 Part 11 of the Story of Mary MacLean. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Kristen Hughes. The Story of Mary MacLean by Mary MacLean. Part 11. March 12th. Everything is so dreary, so dreary. I feel as if I would like to die today. I should not be the tiniest bit less unhappy afterward, but this life is unutterably weary. I am not strong, I cannot bear things. I do not want to bear things. I do not long for strengths. I want to be happy. When I was very little it was cold and dreary also. But I was certain it would be different when I should grow and be ten years old. It must be very nice to be ten, I thought, and one would not be nearly so lonesome. But when the years passed and I was ten, it was just exactly as lonesome. And when I was ten everything was very hard to understand. But it will surely be different when I am seventeen, I said. I will know so much when I am seventeen. But when I was seventeen it was even more lonely and everything was still harder to understand. And again I said, faintly, everything will become clearer in a few years more. And I will wonder to think how stupid I have always been. But now the few years more have gone and here I am in loneliness that is more hopeless and harder to bear than when I was very little. Still I wonder indeed to think how stupid I have been. And now I am not so stupid. I do not tell myself that it will be different when I am five and twenty. For I know that it will not be different. I know that it will be the same dreariness, the same nothingness, the same loneliness. It is very, very lonely. It is hope deferred and maketh the heart sick. It is more than I can bear. Why, why was I ever born? I cannot live and I cannot die. For what is there after I am dead? I can see myself wandering in the dark and lonely places. Yet I feel as if I would like to die today. March thirteenth. If it were pain alone that one must bear one could bear it. One could lose one's sense of everything but pain. But it is pain with other things. It is the sense of pain with the sense of beauty and the sense of the anemone. And there is that mysterious pain. Who knows the name of that mysterious pain? It is these mingled senses that torture me. March fourteenth. I have been placed in this world with eyes to see and ears to hear and I ask for life. Is it to be wondered at? Is it so strange? Should I be content merely to see and to hear? There are other things for other people. Is it atrocious that I should ask for some other things also? Is thy servant a dog? March fifteenth. In these days of approaching emotional nature even the sand and barrenness begin to stir and rub its eyes. My sand and barrenness is clothed in the awful majesty of countless ages. It stands always through the never-ending march of the living and the dead. It may have been green once, green and fertile and birds and snakes and everything that loves green growing things may have lived in it. It may have some time been rolling prairie. It may have been submerged in floods. It changed and changed in the centuries. Now it is sand and barrenness and there are no birds and no snakes, only me. But whatever change came into it whatever its transfiguration the spirit of it never moved. Flood or fertility or rolling prairie or barrenness it is only itself. It has a great self, a wonderful self. I shall never forget you my sand and barrenness. Some day shall my thirsty life be watered my starved heart fed my asking voice answered my tired soul taken into the warmth of another with the intoxicating sweetness of love. It may be. But I shall remember the sand and barrenness that is with me in my nothingness. The sand and barrenness and the memory of the anemone lady are all that are in any degree mine. And so then I shall remember it. As I stand among the barren gulches in these days and look away at the slow awakening hills of Montana I hear the high swelling, half tired half hopeful song of the world. As I listen I know that there are things other than the virtue and the truth and the love that are not for me. There is beyond me, like me the unbreaking undying bond of human fellowship a thing that is earth old. It is beyond me and it is nothing to me. In my intensest desires in my widest longings I never go beyond self. The ego is the all. Limitless legions of women and men in weariness and in joy are one. They are killing each other and torturing each other and going down in sorrow to the dust. But they are one. Their right hands are joined in unseen sympathy and kinship. But my two hands are apart and clasped together in an agony of loneliness. I have read of women who have been strongly, grandly brave. Sometimes I have dreamed that I might be brave. The possibilities of this life are magnificent. To be saturated with this agony I say at times and to bear with it all not to sink beneath it but to vanquish it and to make it the grace and comeliness of my entire life from the beginning to the end. Perhaps a woman, a real woman could do this. But I? No. I am not real. I do not seem real to myself. In such things as these my life is a blank. There was Charlotte Corday a heroine whom I admire above all the heroines and more than she was a heroine she was a woman and she had her agony. It was for love of her fair country. To suffer and do and die for love of something it is glorious. What must be the exalted ecstasy of Charlotte Corday's soul now? And I, with all my manifold passions I am a coward. I have had moments when vaguely and from far off seemed as if there might be bravery and exaltation for me when I could rise far over myself I have felt unspeakable possibilities while they lasted what wonderful emotion