was the hospital good for if they couldn't cure her? She grew
suspicious, hinting dark things to me about the doctors. They were
keeping her there to try experiments on her, and she was a respectable
woman, and always had been, and she did not like to be stared at in her
bed by a lot of young fellows. The nurses were as bad. But once out of
their clutches she would be "bonny" again, she knew. Probably the
doctors and nurses knew too, for the same suspicion is more often than
not their reward; and indeed it was so unlike Trimmer that she must have
picked it up in the ward. Anyway, in their kindness they had kept her
far longer than is usual in such cases, and when they saw her grow
restless and unhappy, it seemed best to let her go. At the end of four
months, and to her infinite joy, Trimmer, five years older than when she
came to us, in the advanced stage of an incurable disease, with a
capital of seven pounds and fifteen shillings, was free to begin life
again.
I pass quickly over the next weeks,--I wish I could have passed over
them as quickly at the time. My visits were now to a drab quarter on the
outskirts of Camden Town, where Trimmer had set up as a capitalist. She
boarded with her cousin, many shillings of her little store going to pay
the weekly bill; she found a wonderful doctor who promised to cure her
in no time, and into his pockets the rest of her savings flowed. There
was no persuading her that he could not succeed where the doctors at the
hospital had failed, and so long as she went to him, to help her would
only have meant more shillings for an unscrupulous quack who traded on
the ignorance and credulity of the poor. Week by week I saw her grow
feebler, week by week I knew her little capital was dribbling fast away.
She seemed haunted by the dread that her place would be taken in our
chambers, and that, once cured, she would have to hunt for another. That
she was "bonny" was the beginning and end of all she had to say. One
morning, to prove it, she managed to drag herself down to see us,
arriving with just strength enough to stagger into my room, her arms
outstretched to feel her way, for the disease, by this time, was
affecting both eyes and brain. Nothing would satisfy her until she had
gone into the studio, stumbling about among the portfolios, I on one
side, on the other J., with no desire to wring her neck for it was grim
tragedy we were guiding between us,--tragedy in rusty black with a
reticule hanging from one arm,--five years nearer the end than when
first the curtain rose upon it in our chambers. We bundled her off as
fast as we could, in a cab, with the cousin who had brought her. She
stopped in the doorway.
"Oh, I'm bonny, mum. I can cut about, you'll see!" And she would have
fallen, had not the cousin caught and steadied her.
After that, she had not the strength to drag herself anywhere, not even
to see the quack. A week later she took to her bed, almost blind, her
poor old wits scattered beyond recovery. I was glad of that: it spared
her the weary waiting and watching for death while the shadow of the
grim building she feared still more drew ever nearer. I hesitated to go
and see her, for my mere presence stirred her into consciousness, and
reminded her of her need to work and her danger if she could not. Then
there was a day when she did not seem to know I was there, and she paid
no attention to me, never spoke until just as I was going, when of a
sudden she sat bolt upright:--
"Oh, I'm bonny, mum, I'm bonny. You'll see!" she wailed, and sank back
on her pillows.
These were Trimmer's last words to me, and I left her at death's door,
still crying for work, as if in the next world, as in this, it was her
only salvation. Very soon, the cousin came to tell me that the little
capital had dribbled entirely away, and that she could not keep Trimmer
without being paid for it. Could I blame her? She had her own fight
against the shadow hanging all too close now over Trimmer. Her 'usband
worked 'ard, she said, and they could just live respectable, and
Trimmer's brothers, they was for sending Trimmer to the workus. They
might have sent her, and I doubt if she would have been the wiser. But
could we see her go? For our own comfort, for our own peace of mind, we
interfered and arranged that Trimmer should board with her cousin until
a bed was found in another hospital. It was found, mercifully, almost at
once, but, before I had time to go there, the Great Release had come for
her; and we heard with thankfulness that the old head was free from
suffering, that the twisted hands were still, that fear of the workhouse
could trouble her no more. Life's one gift to Trimmer had been toil,
pain her one reward, and it was good to know that she was at rest.
