The Sagebrusher - Emerson Hough (classic book list .txt) 📗

don't suppose I'd ask him to do anything, do you?" said Annie Squires. "He's no good. I tell you he'll be playing in luck if I don't break loose and read the law to him."

"Well, now," said Wid, apologetically, "I wouldn't start any too strong right at first. There ain't nothing he wouldn't do for her—nothing in the whole, wide world."

"But now, about you," he added—"I'm glad you've come. It looks sort of like you was going to move in, don't it?"

"You've said it," said Annie.

Wid Gardner looked at her curiously, and meekly went about his new duties regarding wood and water.

CHAPTER XXV ANOTHER MAN'S WIFE

Revolution, and not less, had occurred within a month at Sim Gage's ranch. This was not so much evidenced by the presence of a hard-bitten corporal and his little army of four men; nor so much more by the advent of Annie Squires; neither was it proved by the new buildings that had risen so quickly; nor by the appearance of new equipment. It was not so much in the material as in the intangible things of life that greatest change had come.

Karen Jensen smiled now as she talked with her new friend, Annie Squires. Even Mary Gage, for some reason, had ceased to weep. But the main miracle was in the instance of Sim Gage himself.

Perhaps it was the hat which did it, with its brave cord of green, humblest of all the insignia of those who stand at the threshold of the Army. To Sim's vague soul it carried a purpose in life, knowledge that there was such a thing as service in the world. Daily his face now was new-reaped, his hands made clean. He imitated the erectness and alertness of these young soldiers whom he saw, learned the jerk of the elbow in their smart salute. Enriched by a pair of cast-off breeches, and the worn leggins thereto, he rode now with both feet in the stirrups and looked square between his horse's ears. Strong as are many lazy men, not cowardly, and therefore like many timid men, he rode straight, with his campaign hat a trifle at one side, like to the fashion of these others.

And he wished that She might see him now, in his new uniform. He wondered if she knew how much larger and more important a man he was now. Into the pleached garden of his life came a new vision of the procession of the days; and he was no longer content. He saw the vision of a world holding the cares and duties of a man.

That this revolution had come to pass was by reason of the presence of this blind woman who walked tap-tapping, led by a little dog; a blind woman who for some reason had begun to smile again.

As for Doctor Barnes, he had been the actual agent, to be sure. This new order of things was the product of his affirmative and initiating mind. Mary Gage, consciously or unconsciously, within a few weeks, learned his step as surely as his voice, could have told you which was his car had a dozen come into the yard at the same time. Therefore, on this certain morning, she knew his voice, when, after stopping his car in the dooryard, he called out to the men before he approached the door of her own home. It was then that Mary Gage did something which she never yet had done when she had heard the step and voice of her lawful lord and master—something she had not done since her arrival here. Blind, she turned unconsciously to the mirror which she knew Annie had hung on the wall! She smoothed back her hair, felt for the corners of her collar to make it neat. She really did not know that she did these things.

She was young. Life was still buoyant in her bosom, after all, and far more now than at any time in her life. New graciousness of face and figure began to come to her. Well-being appeared in her eye and her cheek. The clean air of this new world had done its work, the actinic sun had painted her with the colors of the luckier woman, who expects to live and to be loved. It was a lovely face she might have seen in yonder mirror—a face flushed as she heard this step at the door.

"Greetings and salutations!" said he as he entered. "Of course you know who I am."

"I'm trained in hide-and-seek," said she. "Sit down, won't you?"

He tossed his hat on the table. "Alone?" he asked.

"I always am. Annie is busy almost all day, over at the soldier house, you know."

"I suppose he is up in the hills to-day?"

She knew whom he meant. "Yes. Annie tells me he goes up every other day to look around. I should think he would be afraid."

"Annie told you?—doesn't he tell you what he does?"

"No. Sometimes in the evening he comes in for a moment."

"Well, of course," he went on, "in my capacity as Pooh Bah, Major and doctor too, I've got to be part medico to take care of the poor devils who blow off their hands or drop things on their feet, or eat too much cheap candy at the store. How is Sim's knee by this time?"

"He limps a little—I can hear it when he walks on the boards. Annie says that Wid Gardner says that Sim says that his leg's all right." She smiled, and he laughed with her.

"That's fine. And how about Madam herself, Mrs. Gage?"

She shivered. "I wish you wouldn't call me that. It—well, don't, please. Let's not ever joke."

"What shall I call you?"

"I don't know. What's wrong here, Doctor?" She faced him now.

He evaded. "I was wondering about your health."

"Oh, I'm very well. Sometimes my eyes hurt me a little, as though I felt more of the light. Subjective, I suppose."

She could not feel him look at her. At length, he spoke, quietly. "I've some news for you, or possible news. It has very much to do with your happiness. Tell me, if it were in my power to give you back your eyes, would you tell me to do that?"

"My eyes? What do you mean? To see again?"

"If I gave you back your sight, I would be giving you back the truth; and that would be very, very cruel."

He saw the fluttering of her throat, the twitching of the hands in her lap, and so hurried on.

"Listen! There's a chance in a hundred that your sight can be restored. My old preceptor writes me, from what I've told him, that there is about that chance. If it did succeed——"

"Then I'd see again!"

"Yes. So you would be very unhappy."

"You say a thing like that!"

He winced, flushed.

"You come here now with hopes that you ought not to offer, and you qualify even that! Fine—fine! You think I can stand much more than I have?"

Still the trembling of her hands, the fluttering at her throat. He endured it for a time, but broke out savagely at last. "You'd be perfect then—as lovely as ever any woman—why, you're perfect now! And yet without that one flaw where would you be? You'd not be married then, though you are now."

"Go on!" she said at length, coldly.

"You don't know one of us here except that girl, Annie, as different from you as night is from day. You don't know about the rest of us. You only think about us, imagine us—you don't see us, don't know us. Ah, God! If you only could! But—if you did!"

The last words broke from him unconsciously. He sat chilled with horror at his own speech, but knew he had to go on.

"I am going to do what shall leave us both unhappy as long as we live. I'll give you back your eyes if I can."

"I am helpless." She spoke simply.

"Yes! Why, if I even look at you, I feel I'm an eavesdropper, I'm stealing. You can't see in my face what your face puts there—you can't see my eyes with yours. You can't understand how you've made me know things I never did know until I saw you. Why, cruel? yes! And now you're asking me to be still more cruel. And I'm going to be."

"Don't!" she broke out. "Oh, God! Don't! Please—you must not talk. I thought you were different from this."

"And yet you have asked me a dozen times what's wrong here. Why, everything's wrong! That man loves you because he can see you—any man would—but you don't love him, because you haven't seen him. You're not a woman to him at all, but an abstraction. He's not a man to you at all, but an imagination. That's not love of man and woman. But when you have back your eyes,—then you're in shape to compete with the best women in the world for the best man in the world. That's love! That's marriage! That's right! Nothing else is."

He paused horrified. Her voice was icy. "I asked you what was wrong here. I begin to see now. You spoke the truth—everything is wrong."

"You'll hate me all your life and I hate myself now as I never have before in my life—despise myself. What a mockery we've made of it all. God help those who see!"

She sat silent for a very long time. "You say I shall be able to see him—my husband?"