IN DURANCE VILE
Gabrielle always remembered the day that the ringmaster of the circus came to see her pony jump. She was proud of her pony, who was dapple grey and Welsh, and could jump nine inches higher than himself.
Gabrielle was five, and had ridden without a leading rein for two years, but her father never let her jump Roland, the pony. So the pony jumped by himself, greatly to the edification of the ringmaster who had been bidden to see the feat.
While all this was going on, Nana called her to nursery tea, and as she trotted down the long yard, past the stables, and towards the drive, the ringmaster turned to Jack Ainslie, Gabrielle’s father, and said: “Has the little Missie hurt her foot? She’s a thought lame.”
Jack Ainslie looked hastily after the idolized little figure, and noted that the ringmaster was right. Shewasa thought lame.
Hastily excusing himself, he ran after the child. “Have you hurt your foot, darling?” he asked anxiously. “You’re limping a little. Did you twist your ankle?”
“Oh, no, Daddy dear, I’m not hurt. I’m goingto tea.” Gabrielle put up her face for the ever-expected kiss and ran after her nurse. Jack Ainslie dismissed the subject from his mind and showed the ringmaster the rest of the horses.
From that day, however, things changed for Gabrielle. Other people noticed the little limp, and her parents, terrified and distressed, sent for the family doctor. He discovered that in some way, probably at birth, her hip had been dislocated, and had formed a new socket for itself, and that henceforth she would limp—unless—and here all the mischief began—something could be done. Her father was frantic. Of course something must be done. That his Gabrielle, his dainty little lady with her pretty face, her quick intelligence, and her gracious ways, should be lame—oh, it was intolerable! He was broken-hearted and rebellious, and even his wife’s steadfast patience and unchanging tenderness could not make him resigned. Then began for Gabrielle a series of visits to London. She was taken from one great doctor to another till she grew quite used to marching about on thick piled carpets, clad in nothing but her sunny hair, while they discussed her interesting “case.”
“Doctors are chilly men,” said Gabrielle; “their hands are always cold to my body.”
An operation was arranged, but at the last moment Jack Ainslie drew back, for the surgeons would not guarantee success, and the family doctor said grave things about Gabrielle’s constitutional delicacy. So it was decided that more gradual means must be tried to bring about thedesired result. The “gradual means” assumed the shape of an instrument, hideous to behold and painful to wear. It broke Jack Ainslie’s heart to see his little lady cabined and confined in such a cruel cage, and for the little lady herself it blotted out the sunshine and made life very grey and terrible. One thing was quite plain to Gabrielle, and that was that evidently Nature was very much to blame in having provided a new “socket” for the poor little dislocated bone. This impertinence must be interfered with at all costs—the doctors seemed to agree upon that. And Gabrielle wondered why it was so wrong to have no pain, to be perfectly unconscious of her “affliction,” as her nurse called it, and so interesting (to the doctors) and right, to be uncomfortable and to wear a hideous high-soled boot and an iron cage, with crutches under the arms that pushed her shoulders up to her ears.
As for the instrument, it was designed and ordered by three famous surgeons, and it cost the price of many ponies. Gabrielle tried to be brave. She was curiously conscious that the pain her parents suffered was far greater than her own. The instrument was adjusted in London, and on the way home in the train her mother asked her many times, “Does it hurt you, my darling?” And Gabrielle always answered bravely, “I can bear it, mother dear; I can bear it!”
When she got home that night, the poor little leg was black from the cruel pressure, and Mary Ainslie broke down and cried till she could cry no longer. Gabrielle tried to walk bravely in hercramping irons, and to smile at her parents when she met their troubled eyes. At first she broke the thing continually, for she was an active child, much given to jumping off chairs and playing at circus on the big old sofa. But by and by all desire to jump and run left her. She grew high-shouldered, and would sit very still for hours, while her daddy told her stories or drove her behind Roland in a little basket-carriage he had bought for her. Truly the iron entered into her soul, the cruel iron that cramped the child’s soft body; and Gabrielle’s eyes grew larger and larger, and her chin more pointed, while the once plump little hands were white as the petals of the pear-blossom outside the nursery window.
“I wish people wouldn’t ask me about it; they are kind, but I wish they wouldn’t,” Gabrielle would say. “I’m tired of telling them about the socket, and I’m not ‘a poor little soul’—I’m daddy’s little lady!”
There came to Jack Ainslie a very old college friend, a doctor, Gabrielle’s godfather, and devoted to her, and he was supremely dissatisfied with her treatment and implored them to take her to see a young surgeon, a friend of his own, who was making a great name, and doing wonders for everyone who came under his care. Jack Ainslie and his wife needed but small persuasion, and it was decided that Gabrielle should go to London as soon as possible.
