Part 2

And so, Devil, accept, for my two good legs, my sincerest gratitude. I lie on the ground for some minutes and meditate idly. There is a worldful of easy indolent, beautiful sensuality in the figure of a young woman lying on the ground under a warm setting sun. A man may lie on the ground--but that is as far as it goes. A man would go to sleep, probably, like a dog or a pig. He would even snore, perhaps--under the setting sun. But then, a man has not a good young feminine body to feel with, to receive into itself the spirit of a warm sun at its setting, on a day in October,--and so let us forgive him for sleeping, and for snoring.

When I rise again to a sitting posture all the brightness has focused itself to the west. It casts a yellow glamor over the earth, a glamor not of joy, nor of pleasure, nor of happiness--but of peace.

The young poplar trees smile gently in the deathly still air. The sage brush and the tall grass take on a radiant quietness. The high hills of Montana, near and distant, appear tender and benign. All is peace--peace. I think of that beautiful old song:

“Sweet vale of Avoca! how calm could I rest In thy bosom of shade----.”

But I am too young yet to think of peace. It is not peace that I want. Peace is for forty and fifty. I am waiting for my Experience.

I am awaiting the coming of the Devil.

And now, just before twilight, after the sun has vanished over the edge, is the red, red line on the sky.

There will be days wild and stormy, filled with rain and wind and hail; and yet nearly always at the sun’s setting there will be calm--and the red line of sky.

There is nothing in the world quite like this red sky at sunset. It is Glory, Triumph, Love, Fame!

Imagine a life bereft of things, and fingers pointed at it, and eyebrows raised; tossed and bandied hither and yon; crushed, beaten, bled, rent asunder, outraged, convulsed with pain; and then, into this life while still young, the red, red line of sky!

Why did I cry out against Fate, says the line; why did I rebel against my term of anguish! I now rather rejoice at it; now in my Happiness I remember it only with deep pleasure.

Think of that wonderful, admirable, matchless man of steel, Napoleon Bonaparte. He threw himself heavily on the world, and the world has never since been the same. He hated himself, and the world, and God, and Fate, and the Devil. His hatred was his term of anguish.

Then the sun threw on the sky for him a red, red line--the red line of Triumph, Glory, Fame!

And afterward there was the blackness of Night, the blackness that is not tender, not gentle.

But black as our Night may be, nothing can take from us the memory of the red, red sky. “Memory is possession,” and so the red sky we have with us always.

Oh, Devil, Fate, World--some one, bring me my red sky! For a little brief time, and I will be satisfied. Bring it to me intensely red, intensely full, intensely alive! Short as you will, but red, red, red!

I am weary--weary, and, oh, I want my red sky! Short as it might be, its memory, its fragrance would stay with me always--always. Bring me, Devil, my red line of sky for one hour and take all, _all_--everything I possess. Let me keep my Happiness for one short hour, and take away all from me forever. I will be satisfied when Night has come and everything is gone.

Oh, I await you, Devil, in a wild frenzy of impatience!

And as I hurry back through the cool darkness of October, I feel this frenzy in every fiber of my fervid woman’s-body.

January 19.

I come from a long line of Scotch and Canadian MacLanes. There are a great many MacLanes, but there is usually only one real MacLane in each generation. There is but one who feels again the passionate spirit of the clans, those barbaric dwellers in the bleak, but well-beloved Highlands of Scotland.

I am the real MacLane of my generation. The real MacLane in these later centuries is always a woman. The men of the family never amount to anything worth naming--if one accepts the acme, the zenith, of pure selfishness, with a large letter “s.” Life may be easy enough for the innumerable Canadian MacLanes who are not real. But it is certain to be more or less a Hill of Difficulty for the one who is. She finds herself somewhat alone. I have brothers and a sister and a mother in the same house with me--and I find myself somewhat alone. Between them and me there is no tenderness, no sympathy, no binding ties. Would it affect me in the least--do you suppose--if they should all die to-morrow? If I were not a real MacLane perhaps it would have been different, or perhaps I should not have missed these things.

