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?"
[Illustration: "You say I shall be able to see him--my husband?"]
"Yes, I think so," he said.
"And you also?"
"No! Him, but not me. You never will. I'll be an imagination
forever. You'll never see me at all."
"Under what star of sadness was I born?" said Mary Gage, simply. "What
a problem!"
"Good-by," he replied. "I don't need to wait."
She held out her hands to him, gropingly. "Going?"
"Yes. I'm coming back, week after next, to get you. I'll not talk
this way ever again. Don't forgive me--you can't.
"You'll have to go down to our hospital, perhaps for a couple of
weeks," he concluded.
He stepped from the room so silently, passed so quickly on the turf,
that she was not sure he had gone. He never saw her hands reach out,
did not hear her voice: "No, no! I'll not go! Let me be as I am!"