I Await the Devil's Coming - Unexpurgated and Annotated (9 page)

You must take the idea as I have just now presented it for what it may be worth. This is as near as I can come to it. But it is something infinitely finer and rarer.

It is a difficult task to show to others a thing which, though I feel and recognize it thoroughly, I have not yet analyzed for myself.

But this is a complete Portrayal of me - as I await the Devil’s coming - and I must tell everything - everything.

February 13

So then yes. As I have said, I find that I am quite, quite odd. My various acquaintances say that I am
funny
. They say, “Oh, it’s that May MacLane, Dolly’s younger sister. She’s funny.” But I call it oddity. I bear the hall-mark of oddity.

There was a time, a year or two since, when I was an exceedingly sensitive little fool. Sensitive in that it used to strike very deep when my young acquaintances would call me funny and find in me a vent for their distinctly unfriendly ridicule. My years in the High School were not years of joy. Two years ago I had not yet risen above these things. I was a sensitive little fool.

But that sensitiveness, I rejoice to say, has gone from me. The opinion of these young people, or of these old people, is now a thing that is quite unable to affect me.

The more I see of conventionality, it seems, the more I am odd.

Though I am young and feminine - very feminine - yet I am not that quaint conceit, a
girl
: the sort of person that Laura E. Richards writes about, and Nora Perry, and Louisa M. Alcott, - girls with bright eyes, and with charming faces - (they always have charming faces), - standing with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet, - and all that sort of thing.

I missed all that.

I have read some girl-books, a few years ago -
Hildegarde Graham
, and
What Katy Did
, and all, - but I read them from afar. I looked at those creatures from behind a high board fence. I felt as if I had more tastes in common with the Jews wandering through the Wilderness, or with a band of fighting Amazons. I am not a girl. I am a woman, of a kind. I began to be a woman at twelve, or more properly, a genius.

And then, usually, if one is not a girl one is a heroine - of the kind you read about. But I am not a heroine, either. A heroine is beautiful - eyes like the sea, shoots opaque glances from under drooping lids, walks with undulating movements, her bright smile haunts one still, falls methodically in love with a man - always with a man, - eats things (they are always called “viands”) with a delicate appetite, and on special occasions her voice is full of tears. I do none of these things. I am not beautiful. I do not walk with undulating movements - indeed, I have never seen any one walk so, except, perhaps, a cow that has been overfed. My bright smile haunts no one. I shoot no opaque glances from my eyes, which are not like the sea by any means. I have never eaten any viands, and my appetite for what I do eat is most excellent. And my voice has never yet, to my knowledge, been full of tears.

No. I am not a heroine.

There never seem to be any plain heroines, except Jane Eyre, and she was very unsatisfactory. She should have entered into marriage with her beloved Rochester in the first place. I should have, let there be a dozen mad wives up-stairs. But I suppose the author thought she must give her heroine some desirable thing - high moral principles, since she was not beautiful. Some people say that beauty is a curse. It may be true, but I’m sure I should not have minded being cursed a little. And I know several persons who might well say the same. But anyway, I wish some one would write a book about a plain, bad heroine so that I might feel in real sympathy with her.

So far from being a girl or a heroine, I am a thief - as I have before suggested.

I mind me of how, not long since, I stole three dollars. A woman whom I know rather well, and lives near, called me into her house as I was passing and asked me to do an errand for her. She was having an ornate gown made, and she needed some more applique with which to festoon it. The applique cost nine dollars a yard. My trusting neighbor gave me a bit of the braid for a sample and two twenty-dollar bills. I was to get four yards. I did so, and came back and gave her the braid and a single dollar. The other three dollars I kept myself. I wanted three dollars very much, to put with a few that I already had in my purse. My trusting neighbor is of the kind that throws money about carelessly. I knew she would not pay any attention to a little detail like that - she was deeply interested in her new frock; or perhaps she would think I had got thirty-nine dollars’ worth of applique. At any rate, she did not need the money, and I wanted three dollars, and so I stole it.

I am a thief.

It has been suggested to me that I am a kleptomaniac. But I am sure my mind is perfectly sane. I have no such excuse. I am a plain, down-right thief.