was it that I felt but they are not real they fade away they fade away and again come the varied phenomena of my life to bewilder and terrify me confusion, chaos, damnation they are not moments of exaltation now poor little Mary MacLaine if to do were as easy as to know what we're good to do chapels had been churches and poor men's cottages, princes' palaces I do not know what to do I do not know what we're good to do I would do nothing if I knew I might add to my litany this most kind devil deliver me from myself March 16th today I walked over the sand and it was almost beautiful the sun was sinking and the sky was filled with roses and gold then came my soul and confronted me my soul is a wondrous fare it is like a young woman the beauty of it is too great for human eyes to look upon it is too great for mine yet I look my soul said to me I am sick I answered and I am sick we may be well, said my soul why are we not well how may we be well, I asked we may throw away all our vanity and false pride said my soul we may take on a new life we may learn to wait and to possess ourselves in patience we may labour and overcome we can do none of these things, I cried have I not tried all of them some time in my short life and have I not waited and wanted until you have become faint with pain have I not looked and longed dear soul, why do you not resign yourself why can you not stay quiet and trouble yourself and me no more why are you always straining and reaching there isn't anything for you you are wearing yourself out my soul made answer I may strain and reach until only one worn nerve of me is left and that one nerve may be scourged with whips and burned with fire but I will keep one atom of faith I may go bad but I will keep one atom of faith in love and in the truth that is love you are a genius but I am no genius the years, a million of years do their utmost to destroy the single nerve they may lash and beat it I will keep my one atom of faith you are not wise, I said you have been wandering and longing for a time that seems a thousand years through my cold, dark childhood to my cold, dark womanhood is that not enough to quiet you is that not enough to teach you the lesson of nothing you are not a genius but you are not a fool I will keep my one atom of faith said my soul but lie and sleep now I said don't reach after that light anymore let us both sleep a few years no said my soul oh my soul I wailed look away at that glowing copper horizon and beyond it let us go there now and take an infinite rest now we can bear this no longer no said my soul we will stay here and bear more there would be no rest yet beyond the copper horizon and there is no need of going anywhere I have my one atom of faith I gazed at my soul as it stood plainly before me weak and worn and faint in the fading light it had one atom of faith it said tried to hold its head high and to look strong and triumphant oh the irony the pathos of it my soul with its one pitiful atom of faith looked only what it was a weeping hunted thing March 17th in some rare between wiles it is as if nothing mattered my heart aches I say my soul wanders this person or that person was repelled today but nothing matters a great inner langer comes like a giant and lays hold of me I lie fallow beneath it someone forgot me in the giving of things but it does not matter I feel nothing persons say to me don't analyze anymore and you will not be unhappy when something throws heavy clubs at you and you are hit by them don't be hurt when something stronger than you holds your hand in the fire don't let it burn you when something pushes you into a river of ice don't be cold when something draws a cutting lash against your naked shoulders don't let it concern you don't be conscious that it is there this is great wisdom and fine clear logic it is a pity that no one has ever yet been able to live by it but after all it's no matter nothing is anyone's affair it is all of no consequence and have I not had all my anguish for nothing I am a fool a fool a handful of rich black mud in the pig's yard does it wonder why it is there does it torture itself about the other mud around it and about the earth and water of which it is made and about the pig only fool's mud would do so and so then I am fool's mud nothing counts nothing can possibly count regret, passion, cowardice, hope, bravery, unrest, pain the love sense, the soul sense, the beauty sense all for nothing what can a handful of rich black mud in a pig's yard have to do with these I am a handful of rich black mud a fool woman fool's mud all on earth that I need to do is lie still in the hot sun and feel the pig rolling and floundering and slushing about it were folly to waste my mud nerves and wandering be quiet fool woman let things be your soul is a fool's mud soul and is governed by the pig your heart is a fool's mud heart and wants nothing beyond the pig your life is a fool's mud life and is the pig's life something within me shrieks now but I do not know what it is nor why it shrieks it groans and moans there's no satisfaction in being a fool no satisfaction at all March 18th but yes it all matters whether or no nature is one long battle and the never-ending perishing of the week I must grind and grind away I have no choice and I must know that I grind fool genius young lonely woman I must go round and round in the life within for how many years the devil knows after that my soul must go round and round for how many centuries the devil knows what a mastermind is that of the devil the world is a wondrous scheme for me it is a scheme that is black with woe but there may be in the world someone who finds it beautiful real life I wonder as I write this portrayal if there will be one person to read it and see a thing that is mingled with every word it is something that you must feel that must fascinate you the like of which you have never before met with it is the unparalleled individuality of me I wish I might write it in so many words of English but that is not possible if I have put it in every word and if you feel it and are fascinated then I have done very well I am marvelously clever if I have done so I know that I am marvelously clever but I have need of all my peculiar genius to show you my individuality my aloneness I am alone out on my sand and barrenness I should be alone if my sand and barrenness were a crowd with a thousand people each filled with melting sympathy for me though it would be unspeakably sweet people say of me, she's peculiar they do not understand me if they did, they would say so oftener and with emphasis and so I try to put my individuality in the quality of my diction in my method of handling words my conversation plainly shows this individuality more than shows it indeed my conversation hurls it violently at people's heads my conversation when I choose makes people turn around in their chairs and stare and give me all of their attention they admire me though their admiration is mixed decidedly with other feelings I like to be admired it soothes my vanity when you read this portrayal you will admire me you will surely have to admire me and so this is life and everything matters but just now I will stop writing and go downstairs to my dinner there is a porterhouse steak broiled rare and some green young onions oh they are good and when one is to have a porterhouse steak for one's dinner and some green young onions one doesn't give a top any damn whether anything else matters or not end of part 11 part 12 of the story of Mary MacLean this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Kristen Hughes the story of Mary MacLean by Mary MacLean part 12 March 19th on a day when the sky is like lead and a dull tempestuous wilderness of grey clouds adds a dreariness to the sand there is added to the loneliness of my life a deep bitterness of gall and wormwood out of my bitterness it is easy for bad to come surely badness is a deep black pool wherein one may drown dullness in nothingness I do not know badness well it is something material that seems a great way off now but that might creep nearer and nearer as I became less and less young but now when the days of the leaden dullness I look at badness and long for it I am young and all alone and everything that is good is beyond my reach but all that is bad surely that is within the reach of everyone I wish for a long pageant of bad things to come and whirl and rage through this strange leaden life of mine and break the spell why should it not be badness instead of death death it seems will bring me but a change of agony badness would perhaps so crowd my life with its vivid phenomena that they would act as a neurotic to the wracked nerves of my nothingness it would be an outlet and possibly I could forget some things I think just now of a woman who lived long ago and in whom the world at large seems not to have found anything admirable I mean Melisina Valeria the wife of the stupid Emperor Claudius I have conceived a profound admiration for this historic wanton she may not indeed have had anything to forget she may not have suffered but she had the strength of will to take what she wanted to do as she liked to live as she chose to live it is admirable and beautiful beyond expression to sacrifice and give up and wait for love of that good that gives in itself a just reward and only next to this is the throwing to the winds of all restraint when the good holds itself aloof and gives nothing we are weak contemptible fools who do not grasp the resources within our reach when there is no just reward for our restraint why do we not take what we want of the various temptations it is not that we are virtuous it is that we are cowards and is it worth while to remain true to an ideal that offers only the vaguest hopes of realization it is not philosophy when one has made up one's mind that one wants a dish of hot stewed mushrooms and set one's heart on it should one scorn a handful of raw evaporated apples if one were starving for the sake of the phantom dish of hot stewed mushrooms should one say let me starve but I will never descend to evaporated apples I will have nothing but a dish of hot stewed mushrooms if one is sure one will have the stewed mushrooms finally before one dies of starvation then very well one should wait for them and take nothing else but it is not in my good parapetetic philosophy to pass by the badness that the gods provide for the sake of a faraway always unrealized ideal however brilliant however beautiful however golden when the light is in the sky and in my life a vision of badness looms up on the horizon and looks at me and beckons with a fascinating finger then I say to myself what is the use of this unsullied struggling soul this unbesmerged empty heart this treasurless innocent mind this insipid maid's body there are no good things for them but here to be sure are fascinating glittering bad things the goods that the gods provide the compensation of the devil comes death some day I said but to die in the sight of glittering bad things and I only nineteen these glittering things appear fair there is really nothing evil in the world some things appear distorted and unnatural because they have been badly done had they been perfect in conception and execution they would strike one only with admiration at their fine iridescent lights