Long ago when I was six I was a thief - only I was not then, as now, a graceful, light-fingered thief - I had not the philosophy of stealing.
When I would steal a copper cent out of my mother’s pocket-book I would feel a dreadful suffocating sinking in my bad heart, and for days and nights afterwards - long after I had eaten the chocolate mouse - the copper cent would haunt me and haunt me, and oh, how I wished it back in that pocket-book with the clasp shut tight and the bureau-drawer locked!
And so is it not fine to be nineteen and a thief, with the philosophy of stealing - than to be six and haunted day and night by a copper cent?
For now always my only regret is, when I have stolen five dollars, that I did not steal ten while I was about it.
It is a long time ago since I was six.
February 17
To-day I walked over the hill where the sun vanishes down in the afternoon.
I followed the sun so far as I could, but two even very good legs can do no more than carry one into the midst of the sunshine - and then one may stand and take leave, lovingly, of it.
I stood in the valley below the hill and looked away at the gold-yellow mountains that rise into the cloudy blue, and at the long gray stretches of rolling sand. It all reminded me of the Devil and the Happiness he will bring me.
Some day the Devil will come to me and say: “Come with me.”
And I will answer: “Yes.”
And he will take me away with him to a place where it is wet and green - where the yellow, yellow sunshine falls on heaven-kissing hills, and misty, cloudy masses float over the valleys.
And for days I shall be happy - happy - happy!
For days! The Devil and I will love each other intensely, perfectly - for days! He will be incarnate but he will not be a man. He will be the man-Devil, and his soul will take mine to itself and they will be one - for days.
Imagine me raised out of my misery and obscurity, dullness and Nothingness, into the full, brilliant life of the Devil - for days!
The love of the man-Devil will enter into my barren, barren life and melt all the cold, hard things, and water the barrenness, and a million little green growing plants will start out of it; and a clear, sparkling spring will flow over it - through the dreary, sandy stretches of my bitterness, among the false stony roadways of my pain and hatred. And a great rushing, flashing cataract of melting love will flow over my weariness and unrest and wash it away forever. My soul will be fully awakened and there will be a million little sweet new souls in the green growing things. And they will fill my life with everything that is beautiful - tenderness, and divineness, and compassion, and exaltation, and uplifting grace, and light, and rest, and gentleness, and triumph, and truth, and peace. My life will be borne far out of self, and self will sink quietly out of sight - and I shall see it farther and farther away, until it disappears.
“It is the last - the last - of that Mary MacLane,” I will say, and I will feel a long, sighing, quivering farewell.
A thousand years of misery - and now a million years of Happiness.
When the sun is setting in the valley and the crests of those heaven-kissing hills are painted violet and purple, and the valley itself is reeking and swimming in yellow-gold light, the man-Devil - whom I love more than all - and I will go out into it.
We will be saturated in the yellow light of the sun and the gold light of Love.
The man-Devil will say to me: “Look, you little creature, at this beautiful picture of Joy and Happiness. It is the picture of your life as it will be while I stay with you - and I will stay with you for days.”
Ah, yes, I will take a last long farewell of this Mary MacLane. Not one faint shadow of her weary wretched Nothingness will remain.
There will be instead a brilliant, buoyant, joyous creature - transformed, adorned, garlanded by the love of the Devil.
My mind will be a treasure-house of Art, swept and garnished and strong and at its best.
My barren hungry heart will come at last to its own. The red flames of the man-Devil’s love will burn out forever its pitiable distorted wooden quality, and he will take it and cherish it - and give me his.
My young woman’s-body likewise will be metamorphosed, and I shall feel it developing and filled with myriads of little contentments and pleasures. Always my young woman’s-body is a great and important part of me, and when I am married to the Devil its finely-organized nerve-power and intricate sensibility will be culminated to marvelous completeness.
My soul - upon my soul will descend consciously the light that never was on land or sea.
This will be for days - for days.
No matter what came before, I will say; no matter what comes afterward. Just now it is the man-Devil, my best-beloved, and I, living in the yellow light.
Think of living with the Devil in a bare little house, in the midst of green wetness and sweetness and yellow light - for days!
In the gray dawn it will be ineffably sweet and beautiful, with shining leaves and the gray unfathomable air, and the wet grass, and all.
“Be happy now, my weary little wife,” the Devil will say.
And the long, long yellow-gold day will be filled with the music of Real Life.
My grandest possibility will be realized. The world contains a great many things - and this is my grandest possibility realized!
And in the soft black night I will lie by the side of the man-Devil - and my head will rest in the hollow of his shoulder, and my hand will be clasped in his hand.
I will weep rapturous tears. -
When I think of all this and write it there is in me a feeling that is more than pain.
Perhaps the very sweetest, the tenderest, the most pitiful and benign human voice in the world could sing these things and this feeling set to their own wondrous music, - and it would echo far - far, - and you would understand.
