_ CHAPTER VIII. RIVAL CONSCIENCES
The transcontinental train from the East rarely made its great climb up the Two Forks divide on time, and to-day it was more than usually late. A solitary figure long since had begun to pace the station platform, looking anxiously up and down the track.
It was Sim Gage; and this was the first time he ever had come to meet a train at Two Forks.
Sim Gage, but not the same. He now was in stiff, ill-fitting and exclaimingly new clothing. A new dark hat oppressed his perspiring brow, new and pointed shoes agonized his feet, a new white collar and a tie tortured his neck. He had been owner of these things no longer than overnight. He did not feel acquainted with himself.
He was to meet a woman! Her picture was in his pocket, in his brain, in his blood. A vast shyness, coming to consternation, seized him. He felt a sense of personal guilt; and yet a feeling of indignity and injustice claimed him. But all this and all his sullen anger was wiped out in this great shyness of a man not used to facing women. Sim Gage was product of a womanless land. This was the closest his orbit ever had come to that of the great mystery. And he had been alone so long. A sudden surging longing came to his heart. Sim Gage was shy always, and he was frightened now; but now he felt a longing--a longing to be human.
Sim Gage never in all his life had seen a young woman looking back at him over his shoulder. And now there came accession of all his ancient dread, joined with this growing sense of guilt. A few passengers from the resort hotel back in the town began to appear, lolling at the ticket window or engaged at the baggage room. Sim Gage found a certain comfort in the presence of other human beings. All the time he gazed furtively down the railway tracks.
A long-drawn scream of the laboring engines told of the approaching train at last. Horses and men pricked up their ears. The blood of Sim Gage's heart seemed to go to his brain. He was seized with a panic, but, fascinated by some agency he could not resist, he stood uncertainly until the train came in. He began to tremble in the unadulterated agony of a shy man about to meet the woman to whom he has made love only in his heart.
Sim Gage's team of young and wild horses across the street began to plunge now, and to entangle themselves dangerously, but he did not cross the street to care for them.
She was coming! The woman from the States was on this very train. In two minutes----
But the crowd thinned and dissipated at length, and Sim Gage had not found her after all. He felt sudden relief that she had not come, mingled with resentment that he had been made foolish. She was not there--she had not come!
But his gaze, passing from one to another of the early tourists, rested at last upon a solitary figure which stood close to the burly train conductor near the station door. The conductor held the young woman's arm reassuringly, as they both looked questioningly from side to side. She was in dark clothing. A dark veil was across her face. As she pushed it back he saw her eyes protected by heavy black lenses.
Sim Gage hesitated. The conductor spoke to him so loudly that he jumped.
"Say, are you Mr. Gage?"
"That's me," said Sim. "I'm Mr. Gage." He could not recall that ever in his life he had been so accosted before; he had never thought of himself as being Mr. Gage, only Sim Gage.
One redeeming quality he had--a pleasant speaking voice. A sudden turn of the head of the young woman seemed to recognize this. She reached out, groping for the arm of the conductor. Consternation urged her also to seek protection. This was the man!
"Lady for you, Mr. Gage," said the conductor. "This young woman caught a cinder down the road. Better see a doctor soon as you can--bad eye. She said she was to meet you here."
"It's all right," said Sim Gage suddenly to him. "It's all right. You can go if you want to."
He saw that the young woman was looking at him, but she seemed to make no sign of recognition.
"I'm Mr. Gage, ma'am," said he, stepping up. "I'm sorry you got a cinder in your eye. We'll go up and see the doctor. Why, I had a cinder onct in my eye, time I was going down to Arizony, and it like to of ruined me. I couldn't see nothing for nearly four days."
He was lying now, rather fluently and beautifully. He had never been in Arizona, and so little did he know of railway travel that he had not noted that this young woman came not from a sleeping car, but from one of the day coaches. The dust upon her garments seemed to him there naturally enough.
She did not answer, stood so much aloof from him that a sudden sense of inferiority possessed him. He could not see that her throat was fluttering, did not know that tears were coming from back of the heavy glasses. He could not tell that Mary Warren had appraised him even now, blind though she was; that she herself suffered by reason of that wrong appraisal.
The throng thinned, the tumult and shouting of the hotel men died away. Sim Gage did not know what to do. A woman seemed to mean a sudden and strangely overwhelming accession of problems. What should he do? Where would he put her? What ought he to say?
"If you'll excuse me," he ventured at last, "I'll go acrosst and git my team. They're all tangled up, like you see."
She spoke, her voice agitated; reached out a hand. "I--I can't see at
all, sir!"
