AT THE BEAU-RIVAGE.
“BEAU-RIVAGE, OUCHY, SWITZERLAND, August 4, 18—.
“To MISS BERTHA LEIGHTON, Hôtel Splendide,
Aix-les-Bains, Savoie.
“Fred is dying, and I am ill in bed. Come at once.
“LOUIE THURSTON.”
This was the telegram which Bertha received about a week after Rex’s
departure for Chamonix, and within an hour of its receipt her trunk was
packed and she was ready for the first train which would take her to
Ouchy. Mrs. Hallam had made no objection to her going, but, on the
contrary, seemed rather relieved than otherwise, for since the
revolution which Rex had brought about she hardly knew what to do with
Bertha. The maid Eloïse had proved a treasure, and under the combined
effects of Rex’s _pourboire_ and Rex’s instructions, had devoted herself
so assiduously to both Mrs. Hallam and Bertha that it was difficult to
tell which she was serving most. But she ignored Mrs. Haynes entirely,
saying that Monsieur’s orders were for _his_ Madame and _his_
Mademoiselle, and she should recognize the rights of no third party
until he told her to do so. In compliance with Rex’s wishes, very
decidedly expressed, Mrs. Hallam now took all her meals in the salon
with Bertha, but they were rather dreary affairs, and, although sorry
for the cause, both were glad when an opportunity came for a change.
“Certainly it is your duty to go,” Mrs. Hallam said, when Bertha handed
her the telegram, while Mrs. Haynes also warmly approved of the plan,
and both expressed surprise that Bertha had never told them of her
relationship to Mrs. Fred Thurston.
They knew Mrs. Fred was a power in society, and Mrs. Haynes had met her
once or twice and through a friend had managed to attend a reception at
her house, which she described as magnificent. To be Mrs. Fred
Thurston’s cousin was to be somebody, and both Mrs. Hallam and Mrs.
Haynes became suddenly interested in Bertha, the latter offering her
advice with regard to the journey, while the former suggested the
propriety of sending Browne as an escort. But Bertha declined the offer.
She could speak the language fluently and would have no difficulty
whatever in finding her way to Ouchy, she said, but she thanked the
ladies for their solicitude and parted with them, apparently, on the
most amicable terms. Grace accompanied her to the station, and while
waiting for the train said to her confidentially, “I expect there will
be a bigger earthquake bye-and-bye than Rex got up on your account. Jack
and I are engaged. I made up my mind last night to take the great,
good-natured, awkward fellow and run my chance on seven hundred dollars
a year. It will come off early in the autumn, and we shall go to Florida
and see what we can do with that orange grove. Jack will have to work,
and so shall I, and I shall like it and he won’t, but I shall keep him
at it, trust me. Can you imagine mother’s disgust when I tell her? She
really thinks that I have a chance with Rex. But that is folly. Play
your cards well. I think you hold a lore hand. There’s your train. Write
when you get there, Good-bye.”
There was a friendly parting, a rush through the gate for the carriages,
a slamming of doors, and then the train sped on its way, bearing Bertha
to a new phase of life in Ouchy.
Thurston had been sick all the voyage, and instead of resting in Paris,
as Rex had advised him and Louie had entreated him to do, he had started
at once for Geneva and taken a severe cold on the night train. Arrived
at the Beau-Rivage in Ouchy, he refused to see a physician until his
wife came down with nervous prostration and one was called for her.
Louie had had rather a hard time after Rex left her in Paris, for, as if
to make amends for his Jekyll mood on the ship, her husband was
unusually unreasonable, and worried her so with sarcasm and taunts and
ridicule that her heart was very sore when she reached Ouchy. The
excitement of the voyage, with Reginald as her constant companion, was
over, and she must again take up the old life, which seemed drearier
than ever because everything and everybody were so strange, and she
found herself constantly longing for somebody to speak a kind and
sympathetic word to her. In this condition of things it was not strange
that she succumbed at last to the extreme nervous depression which had
affected her in Boston, and which was now so intensified that she could
scarcely lift her head from the pillow.
