"Louis is worried because he thinks he cannot write as gracefully as he used to, but I believe his writing is more direct and stronger, and that when he is able to join his old style with the new he will do better work than he dreams of now. His later work is fuller of thought, more manly in every way."
With the month of March came Mrs. Stevenson's birthday, and, to her great surprise and confusion, it was made the occasion of a general fête in which the whole colony took part. She thus describes the affair:
"I was told there was to be a dance in the dining-room and cake and ices in my honor, so Louis and I went down in the evening. I watched the dancing awhile, when suddenly I found myself seated alone at the end of the room. Judge of my surprise, and I must confess, dismay, when I saw the two little Doney children, in Watteau costumes, looking just like bits of porcelain painting, coming down the center towards me, one bearing a large birthday cake and the other a bouquet of flowers. The beautiful little creatures dropped on their knees at my feet and presented their offerings. I suppose I should have said something, but Louis said I did the best thing possible; I only kissed both the darlings. Other people had had birthdays and only received congratulations, so I felt horribly embarrassed by all these grand doings in a public room, though I was very grateful for the friendly feelings of those who arranged the affair."
The snow came late, but during the winter it lay deep and heavy on the ground, making the roads almost impassable and their isolation more complete. Both husband and wife began to feel an almost uncontrollable depression amid these bleak surroundings, aggravated as they were by many deaths among the patients. As spring approached Mrs. Stevenson wrote:
"Louis is not very well and not very ill. Spring, I think, sits upon him, and so also all these deaths and Bertie's[19] illness. As soon as he is a little stronger the doctor is going to send him to some place in the neighborhood for a change."
And she, to whom warmth and colour were a very part of her nature, was an exotic, a lost tropic bird, in these icy mountains. In a letter to her mother-in-law her heart cried out: "I cannot deny that living here is like living in a well of desolation. Sometimes I feel quite frantic to look out somewhere, and almost as though I should suffocate. But may Davos forgive me! It has done so much for Louis that I am ashamed to say anything against it."
In the latter part of April their discontent went beyond endurance, and, believing his health now sufficiently improved to warrant the risk, they turned their steps once more towards their beloved France, where they spent a month between Barbizon, St. Germain, and Paris.
In Paris their haunting Nemesis gave them a little breathing spell, and when Louis's strength permitted, they wandered about the streets in their own careless, irresponsible fashion, having a delightful time poking into all sorts of strange places, in one of which he insisted on spending practically his last sou for an antique watch for which she had expressed admiration. "Now we'll starve," said she, but after reaching home he happened to put his hand in the pocket of an old coat and drew out an uncashed cheque which had been forgotten. One day when out alone she went into a dismal-looking pawn-shop in a part of the city that was not considered exactly safe. She was puzzled by the evident superiority of the proprietor to his surroundings, and when he invited her to follow him, she went without hesitation back through winding passages until they stepped out into a beautiful garden, where sat a charming invalid lady, wife of the pawnbroker. It seemed that they were people who had fallen from a high estate, and, through devotion to his wife, who was helplessly confined to her chair, he had for years kept the secret of his occupation from her, and she had lived in her garden like a fair flower, uncontaminated by the slums of Paris. In this shop Mrs. Stevenson bought four rich mahogany posts, part of an antique bedstead, which she used many years afterwards as pillars in the drawing-room of her San Francisco house.
But alas, their pleasant jaunting soon came to an end, for Louis had a relapse which brought desperate disappointment to them both, and of which she writes to his mother: "I felt compelled to tell him that he must be prepared for whatever may happen. Naturally the poor boy yearned for his mother. I think it must be very sweet to you to have this grown-up man of thirty still clinging to you with his child love."
The setback dashed their spirits so severely that his conscientious Scotch parents thought it their duty to lecture them on the sin of ingratitude for the blessings that were still theirs. In great contrition their daughter-in-law writes: