The Sagebrusher: A Story of the West

by Emerson Hough

  CHAPTER XXX

  BEFORE DAWN

  A day passed, two, and three. Nothing came to break the monotony atthe big dam. Donkey engines screamed intermittently. Workmen stillpassed here or there with their barrows. Teams strained at heavy loadsof gravel and cement. The general labor in the way of finishingtouches on the undertaking still went on under the care of the foremen,monotonously regular. No one knew that Waldhorn, chief engineer, was aprisoner under guard.

  Mary Gage was more ignorant than any prisoner of what went on abouther. A hard lot, that of waiting at any time, but the waiting of thenewly blind--there is no human misery to equal it. It seemed at timesto her she must go mad.

  She recognized the footfall of Doctor Barnes when one morning she heardit on the gallery floor inside the slamming screen door. "Come in,"she said, meeting him. "What is it?"

  He entered without any speech, cast himself into a chair. She knew hewas looking at her steadfastly.

  "Well," said she, feeling herself color slightly. Still he did notanswer. She shifted uneasily.

  "What are you doing?" she demanded, just a trace of the personal in hertone.

  "Eavesdropping again. Staring. This is the day when I say good-by toyou. I've come to say my good-by now."

  "Why should it be like that?" she asked after a time.

  "Will you be happy?"

  She did not answer, and he leaned forward as he spoke.

  "You left a happy world behind you. Do you want to see this world now,this sordid, bloody, torn and worn old world, so full of everything butjoy and justice? Do you want to see it any more? Why?"

  "It is my right to see the world," said Mary Gage simply. "I want tosee life. There's not much risk left for me. But you talk as thoughthings were final."

  "I'm going away. Let's not talk at all."

  For a long time she sat silent.

  "Don't you think that in time we forget things?"

  "I suppose in ten years I will forget things--in part."

  "Nonsense! In five years--two--you'll be married."

  "So you think that of me?" said he after a time. "Fine!"

  "But you have always told me that life is life, you know."

  "Yes, sometimes I have tried my hand at scientific reasoning. But whenI say ten years for forgetting anything, that's pathological diagnosis,and not personal. I try to reason that time will cure any inorganicdisease just as time cures the sting of death. Otherwise the worldcould not carry its grief and do its work. The world is sick, near todeath. It must have time. So must I. I can't stay here and work anymore. If you can see--if you get well and normal again--I'll be here."

  She looked at him steadily. He wanted to take her face between hishands.

  "Oh, I'll not leave here until everything is right with your case.There's good excuse for me to go out. It will be for you the same asthough we had never met at all."

  "That's fine of you! So you believe that of me?"

  "Why not? I must. You're married. That's outside my province now.I've just come to tell you now that I don't think we ought to wait anylonger about your eyes. We'll try this afternoon, in our littlehospital here. I wish my old preceptor were here; but Annie will helpme all she can, and I'll do my very best."

  "I'm quite ready."

  "I don't know whether or not to be glad that you have no curiosityabout your own case," he said presently.

  "That only shows you how helpless I am. I have no choice. I have lostmy own identity."

  "Didn't your doctor back in Cleveland tell you anything about what waswrong with your eyes?"

  "He said at first it was retinal; then he said it was iritis. Hedidn't like to answer any questions."

  "The old way--adding to all the old mummeries of the most mumming ofall professions--medicine! That dates back to bats' wings and toads'livers as cure for the spleen. But at least and at last he said it wasiritis?"

  "Yes. He told me that I might gradually lose one eye--which was true.He thought the trouble might advance to the other eye. It came outthat way. He must have known."

  "Perhaps he knew part," said Doctor Barnes. "You had some pain?"

  "Unbearable pain part of the time--over the eyes, in the front of thehead."

  "Didn't your doctor tell you what iritis meant?"

  "No. I suppose inflammation of the eyes--the iris."

  "Precisely. Now, just because you're a woman of intelligence I'm goingto try to give you a little explanation of your trouble, so you willknow what you are facing."

  "I wish you would."

  "Very well. Now, you must think of the eye as a lens, but one made upof cells, of tissues. It can know inflammation. As a result of manyinflammations there is what we call an exudation--a liquid passes fromthe tissues. This may be thin or serum-like, or it may be heavier,something like granulations. The tissues are weak--they exudesomething in their distress, in their attempt to correct this conditionwhen they have been inflamed.

