The letter was written on the stationery of the fashionable St. James
Club. Now I was positive that Colonel Stevens had fallen in love with
me. I thought of his suffering because he could not marry me. In many of
the French novels I had read men ran away from their wives, and, I
thought: “Maybe the Colonel will want me to elope with him, and if I
won’t, perhaps, he will kill himself,” and I began to feel very sorry to
think of such a fine-looking soldierly man as Colonel Stevens killing
himself just because of me.
When I showed Ellen the letter, after she got home from work, to my
surprise and delight, she said:
“All right, let’s go. A little ride will refresh us, and I’ve had a hard
week of it, but better not let mama know where we’re going. We’ll slip
out after supper, when she’s getting the babies to sleep.”
Reaching the corner of St. James and St. Denis Streets that evening, we
saw a beautiful closed carriage, with a coat of arms on the door, and a
coachman in livery jumped down and opened the door for us. We stepped
in. With the Colonel was a middle-aged man, with a dry, yellowish face
and a very black--it looked dyed--mustache.
“Mr. Mercier,” said the Colonel, introducing us.
“Oh,” exclaimed Ellen, “are you the Premier?”
“Non, non, non,” laughed Mr. Mercier, and turning about in the seat, he
began to look at Ellen and to smile at her, until the ends of his waxed
mustache seemed to jump up and scratch his nose. Colonel Stevens had put
his arm just at the back of me, and as it slipped down from the carriage
seat to my waist, I sat forward on the edge of the seat. I didn’t want
to hurt his feelings by telling him to take his arm down, and still I
didn’t want him to put it around me. Suddenly Ellen said:
“Marion, let’s get out of this carriage. That beast there put his arm
around me, and he pinched me, too.” She indicated Mercier.
She was standing up in the carriage, clutching at the strap, and she
began to tap upon the window, to attract the attention of the coachman.
Mr. Mercier was cursing softly in French.
“Petite folle!” he said, “I am not meaning to hurt you--joost a little
loving. Dat is all.”
“You ugly old man,” said Ellen, “do you think I want _you_ to love me?
Let me get out!”
“Oh, now, Miss Ellen,” said the Colonel, “that is too rude. Mr. Mercier
is a gentleman. See how sweet and loving your little sister is.”
“No, no,” I cried, “I am not sweet and loving. He had no business to
touch my sister.”
Mr. Mercier turned to the Colonel.
“For these children did you ask me to waste my time?” and putting his
head out of the carriage, he simply roared:
“Rue Saint Denis! Sacré!”
They set us down at the corner of our street. When we got in a friend of
papa’s was singing to mama and Ada in the parlor:
“In the gloaming, oh, my darling,
When the lights are dim and low.”
He was one of many Englishmen, younger sons of aristocrats, who, not
much good in England, were often sent to Canada. They liked to hang
around papa, whose family most of them knew. This young man was a thin,
harmless sort of fellow, soft-spoken and rather silly, Ellen and I
thought; but he could play and sing in a pretty, sentimental way and
mama and Ada would listen by the hour to him. He liked Ada, but Ada
pretended she had only an indifferent interest in him. His father was
the Earl of Albemarle, and Ellen and I used to make Ada furious by
calling her “Countess,” and bowing mockingly before her.
Walking on tiptoe, Ellen and I slipped by the parlor door, and up to our
own room. That night, after we were in bed, I said to Ellen:
“You know, I think Colonel Stevens is in love with me. Maybe he will
want me to elope with him. Would you if you were me?”
“Don’t be silly. Go to sleep,” was Ellen’s cross response. She regretted
very much taking that ride, and she said she only did it because she got
so tired at the office all day, and thought a little ride would be nice.
She had no idea, she said, that those “two old fools” would act like
that.