The Story of Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane (free reads txt) 📖

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.

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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.

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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 con tinual 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 straightaway 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:

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_ `O, 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 wi’ 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.

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

A tress o’ golden hair,

O’ 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 o’ 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