“I am only tired,” she said to the physician, a kind, fatherly old man,
who asked her what was the matter. “Only tired of life, which is not
worth the living.” And her sad blue eyes looked up so pathetically into
his face that the doctor felt moved with a great pity for this young,
beautiful woman, surrounded with every luxury money could buy, but whose
face and words told a story he could not understand until called to
prescribe for her husband; and then he knew.
Thurston had made a fight against the illness which was stealing over
him and which he swore he would defy. Drugs and doctors were for silly
women like Louie, who must be amused, he said, but he would have none of
them. “Only exert your will and you can cheat Death himself,” was his
favorite saying, and he exerted his will, and went to Chillon, rowed on
the lake in the moonlight, took a Turkish bath, and next day had a
chill, which lasted so long and left him so weak that he consented to
see the doctor, but raved like a madman when told that he must go to bed
and stay there if he wished to save his life.
“I don’t know that I care particularly about it. I haven’t found it so
very jolly,” he said; then, after a moment, he added, with a bitter
laugh, “Tell my wife I am likely to shuffle off this mortal coil, and
see how it affects her.”
He was either crazy, or a brute, or both, the doctor thought, but he
made him go to bed, secured the best nurse he could find, and was there
early the next morning to see how his patient fared. He found him so
much worse that when he went to Louie he asked if she had any friends
near who could come to her, saying, “If you have, send for them at
once.”
Louie was in a state where nothing startled her, and without opening her
eyes she said, “Am I going to die?”
“No,” was the doctor’s reply, and she continued, “Is my husband?”
“I hope not, but he is very ill and growing steadily worse. Have you any
friend who will come to you?”
“Yes,—my cousin, Miss Leighton, at Aix,” Louie answered; and she
dictated the telegram, which the doctor wrote after asking if she had no
male friend.
For a moment she hesitated, thinking of Reginald, who would surely come
if bidden, and be so strong and helpful. But that would not do; and she
answered, “There is no one. Bertha can do everything.”
So Bertha was summoned, and the day after the receipt of the telegram
she was at the Beau-Rivage, feeling that she had not come too soon when
she saw how utterly prostrated Louie was, and how excited and
unmanageable Thurston was becoming under the combined effects of fever
and his dislike of his nurse, who could not speak a word of English,
while he could understand very little French. Frequent altercations were
the result, and when Bertha entered the sick-room there was a fierce
battle of words going on between the two, Victoire trying to make the
patient take his medicine, while Fred sat bolt upright in bed, the
perspiration rolling down his face as he fought against the glass and
hurled at the half-crazed Frenchman every opprobrious epithet in the
English language. As Bertha appeared the battle ceased, but not until
the glass with its contents was on the floor, where Thurston had struck
it from Victoire’s hand.
“Ah, Bertha,” he gasped, as he sank exhausted upon his pillow, “did you
drop from heaven, or where? and won’t you tell this idiot that it is not
time to take my medicine? I know, for I have it written down in good
English. Blast that French language, which nobody can understand! I
doubt if they do themselves, the gabbling fools, with their _parleys_
and _we-we’s_.”
It did not take Bertha long to bring order out of confusion. She was a
natural nurse, and when the doctor came and she proposed to take
Victoire’s place until a more suitable man was found, her offer was
accepted. But it was no easy task she had assumed, and after two days
and nights, during which she was only relieved for a few hours by John,
Thurston’s valet, when sleep was absolutely necessary, she was
thoroughly worn out. Leaving the sick man in charge of John, she started
for a ramble through the grounds, hoping that the air and exercise would
rest and strengthen her. The Thurston rooms were at the rear of a long
hall on the second floor, and, as the other end was somewhat in shadow,
she only knew that some one was advancing towards her as she went
rapidly down the corridor. Nor did she look up until a voice which sent
a thrill through every nerve said to her, “Good-afternoon, Miss
Leighton. Don’t you know me?” Then she stopped suddenly, while a cry of
delight escaped her, as she gave both her hands into the warm, strong
ones of Rex Hallam, who held them fast while he questioned her rapidly
and told her how he chanced to be there. He had joined his party at
Chamonix, where they had stayed for several days, crossing the
Mer-de-Glace and making other excursions among the mountains and
glaciers. He had then made a flying trip to Interlaken, Lucerne, and
Geneva, in quest of the place to which he meant to remove his aunt, and
had finally thought of Ouchy, where he knew the Thurstons were, and to
which he had come in a boat from Geneva. Learning at the office of his
friend’s illness, he had started at once for his room, meeting on the
way with Bertha, whose presence there he did not suspect. While he
talked he led her near to a window, where the light fell full upon her
face, showing him how pale and tired it was.