The cousin brought us the news. But I had a visit the same day from the
sister-in-law, the paragon of virtue, a thin, sharp-faced woman of
middle age. I said what I could in sympathy, telling her how much we
missed Trimmer, how well we should always remember her. But this was not
what she had come to hear. She let me get through. She drew the sigh
appropriate for the occasion. Then she settled down to business. When
did I propose to pay back the money Trimmer had spent on the doctor in
Camden Town? I didn't propose to at all, I told her: he was a miserable
quack and I had done my best to keep Trimmer from going to him; besides,
fortunately for her, she was beyond the reach of money that was not
owing to her. The sister-in-law was indignant. The family always
understood I had promised, a promise was a promise, and now they
depended on me for the funeral. I reminded her of the society to which
Trimmer had subscribed solely to meet that expense. But she quickly let
me know that the funeral the society proposed to provide fell far short
of the family's standard. To them it appeared scarcely better than a
pauper's. The coffin would be plain, there would be no oak and brass
handles,--worse, there would be no plumes for the horses and the hearse.
To send their sister to her grave without plumes would disgrace them
before their neighbours. Nor would there be a penny over for the family
mourning,--could I allow them, the chief mourners, to mourn without
crape?
I remembered their willingness to let Trimmer die as a pauper in the
workhouse. After all, she would have the funeral she had provided for.
She would lie no easier in her grave for oak and brass handles, for
plumes and crape. Her family had made use of her all her life; I did not
see why I should help them to make use of her after her death, that
their grief might be trumpeted in Brixton and Camden Town. I brought the
interview to an end. But sometimes I wonder if Trimmer would not have
liked it better if I had helped them, if plumes had waved from the heads
of the horses that drew her to her grave, if her family had followed
swathed in crape. She would have looked upon it as another piece of her
extraordinary good luck if, by dying, she had been of service to
anybody.
I do not know where they buried her. Probably nobody save ourselves
to-day has as much as a thought for her. But, if self-sacrifice counts
for anything, if martyrdom is a passport to heaven, then Trimmer should
take her place up there by the side of St. Francis of Assisi, and Joan
of Arc, and St. Vincent de Paul, and all those other blessed men and
women whose lives were given for others, and who thought it was
"bonny."
_Louise_
[Illustration: "TUMBLED, WEATHER-WORN, RED-TILED ROOFS"]
III
LOUISE
For the third time since we had taken our chambers, I was servantless,
and I could not summon up courage to face for the third time the scorn
which the simple request for a "general" meets in the English Registry
Office. That was what sent me to try my luck at a French _Bureau_ in
Soho, where, I was given to understand, it was possible to inquire for,
and actually obtain, a good _bonne a tout faire_ and escape without
insult.
Louise was announced one dull November morning, a few days later. I
found her waiting for me in our little hall,--a woman of about forty,
short, plump, with black eyes, blacker hair, and an enchanting smile.
But the powder on her face and the sham diamonds in her ears seemed to
hang out danger signals, and my first impulse was to show her the door.
It was something familiar in the face under the powder, above all in
the voice when she spoke, that made me hesitate.
"Provencale?" I asked.
"Yes, from Marseilles," she answered, and I showed her instead into my
room.
I had often been "down there" where the sun shines and skies are blue,
and her Provencal accent came like a breath from the south through the
gloom of the London fog, bringing it all back to me,--the blinding white
roads, the gray hills sweet with thyme and lavender, the towns with
their "antiquities," the little shining white villages,--M. Bernard's at
Martigues, and his dining-room, and the Marseillais who crowded it on a
Sunday morning, and the gaiety and the laughter, and Desire in his white
apron, and the great bowls of _bouillabaisse_....
It was she who recalled me to the business of the moment. Her name was
Louise Sorel, she said; she could clean, wash, play the lady's maid,
sew, market, cook--but cook! _Te--au mouins_, she would show _Madame_;
and, as she said it, she smiled. I have never seen such perfect teeth in
woman or child; you knew at a glance that she must have been a radiant
beauty in her youth. A Provencal accent, an enchanting smile, and the
remains of beauty, however, are not precisely what you engage a servant
for; and, with a sudden access of common sense, I asked for references.
