more than we cared to know. For if he did not show himself at first,
that did not mean his willingness to let us ignore him. He persisted in
wanting Louise to meet him at the corner, sometimes just when I most
wanted her in the kitchen. He would have her come back to him at night;
and to see her, after her day's hard work, start out in the black sodden
streets, seldom earlier than ten, often as late as midnight; to realize
that she must start back long before the sun would have thought of
coming up, if the sun ever did come up on a London winter morning, made
us wretchedly uncomfortable. The husband, however, was not to be moved
by any messages I might send him. He was too shy to grant the interview
I asked. But he gave me to understand through her that he wouldn't do
without her, he would rather starve, he couldn't get along without her.
We did not blame him: we couldn't, either. That was why, after several
weeks of discomfort to all concerned, it occurred to us that we might
invite him to make our home his; and we were charmed by his
condescension when, at last conquering his shyness, he accepted our
invitation. The threatened deadlock was thus settled, and M. Auguste,
as he introduced himself, came to us as a guest for as long as he chose
to stay. There were friends--there always are--to warn us that what we
were doing was sheer madness. What did we know about him, anyway?
Precious little, it was a fact: that he was the husband of Louise,
neither more nor less. We did not even know that, it was hinted. But if
Louise had not asked for our marriage certificate, could we insist upon
her producing hers?
It may have been mad, but it worked excellently. M. Auguste as a guest
was the pattern of discretion. I had never had so much as a glimpse of
him until he came to visit us. Then I found him a good-looking man,
evidently a few years younger than Louise, well-built, rather taller
than the average Frenchman. Beyond this, it was weeks before I knew
anything of him except the astonishing adroitness with which he kept out
of our way. He quickly learned our hours and arranged his accordingly.
After we had begun work in the morning, he would saunter down to the
kitchen and have his coffee, the one person of leisure in the
establishment. After that, and again in the afternoon, he would stroll
out to attend to what I take were the not too arduous duties of a
horse-dealer with neither horses nor capital,--for as a horse-dealer he
described himself when he had got so far as to describe himself at all.
At noon and at dinner-time, he would return from Tattersall's, or
wherever his not too exhausting business had called him, with a small
paper parcel supposed to contain his breakfast or his dinner, our
agreement being that he was to supply his own food. The evenings he
spent with Louise. I could discover no vice in him except the, to us,
disturbing excess of his devotion to her. You read of this sort of
devotion in French novels and do not believe in it. But M. Auguste, in
his exacting dependence on Louise, left the French novel far behind. As
for Louise, though she was no longer young and beauty fades early in the
South, I have never met, in or out of books, a woman who made me
understand so well the reason of the selfishness some men call love.
M. Auguste's manners to us were irreproachable. We could only admire
the consideration he showed in so persistently effacing himself. J.
never would have seen him, if on feast days--Christmas, New Year's, the
14th of July--M. Auguste had not, with great ceremony, entered the
dining-room at the hour of morning coffee to shake hands and wish J. the
compliments of the season. With me his relations grew less formal, for
he was not slow to discover that we had one pleasant weakness in common.
Though the modest proportions of that brown-paper parcel might not
suggest it, M. Auguste knew and liked what was good to eat; so did I.
Almost before I realized it, he had fallen into the habit of preparing
some special dish for me, or of making my coffee, when I chanced to be
alone for lunch or for dinner. I can still see the gleam in his eyes as
he brought me in my cup, and assured me that he, not Louise, was the
artist, and that it was something of extra--but of extra!--as it always
was. Nor was it long before he was installed _chef_ in our kitchen on
the occasion of any little breakfast or dinner we might be giving. The
first time I caught him in shirt-sleeves, with Louise's apron flapping
about his legs and the bib drawn over his waistcoat, he was inclined to
be apologetic. But he soon gave up apology. It was evident there were
few things he enjoyed more than cooking a good dinner,--unless it was
eating it,--and his apron was put on early in the day. In the end, I
never asked any one to breakfast or dinner without consulting him, and
his _menus_ strengthened the friendliness of our relations.