What hastened the visit was this: Gabrielle was devoted to fairy lore, and a favorite play of hers was to be the beautiful princess who is freedfrom giants and dragons and lions by the gallant “Boots” of the Norse tales. Her father always enacted the part of that redoubtable third son, and was wont to kneel before her, making extravagant protestations of his devotion, which she accepted with gracious condescension. On this particular afternoon, just after tea, her father proposed to play the favorite game, but Gabrielle would have none of it. “I can’t be a princess any more, Daddy; I’m sure no princess ever wore an instrument!” she said. “I don’t feel like a princess any more at all.” Her father caught her up in his arms, with a great hard sob, which frightened her, and she stroked his face, saying tenderly: “Don’t be sorry, dear, dear Dad! I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’ll be a princess, I will, indeed! Iwillfeel like a princess really!” The next day Jack Ainslie and his wife took Gabrielle up to town. They did not even take the faithful Nana, for Gabrielle’s mother could hardly bear to let any hands but hers touch her darling, ever since the day that the ringmaster had made his sad discovery.
Mary Ainslie took Gabrielle to the new doctor the following morning, while Jack sat in the smoking-room of the hotel, lighting innumerable cigars which he did not smoke, and turning over illustrated papers which he did not see. Then he turned out of the hotel and walked down Piccadilly, blundering into the passers-by, and when he crossed the road, was nearly ridden over by an omnibus, so blind and stupid was he in his heavy sorrow. Poor Jack! his honest heart was veryfull of grief, for he loved his little lady dearly, and he felt that unless something were done quickly, he would soon have nothing but a tender memory to love.
Gabrielle and her mother were shown into the new doctor’s consulting-room at once. He was a tall young man, with red hair and keen green eyes. Her mother undressed Gabrielle, all but the “instrument,” which clasped the tender little body, and seemed so cruelly unnecessary. The young doctor frowned when he saw it, then he took it off himself, and Gabrielle noticed that his touch was as gentle as her mother’s, and that his hands were warm. She gave a happy little shake when she was free of it, a little wriggle and jump of relief. Then the doctor made her walk, and felt her all over, after which he rolled her up in a big fur rug, to sit in front of the fire, while he went into the next room with her mother. They were not long away, and on their return Gabrielle looked up at the doctor with bright, curious eyes.
“Does the instrument hurt you?” he asked. Gabrielle looked at it, as it leaned feebly against a chair, and said: “It does, rather; but it does its best not to. I think...!”
“Well, any way, you’re not going to wear it any more. Are you glad?”
“But what will the socket do?”
“Bless me, child; they’ve talked about you far too much. The socket will do beautifully—much better without it than with it!”
“May I wear shoes like other little girls?”
“Certainly; the prettiest shoes that can be got!”
“Not compensatum shoes?”
“No; ordinary shoes, exactly alike!”
By this time Gabrielle had been arrayed in some clothes. She noticed that her mother’s hands trembled, but that her eyes were glad. The child looked up at the tall young doctor, who was watching her with his keen green eyes, and said: “My Daddy will be so glad. He will look at me, and not look so sorry, and there will be no hard things to stick into him when he cuddles me! He will be so glad!”
The doctor made a queer little sound in his throat; then he lifted Gabrielle in his arms and carried her to the window.
“Do you see the end of this street,” he asked, “where the roar and the rumbling sound comes from? That’s Oxford Street. Well, in that street is a beautiful shop full of shoes—shoes for little girls—and you are going there directly, to get the prettiest pair that mother can find for you!”
“May they have silver buckles?” Gabrielle asked eagerly.
“I think it extremely advisable they should have big silver buckles. You will walk both fast and far in buckles shoes, and you must learn to dance thetarantella, and all the dolls will sit in a row to watch you!”
Gabrielle gave a delighted laugh. “Will the leg that wore the irons get fat again, like the other?”
“Oh, dear, yes! You mustn’t think about that leg any more, but you must do all the exercisesmother is going to show you, and when you can hang on a trapeze for twenty minutes, without falling off, you must write and tell me.”
Then Gabrielle’s mother finished dressing her, all but her boots. The boot with the “compensatum” sole lay near the instrument. Gabrielle looked at it with great aversion. “It’s a very dry day,” said she. “May I go to the cab in my stockings, and not put on no shoes till I have my new ones?”
The doctor pushed the little boot out of sight, under the chair, with his foot, and said: “I’ll carry you to the cab, and mother or the cabman will carry you to the shop across the pavement, and you shall never see that iron horror or that boot again!”
As the doctor carried her across the hall, Gabrielle put her arms round his neck, and kissed him on both his eyes.
“Your eyes taste very salt!” she said, “But you are the best doctor in the world!”