I Await the Devil's Coming - Unexpurgated and Annotated

by MacLane, Mary

  I heard music - the silent music of myriad voices that you hear when all is still. One of them came and whispered to me softly: “Don’t suffer any more just now, little Mary MacLane. You suffer enough in the brightness of the sun and the blackness of the night. This is the Gray Dawn. Take a little rest.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I will take a little rest.”

  And then a wild swelling chorus of voices whispered in the stillness: “Rest, rest, rest little Mary MacLane. Suffer in the brightness, suffer in the blackness - your soul, your wooden heart, your woman’s-body. But now a little rest - a little rest.”

  “A little rest,” I said again.

  And straightway I began resting lest the sun should come too quickly over the edge.

  When I have heard in summer the wind in a forest of pines, blowing a wondrous symphony of purity and truth, my varied nature felt itself abashed and there was a sinking in my wooden heart. The beauty of it ravished my senses, but it savored crushingly of the virtue that is far above and beyond me and I felt a certain sore despairing grief.

  But the Gray Dawn is in perfect sympathy. It is quite as beautiful as the wind in the pines and its truth and purity are extremely gentle, and partly hidden under the gray curtain.

  Almost I can be a different Mary MacLane out in the Gray Dawn. Let me forget all the mingled agonies of my life. Let me walk in the midst of this gray softness and drink of the waters of Lethe.

  The Gray Dawn is not Paradise; it is not a Happy Valley; it is not a Garden of Eden; it is not a Vale of Cashmere. It is the Gray Dawn - soft, charitable, tender. “The brilliant, celestial yellow will come shortly,” it says. “You will suffer then to your greatest extent. But now I am here - and so, rest.”

  And so in the Gray Dawn I was forgetting for a brief period. I was submerged for a little in Lethe, river of oblivion. If I had seen some one coming over the near horizon with Happiness I should have protested, Wait, wait until the Gray Dawn has passed.

  The deep, deep blue of the summer sky stirs me to a half-painful joy. The cool green of a swiftly-flowing river fills my heart with unquiet longings. The red, red of the sunset sky convulses my entire being with passion. But the dear Gray Dawn brings me Rest.

  Oh, the Gray Dawn is sweet - sweet!

  Could I not die for very love of it!

  The Gray Dawn can do no wrong. If those myriad voices suddenly had begun to sing a voluptuous evil song of the so great evil that I could not understand, but that I could feel instantly, still the Gray Dawn would have been fine and sweet and beautiful.

  Always I admire Mary MacLane greatly - though sometimes in my admiration I feel a complete contempt for her. But in the Gray Dawn I love Mary MacLane tenderly and passionately.

  I seem to take on a strange calm indifference to everything in the world but just Mary MacLane and the gray dawn. We two are identified with each other and joined together in shadowy vagueness from the rest of the world.

  As I walked over my sand and barrenness in the Gray Dawn a poem ran continuously through my mind. It expressed to me in my gray condition an ideal life and death and ending. Every desire of my life melted away in the Gray Dawn except one good wish that my own life and death might be short and obscure and complete like them. The poem was this beautiful one of Charles Kingsley’s:

  “Oh, Mary, go and call the cattle home,

  And call the cattle home,

  And call the cattle home,

  Across the sands of Dee!”

  The western wind was wild and dank with foam,

  And all alone went she.

  The creeping tide came up along the sand,

  And o’er and o’er the sand,

  And round and round the sand,

  As far as eye could see;

  The blinding mist came up and hid the land -

  And never home came she.

  Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair? -

  A tress of golden hair,

  Of drowned maiden’s hair,

  Above the nets at sea.

  Was never salmon yet that shone so fair

  Among the stakes on Dee.

  They rowed her in across the rolling foam,

  The cruel, crawling foam,

  The cruel, hungry foam,

  To her grave beside the sea;

  But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home

  Across the sands of Dee.

  This is a poem perfect. And in the Gray Dawn it expresses to me a most desirable thing - a short eventless life, a sudden ceasing, and a forgotten voice sometimes calling. This Mary, in the Gray Dawn, would wish nothing else. If the waters rolled over me now - over my short eventless life - there would be the sudden ceasing, - and the anemone lady would hear my voice sometimes, and remember me - the anemone lady and one or two others. And after a short time even my pathetic, passionate voice would sound faint and be forgotten, and my world of sand and barrenness would know me and my weary little life-tragedy no more.

  And well for me, I say, - in the Gray Dawn.

  It is different - oh, very different - when the yellow bursts through the gray. And the yellow is with me all day long, and at sunset - the red, red line!

  Yet - oh, sweet Gray Dawn -

  March 5

  Sometimes I am seized with nearer, vivider sensations of love for my one friend, the anemone lady.

  She is so dear - so beautiful!

  My love for her is a peculiar thing. It is not the ordinary woman-love. It is something that burns with a vivid fire of its own. The anemone lady is enshrined in a temple on the inside of my heart that shall always only be hers.

  She is my first love - my only dear one.

  The thought of her fills me with a multitude of feelings, passionate yet wonderfully tender, - with delight, with rare, undefined emotions, with a suggestion of tears.