After a while he ran my errands and helped Louise to market. I found
that he spoke and wrote very good English, and was a man of some
education. I have preserved his daily accounts, written in an unusually
neat handwriting, always beginning "Mussy: 1 penny"; and this reminds me
that not least in his favour was his success in ingratiating himself
with William Penn,--or "Mussy" in Louise's one heroic attempt to cope
with the English. M. Auguste, moreover, was quiet and reserved to a
degree that would not have discredited the traditional Englishman. Only
now and then did the _Midi_ show itself in him: in the gleam of his eye
over his gastronomic masterpieces; in his pose as horse-dealer and the
scale on which the business he never did was schemed,--_Mademoiselle_,
the French dressmaker from Versailles, who counted in tens and thought
herself rich, was dazzled by the way M. Auguste reckoned by thousands;
and once, luckily only once, in a frenzied outbreak of passion.
He was called to Paris, I never understood why. When the day came, he
was seized with such despair as I had never seen before, as I trust I
may never have to see again. He could not leave Louise, he would not.
No! No! No! He raved, he swore, he wept. I was terrified, but Louise,
when I called her aside to consult her, shrugged her shoulders. "We play
the comedy in the kitchen," she laughed, but I noticed that her laughter
was low. I fancy when you played the comedy with M. Auguste, tragedy was
only just round the corner. With the help of _Mademoiselle_ she got him
to the station; he had wanted to throw himself from the train as it
started, was her report. And in three days, not a penny the richer for
the journey, he had returned to his life of ease in our chambers.
Thus we came to know M. Auguste's virtues and something of his temper,
but never M. Auguste himself. The months passed, and we were still
conscious of mystery. I did not inspire him with the healthy fear he
entertained for J., but I cannot say he ever took me into his
confidence. What he was when not in our chambers; what he had been
before he moved into them; what turn of fate had stranded him,
penniless, in London with Louise, to make us the richer for his coming;
why he, a man of education, was married to a woman of none; why he was
M. Auguste while Louise was Louise Sorel--I knew as little the day he
left us as the day he arrived. J. instinctively distrusted him,
convinced that he had committed some monstrous crime and was in hiding.
This was also the opinion of the French Quarter, as I learned
afterwards. It seems the _Quartier_ held its breath when it heard he was
our guest, and waited for the worst, only uncertain what form that worst
would take,--whether we should be assassinated in our beds, or a
bonfire made of our chambers. M. Auguste, however, spared us and
disappointed the _Quartier_. His crime, to the end, remained as baffling
as the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask, or the secret of Kaspar
Hauser.
That he was honest, I would wager my own reputation for honesty, even if
it was curious the way his fingers gradually covered themselves with
rings, a watch-chain dangled from his waistcoat pocket, a pin was stuck
jauntily in his necktie. Her last purchases at the _Mont de Piete_,
pawned during those first weeks of starving in London and gradually
redeemed, was Louise's explanation; and why should we have suspected M.
Auguste of coming by them unlawfully when he never attempted to rob us,
though we gave him every opportunity? He knew where I kept my money and
my keys. He was alone with Louise in our chambers, not only many a day
and evening, but once for a long summer.
We had to cycle down into Italy and William Penn could not be left to
care for himself, nor could we board him out without risking the
individuality of a cat who had never seen the world except from the top
of a four-story house. Louise and M. Auguste, therefore, were retained
to look after him, which, I should add, they did in a manner as
satisfactory to William as to ourselves. Every week I received a report
of his health and appetite from M. Auguste, in whom I discovered a new
and delightful talent as correspondent. "_Depuis votre depart_," said
the first, "_cette pauvre bete a miaule apres vous tous les jours, et il
est constamment a la porte pour voir si vous ne venez pas. Il ne
commence vraiment a en prendre son parti que depuis hier. Mais tous ces
soucis de chat_ [for that charming phrase what would one not have
forgiven M. Auguste?], _mais tous ces soucis de chat ne l'empechent pas
de bien boire son lait le matin et manger sa viande deux fois par
jour._" Nor was it all colour of rose to be in charge of William.
"_Figurez-vous_," the next report ran, "_que Mussy a devore et abime
completement une paire de bas tout neufs que Louise s'est achetee hier.
