Our House and London out of Our Windows

by Elizabeth Robins Pennell

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 ça. 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 là-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'étais chez moi, et j'étais 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'étais 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 régulièrement, 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-pèche-â-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?