Chapter XIV: 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.