C'est un vrai petit diable, mais il est si gentil qu'on ne peut vraiment
pas le gronder pour cela._" It was consoling to hear eventually that
William had returned to normal pursuits. "_Mussy est bien sage, il a
attrape une souris hier dans la cuisine--je crois bien que Madame ne
trouvera jamais un aussi gentil Mussy._" And so the journal of William's
movements was continued throughout our absence. When, leaving J. in
Italy, I returned to London,--met at midnight at the station by M.
Auguste with flattering enthusiasm,--Mussy's condition and behaviour
corroborated the weekly bulletins. And not only this. Our chambers were
as clean as the proverbial new pin: everything was in its place; not so
much as a scrap of paper was missing. The only thing that had
disappeared was the sprinkling of gray in Louise's hair, and for this M.
Auguste volubly prepared me during our walk from the station; she had
dyed it with almost unforeseen success, he told me, so triumphantly that
I put down the bottle of dye to his extravagance.
If I know M. Auguste was not a thief, I do not think he was a murderer.
How could I see blood on the hands of the man who presided so joyously
over my pots and pans? If he were a forger, my trust in him never led
to abuse of my cheque book; if a deserter, how came he to be possessed
of his _livret militaire_ duly signed, as my own eyes are the witness?
how could he venture back to France, as I know he did for I received
from him letters with the Paris postmark? An anarchist, J. was inclined
to believe. But I could not imagine him dabbling in bombs and fuses. To
be a horse-dealer, without horses or money, was much more in his line.
Only of one thing were we sure: however hideous or horrible the evil, M.
Auguste had worked "down there," under the hot sun of Provence, Louise
had no part in it. She knew--it was the reason of her curious
reticences, of her sacrifice of herself to him. That he loved her was
inevitable. Who could help loving her? She was so intelligent, so
graceful, so gay. But that she should love M. Auguste would have been
incomprehensible, were it not in the nature of woman to love the man who
is most selfish in his dependence upon her. She did all the work, and he
had all the pleasure of it. He was always decently dressed, there was
always money in his pocket, though she, who earned it, never had a penny
to spend on herself. No matter how busy and hurried she might be, she
had always the leisure to talk to him, to amuse him when he came in,
always the courage to laugh, like the little Fleurance in the story.
What would you? She was made like that. She had always laughed, when she
was sad as when she was gay. And while she was making life delightful
for him, she was doing for us what three Englishwomen combined could not
have done so well, and with a charm that all the Englishwomen in the
world could not have mustered among them.
She had been with us about a year when I began to notice that, at
moments, her face was clouded and her smile less ready. At first, I put
it down to her endless comedy with M. Auguste. But, after a bit, it
looked as if the trouble were more serious even than his histrionics. It
was nothing, she laughed when I spoke to her; it would pass. And she
went on amusing and providing for M. Auguste and working for us. But by
the time the dark days of November set in, we were more worried about
her than ever. The crisis came with Christmas.
On Christmas Day, friends were to dine with us, and we invited
_Mademoiselle_, the French dressmaker, to eat her Christmas dinner with
Louise and M. Auguste. We were very staid in the dining-room,--it turned
out rather a dull affair. But in the kitchen it was an uproarious feast.
Though she lived some distance away, though on Christmas night London
omnibuses are few and far between, _Mademoiselle_ could hardly be
persuaded to go home, so much was she enjoying herself. Louise was all
laughter. "You have been amused?" I asked, when _Mademoiselle_, finally
and reluctantly, had been bundled off by J. in a hansom.
"_Mais oui, mais oui_," M. Auguste cried, pleasure in his voice. "_Cette
pauvre Mademoiselle!_ Her life, it is so sad, she is so alone. It is
good for her to be amused. We have told her many stories,--_et des
histoires un tout petit peu salees, n'est-ce pas? pour egayer cette
pauvre Mademoiselle?_"
It was the day after the feast that Louise had to give in. She confessed
she had been in torture while she served our dinner and _Mademoiselle_
was there. She could hardly eat or drink. But why make it sad for all
the world because she was in pain? and she had laughed, she had laughed!
We scolded her first. Then we sent her to a good doctor. It was worse
than we feared. The trouble was grave, there must be an operation
without delay. The big tears rolled down her cheeks as she said it. She
looked old and broken. Why, she moaned, should this sorrow come to her?