  - Oh, dearest anemone lady, shall I ever be able to forget your beautiful face! There may be some long crowded years before me; it may be there will be people and people entering and departing - but oh, no - no, I shall never forget! There will be in my life always - always the faint sweet perfume of the blue anemone: the memory of my one friend.

  Before she went away, to see her, to be near her, was an event in my life - a coloring of the dullness. Always when I used to look at her there would rush a train of things over my mind, a vaguely glittering pageant that came only with her, and that held an always-vivid interest for me.

  There were manifold and varied treasures in this train. There were skies of spangled sapphire, and there were lilies, and violets wet with dew. There was the music of violins, and wonderful weeds from the deep sea, and songs of troubadours, and gleaming white statues. There were ancient forests of oak and clematis vines; there were lemon-trees, and fretted palaces, and moss-covered old castles with moats and draw-bridges and tiny mullioned windows with diamond panes. There was a cold glittering cataract of white foam, and a little green boat far off down the river, drifting along under drooping willows. There was a tree of golden apples, and a banquet in a beautiful house with the melting music of lutes and harps, and mulled orange-wine in tall thin glasses. There was a field of long fine grass, soft as bat’s-wool, and there were birds of brilliant plumage - scarlet and indigo with gold-tipped wings.

  All these and a thousand fancies alike vaguely glittering would rush over me when I was with the anemone lady. Always my brain was in a gentle delirium. My nerves were unquiet.

  - It was because I love her. -

  Oh, there is not - there can never be - another anemone lady!

  My life is a desert - a desert, but the thin, clinging perfume of the blue anemone reaches to its utter confines. And nothing in the desert is the same because of that perfume. Years will not fade the blue of the anemone, nor a thousand bitter winds blow away the rare fragrance.

  I feel in the anemone lady a strange att
raction of sex. There is in me a masculine element that, when I am thinking of her, arises and overshadows all the others.

  “Why am I not a man,” I say to the sand and barrenness with a certain strained, tense passion, “that I might give this wonderful, dear, delicious woman an absolutely perfect love!”

  And this is my predominating feeling for her.

  So then it is not the woman-love, but the man-love, set in the mysterious sensibilities of my woman-nature. It brings me pain and pleasure mingled in that old, old fashion.

  Do you think a man is the only creature with whom one may fall in love?

  - Often I see coming across the desert a long line of light. My soul turns toward it and shrinks away from it as it does from all the lights. - Some day, perhaps, all the lights will roll into one terrible white effervescence and rush over my soul and kill it. - But this light does not bring so much of pain, for it is soft and silvery, and always with it is the Soul of Anemone.

  March 8

  There are several things in the world for which I, of womankind and nineteen years, have conceived a forcible repugnance - or rather, the feeling was born in me; I did not have to conceive it.

  Often my mind chants a fervent litany of its own that runs somewhat like this:

  From good Catholics and virtuous Christians: kind Devil deliver me.

  From women and men who dispense odors of musk; from little boys with long curls; from the kind of people who call a woman’s figure her “shape”: kind Devil deliver me.

  From all sweet girls; from “gentlemen”; from feminine men: kind Devil deliver me.

  From black under-clothing - and any color but white; from hips that wobble as one walks; from persons with fishy eyes; from the books of Archibald C. Gunter and Albert Ross: kind Devil deliver me.

  From the soft, persistent, maddening glances of water-cart drivers: kind Devil deliver me.

  From lisle-thread stockings; from round tight garters; from brilliant brass belts: kind Devil deliver me.

  From insipid sweet wine; from men who wear moustaches; from the sort of people that call legs “limbs”; from bedraggled white petticoats: kind Devil deliver me.

  From unripe bananas; from bathless people; from a waist-line that slopes up in the front: kind Devil deliver me.

  From an ordinary man; from a bad stomach, bad eyes, and bad feet: kind Devil deliver me.

  From red note-paper; from a rhinestone-studded comb in my hair; from weddings: kind Devil deliver me.

  From cod-fish balls; from fried-eggplant, fried beef-steak, fried pork-chops, and fried French toast: kind Devil deliver me.

  From wax-flowers off a wedding-cake, under glass; from thin-soled shoes; from tape-worms; from photographs perched up all over my house: kind Devil deliver me.

  From soft old bachelors and soft old widowers; from any masculine thing that wears a pale blue neck-tie; from agonizing elocutionists who recite “Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night,” and “The Lips that Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine”; from a Salvation Army singing hymns in slang: kind Devil deliver me.

  From people who persist in calling my good body “mere vile clay”; from idiots who appear to know all about me and enjoin me not to bathe my eyes in hot water since it hurts their own; from fools who tell me what I “want” to do: kind Devil deliver me.

  From a nice young man; from tin spoons; from popular songs: kind Devil deliver me.

  From pleasant old ladies who tell a great many uninteresting, obvious lies; from men with watch-chains draped across their middles; from some paintings of the old masters which I am unable to appreciate; from side-saddles: kind Devil deliver me.

  From the kind of man who sings “Oh, Promise Me!” - who sings at it; from constipated dressmakers; from people who don’t wash their hair often enough: kind Devil deliver me.

