BEFORE DAWN
A day passed, two, and three. Nothing came to break the monotony at
the big dam. Donkey engines screamed intermittently. Workmen still
passed here or there with their barrows. Teams strained at heavy loads
of gravel and cement. The general labor in the way of finishing
touches on the undertaking still went on under the care of the foremen,
monotonously regular. No one knew that Waldhorn, chief engineer, was a
prisoner under guard.
Mary Gage was more ignorant than any prisoner of what went on about
her. A hard lot, that of waiting at any time, but the waiting of the
newly blind--there is no human misery to equal it. It seemed at times
to her she must go mad.
She recognized the footfall of Doctor Barnes when one morning she heard
it 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 he
was looking at her steadfastly.
"Well," said she, feeling herself color slightly. Still he did not
answer. She shifted uneasily.
"What are you doing?" she demanded, just a trace of the personal in her
tone.
"Eavesdropping again. Staring. This is the day when I say good-by to
you. 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 but
joy 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 to
see life. There's not much risk left for me. But you talk as though
things 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 when
I say ten years for forgetting anything, that's pathological diagnosis,
and not personal. I try to reason that time will cure any inorganic
disease just as time cures the sting of death. Otherwise the world
could not carry its grief and do its work. The world is sick, near to
death. It must have time. So must I. I can't stay here and work any
more. 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 his
hands.
"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 as
though 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 any
longer about your eyes. We'll try this afternoon, in our little
hospital here. I wish my old preceptor were here; but Annie will help
me 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 curiosity
about your own case," he said presently.
"That only shows you how helpless I am. I have no choice. I have lost
my own identity."
"Didn't your doctor back in Cleveland tell you anything about what was
wrong with your eyes?"
"He said at first it was retinal; then he said it was iritis. He
didn't like to answer any questions."
"The old way--adding to all the old mummeries of the most mumming of
all 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 was
iritis?"
"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 out
that 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 the
head."
"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 going
to try to give you a little explanation of your trouble, so you will
know what you are facing."
"I wish you would."
"Very well. Now, you must think of the eye as a lens, but one made up
of cells, of tissues. It can know inflammation. As a result of many
inflammations there is what we call an exudation--a liquid passes from
the tissues. This may be thin or serum-like, or it may be heavier,
something like granulations. The tissues are weak--they exude
something in their distress, in their attempt to correct this condition
when they have been inflamed.
"The pupil of your eye is the aperture, the stop of the lens. That is
the hole through which the light passes. Around it lie the tissues of
the iris. In the back of the eye is the retina, which acts as a film
for the eye's picture.
"Now, it was the part of the eye around that opening which got inflamed
and began to exude. Such inflammation may come from eye-strain,
sometimes from glare like furnace heat, or the reflection of the sun on
the 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 the
inflamed iris. It was so heavy that we call it a 'plastic' exudation.
Now, that was what was the technical trouble of your eye--plastic
exudation.
"This exudation, or growth, as we might call it, went on from the edges
of the iris until it met in the middle of the pupil. Then there was
spread across the aperture of your lens an opaque granulated curtain
through which light could not pass. Therefore you could not see. The
plastic exudation had done its evil work as the result of the
iritis--that is to say, of the sufferings of the iris."
"I begin to understand," said Mary Gage. "That covers what seemed to
happen."
"It covers it precisely, for that is precisely what did happen. It was
not cataract. I knew, or thought I knew, that it was not from retinal
scars due to inflammation in the back of the eye. It was just a
filling up of the opening of the eye.
"So I know you lost sight in that last eye little by little, as you did
in the other. You kept on knitting all the time. On your way out you
struck 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; sometimes
even we can take out the crystalline lens and substitute a heavy lens
in 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-hole
aperture, not through the pupil, but at one side the pupil. In other
words, I've got to make an artificial pupil--it will be just a little
at 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 is
a lens. Suppose you put a piece of black paper over a part of your
lens--paste it there. You will find that you can still make pictures
with that lens, and that they will not be distorted. Not quite so much
illumination 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 as
an 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 am
the best that offers, and it must be done now.