She had never done any harm to any one: why should she have to suffer?
Why, indeed? Her mistake had been to do too little harm, too much good,
to others, to think too little of herself. Now, she had to pay for it as
one almost always does pay for one's good deeds. She worried far less
over the pain she must bear than over the inconvenience to M. Auguste
when she could no longer earn money for him.
We wanted her to go into one of the London hospitals. We offered to take
a room for her where she could stay after the operation until she got
back her strength. But we must not think her ungrateful, the mere idea
of a hospital made her desperate. And what would she do in a room _avec
un homme comme ca_. Besides, there was the sister in Marseilles, and, in
the hour of her distress, her sister's horses and carriages multiplied
like the miraculous loaves and fishes, the vintages in the cellar
doubled in age and strength. And she was going to die; it was queer, but
one knew those things; and she longed to die _la-bas_, where there was a
sun and the sky was blue, where she was at home. We knew she had not a
penny for the journey. M. Auguste had seen to that. Naturally, J. gave
her the money. He would not have had a moment's comfort if he had
not,--the drain upon your own emotions is part of the penalty you pay
for having a human being and not a machine to work for you,--and he
added a little more to keep her from want on her arrival in Marseilles,
in case the sister had vanished or the sister's fortunes had dwindled to
their original proportions. He exacted but one condition: M. Auguste
was not to know there was more than enough for the journey.
Louise's last days with us were passed in tears,--poor Louise! who until
now had laughed at fate. It was at this juncture that M. Auguste came
out strong. I could not have believed he had it in him. He no longer
spent his time dodging J. and dealing in visionary horses. He took
Louise's place boldly. He made the beds, cooked all our meals, waited on
us, dusted, opened the door, while Louise sat, melancholy and forlorn,
in front of the kitchen fire. On the last day of all--she was not to
start until the afternoon Continental train--she drew me mysteriously
into the dining-room, she shut the door with every precaution, she
showed me where she had sewed the extra sovereigns in her stays. M.
Auguste should never know. "_Je pars pour mon long voyage_," she
repeated. "_J'ai mes pressentiments._" And she was going to ask them to
let her wear a black skirt I had given her, and an old coat of J.'s she
had turned into a bodice, when the time came to lay her in her coffin.
Thus something of ours would go with her on the long journey. How could
she forget us? How could we forget her? she might better have asked. I
made a thousand excuses to leave her; Louise playing "the comedy" had
never been so tragic as Louise in tears. But she would have me back
again, and again, and again, to tell me how happy she had been with us.
"Why, I was at home," she said, her surprise not yet outworn. "_J'etais
chez moi, et j'etais si tranquille._ I went. I came. _Monsieur_ entered.
He called me. '_Louise._'--'_Oui, Monsieur._'--'_Voulez-vous faire ceci
ou cela?_'--'_Mais oui, Monsieur, de suite._' And I would do it and
_Monsieur_ would say, '_Merci, Louise_,' and he would go. And me, I
would run quick to the kitchen or upstairs to finish my work. _J'etais
si tranquille!_"
The simplicity of the memories she treasured made her story of them
pitiful as I listened. How little peace had fallen to her lot, that she
should prize the quiet and homeliness of her duties in our chambers!
At last it was time to go. She kissed me on both cheeks. She gave J. one
look, then she flung herself into his arms and kissed him too on both
cheeks. She almost strangled William Penn. She sobbed so, she couldn't
speak. She clutched and kissed us again. She ran out of the door and we
heard her sobbing down the three flights of stairs into the street. J.
hurried into his workroom. I went back to my desk. I don't think we
could have spoken either.
Two days afterwards, a letter from M. Auguste came to our chambers, so
empty and forlorn without Louise. They were in Paris. They had had a
dreadful crossing,--he hardly thought Louise would arrive at Boulogne
alive. She was better, but must rest a day or two before starting for
the _Midi_. She begged us to see that Mussy ate his meals _bien
regulierement_, and that he "made the dead" from time to time, as she
had taught him; and, would we write? The address was Mr. Auguste,
Horse-Dealer, Hotel du Cheval Blanc, Rue Chat-qui-peche-a-la-ligne,
Paris.