"That's too bad, ma'am," said Sim Gage, "but don't you worry none at all. You set right down here on the aidge of the side walk, till I git the horses fixed. They're scared of the cars. Is this your satchel, ma'am?"
"Yes--that's mine."
"You got any trunk for me to git?" he asked, turning back, suddenly and by miracle, recalling that people who traveled usually had trunks.
He could not see the flush of her cheek as she replied, "No, I didn't bring one. I thought--what I had would do." He could not know that nearly all her worldly store was here in this battered cheap valise.
"You ain't a-going to leave us so soon like that, are you?"
She turned to him wistfully, a swift light upon her face. He had said, "leave us"--not "leave me." And his voice was gentle. Surely he was the kind-hearted and chivalrous rancher of his own simple letters. She began to feel a woman's sense of superiority. On the defensive, she replied: "I don't know yet. Suppose we--suppose----"
"Suppose that we wait awhile, eh?" said Sim Gage, himself wistful.
"Why--yes."
"All right, ma'am. We'll do anything you like. You don't need no trunk full of things out here--I hope you'll git along somehow."
Knowing that he ought to assist her, he put out a hand to touch her arm, withdrew it as though he had been stung, and then hastily stood as he felt her hand rest upon his arm. He led her slowly to the edge of the platform. Then she heard his footsteps passing, heard the voices of two men--for now a bystander had gone across to do something for the plunging horses, one of which had thrown itself under the buckboard tongue. She heard the two men as they worked on. "Git up!" said one voice. "Git around there!" Then came certain oaths on the part of both men, and conversation whose import she did not know.
Their voices were as though heard in a dream. There suddenly came an overwhelming sense of guilt to Mary Warren. She had been unfair to this man! He was a trifle crude, yes; but kind, gentle, unpresuming. She felt safer and safer--guilty and more guilty. How could she ever explain it all to him?
"I reckon they're all right now," said Sim Gage, after a considerable battle with his team. "Nothing busted much. Git up on the seat, won't you, Bill, and drive acrosst--I got to help that lady git in."
"Who is she?" demanded the other, who had not failed to note the waiting figure.
"It's none of your damn business," said Sim Gage. "That is, it's my housekeeper--she's going to cook for the hay hands."
"With a two months' start?" grinned the other.
"Drive on acrosst now," said Sim Gage, in grim reply, which closed the other's mouth at once.
Mary Warren heard the crunch of wheels, heard the thump of her valise as Sim Gage caught it up and threw it into the back of the buckboard. Then he spoke again. She felt him standing close at hand. Once more, trembling as in an ague, she placed a hand upon his arm.
"Now, when I tell you," he said gently, "why, you put your foot up on the hub of the wheel here, and grab the iron on the side, and climb in quick--these horses is sort of uneasy."
"I can't see the wheel," said Mary Warren, groping.
She felt his hand steadying her--felt the rim of the wheel under her hand, felt him gently if clumsily try to help her up. Her foot missed the hub of the wheel, the horses started, and she almost fell--would have done so had not he caught her in his arms. It was almost the first time in his life, perhaps the only time, that he had felt the full weight of a woman in his arms. She disengaged herself, apologized for her clumsiness.
"You didn't hurt yourself, any?" said he anxiously.
"No," she said. "But I'm blind--
I'm blind! Oh, don't you know?"
He said nothing. How could she know that her words brought to Sim Gage not regret, but--relief!
He steadied her foot so that it might find the hub of the wheel, steadied her arm, cared for her as she clambered into the seat.
"All right," she heard him say, not to her; and then he replaced the other man on the high seat. The horses plunged forward. She felt herself helpless, alone, swept away. And she was blind.
All the way across the Middle West, across the great plains, Mary Warren had been able to see somewhat. Perhaps it was the knitting--hour after hour of it, in spite of all, done in sheer self-defense. But at the western edge of the great Plains, it had come--what she had dreaded. Both eyes were gone! Since then she had not seen at all, and having in mind her long warning, accepted her blindness as a permanent thing.
She passed now through a world of blackness. She could not see the man who had written those letters to her. She could catch only the wine of a high, clean air, the breath of pine trees, the feeling of space, appreciable even by the blind.
Suddenly she began to sob. Sim Gage by now had somewhat quieted his wild team, and he looked at her, his face puckered into a perturbed frown.
"Now, now," he said, "don't you take on, little woman." He was abashed at his daring, but himself felt almost like tears, as things now were. "It'll all come right. Don't you worry none. Don't be scared of these horses a-tall, ma'am; I can handle 'em all right. We got to see that doctor."
But when presently they had driven the half mile to the village, he learned that the doctor was not in town.
"We can't do anything," said she. "Drive on--we'll go. I don't think the doctor could help me very much."
