I had often been "down there" where the sun shines and skies are blue, and her Provençal 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 Désiré 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! _Té--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 Provençal 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.