  "The pupil of your eye is the aperture, the stop of the lens. That isthe hole through which the light passes. Around it lie the tissues ofthe iris. In the back of the eye is the retina, which acts as a filmfor the eye's picture.

  "Now, it was the part of the eye around that opening which got inflamedand began to exude. Such inflammation may come from eye-strain,sometimes from glare like furnace heat, or the reflection of the sun onthe snow. Snow-blindness is sometimes painful. Why? Iritis.

  "In any case, a chronic irritation came into your case some time.Little by little there came a heavy exudation around the edges of theinflamed iris. It was so heavy that we call it a 'plastic' exudation.Now, that was what was the technical trouble of your eye--plasticexudation.

  "This exudation, or growth, as we might call it, went on from the edgesof the iris until it met in the middle of the pupil. Then there wasspread across the aperture of your lens an opaque granulated curtainthrough which light could not pass. Therefore you could not see. Theplastic exudation had done its evil work as the result of theiritis--that is to say, of the sufferings of the iris."

  "I begin to understand," said Mary Gage. "That covers what seemed tohappen."

  "It covers it precisely, for that is precisely what did happen. It wasnot cataract. I knew, or thought I knew, that it was not from retinalscars due to inflammation in the back of the eye. It was just afilling up of the opening of the eye.

  "So I know you lost sight in that last eye little by little, as you didin the other. You kept on knitting all the time. On your way out youstruck the glare from the white sands of the plains in the dry country.At once the inflammation finished its exudation--and you were blind."

  She sat motionless.

  "Sometimes we take off the film of a cataract from the eye; sometimeseven we can take out the crystalline lens and substitute a heavy lensin glasses to be worn by the patient."

  "But in my case you intend to cut out that exudation from the pupil?"

  "No. I wish we could. What we do is to cut a little key-holeaperture, not through the pupil, but at one side the pupil. In otherwords, I've got to make an artificial pupil--it will be just a littleat one side of the middle of the eye. You will hardly notice it."

  "But that will mean I cannot see!"

  "On the contrary, it will mean that you can see. Remember, your eye isa lens. Suppose you put a piece of black paper over a part of yourlens--paste it there. You will find that you can still make pictureswith that lens, and that they will not be distorted. Not quite so muchillumination will get into the lens, but the picture will be the same.Therefore you will see, and see finely.

  "Now, you must not be uneasy, and you must not think of this merely asan interesting experiment just because you have not heard of it before.My old preceptor, Fuller of Johns Hopkins, did this operation often,and almost always with success. He could do it better than I, but I amthe best that offers, and it must be done now.

  "There is a very general human shrinking f
rom the thought of anyoperation on the eye--it is so delicate, so sensitive in every way, butas a matter of fact, science can do many things by way of operationupon the eye. If I did not think I could give you back your sight, youmay be sure I should never undertake this work to-day. The operationis known technically as iridectomy. That would mean nothing to you ifI had not tried to explain it.

  "Of course there will be wounds in the tissues of the iris which mustbe healed. There must not be any more inflammation. That means thatfor some time after the operation your eyes must be bandaged, and youwill remain in absolute darkness. You will have to keep on thebandages for a week or more--you understand that. If after hearingthis explanation you do not wish to go forward, this is the time to letme know."

  "I am quite ready," said Mary Gage. "As though I could ever thank youenough!"

  "Let me remain in your memory, as a picturesque and noble figure, mydear lady! Think of me as a Sir Galahad, which I am not. Picture meof lofty carriage and beautiful countenance, which is not true.Imagine me as a pleasing and masterful personality in every way--whichI am not. You will not meet me face to face."

  "I've been praying for my sight when it didn't seem to be any use tohave faith in God any more. If I should get back my eyes I wouldalways have faith in prayer. But--the other day you told me I'd not bemarried, then! May not a blind woman be a married woman also?"

  "No! Not if she never saw her husband. How could she ever havechosen, have selected? How could either her body or her soul ever haveseen?"

  She rose before him suddenly. "You say that!" She choked. "You saythat, who helped put me where I am! And now you say you are goingaway--and you say that's all wrong, my being married! What do youmean?"

  "If I gave you back your eyes and your life, isn't that something?"

  "Why, no! A fight which isn't fought is worse than defeat. But you'retalking as though you really meant to go away and leave me--always!"

  "Yes. I've come to say good-by--and then to operate. Two thisafternoon. Annie will come for you. I have told her what to do."

  "And my husband?"

