When they had finished grovelling, he got in again, and Uncle John insisted upon exchanging cards with the stranger. He got out his from some pocket, but the American had not one. "By the living jingo," he said, "I've no bit of pasteboard handy—but my name is Horatio Thomas Nelson Renour—and you'll find me any day at the Nelson Building, Osages City, Nevada. This is my first visit to Europe." Perhaps I am not repeating exactly the right American, Mamma, but it was something like that. But I wish you could have seen him, I know you would have liked him as I did. Wait till I tell you what he did afterwards, then you will, anyway. "Anyway" is American—you see I have picked it up already!
We waved a kind of grateful goodbye and went our different ways, and beyond its raining most of the time we had a quick journey; but at last we felt in the dusk we were off the right road. Like all chauffeurs ours had whizzed past every notice of the direction—so carefully printed up as they are in France, too. From the way they behave one would think chauffeurs believe themselves to possess a sixth sense and can feel in some occult manner the right turns, as they never bother to look at sign posts, or condescend to ask the way like ordinary mortals. Ours did not so much as stop even when the lane got into a mere track, until, with the weight of Uncle John, Aunt Maria and me in the back seat, and the extra stones in the rumble, as he made a sensational backing turn into a fieldish looking place, (it was dark twilight) our hind wheels sunk in up to their axles,—and the poor machinery groaned in its endeavours to extricate us! We had to get out in the gloom and mud, and Aunt Maria looked almost pathetic in her elastic side "prunella" boots, edged with fur, white silk stockings and red quilted silk petticoat held up very high. But she was so good tempered over it all! She said when one had been married happily for fifty years, and was having one's honeymoon all over again—(she had forgotten the hysterics)—one ought not to grumble at trifles.
Meanwhile the hind wheels of the car sank deeper and deeper. I believe we should never have got out, and it would have been there still, if we had not heard a scream from a siren, and our American friend tore up again! It was pitch dark by now, and the valet, the chauffeur, and Uncle John were shoving and straining, and nothing was happening. Why he was returning this way, right out of the main road, he did not explain, but he jumped out and in a minute took command of the situation. He said, "If we had taken a waggon over the desert, we'd know how to fix up this in a shake." He sent his chauffeur back to the nearest village for some boards and a shovel, and then dug out to firm ground and got the boards under, all so neatly and quickly, and no one thought of disobeying him! And we were soon all packed into the car again none the worse. Then he said he also found he was obliged to go back and would show us the way as far as we liked. Uncle John was so grateful, and we started.
Tonnerre was all as far as we could get to-night, and about six o'clock we arrived at this hotel I am writing from.
Mr. Horatio Thomas Nelson Renour was a few yards in front of us. "Say, Lord Wordon," he said to Uncle John, "I guess this is no kind of a place your ladies have been accustomed to, but it's probably pretty decent in spite of appearances. I know these sort of little shanties, and they aren't half as bad as they look."
He took as much pains to shout down Aunt Maria's trumpet as Harry used in the beginning when he wanted to please me, and when we got upstairs she said she had no idea Americans were such "superior persons." "One of Nature's gentlemen, my dear, which are the only sort of true gentlemen you will find."
Such a hotel, Mamma! And Uncle John and Aunt Maria had to have the only big bedroom on the first floor, and Mr. Renour and I were given two little ones communicating on the back part. They thought of course we were of the same party, and married.
"Madame" could have the inner one, they explained, and "Monsieur" the outer! Aunt Maria, who thought, I suppose, they said Agnès, not "Monsieur," smiled pleasantly and agreed—that would be "tout à fait bien." Of course if Horatio Thomas Nelson Renour had been a Frenchman, or even heaps of Englishmen we know, he would have been delighted; instead of which he got perfectly crimson all over his bronzed face and explained in fearful French to the landlady he could not sleep except on a top floor. Wasn't it nice of him, Mamma?
Dinner was at seven o'clock in the table d'hôte, and about eight commercial travellers were already seated when we got down. We had glass racks to put our forks and knives on, and that wrung out kind of table linen, not ironed, but all beautifully clean; and wonderfully good food.
Uncle John made one end of our party and Mr. Renour the other, with Aunt Maria and me in the middle, and the commercial travellers, who all tucked in their table napkins under their chins, beyond. The American was so amusing:—it was his language, not exactly what he said. I shall get into it soon and tell you some of the sentences, but at first it is too difficult. Presently he said he did not understand about English titles; he supposed I had one, but he was not "kinder used to them," so did I mind his calling me Lady Elizabeth, as he heard Aunt Maria calling me Elizabeth, and he felt sure "Miss" wouldn't be all right, but would "Lady" be near enough? I said, quite, I was so enchanted, Mamma, to be taken for a young girl, after having been married nearly seven years and being twenty-four last month! I would not undeceive him for the world, and as we shall never see him again it won't matter. Think, too, how cross Harry—but I won't speak of him!