
Oh, it is one year or two years,
Or twenty years or ten,
Till in the murk of No Man’s Land
We’ll pay – we common men.
The New Day
The folks outsurge the boulevard;
Without a crown or sword,
A plain man greets the crowds today —
They wait a plain man’s word.
The hoarse and harrowed peoples wait;
For they and theirs – the dead —
Have all the savings of their hope
With dim deposited.
A democrat, a democrat
Rides with the Kings today:
And can it be the people’s turn,
And must the rulers pay?
Having finished Madame Clermont came and stood before Miss Patricia.
“I hope my song was not too long and that I have not bored you. Thank you for my charming afternoon. I hope I may come to see you at some other time.”
Although intending no ungraciousness, Miss Patricia did not reply, instead allowing Mrs. Burton to answer for her. And this was because on one of the few occasions in her life she was permitting herself the enjoyment of a few, hardly wrung tears. Madame Clermont’s song had stirred Miss Patricia’s gallant spirit, with its warm sympathy and love of justice.
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!”