“This will not do,” he said, when he had heard her story. “I am glad I
have come to relieve you. I shall write to Aix to-day that I am going to
stay here, where I can be of service to Fred and Louie, and to you too.
You will not go back, of course, while your cousin needs you. And now go
out into the sunshine, and bye-and-bye I’ll find you somewhere in the
grounds.”
He had taken matters into his own hands in his masterful way, and Bertha
felt how delightful it was to have some one to lean upon, and that one
Rex Hallam, whose voice was so full of sympathy, whose eyes looked at
her so kindly, and whose hands held hers so long and seemed so unwilling
to release them. With a blush she withdrew them from his clasp. Leaving
her at last, he walked down the hall, entering Louie’s room first and
finding her asleep, with her maid in charge. For a moment he stood
looking at her white, wan face, which touched him more than her fair
beauty had ever done, for on it he could read the story of her life, and
a great pity welled up in his heart for the girl who seemed so like a
lovely flower broken on its stem.
“Poor little Louie!” he said, involuntarily, and at the sound of his
voice Louie awoke, recognizing him at once, and exclaiming:
“Oh, Rex! I was dreaming of you and the magnolias. I am so glad you are
here! You will stay, won’t you? I am afraid Fred is going to die, he is
so bad, and then what shall I do?”
She gave him her hand, which he did not hold as long as he had held
Bertha’s, nor did the holding it affect him the same. Bertha’s had been
warm and full of life, with something electrical in their touch, which
sent the blood bounding through his veins and made him long to kiss
them, as well as the bright face raised so eagerly to his. Louie’s hand
was thin and clammy, and so small that he could have crushed it easily,
as he raised it to his lips with the freedom of an old-time friend, and
just as he would have done had Fred himself been present. He told her he
should stay as long as he was needed, and after a few moments went to
see her husband, who was beginning to grow restless and to fret at
Bertha’s absence. But at sight of Reginald his mood changed, and he
exclaimed joyfully:
“Rex, old boy, I wonder if you know how glad I am to see you. I do
believe I shall get well now you are here, though I am having a big
tussle with some confounded thing,—typhoid, the doctor calls it; but
doctors are fools. How did you happen to drop down here?”
Rex told him how he chanced to be there, and that he was going to stay,
and then, excusing himself, went in quest of Bertha, whom he found
sitting upon a rustic seat which was partially concealed by a clump of
shrubbery. It was a glorious afternoon, and Rex, who was very fond of
boating, proposed a row upon the lake, to which Bertha consented.
“I have had too many races with Harvard not to know how to manage the
oars myself,” he said, as he handed Bertha into the boat, and dismissing
the boy, pushed off from the shore.
It was a delightful hour they spent together gliding over the smooth
waters of the lake, and in that time they became better acquainted than
many people do in years. There was no coquetry nor sham in Bertha’s
nature, while Rex was so open and frank, and they had so much in common
to talk about, that restraint was impossible between them. Poor Rose
Arabella Jefferson was discussed and laughed over, Rex declaring his
intention to find her some time, if he made a pilgrimage to Scotsburg on
purpose. Then he spoke of the encounter on the ship, and said:
“I can’t tell you how many times I have thought of that girl before I
knew it was you, or how I have wanted to see her and apologize properly
for my awkwardness. Something seems to be drawing us together
strangely.” Then he spoke again of his visit to the Homestead, while
Bertha became wonderfully animated as she talked of her home, and Rex,
watching her, felt that he had never seen so beautiful a face as hers,
or listened to a sweeter voice. “I wonder if I am really falling in
love,” he thought, as he helped her from the boat, while she was
conscious of some subtle change wrought in her during that hour on Lake
Geneva, and felt that life would never be to her again exactly what it
had been.