All the time she knew she had in part been lying to him. It was not merely a cinder in her eye--this was a helpless blindness, a permanent thing. The retina of each eye now was ruined, gone. So she had been warned. Again she reached out her hand in spite of all to touch his arm. He remained silent. She cruelly misunderstood him.
At last she turned fully towards him, and spoke suddenly. "Listen!" said she. "I believe you're a good man. I'll not deceive you."
"God knows I ain't no good man," said Sim Gage suddenly, "and God knows I'm sorry I deceived you like I have. But I'll take care of you until you can do something better, and until you want to go back home."
"Home?" she said. "I haven't any home. I tell you I've deceived you. I'm sorry--oh, it's all so terrible."
"It shore is," said Sim Gage. "I didn't really write them letters--but it's my fault you're here. You can blame me fer everything. Why, almost I was a notion never to come near this here place this morning. I felt guilty, like I'd shot somebody--I didn't know. I feel that way now."
"You're all your letters said you were," said Mary Warren, weeping now. "Any woman who would deceive such a man----"
"You ain't deceived me none," said Sim Gage. "But it's wrong of me to fool a woman such as you, and I'm sorry. Only, just don't you git scared too much. I'm a-going to take care of you the best I know how."
"But it wasn't true!" she broke out--"what the conductor said! It isn't just a cinder in my eye--it's worse. My eyes have been getting bad right along. I couldn't see
anything to-day. You didn't know. I lost my place. I have no relatives--there wasn't any place in the world for me. I was afraid I was going blind--and yesterday I
did go blind. I'll never see again. And you're kind to me. I wish--I wish--why, what shall I
do?"
"Ma'am," said Sim Gage, "I didn't know, and you didn't know. Can you ever forgive me fer what I've done to you?"
"Forgive you--what do you mean?" she said. "Oh, my God, what shall I do!"
Sim Gage's face was frowning more than ever.
"Now, you mustn't take on, ma'am," said he. "I'm sorry as I can be fer you, but I got to drive these broncs. But fer as I'm concerned--it ain't just what I want to say, neither--I
can't make it right plain to you, ma'am. It ain't right fer me to say I'm almost
glad you can't see--but somehow, that's right the way I do feel! It's mercifuler to
you that way, ma'am."
"What do you mean?" said Mary Warren. She caught emotion in this man's voice. "Whatever can you
mean?"
"Well," said Sim Gage, "take me like I am, setting right here, I ain't fitten to be setting here. But I don't
want you to see. I got that advantage of you, ma'am. I can
see you, ma'am"; and he undertook a laugh which made a wretched failure.
"How far is it to your--our--the place where we're going?" she asked after a time.
"About twenty-three mile, ma'am," he answered cheerfully. "Road's pretty fair now. I wish't you could see how pretty the hills is--they're gitting green now some."
"And the sky is blue?" Her eyes turned up, sensible of no more than a feeling that light was somewhere.
"Right blue, ma'am, with leetle white clouds, not very big. I wish't you could see our sky."
"And trees?"
"Dark green, ma'am--pine trees always is."
She heard the rumble of the wheels on planks, caught the sound of rushing waters.
"This is the bridge over the West Fork, ma'am," said her companion. "It's right pretty here--the water runs over the rocks like."
"And what is the country like on ahead, where--where we're going?"
"It's in a valley like, ma'am," said Sim Gage.
"There's mountains on each side--they come closest down to the other fork, near in where I live. That fork's just as clean as glass, ma'am--you can see right down into it, twenty feet----" Then suddenly he caught himself. "That is, I wish't you could. Plenty of fish in it--trout and grayling--I'll catch you all you want, ma'am. They're fine to eat."
"And are there things about the place--chickens or something?"
"There's calves, ma'am," said Sim Gage. "Not many. I ain't got no hens, but I'll git some if you want 'em. We'd ought to have some eggs, oughtn't we? And I got several cattle--not many as I'd like, but some. This ain't my wagon. These ain't my horses; I got one horse and a mule."
"What sort is it--the house?"
Sim Gage spoke now like a man and a gentleman.
"I ain't got no house fitten to call one, ma'am," said he, "and that's the truth. I've got a log cabin with one room. I've slept there alone fer a good many years, holding down my land."
"But," he added quickly, "that's a-going to be your place. Me--I'm out a leetle ways off, in the flat, beyond the first row of willers between the house and the creek--I always sleep in a tent in the summer time. I allow you'd feel safer in a house."
"I've always read about western life," said she slowly, in her gentle voice. "If only--I wish----"
"So do I, ma'am," said Sim Gage.
But neither really knew what was the wish in the other's heart. _