How much, Devil, have I lost for the privilege of being a real MacLane?

But yes, I have also gained much.

January 20.

I have said that I am alone.

I am not quite, quite alone.

I have one friend--of that Friendship that is real and is inlaid with the beautiful thing Truth. And because it has the beautiful thing Truth in it, this my one Friendship is somehow above and beyond me; there is something in it that I reach after in vain--for I have not that divinely beautiful thing Truth. Have I not said that I am a thief and a liar? But in this Friendship nevertheless there is a rare, ineffably sweet something that is mine. It is the one tender thing in this dull dreariness that wraps me round.

Are there many things in this cool-hearted world so utterly exquisite as the pure love of one woman for another woman?

My one friend is a woman some twelve or thirteen years older than I. She is as different from me as is day from night. She believes in God--that God that is shown in the Bible of the Christians. And she carries with her an atmosphere of gentleness and truth. The while I am ready and waiting to dedicate my life to the Devil in exchange for Happiness--or some lesser thing. But I love Fannie Corbin with a peculiar and vivid intensity, and with all the sincerity and passion that is in me. Often I think of her, as I walk over the sand in my Nothingness, all day long. The Friendship of her and me is a fair, dear benediction upon me, but there is something in it--deep within it--that eludes me. In moments when I realize this, when I strain and reach vainly at a thing beyond me, when indeed I see in my mind a vision of the personality of Fannie Corbin, it is then that it comes on me with force that I am not good.

But I can love her with all the ardor of a young and passionate heart.

Yes, I can do that.

For a year I have loved my one friend. During the eighteen years of my life before she came into it I loved no one, for there was no one.

It is an extremely hard thing to go through eighteen years with no one to love, and no one to love you--the first eighteen years.

But now I have my one friend to love and to worship.

I have named my friend the “anemone lady,” a name beautifully appropriate.

The anemone lady used to teach me literature in the Butte High School. She used to read poetry in the class-room in a clear, sweet voice that made one wish one might sit there forever and listen to it.

But now I have left the high school, and the dear anemone lady has gone from Butte. Before she went she told me she would be my friend.

Think of it--to live and have a friend!

My friend does not fully understand me; she thinks much too well of me. She has not a correct idea of my soul’s depths and shallows. But if she did know them she would still be my friend. She knows the heavy weight of my unrest and unhappiness. She is tenderly sympathetic. She is the one in all the world who is dear to me.

Often I think, if only I could have my anemone lady and go and live with her in some little out-of-the-world place high up on the side of a mountain for the rest of my life--what more would I desire? My friendship would constitute my life. The unrest, the dreariness, the Nothingness of my existence now is so dull and gray by contrast that there would be Happiness for me in that life, Happiness softly radiant, if quiet--redolent of the fresh, thin fragrance of the dear blue anemone that grows in the winds and rains of spring.

But Miss Corbin would doubtless look somewhat askance at the idea of spending the rest of her life with me on a mountain. She is very fond of me, but her feeling for me is not like mine for her, which indeed is natural. And her life is made up mostly of sacrifices--doing for her fellow-creatures, giving of herself. She never would leave this.

And so, then, the mountainside and the solitude and the friend with me are, like every good thing, but a vision.

“Thy friend is always thy friend; not to have, nor to hold, nor to love, nor to rejoice in: but to remember.”

And so do I remember my one friend, the anemone lady--and think often about her with passionate love.

January 21.

Happiness, don’t you know, is of three kinds--and all are transitory. It never stays, but it comes and goes.

There is that happiness that comes from newly-washed feet, for instance, and a pair of clean stockings on them, particularly after one has been upon a tramp into the country. Always I have identified this kind of happiness with a Maltese cat, dipping a hungry, stealthy, sensual tongue into a bowl of fresh, thick cream.

There is that still happiness that has come to me at rare times when I have been with my one friend--and which does very well for people whose feelings are moderate. They need wish for nothing beyond it. They could not appreciate anything deeper.

