In the next week or two a series of distressing events took place which brought Mrs. Stevenson almost to the verge of nervous prostration. The night before her husband's departure a peasant on the estate died of the prevailing disease, and for some unknown reason the body, much swollen and disfigured, was permitted to lie just outside the gate during the entire morning. Next in the chapter of unfortunate accidents was the failure to reach her of the promised telegram announcing Louis's safe arrival at Nice. After four days' anxious waiting she decided to follow him, and her subsequent adventures may best be told in her own language as written to her mother-in-law:
"The fourth night I went to Marseilles and telegraphed to the gare and the police at Nice. All the people said it was no use, and that it was plain that he had been taken with a violent hemorrhage on the way and was now dead and buried at some little station. They said all I could do was to pack up and go back to Scotland. All were very kind in a dreadful way, but assured me that I had much better accept what 'le bon Dieu' had sent and go back to Scotland at once. After much telegraphing back and forth I found that Louis was at the Grand Hotel at Nice, and when I reached there he was calmly reading in bed. At St. Marcel and Marseilles every one was furious with me; they were all fond of Louis and said I had let a dying man go off alone. You may imagine my feelings all this time!"
As though all that went before had not been enough, her return journey to St. Marcel was made so uncomfortable by a tactless fellow passenger that she arrived in a state of complete exhaustion. Of this she writes:
"I have had a miserable time altogether, and the people, meaning to be so kind, were really so dreadful. There was a man on the train, an Englishman, who said such terrible things to me about Louis that when we reached Marseilles another Englishman[22] who had been in the carriage came to me and spoke about it, saying he had been so wretched all the time. He insisted on stopping his journey a day to help me in my affairs. Here is a specimen of the horrid person's talk: 'What are you going to do when your husband dies?' 'I don't expect him to die.' 'Oh, I know all about that. I've heard that kind of talk before. He's done for, and in this country they'll shovel him underground in twenty-four hours, almost before the breath is out of his body. His mother'll never see him again.' I do not speak but look intently out of the window. Again he speaks, leaning forward to be sure that I hear him. 'Have him embalmed; that's the thing; have you got money enough?' Can you fancy five hours of this? I got out in the rain several times to try to get into another carriage, but they were all filled. But I never heard of anybody being so nice as Mr. Hammond was. I think he was more proud to be able to help Louis and those belonging to him than to help the Queen."
Anxious to prevent her husband's return to St. Marcel while conditions were so unfavourable, she wrote to him: "Don't you dare to come back to this home of 'pizon' until you are really better. I do not see how you are to come back at all under the circumstances, deserting your family as you have done and being hunted down and caught by your wife. Madame desires me to say that she knows what is keeping you in Nice—it is another lady. I told her that instead of amusing yourself with another lady you were weeping for me and home and your Wogg. She was greatly touched at that and almost wept herself into her dishpan. You are a dear creature and I love you, but I am not going to say that I am lonesome lest you come flying back to this den of death." In the meantime he wrote her letters in which he expressed his own loneliness in humourous verses, illustrated with drawings, one of which runs like this:
"When my wife is far from me
The undersigned feels all at sea."
R. L. S.
"I am as good as deaf
When separate from F.
I am far from gay
When separate from A.
I loathe the ways of men
When separate from N.