February 19
- Am I not intolerably conceited? -
February 20
At times when I walk among the natural things - the barren natural things - I know that I believe in Something. Why can I not call it God and pray to it?
There is Something - I do not know it intellectually, but I feel it - I feel it - with my soul. It does not seem to reach down to me. It does not pity me. It does not look at me tenderly in my unhappiness.
My soul feels only that it is there.
No. It is not all-loving, all-gracious, all-pitying. It hurts me - it hurts me always as I walk over the sand. But even while it hurts me it seems to promise - ah, those beautiful things that it promises me!
And then the hurting is anguish - for I know that the promises will never be fulfilled.
There is within me a thing that is aching, aching, aching always as the days pass.
It is not my pain of wanting, nor my pain of unrest, nor my pain of bitterness, nor of hatred. I know those in all their own anguish.
This aching is another pain. It is a pain that I do not know - that I feel ignorantly but sharply, and oh, it is torture, torture!
My soul is worn and weary with pain. There is no compassion - no mercy upon me. There is no one to help me bear it. It is just I alone out on the sand and barrenness. It is cruel anguish to be always alone - and so long - oh, so long!
Nineteen years are as ages to you when you are nineteen.
When you are nineteen there is no experience to tell you that all things have an end.
This aching pain has no end.
- I feel no tears now, but I feel heavy sobs that shake my life to its center. -
My soul is wandering in a wilderness.
There is a great Light sometimes that draws my soul toward it. When my soul turns toward it, it shines out brilliant and dazzling and awful - and the worn sensitive thing shrinks away, and shi
vers, and is faint.
Shall my soul have to know this Light, inevitably? Must it, some day, plunge into this?
Oh, it may be - it may be. But I know that I shall die with the pain.
There are times when the great Light is dim and beautiful as the star-light - the utter agony of it - the cruel ineffable loveliness!
- Do you understand this? That I am telling you my young passionate life-agony? Do you listen to it indifferently? Has it no meaning for any one? For me it means everything. For me it makes life old long weariness.
It may be that you know. And perhaps you would even weep a little with me if you had time. -
It is as if this Light were the light of the Christian religion - and the Christian religion is full of hatred. It says, Come unto me - you that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. But when you would go, when you reach up with your weary hands, it sends you a too-brilliant Light - it makes you fair, wondrous promises - it puts you off. You beseech it in your suffering -
While the waters near me roll,
While the tempest still is high -
but it does not listen - it does not care. Worship me, worship me, it says, but after that let me alone. There is a bookful of promises. Take it and thank me and worship me.
It does not care.
If I obey it, it looks on indifferently. If I disobey it, it looks on indifferently. If I am in woe, it looks on indifferently. If I am in a brief joy, it looks on indifferently.
I am left all alone - all alone.
The Light is shown me and I reach after it, but it is placed high out of my reach.
I see the promises in the Light. Oh, why - why does it promise these things! Is not the burden of life already greater than I can bear? And there is the story of the Christ. It is beautiful. It is damningly beautiful. It draws the tears of pain and soft anguish from me at the sense of beauty. And when every nerve in me is melted and overflowing, then suddenly I am conscious that it is a lie - a lie.
Everywhere I turn there is Nothing - Nothing.
My soul wails out its grief in loneliness.
My soul wanders hither and thither in the dark wilderness and asks, asks always in blind, dull agony: How long? - how long?
February 22
Life is a pitiable thing.
February 23
I stand in the midst of my sand and barrenness and gaze hard at everything that is within my range of vision - and ruin my eyes trying to see into the darkness beyond.
And nearly always I feel a vague contempt for you, fine brave world, - for you and all the things that I see from my barrenness. But, I promise you, if some one comes from among you over the sunset hill one day with love for me, I will fall at your feet.
I am a selfish, conceited, impudent little animal it is true, but, after all, I am only one grand conglomeration of Wanting - and when some one comes over the barren hill to satisfy the Wanting, I will be humble, humble in my triumph.
It is a difficult thing - a most difficult thing - to live on as one year follows another, from childhood slowly to womanhood, without one single sharer of your life - to be alone, always alone, when your one friend is gone. Oh, yes, it is hard! Particularly when one is not high-minded and spiritual, when one’s near longing is not a God and a religion, when one wants above all things the love of a human being - when one is a woman, young and all alone. Doubtless you know this. After all, fine brave world, there are some things that you know very well. Whether or not you care is a quite different matter.
You have the power to take this wooden heart in a tight, suffocating grasp. You have the power to do this with pain for me, and you have the power to do it with ravishing gentleness. But whether or not you will is another matter.
You may think evil of me before you have finished reading this. You will be very right to think so - according to your standards. But sometimes you see evil where there is no evil, and think evil when the only evil is in your own brains.
My life is a dry and barren life. You can change it.
Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
And the little less, and what worlds away.
