I Await the Devil's Coming - Unexpurgated and Annotated (10 page)

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 shivers, 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 can 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 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:

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 attraction 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.