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."
[Illustration: "TUMBLED, WEATHER-WORN, RED-TILED ROOFS"]
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 à 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.
"Yes, from Marseilles," she answered, and I showed her instead into my room.