Surely, _Madame_ would not ask the impossible, she said reproachfully.
She had but arrived in London, she had never gone as _bonne_ anywhere;
how, then, could she give references? She needed the work and was
willing to do it: was not that sufficient? I got out of it meanly by
telling her I would think it over. At that she smiled again,--really,
her smile on a November day almost warranted the risk. I meant to take
her; she knew; _Madame_ was kind.
I did think it over,--while I interviewed slovenly English "generals"
and stray Italian children, dropped upon me from Heaven knows where,
while I darned the family stockings, while I ate the charwoman's chops.
I thought it over indeed, far more than I wanted to, until, in despair,
I returned to the Soho _Bureau_ to complain that I was still without a
servant of any kind. The first person I saw was Louise, disconsolate, on
a chair in the corner. She sprang up when she recognized me. Had she not
said _Madame_ was kind? she cried. _Madame_ had come for her. I had done
nothing of the sort. But there she was, this charming creature from the
South; at home was the charwoman, dingy and dreary as the November
skies. To look back now is to wonder why I did not jump at the chance of
having her. As it was, I did take her,--no references, powder, sham
diamonds, and all. But I compromised. It was to be for a week. After
that, we should see. An hour later she was in my kitchen.
A wonderful week followed. From the start we could not resist her charm,
though to be on such terms with one's servant as to know that she has
charm, is no doubt the worst possible kind of bad form. Even William
Penn, the fastidious, was her slave at first sight,--and it would have
been rank ingratitude if he had not been, for, from the ordinary London
tabby average people saw in him, he was at once transformed into the
most superb, the most magnificent of cats! And we were all superb, we
were all magnificent, down to the snuffy, tattered old Irish charwoman
who came to make us untidy three times a week, and whom we had not the
heart to turn out, because we knew that if we did, there could be no one
else foolish enough to take her in again.
And Louise, though her southern imagination did such great things for
us, had not overrated herself. She might be always laughing at
everything, as they always do laugh "down there,"--at the English she
couldn't understand, at _Mize Boum_, the nearest she came to the
charwoman's name, at the fog she must have hated, at the dirt left for
her to clean. But she worked harder than any servant I have ever had,
and to better purpose. She adored the cleanliness and the order, it
seemed, and was appalled at the dirt and slovenliness of the English, as
every Frenchwoman is when she comes to the land that has not ceased to
brag of its cleanliness since its own astonished discovery of the
morning tub. Before Louise, the London blacks disappeared as if by
magic. Our wardrobes were overhauled and set to rights. The linen was
mended and put in place. And she could cook! Such _risotto_!--she had
been in Italy--Such _macaroni_! Such _bouillabaisse_! Throughout that
wonderful week, our chambers smelt as strong of _ail_ as a Provencal
kitchen.
In the face of all this, I do not see how I brought myself to find any
fault. To do myself justice, I never did when it was a question of the
usual domestic conventions. Louise was better than all the
conventions--all the prim English maids in prim white caps--in the
world. Just to hear her talk, just to have her call that disreputable
old _Mize Boum ma belle_, just to have her announce as _La Dame de la
bouillabaisse_ a friend of ours who had been to Provence and had come to
feast on her masterpiece and praised her for it,--just each and every
one of her charming southern ways made up for the worst domestic crime
she could have committed, I admit to a spasm of dismay when, for the
first meal she served, she appeared in her petticoat, a dish-cloth for
apron, and her sleeves rolled up above her elbows. But I forgot it with
her delightful laugh at herself when I explained that, absurdly it might
be, we preferred a skirt, an apron, and sleeves fastened at the wrists.
It seemed she adored the economy too, and she had wished to protect her
dress and even her apron.
These things would horrify the model housewife; but then, I am not a
model housewife, and they amused me, especially as she was so quick to
meet me, not only half, but the whole way. When, however, she took to
running out at intervals on mysterious errands, I felt that I must
object. Her first excuse was _les affaires_; her next, a friend; and,
when neither of these would serve, she owned up to a husband who,
apparently, spent his time waiting for her at the street corner; he was
so lonely, _le pauvre_! I suggested that he should come and see her in
the kitchen. She laughed outright. Why, he was of a shyness _Madame_
could not figure to herself. He never would dare to mount the stairs and
ring the front door-bell.