  From a servant girl with false teeth; from persons who make a regular practice of rubbing oily mixtures into their faces; from a bed that sinks in the middle: kind Devil deliver me.

  And so on and on and on. And in each petition I am deeply sincere. But, kind Devil, only bring me Happiness and I will more than willingly be annoyed by all these things. Happiness for two days, kind Devil, and then, if you will, languishing widowers, lisle-thread stockings - anything, for the rest of my life.

  And hurry, kind Devil, pray - for I am weary.

  March 9

  It is astonishing to me how very many contemptible, petty vanities are lodged in the crevices of my genius. My genius itself is one grand good vanity - but it is not contemptible. And even those little vanities - though they are contemptible I do not hold them in contempt by any means. I smile involuntarily at their absurdness sometimes, but I know well that they have their function.

  They are peculiarly of my mind, my humanness, and they are useful therein. When this mind stretches out its hand for things and finds only wilderness and Nothingness all about it, and draws the hand back empty, then it can only turn back - like my soul - to itself. And it finds these innumerable little vanities to quiet it and help it. - My soul has no vanity, and it has nothing, nothing to quiet it. My soul is wearing itself out, eating itself away. - These vanities are a miserable substitute for the rose-colored treasures that it sees a great way off and even imagines in its folly that it may have, if it continues to reach after them. Yet the vanities are something. They prevent my erratic, analytical mind from finding a great Nothing when it turns back upon itself.

  If I were not so unceasingly engrossed with my sense of misery and loneliness my mind would produce beautiful, wonderful logic. I am a genius - a genius - a genius. Even after all this you may not realize that I am a genius. It is a hard thing to show. But, for myself, I feel it. It is enough for me that I feel it.

  I am not a genius because I am foreign to everything in the world, nor because I am intense, nor because I suffer. One may be all of these and yet not have this marvelous perceptive sense. My genius is because of nothing. It was born in me as germs of evil were born in me. And mine is a genius that has been given to no one else. The genius itself enables me to be thoroughly convinced of this.

  It is hopeless, never-ending loneliness!

  My ancestors in their Highlands - some of them - were endowed with second sight. My genius is not in the least like second sight. That savors of the supernatural, the mysterious. My genius is a sound sure earthly sense, with no suggestion of mystery or occultism. It is an inner sense that enables me to feel and know things that I could not possibly put into thought, much less into words. It makes me know and analyze with deadly minuteness every keen tiny damnation in my terrible lonely life. It is a mirror that shows me myself and something in myself in a merciless brilliant light, and the sight at once sickens and maddens me and fills me with an unnamed woe. It is something unspeakably dreadful. The sight for the time deadens all thought in my mind. It freezes my reason and intellect. Logic can not come to my aid. I can only feel and know the thing as it analyzes itself before my eyes.

  I am alone with this - alone, alone, alone! There is no pitiful hand extended from the heights - there is no human being - ah, there is Nothing.

  How can I bear it! Oh, I ask you - how can I bear it!

  March 10

  My genius is an element by itself and it is not a thing that I can tell in so many words. But it makes itself felt in every point of my life. This book would be a very different thing if I were not a genius - though I am not a literary genius. Often people who come in contact with me and hear me utter a few commonplace remarks feel at once that I am extraordinary.

  I am extraordinary.

  I have tried longingly, passionately, to think that even this sand and barrenness is mine. But I can not. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that it, like all good things, is beyond me. It has something that I also have. In that is our bond of sympathy.

 
But the sand and barrenness itself is not mine.

  Always I think there is but one picture in the world more perfect in its art than the picture of me in my sand and barrenness. It is the picture of the Christ crucified with two thieves. Nothing could be more divinely appropriate. The art in it is ravishingly perfect. It is one of the few perfect pictures set before the world for all time. As I see it before my mind I can think only of its utter perfectness. I can summon no feeling of grief at the deed. The deed and the art are perfect. Its perfectness ravishes my senses.

  And within me I feel that the picture of me in my sand and barrenness - knowing that even the sand and barrenness is not mine - is only second to it.

  March 11

  Sometimes when I go out in the barrenness my mind wanders afar.

  To-day it went to Greece.

  Oh, it was very beautiful in Greece!

  There was a wide long sky that was vividly, wonderfully blue. And there was a limitless sea that was gray and green. And it went far to the south. The sky and the sea spread out into the vast world - two beautiful elements, and they fell in love with each other. And the farther away they were the nearer they moved together until at last they met and clasped each other in the far distance. There were tall dark-green trees of kinds that are seen only in Greece. They murmured and whispered in the stillness. The wind came off from the sea and went over them and around them. They quivered and trembled in shy, ecstatic joy - for the wind was their best-beloved. There were banks of moss of a deep emerald color, and golden flowers that drooped their heavy sensual heads over to the damp black earth. And they also loved each other, and were with each other, and were glad. Clouds hung low over the sea and were dark-gray and heavy with rain. But the sun shone from behind them at intervals with beams of bronze-and-copper. Three white rocks rose up out of the sea, and the bronze-and-copper beams fell upon them, and straightway they were of gold.