This is only one of my peculations. I steal money, or anything that I want, whenever I can, nearly always. It amuses me - and one must be amused.

I have only two stipulations: that the person to whom it belongs does not need it pressingly, and that there is not the slightest chance of being found out. (And of course I could not think of stealing from my one friend.)

It would be extremely inconvenient to be known as a thief, merely.

When the world knows you are a thief it blinds itself completely to your other attributes. It calls you a thief, and there’s an end. I am a genius as well as a thief - but the world would quite overlook that fact. “A thief
’
s a thief,” says the world. That is very true. But the mere fact of being a thief should not exclude the consideration of one’s other traits. When the world knows you are a Methodist minister, for instance, it will admit that you may also be a violinist, or a chemist, or a poet, and will credit you therefor. And so if it condemns you for being a thief, it should at the same time admire you for being a genius. If it does not admire you for being a genius, then it has no right to condemn you for being a thief.

- And why the world should condemn any one for being a thief - when there is not within its confines any one who is not a thief in some way - is a bit of irony upon which I have wasted much futile logic. -

I am not trying to justify myself for stealing. I do not consider it a thing that needs to be justified, any more than walking or eating or going to bed. But, as I say, if the world knew that I am a thief without being first made aware with emphasis that I am some other things also, then the world would be a shade cooler for me than it already is - which would be very cool indeed.

And so in writing my Portrayal I have dwelt upon some other things at some length before touching on my thieving propensities.

None of my acquaintances would suspect that I am a thief. I look so respectable, so refined, so “nice,” so inoffensive, so sweet, even!

But, for that matter, I am a great many things that I do not appear to be.

The woman from whom I stole the three dollars, if she reads this, will recognize it. This will be inconvenient. I fervently hope she may not read it. It is true she is not of the kind that reads.

But after all, it’s of no consequence. This Portrayal is Mary MacLane: her wooden heart, her young woman’s-body, her mind, her soul.

- The world may run and read. -

I will tell you what I did with the three dollars. In Dublin Gulch, which is a rough quarter of Butte inhabited by extremely Irish people, there lives an old world-soured, wrinkle-faced woman. She lives alone in a small untidy house. She swears frightfully like a parrot, and her reputation is bad - so bad indeed that even the old woman’s compatriots in Dublin Gulch do not visit her lest they damage their own. It is true that the profane old woman’s morals are not good - have never been good - judged by the world’s standards. She bears various marks of cold, rough handling on her mind and body. Her life has all but run its course. She is worn out.

Once in a while I go to visit this old woman. - My reputation must be sadly damaged now. -

I sit with her for an hour or two and listen to her. She is extremely glad to have me here. Except me she has no one to talk to but the milk man, the grocery man, and the butcher. So always she is glad to see me. There is a certain bond of sympathy between her and me. We are fond of each other. When she sees me picking my way toward her house, her hard sour face softens wonderfully and a light of distinct friendliness comes into her green eyes.

Don’t you know, there are few people enough in the world whose hard sour faces will soften at the sight of you and a distinctly friendly light come into their green eyes. For myself I find such people few indeed.

So the profane old woman and I are fond of each other. No question of morals, or of immorals, comes between us. We are equals.

I talk to her a little - but mostly she talks. She tells me of the time when she lived in County Galway, when she was young - and of her several husbands, and of some who were not husbands, and of her children scattered over the earth. And she shows me old tin-types of these people. She has told me the varied tale of her life a great many times. I like to hear her tell it. It is like nothing else I have heard. The story in its unblushing simplicity, the sour-faced old woman sitting telling it, and the tin-types, - contain a thing that is absurdly, grotesquely, tearlessly sad.

Once when I went to her house I brought with me six immense heavy fragrant chrysanthemums.

They had been bought with the three dollars I had stolen.

It pleased me to buy them for the profane old woman. They pleased her also - not because she cares much for flowers, but because I brought them to her. I knew they would please her, but that was not the reason I gave her them.

I did it purely and simply to please myself.

I knew the profane old woman would not be at all concerned as to whether they had been bought with stolen money or not, and my only regret was that I had not had an opportunity to steal a larger sum so that I might have bought more chrysanthemums without inconveniencing my purse.

But as it was they filled her dirty little dwelling with perfume and color.

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.