Horse-dealer! Louise might be at death's door, but M. Auguste had his
position to maintain. Then, after ten long days, came a post-card, also
from Paris: Louise was in Marseilles, he was on the point of going, once
there he would write. Then--nothing. Had he gone? Could he go?
If I were writing a romance it would, with dramatic fitness, end here.
But if I keep to facts, I must add that, in about eight months, Louise
and M. Auguste reappeared; that both were in the best of health and
spirits, M. Auguste a mass of jewelry; that all the sunshine of Provence
seemed let loose in the warmth of their greeting; that horse-dealing for
the moment prospered too splendidly for Louise to want to return to
us,--or was this a new invention, I have always wondered, because she
found in her place another Frenchwoman who wept at the prospect of being
dismissed to make room for her?
Well, anyway, for a while, things, according to Louise, continued to
prosper. She would pay me friendly visits and ask for sewing,--her
afternoons were so long,--and tell me of M. Auguste's success, and of
Provence, though there were the old reticences. By degrees, a shadow
fell over the gaiety. I fancied that "the comedy" was being played
faster than ever in the Soho lodgings. And, of a sudden, the fabric of
prosperity collapsed like a house of cards. She was ill again, and again
an operation was necessary. There was not a penny in her pockets nor in
M. Auguste's. What happened? Louise had only to smile, and we were her
slaves. But this time, for us at least, the end had really come. We
heard nothing more from either of them. No letters reached us from
Paris, no post-cards. Did she use the money to go back to Marseilles?
Did she ever leave London? Did M. Auguste's fate overtake him when they
crossed the Channel? Were the Soho lodgings the scene of some tremendous
_crime passionel_? For weeks I searched the police reports in my morning
paper. But neither then nor to this day have I had a trace of the woman
who, for over a year, gave to life in our chambers the comfort and the
charm of her presence. She vanished.
I am certain, though, that wherever she may be, she is mothering M.
Auguste, squandering upon him all the wealth of her industry, her
gaiety, her unselfishness. She couldn't help herself, she was made that
way. And the worst, the real tragedy of it, is that she would rather
endure every possible wrong with M. Auguste than, without him, enjoy all
the rights women not made that way would give her if they could. She has
convinced me of the truth I already more than suspected: it is upon the
M. Augustes of this world that the Woman Question will eventually be
wrecked.
_Our Charwomen_
[Illustration: "UP TO WESTMINSTER"]
IV
OUR CHARWOMAN
I took over the charwoman with our chambers, and a great piece of luck I
thought it; for charwomen never advertise, and are unheard of in
Registry Offices. It was certain I could not get into the chambers
without one, and at that early stage of my housekeeping in London I
should not have known where in the world to look for her.
Mrs. Maxfielde was the highly respectable name of the woman who had
"done" for the previous tenant, and had she heard of Mr. Shandy's theory
of names she could not have been more successful in adapting her person
and her manner to her own. She was well over sixty, and thin and gaunt
as if she had never had enough to eat; but age and hunger had not
lessened her hold upon the decencies of life. Worthiness oozed from her.
Victorian was stamped all over her,--it was in her black shawl and
bonnet, in the meekness of her pose, in the little curtsy she bobbed
when she spoke. I remember Harold Frederic seeing her once and, with the
intuition of the novelist, placing her: "Who is your old Queen
Victoria?" he asked. Her presence lost nothing when she took off her
shawl and bonnet. In the house and at work she wore a black dress and a
white apron, surprisingly clean considering the dirt she exposed it to,
and her grey hair was drawn tight back and rolled into a little hard
knob, the scant supply and "the parting all too wide" painfully exposed
to view. I longed for something to cover the old grey head that looked
so grandmotherly and out of keeping as it bent over scrubbing-brushes
and dustpans and the kitchen range, but it would have been against all
the conventions for a charwoman to appear in a servant's cap. There is a
rigid line in these English matters, and to attempt to step across is to
face the contempt of those who draw it. The British charwoman must go
capless, such is the unwritten law; also, she must remain "Miss" or
"Mrs.," though the Empire would totter were the British servant called
by anything but her name; and while the servant would "forget her place"
were she to know how to do any work outside her own, the charwoman is
expected to meet every emergency, and this was in days when housekeeping
for me was little more than a long succession of emergencies.