“I’ve had such a happy day. I feel like a princess—such a spoiled princess!” said Evie, when she went to bed that night; but there were sad days in store for the poor little princess from which all the care and love of her friends could not save her.
When the decree went forth that she should make her first attempt to walk, Rhoda clapped her hands with joy, and could not understand the reason of the quick, grave glance which the nurse cast upon her. She and her mother had decided that the attempt must be made in the drawing-room after tea, and nurse made no objection, hoping, perhaps, that the presence of onlookers would give her patient extra strength for the ordeal. She knew what it meant if the others did not; but, alas! they all learned soon enough, as, at the first slight movement, Evie’s white face turned grey, and she groaned in mingled anguish and dismay.
“I can’t!” she cried; “Oh, I can’t! It is like knives going through me! I can’t move!”
“Ah, but you must, my dear. It has to be done; and the braver you are, the sooner it will be over. You are bound to suffer the first few times, but it would be ten times worse to allow the joint to stiffen. Now be brave, and try to take just two steps with me! I will support you on one side, and—” Nurse looked round questioningly—“Mr Harold will take the other. You can lean all your weight on us. We won’t let you fall.”
Harold stepped forward without a word and put his strong arm under hers, and, as he did so, Evie raised her eyes to his with a look which those who saw it never forgot—a look such as might have been given by an animal caught in a snare from which it was powerless to escape. Rhoda told herself savagely that Harold was a brute to persist in the face of that dumb appeal, but he did not quail even when the sob rose to a cry, and a trembling plea for mercy. The two steps were taken, and henceforth, for weeks to come, the nightmare of repeated effort weighed upon the spirits of the household. At eleven o’clock, after tea, after dinner—three times a day—was the inexorable programme repeated, in spite of prayers and protestations. Mrs Chester’s theory was that it was brutal to torture the child, and that if she were to be lame, for pity’s sake let her be lame in peace. Rhoda suffered agonies of remorse and passionate revolts against the mystery of pain, but the nurse and her assistant never showed a sign of wavering. As a rule, Evie made a gallant attempt to control her sufferings, but there were occasions when even her fortitude gave was, as, on one afternoon, when, after taking a certain number of steps, she was informed that still more must be attempted. She was powerless in the hands that held her, but when she collapsed into helpless sobbings on the sofa, Rhoda turned on her brother with furious indignation:
“You are a brute, Harold! You have no heart! How dare you do it—how dare you make her suffer so!”
He did not answer, but turned his head aside, and stared steadily out of the window. Rhoda glared at him with smarting eyes, and suddenly saw something which put a check on her excitement. Harold’s profile was turned toward her, and the light showed great drops of moisture standing upon the brow, and rolling slowly down the cheek. She realised, with a pang, that once again she had been too quick in her judgment. In spite of his firmness, Harold had suffered more than she, more than her mother—ay, perhaps, more than Evie herself!