  "Said he couldn't stand it to see you hurt. Said he would standoutside the door, but that he couldn't come in. Said he would be rightthere all the time. There's a great man, Mrs. Gage."

  "And you are a very wise man, are you not!" said she suddenly, smilingat him slowly, her dark eyes full upon him.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Oh, so much you know about life and duty and the rights of everybodyelse! If I had my eyes, I'd not be married! Did you ever stop tothink what you have been taking into your own hands here?"

  "Go on," said he. "I've got it coming."

  "Well, one thing you've forgotten. I've been a problem and a troubleand a nuisance--yes. But I'm a woman! You treat me as though I were apawn, a doll. I'm tired of it. I ought to tell you something, forfear you'll really go away, and give me no chance."

  "I ought to have as much courage as you're showing now." He smiled,wryly.

  "Then, if you have courage, you ought to stay here and see thingsthrough. You tell me this is right and this is not right--how do youknow? I owe you very much--but ought you to decide everything for me?Let me also be the judge. If there's any problem in these matters,anything unsaid, let's face it _all_. Cut into my eyes, but don't cutinto my soul any more. If you gave me back my sight, and did not giveme back every unsettled problem, with all the facts before me to settleit at last, you would leave me with unhappiness hanging over me as longas ever I lived. Not even my eyes would pay me for it."

  She rose, stumbling, reaching out a hand to save herself; and he darednot touch her hand even to aid her now.

  "Oh, fine of you all," she said bitterly. "Did the Emperor of Prussiaever do more? You, whom I have never seen in all my life! Anysituation that is hard here for you--take it. Haven't I done as much?If there's any other fight on ahead unsettled for you, can't you fightit out? Can't you give me the privilege--since you've been talking ofa woman's rights and privileges--to fight out my own battles too--tofight out all of life's fights, even to take all of its losses? I'drather have it that way. That means I want to see you, who you are,what you are, whether you are good, whether you are just, whether youare light, whether----"

  "You have a keen mind," said he slowly. "You're telling me to stayhere. If we could meet face to face as though you never had beenblind--why, then--I might say something or do something which wouldmake you feel that I believed you never had been married. I have toldyou that already."

  "Yes! Then surely you will not go away. Because you have brought up aproblem between you and me---- Aren't we big enough to fight that outbetween us? Ought we not? Give me my eyes! Give me my rights!

  "Why, listen," she went on more gently, less argumentatively, "just theother day, when we were talking over this question about my eyes, Icalled out to you when you went away, and you did not hear me. I saidNo; I would not take my eyes from you and pay the price. I said itwould be sweeter to be blind and remain deceived. But that's gone by.I've been thinking since then. Now I want it all--all! I want all thefight of it, all the risk of it. Then, after I've taken my chance andmade my fight, I want all the joy of it or all the sorrow of it at theend! I want life! Don't you? I've always had the feeling that youwere a strong man. I don't want anything I haven't earned. I'll nevergive what hasn't been earned. I won't ever pray for what isn't mine."

  "Now I'm ready," she repeated simply. "I can't talk any more, and youmustn't. Good-by."

  She felt her hand caught tight in both of his, but he could not speakto his hand clasp. "At two!" was all he managed to say.

  And so, in this far-off spot in the wilderness, the science of to-day,not long after two by the clock, had done what it might to remedynature's unkindness, and to make Mary Gage as other women. When thesun had dropped back of its shielding mountain wall, Mary Gage laystill asleep, her eyes bandaged, in her darkened room. Whether atlength she would awaken to darkness or to light, none could tell.Allen Barnes only knew that, tried as never he had been in all his lifebefore, he had done his surgeon's work unfalteringly.

  "Doc," said Sim Gage tremblingly, when they met upon the gravel streetin the straggling little camp, each white-faced from fatigue, "tell mehow long before we'll know."

  "Three or four days at least. We'll have to wait."

  "You're sure she'll see?"

  "I hope so. I think so."

  "What'll she see first?"

  "Light."

  "Who'll she see first, Doc--Annie, you reckon?"

  "If she asks for you, let her see you first," said Doctor Barnes."That's your right."

  "No," said Sim Gage, "no, I don't think so. I think she'd ought to seeyou first, because you're the doctor. A doctor, now, he ain't likefolks, you know. He's just the doctor."

  "Yes, he's just the doctor, Gage, that's all."

  He left Sim Gage standing in the road, looking steadfastly at the door.