And there is that kind of happiness which is of the red sunset sky. There is something terrible in the thought of this indescribable mad Happiness. What a thing it is for a human being to be _happy_--with the red, red Happiness of the sunset sky!

It’s like a terrific storm in summer with rain and wind, beating quiet water into wild waves, bending great trees to the ground,--convulsing the green earth with delicious pain.

It’s like something of Schubert’s played on the violin that stirs you within to exquisite torture.

It’s like the human voice divine singing a Scotch ballad in a manner to drag your soul from your body.

But there are no words to tell it. It is something infinitely above and beyond words. It is the kind of Happiness the Devil will bring to me when he comes,--to me, to _me_! Oh, why does he not come now when I am in the midst of my youth! Why is he so long in coming?

Often you hear a dozen stories of how the Devil was most ready and willing to take all from some one and give him his measure of Happiness. And sometimes the person was innately virtuous and so could not take the Happiness when it was offered. But Happiness is its own justification, and it should be eagerly grasped when it comes.

A world filled with fools will never learn this.

And so here I stand in the midst of Nothingness waiting and longing for the Devil, and he doesn’t come. I feel a choking, strangling, frenzied feeling of waiting--oh, why doesn’t my Happiness come! I have waited so long--so long.

There are persons who say to me that I ought not to think of the Devil, that I ought not to think of Happiness--Happiness for me would be sure to mean something wicked (as if Happiness could ever be wicked!); that I ought to think of being good. I ought to think of God. These are persons who help to fill the world with fools. At any rate their words are unable to affect me. I can not distinguish between right and wrong in this scheme of things. It is one of the lines of reasoning in which I have gotten to the edge, the end. I have gotten to the point to which all logic finally leads. I can only say, What is wrong? What is right? What is good? What is evil? The words are merely words, with word-meanings.

Truth is Love, and Love is the only Truth, and Love is the one thing out of all that is real.

The Devil is really the only one to whom we may turn, and he exacts payment in full for every favor.

But surely he will come one day with Happiness for me.

Yet, oh, how can I wait!

To be a woman, young and all alone, is hard--_hard_!--is to want things, is to carry a heavy, heavy weight.

Oh, damn! damn! damn! Damn every living thing, the world!--the universe be damned!

Oh, I am weary, weary! Can’t you see that I am weary and pity me in my own damnation?

January 22.

It is night. I might well be in my bed taking a needed rest. But first I shall write.

To-day I walked far away over the sand in the teeth of a bitter wind. The wind was determined that I should turn and come back, and equally I was determined I would go on. I went on.

There is a certain kind of wind in the autumn to walk in the midst of which causes one’s spirits to rise ecstatically. To walk in the midst of a bitter wind in January may have almost any effect.

To-day the bitter wind swept over me and around me and into the remote corners of my brain and swept away the delusions, and buffeted my philosophy with rough insolence.

The world is made up mostly of nothing. You may be convinced of this when a bitter wind has swept away your delusions.

What is the wind?

Nothing.

What is the sky?

Nothing.

What do we know?

Nothing.

What is fame?

Nothing.

What is my heart?

Nothing.

What is my soul?

Nothing.

What are we?

We are nothing.

We think we progress wonderfully in the arts and sciences as one century follows another. What does it amount to? It does not teach us the all-why. It does not let us cease to wonder what it is that we are doing, where it is that we are going. It does not teach us why the green comes again to the old, old hills in the spring; why the benign balm-o’-Gilead shines wet and sweet after the rain; why the red never fails to come to the breast of the robin, the black to the crow, the gray to the little wren; why the sand and barrenness lies stretched out around us; why the clouds float high above us; why the moon stands in the sky, night after night; why the mountains and valleys live on as the years pass.

The arts and sciences go on and on--still we wonder. We have not yet ceased to weep. And we suffer still in 1902, even as they suffered in 1802, and in 802.

To-day we eat our good dinners with forks.

A thousand years ago they had no forks.

Yet, though we have forks, we are not happy. We scream and kick and struggle and weep just as they did a thousand years ago--when they had no forks.