Yes, you can change it. Stranger things have happened. Again, whether you will - that is a quite different thing.
No doubt you are the people and wisdom will die with you. I do not question that. I will admit and believe anything you may assert about yourselves. I do not want your wisdom, your judgment. I want some one to come up over the barren sunset hill. My thoughts are the thoughts of youth, which are said to be long, long thoughts.
Your life is multi-colored and filled with people. My life is the gray of sand and barrenness, and consists of Mary MacLane, the longing for Happiness, and the memory of the anemone lady.
This Portrayal is my deepest sincerity, my tears, my drops of red blood. Some of it is wrung from me - wrung by my ambition to tell everything. It is not altogether good that I should give you all this, since I do not give it for love of you. I am giving it in exchange for a few gaily-colored things. I want you to know all these passions and emotions. I give them with the utmost freedom. I shall be furious indeed if you do not take them. At the same time, the fact that I am exchanging my tears and my drops of red blood for your gaily-colored trifles is not a thing that thrills me with delight.
But it’s of little moment. When the Devil comes over the hill with Happiness I will rush at him frantically headlong - and nothing else will matter.
February 25
Mary MacLane - what are you, you forlorn, desolate little creature? Why are you not of and in the galloping herd? Why is it that you stand out separate against the background of a gloomy sky? Why can you not enter into the lives and sympathies of other young creatures? There have been times when you have strained every despairing nerve to do so - before you realized that these things were not for you, that the only sympathy for you was that of Mary MacLane, and the only things for you were those you could take yourself - not which were given you. And your things are few, few, you starved, lean little mud-cat - you worn, youth-weary, obscure little genius!
Oh, it is a wearisome waiting - for the Devil.
February 28
To-day when I walked over my sand and barrenness I felt Infinite Grief.
Everything is beyond me.
Nothing is mine.
My single friendship shines brightly before me, and is fascinating - and always just out of my reach.
I want the love and sympathy of human beings and I repel human beings.
Yes, I repel human beings.
There is something about me that faintly and finely and unmistakably repels.
When my Happiness comes, shall I be able to have it? Shall I ever have anything?
This repellant power is not an outward quality. It is something that comes from deeply, deeply within. It is something that was there in the Beginning. It is a thing from the Original.
There is no ridding myself of it. There is no ridding myself of it. There is no ridding myself of it.
Oh, I am damned - damned!
There is not one soul in the world to feel for me and with me - not one out of all the millions. No one can understand me - no one.
You are saying to yourself that I imagine this.
What right have you to say so? You don’t know anything about me. I know all about me. I have studied all the elements and phases in my life for years and years. I do not imagine anything. I am even fool enough to shut my eyes to some things until, inevitably, I know I must meet them. I am racked with the passions of youth, and I am young in years. Beyond that I am mature - old. I am not a child in anything but my passions and my years. I feel and recognize everything thoroughly. I have not to imagine anything. My inner life is before my eyes.
There is something about me that no one ca
n understand. Can there ever be any one to understand? Shall I not always walk my barren road alone?
This follows me incessantly. It is burning like a smouldering fire every hour of my life.
Oh, deep black Despair!
How I suffer, how I suffer - just in being alive.
I feel Infinite Grief.
Oh, Infinite Grief -
March 2
Often in the early morning I leave my bed and get me dressed and go out into the Gray Dawn. There is something about the Gray Dawn that makes me wish the world would stop, that the sun would never come up over the edge, that my life would go on and on and rest in the Gray Dawn.
In the Gray Dawn every hard thing is hidden by a gray mantle of charity, and only the light, vague, caressing fancies are left.
Sometimes I think I am a strange, strange creature - something not of earth, nor yet of heaven, nor of hell. I think at times I am a little thing fallen on the earth by mistake: a thing thrown among foreign, unfitting elements, where there is nothing in touch with it, where life is a continual struggle, where every little door is closed - every Why unanswered, and itself knows not where to lay its head. I feel a deadly certainty in some moments that the wide world contains not one moment of rest for me, that there will never be any rest, that my woman’s-soul will go on asking long, long centuries after my woman’s-body is laid in its grave.
I felt this in the Gray Dawn this morning, but the gray charitable mantle softened it. Always I feel most acutely in the Gray Dawn, but always there is the thing to soften it.
The gray atmosphere was charged. There was a tense electrical thrill in the cold soft air. My nerves were keenly alive. But the gray curtain was mercifully there. I did not feel too much.
How I wished the yellow beautiful sun would never come up over the edge to show me my nearer anguish!
“Stay with me, stay with me, soft Gray Dawn,” implored every one of my tiny lives. “Let me forget. Let the vanity, the pain, the longing sink deep and vanish - all of it, all of it! And let me rest in the midst of the Gray Dawn.”
I Await the Devil's Coming - Unexpurgated and Annotated Page 8