In the course of this wonderful week, there was sent to me, from the
Soho _Bureau_, a Swiss girl with as many references as a Colonial Dame
has grandfathers. Even so, and despite the inconvenient husband, I might
not have dismissed Louise,--it was so pleasant to live in an atmosphere
of superlatives and _ail_. It was she who settled the matter with some
vague story of a partnership in a restaurant and work waiting for her
there. Perhaps we should have parted with an affectation of indifference
had not J. unexpectedly interfered. Husbands have a trick of pretending
superiority to details of housekeeping until you have had all the
bother, and then upsetting everything by their interference. She had
given us the sort of time we hadn't had since the old days in Provence,
he argued; her smile alone was worth double the money agreed upon;
therefore, double the money was the least I could in decency offer her.
His logic was irreproachable, but housekeeping on such principles would
end in domestic bankruptcy. However, Louise got the money, and my reward
was her face when she thanked me--she made giving sheer
self-indulgence--and the _risotto_ which, in the shock of gratitude,
she insisted upon coming the next day to cook for us.
But, in the end, J.'s indiscretion cost me dear. As Louise was
determined to magnify all our geese, not merely into swans, but into the
most superb, the most magnificent swans, the few extra shillings had
multiplied so miraculously by the time their fame reached the
_Quartier_, that _Madame_ of the _Bureau_ saw in me a special Providence
appointed to relieve her financial difficulties, and hurried to claim an
immediate loan. Then, her claim being disregarded, she wrote to call my
attention to the passing of the days and the miserable pettiness of the
sum demanded, and to assure me of her consideration the most perfect.
She got to be an intolerable nuisance before I heard the last of her.
We had not realized the delight of having Louise to take care of us,
until she was replaced by the Swiss girl, who was industrious, sober,
well-trained, with all the stolidity and surliness of her people, and as
colourless as a self-respecting servant ought to be. I was immensely
relieved when, after a fortnight, she found the work too much for her.
It was just as she was on the point of going that Louise reappeared, her
face still white with powder, the sham diamonds still glittering in her
ears, but somehow changed, I could not quite make out how. She had come,
she explained to present me with a ring of pearls and opals and of
surpassing beauty, at the moment pawned for a mere trifle,--here was the
ticket; I had but to pay, add a smaller trifle for interest and
commission, and it was mine. As I never have worn rings I did not care
to begin the habit by gambling in pawn tickets, much though I should
have liked to oblige Louise. Her emotion when I refused seemed so out of
proportion, and yet was so unmistakably genuine, that it bewildered me.
But she pulled herself together almost at once and began to talk of the
restaurant which, I learned, was marching in a simply marvellous manner.
It was only when, in answer to her question, I told her that the
_Demoiselle Suisse_ was marching not at all and was about to leave me,
that the truth came out. There was no restaurant, there never had
been,--except in the country of Tartarin's lions; it was her invention
to spare me any self-reproach I might have felt for turning her adrift
at the end of her week's engagement. She had found no work since. She
and her husband had pawned everything. _Tiens_, and she emptied before
me a pocketful of pawn tickets. They were without a sou. They had had
nothing to eat for twenty-four hours. That was the change. I began to
understand. She was starving, literally starving, in the cold and gloom
and damp of the London winter, she who was used to the warmth and
sunshine, to the clear blue skies of Provence. If the aliens who drift
to England, as to the Promised Land, could but know what awaited them!
Of course I took her back. She might have added rouge to the powder, she
might have glittered all over with diamonds, sham or real, and I would
not have minded. J. welcomed her with joy. William Penn hung rapturously
at her heels. We had a _risotto_, golden as the sun of the _Midi_,
fragrant as its kitchens, for our dinner.