We are “no wiser than when Omar fell asleep.”

And in the midst of our great wondering, we wonder why some of us are given faith to trust without question, while the rest of us are left to eat out our life’s vitals with asking.

I have walked once in summer by the side of a little marsh filled with mint and white hawthorn. The mint and white hawthorn have with them a vivid, rare, delicious perfume. It makes you want to grovel on the ground--it makes you think you might crawl in the dust all your days, and well for you. The perfume lingers with you afterward when years have passed. You may scream and kick and struggle and weep right lustily every day of your life, but in your moments of calmness sometimes there will come back to you the fragrance of a swamp filled with mint and white hawthorn.

It is meltingly beautiful.

What does it mean?

What would it tell?

Why does the marsh, and the mint and white hawthorn, freeze over in the fall? And why do they come again, voluptuous, enticing, in the damp spring days--and rack the souls of wretches who look and wonder?

You are superb, Devil! You have done a magnificent piece of work. I kneel at your feet and worship you. You have wrought a perfection, a pinnacle of fine, invisible damnation.

The world is like a little marsh filled with mint and white hawthorn. It is filled with things likewise damnably beautiful. There are the green, green grass-blades and the gray dawns; there are swiftly-flowing rivers and the honking of wild geese, flying low; there are human voices and human eyes; there are stories of women and men who have learned to give up and to wait; there is poetry; there is Charity; there is Truth.

The Devil has made all of these things, and also he has made human beings who can feel.

Who was it that said, long ago, “Life is always a tragedy to those who feel”?

In truth, the Devil has constructed a place of infinite torture--the fair green earth, the world.

But he has made that other infinite thing--Happiness. I forgive him for making me wonder, since possibly he may bring me Happiness. I cast myself at his feet. I adore him.

The first third of our lives is spent in the expectation of Happiness. Then it comes, perhaps, and stays ten years, or a month, or three days, and the rest of our lives is spent in peace and rest--with the memory of the Happiness.

Happiness--though it is infinite--is a transient emotion.

It is too brilliant, too magnificent, too overwhelming to be a lasting thing. And it is merely an emotion. But, ah--_such_ an emotion! Through it the Devil rules his domains. What would one not do to have it!

I can think of no so-called vile deed that I would scruple about if I could be happy. Everything is justified if it gives me Happiness. The Devil has done me some great favors; he has made me without a conscience, and without Virtue.

For which I thank thee, Devil.

At least I shall be able to take my Happiness when it comes--even though the piles of nice distinctions between it and me be mountains high.

But meanwhile, the world, I say, and the people are nothing, nothing, nothing. The splendid castles, the strong bridges, that we are building are of small moment. We can only go down the wide roadway wondering and weeping, and without where to lay our heads.

January 23.

I have eaten my dinner.

I have had, among other things, fine, rare-broiled porterhouse steak from Omaha, and some fresh, green young onions from California. And just now I am a philosopher, pure and simple--except that there’s nothing very pure about my philosophy, nor yet very simple.

Let the Devil come and go; let the wild waters rush over me; let nations rise and fall; let my favorite theories form themselves in line suddenly and run into the ground; let the little earth be bandied about from one belief to another; but, I say in the midst of my young peripatetic philosophy, I need not be in complete despair--the world still contains things for me, while I have my fine rare porterhouse steak from Omaha--and my fresh green young onions from California.

Fame may pass over my head; money may escape me; my one friend may fail me; every hope may fold its tent and steal away; Happiness may remain a sealed book; every remnant of human ties may vanish; I may find myself an outcast; good things held out to me may suddenly be withdrawn; the stars may go out, one by one; the sun may go dark; yet still I may hold upright my head, if I have but my steak--and my onions.

I may find myself crowded out from many charmed circles; I may find the ethical world too small to contain me; the social world may also exclude me; the professional world may know me not; likewise the worlds of the arts and the sciences; I may find myself superfluous in literary haunts; I may see myself going gladly back to the vile dust from whence I sprung--to live in a green forest like the melancholy Jacques; but fare they well, I will say with what cheerfulness I can summon, while I have my steak--and my onions.