"There is a very general human shrinking from the thought of any
operation on the eye--it is so delicate, so sensitive in every way, but
as a matter of fact, science can do many things by way of operation
upon the eye. If I did not think I could give you back your sight, you
may be sure I should never undertake this work to-day. The operation
is known technically as iridectomy. That would mean nothing to you if
I had not tried to explain it.
"Of course there will be wounds in the tissues of the iris which must
be healed. There must not be any more inflammation. That means that
for some time after the operation your eyes must be bandaged, and you
will remain in absolute darkness. You will have to keep on the
bandages for a week or more--you understand that. If after hearing
this explanation you do not wish to go forward, this is the time to let
me know."
"I am quite ready," said Mary Gage. "As though I could ever thank you
enough!"
"Let me remain in your memory, as a picturesque and noble figure, my
dear lady! Think of me as a Sir Galahad, which I am not. Picture me
of lofty carriage and beautiful countenance, which is not true.
Imagine me as a pleasing and masterful personality in every way--which
I 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 to
have faith in God any more. If I should get back my eyes I would
always have faith in prayer. But--the other day you told me I'd not be
married, then! May not a blind woman be a married woman also?"
"No! Not if she never saw her husband. How could she ever have
chosen, have selected? How could either her body or her soul ever have
seen?"
She rose before him suddenly. "You say that!" She choked. "You say
that, who helped put me where I am! And now you say you are going
away--and you say that's all wrong, my being married! What do you
mean?"
"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're
talking 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 this
afternoon. 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 stand
outside the door, but that he couldn't come in. Said he would be right
there all the time. There's a great man, Mrs. Gage."
"And you are a very wise man, are you not!" said she suddenly, smiling
at 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 everybody
else! If I had my eyes, I'd not be married! Did you ever stop to
think 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 trouble
and a nuisance--yes. But I'm a woman! You treat me as though I were a
pawn, a doll. I'm tired of it. I ought to tell you something, for
fear 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 things
through. You tell me this is right and this is not right--how do you
know? 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 cut
into my soul any more. If you gave me back my sight, and did not give
me back every unsettled problem, with all the facts before me to settle
it at last, you would leave me with unhappiness hanging over me as long
as ever I lived. Not even my eyes would pay me for it."
She rose, stumbling, reaching out a hand to save herself; and he dared
not touch her hand even to aid her now.
"Oh, fine of you all," she said bitterly. "Did the Emperor of Prussia
ever do more? You, whom I have never seen in all my life! Any
situation 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 fight
it out? Can't you give me the privilege--since you've been talking of
a woman's rights and privileges--to fight out my own battles too--to
fight out all of life's fights, even to take all of its losses? I'd
rather 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 you
are light, whether----"
"You have a keen mind," said he slowly. "You're telling me to stay
here. If we could meet face to face as though you never had been
blind--why, then--I might say something or do something which would
make you feel that I believed you never had been married. I have told
you that already."
"Yes! Then surely you will not go away. Because you have brought up a
problem between you and me---- Aren't we big enough to fight that out
between us? Ought we not? Give me my eyes! Give me my rights!
"Why, listen," she went on more gently, less argumentatively, "just the
other day, when we were talking over this question about my eyes, I
called out to you when you went away, and you did not hear me. I said
No; I would not take my eyes from you and pay the price. I said it
would 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 the
fight of it, all the risk of it. Then, after I've taken my chance and
made my fight, I want all the joy of it or all the sorrow of it at the
end! I want life! Don't you? I've always had the feeling that you
were a strong man. I don't want anything I haven't earned. I'll never
give 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 you
mustn't. Good-by."
She felt her hand caught tight in both of his, but he could not speak
to 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 remedy
nature's unkindness, and to make Mary Gage as other women. When the
sun had dropped back of its shielding mountain wall, Mary Gage lay
still asleep, her eyes bandaged, in her darkened room. Whether at
length 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 life
before, he had done his surgeon's work unfalteringly.
"Doc," said Sim Gage tremblingly, when they met upon the gravel street
in the straggling little camp, each white-faced from fatigue, "tell me
how 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 see
you first, because you're the doctor. A doctor, now, he ain't like
folks, 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.