There was no question of a week now, no question of time at all. It did
not seem as if we ever could manage again, as if we ever could have
managed, without Louise. And she, on her side, took possession of our
chambers, and, for a ridiculously small sum a week, worked her miracles
for us. We positively shone with cleanliness; London grime no longer
lurked, the skeleton in our cupboards. We never ate dinners and
breakfasts more to our liking, never had I been so free from
housekeeping, never had my weekly bills been so small. Eventually, she
charged herself with the marketing, though she could not, and never
could, learn to speak a word of English; but not even the London
tradesman was proof against her smile. She kept the weekly accounts,
though she could neither read nor write: in her intelligence, an
eloquent witness to the folly of general education. She was, in a word,
the most capable and intelligent woman I have ever met, so that it was
the more astounding that she should also be the most charming.
Most astounding of all was the way, entirely, typically Provencale as
she was, she could adapt herself to London and its life and people.
Though she wore in the street an ordinary felt hat, and in the house the
English apron, you could see that her hair was made for the pretty
Provencal ribbon, and her broad shoulders for the Provencal fichu. _Te_,
_ve_, and _au mouins_ were as constantly in her mouth as in Tartarin's.
Provencal proverbs forever hovered on her lips. She sang Provencal songs
at her work. She had ready a Provencal story for every occasion. Her
very adjectives were Mistral's, her very exaggerations Daudet's. And yet
she did everything as if she had been a "general" in London chambers all
her life. Nothing came amiss to her. After her first startling
appearance as waitress, it was no time before she was serving at table
as if she had been born to it, and with such a grace of her own that
every dish she offered seemed a personal tribute. People who had never
seen her before would smile back involuntarily as they helped
themselves. It was the same no matter what she did. She was always gay,
however heavy her task. To her even London, with its fogs, was a
_galejado_, as they say "down there." And she was so appreciative. We
would make excuses to give her things for the pleasure of watching the
warm glow spread over her face and the light leap to her eyes. We would
send her to the theatre for the delight of having her come back and tell
us about it. All the world, on and off the stage, was exalted and
transfigured as she saw it.
But frank as she was in her admiration of all the world, she remained
curiously reticent about herself. "My poor grandmother used to say, you
must turn your tongue seven times in your mouth before speaking," she
said to me once; and I used to fancy she gave hers a few extra twists
when it came to talking of her own affairs. Some few facts I gathered:
that she had been at one time an _ouvreuse_ in a Marseilles theatre; at
another, a tailoress,--how accomplished, the smart appearance of her
husband in J.'s old coats and trousers was to show us; and that, always,
off and on, she had made a business of buying at the periodical sales of
the _Mont de Piete_ and selling at private sales of her own. I gathered
also that they all knew her in Marseilles; it was Louise here, Louise
there, as she passed through the market, and everybody must have a word
and a laugh with her. No wonder! You couldn't have a word and a laugh
once with Louise and not long to repeat the experience. But to her life
when the hours of work were over, she offered next to no clue.
Only one or two figures flitted, pale shadows, through her rare
reminiscences. One was the old grandmother, whose sayings were full of
wisdom, but who seemed to have done little for her save give her,
fortunately, no schooling at all, and a religious education that bore
the most surprising fruit. Louise had made her first communion, she had
walked in procession on feast days. _J'adorais ca_, she would tell me,
as she recalled her long white veil and the taper in her hand. But she
adored every bit as much going to the Salvation Army meetings,--the
lassies would invite her in, and lend her a hymn-book, and she would
sing as hard as ever she could, was her account. Her ideas on the
subject of the Scriptures and the relations of the Holy Family left me
gasping. But her creed had the merit of simplicity. The _Boun Diou_ was
intelligent, she maintained; _il aime les gens honnetes_. He would not
ask her to hurry off to church and leave all in disorder at home, and
waste her time. If she needed to pray, she knelt down where and as she
was, and the _Boun Diou_ was as well pleased. He was a man like us,
wasn't He? Well then, He understood.
There was also a sister. She occupied a modest apartment in Marseilles
when she first dawned upon our horizon, but so rapidly did it expand
into a palatial house in town and a palatial villa by the sea, both with
cellars of rare and exquisite vintages and stables full of horses and
carriages, that we looked confidently to the fast-approaching day when
we should find her installed in the Elysee at Paris. Only in one respect
did she never vary by a hair's breadth: this was her hatred of Louise's
husband.