Possibly I may grow old and decrepit; my hair may turn gray; my bones may become rheumatic; I may grow weak in the knees; my ankle-joints which have withstood many a peripatetic journey may develop dropsical tendencies; my heart may miss a beat now and then; my lungs may begin to fight shy of wintry blasts; my eyes may fail me; my figure that is now in its slim gracefulness may swathe itself in layers of flesh, or worse, it may wither and decay and stoop at the shoulders; my red blood may flow sluggishly; but if I still have left teeth to eat with, why need I lament while I have my steak--and my onions?

I am obscure; I am morbid; I am unhappy; my life is made up of Nothingness; I want everything and I have nothing; I have been made to feel the “lure of green things growing,” and I have been made to feel also that something of them is withheld from me; I have felt the deadly tiredness that is among the birthrights of a human being; but with it all the Devil has given me a philosophy of my own--the Devil has enabled me to count, if need be, the world well lost for a fine rare porterhouse steak--and some green young onions.

For which I thank thee, Devil, profoundly.

Who says the Devil is not your friend? Who says the Devil does not believe in the all-merciful Law of Compensation?

And so it is--do you see?--that all things look different after a satisfying dinner, that the color of the world changes, that life in fact resolves itself into two things: a fine rare-broiled porterhouse steak from Omaha, and some fresh green young onions from California.

January 24.

I am charmingly original. I am delightfully refreshing. I am startlingly Bohemian. I am quaintly interesting--the while in my sleeve I may be smiling and smiling--and a villain. I can talk to a roomful of dull people and compel their interest, admiration, and astonishment. I do this sometimes for my own amusement. As I have said, I am a rather plain-featured, insignificant-looking genius, but I have a graceful personality. I have a pretty figure. I am well set up. And when I choose to talk in my charmingly original fashion, embellishing my conversation with many quaint lies, I have a certain very noticeable way with me, an “air.”

It is well, if one has nothing else, to acquire an air. And an air taken in conjunction with my charming originality, my delightfully refreshing candor, is something powerful and striking in its way.

I do not, however, exert myself often in this way; partly because I can sometimes foresee, from the character of the assembled company, that my performance will not have the desired effect--for I am a genius, and genius at close range at times carries itself unconsciously to the point where it becomes so interesting that it is atrocious, and can not be carried farther without having somewhat mildly disastrous results; and then, again, the facial antics of some ten or a dozen persons possessed more or less of the qualities of the genus fool--even they become tiresome after a while.

Always I talk about myself on an occasion of this kind. Indeed, my conversation is on all occasions devoted directly or indirectly to myself.

When I talk on the subject of ethics, I talk of it as it is related to Mary MacLane.

When I give out broad-minded opinions about Ninon de l’Enclos, I demonstrate her relative position to Mary MacLane!

When I discourse liberally on the subject of the married relation, I talk of it only as it will affect Mary MacLane.

An interesting creature, Mary MacLane.

As a matter of fact, it is so with every one, only every one is far from realizing and acknowledging it. And I have not lacked listeners, though these people do not appreciate me. They do not realize that I am a genius.

I am of womankind and of nineteen years. I am able to stand off and gaze critically and dispassionately at myself and my relation to my environment, to the world, to everything the world contains. I am able to judge whether I am good and whether I am bad. I am able, indeed, to tell what I am and where I stand. I can see far, far inward. I am a genius.

Charlotte Bronté did this in some degree, and she was a genius; and also Marie Bashkirtseff, and Olive Schreiner, and George Eliot. They are all geniuses.

And so, then, I am a genius--a genius in my own right.

I am fundamentally, organically egotistic. My vanity and self-conceit have attained truly remarkable development as I’ve walked and walked in the loneliness of the sand and barrenness. Not the least remarkable part of it is that I know my egotism and vanity thoroughly--thoroughly, and plume myself thereon.