you remember Don Jewen in Haiti that to be sure was not evil in any event they loved each other but if they had had only a passing if intense fancy for one another who would call it evil who would call it anything but wonderful charming enchanting the devil's bad things like the devil's good things may gleam and glisten oh how they may gleam and glisten I have seen them do so not only in a poem of Byron's but in the life that is always when the lead is in the sky I would like to cultivate thoroughly this branch of the vineyard now doesn't it make you shiver do you think of this dear little Mary Maclean wandering unloved through dark byways and deadly labyrinths it makes me shiver but it needn't if I am to wander unloved why not as well wander there as through nothingness I fancy it must be wonderfully easy to become used to the many-sided badness I have lived my nineteen years in the midst of nothingness and I have not yet become used to it it has sharp knives in it has nothingness badness may have some sharp knives also but there are other things yes there are other things kind devil if you are not to fetch me happiness then slip off from your great steel key ring a bright little key to the door of the glittering gleaming bad things and give it to me and show me the way and wish me joy I would like to live about seven years of judicious badness and then death if you will nineteen years of damnable nothingness seven years of judicious badness and then death a noble ambition but might it not be worse if not that then nineteen years of damnable nothingness and then death no when the lead is in the sky that does not appeal to me my versatile mind turns to the seven years of judicious badness there is nothing in the world without its element of badness it is in literature it is in every art in pictures sculpture even in music there are certain fine deep minute passages in Beethoven and in Chopin that tell of things wonderfully sublimely bad Chopin one cannot understand is there anyone in the world who can understand him but we know at once that there is the badness and it is music there is the element of badness in me I long to cultivate my element of badness badness compared to nothingness is beautiful and so then I wait also for someone to come over the hill with things other than happiness but whatever I wait for nothing comes March 20 there were pictures in the red sunset sky today I looked at them and was wracked with passions of desire I fancied to myself that I could have any of the good things in the pictures for the asking and the waiting the while I knew that when the sunset should fade from the sky I would be overwhelmed by my heaviest woe there was a picture of intense peace there were sketches of flat green country and oak trees and aspens and a still still lake in the dim distance you could see fields of wheat and timothy grass that moved a little as if in the wind you could fancy the cows feeding just below the brow of the near hills and a hawk floating and wheeling among the clouds a rainbow arched over the lake there is nothing lacking here I thought life and health and peace possessing give me this kind devil there was a picture of endless limitless strength there were the oak trees again but bereft now of every leaf and the bristling jagged rocks back of them were not more coldly staunch the sun poured brilliantly bright upon them river flowed unmoved and quiet between yellow clay banks a tornado might sweep over this and not one twig would be displaced not one ripple would come to the river is it not fine? I said to myself no feeling, no self-analysis no aching, no pain and the strength of the Philistines oh kind devil I entreat you let me have that there is a picture of untrammeled revel and forgetfulness there were fields of swaying daffodils and red lilies the young shrubs tossed their heads and were joyous lambs gambled in the happy meadowlark knew whereof she sang the winds with wonder whisked smoothly the waters kissed be carefree, be light-hearted, be wicked above all, forget the deeds are what you will the time is now, the aftermath is nothing the day of reckoning is never love things lightly, take all that you see and to the winds with regret gracious devil I whispered intensely give me this and no other there is a picture of raging elements the winds blew and the rains descended and the floods came the sky was overcast with rolling clouds the air was heavy with unrest there was a grey stone house set upon a rocky point and I had momentary glimpses of an unquiet sea below it back on the surface of the land slender trees were waving wildly in the gale the wind and the rain were saying damn you little earth, I have you now I will rend and ruin you they whipped and raged in frenzy joy the little earth liked it the elements whirled and whistled round the grey stone house a lurid light came from a ghastly moon between clouds the entire scene was desolately savage and forlorn but attractive as I listened in fancy to that shrieking whaling wind and saw green branches jerked and twisted asunder in the storm my barren defrauded heart leaped and exalted if I could live in the midst of this and be beaten and shaken roughly would not that deep sense forget to ache? kind devil, pray send me some storms it is nothingness that bears down heavy there was a picture of an exalted spiritual life there was that strange bright light and the things in the picture were those things alone in this world that are real and the only things that count the old soft green of the old old rolling hills was the green of love the earth love and the love that comes from beyond the earth the air and the blue water and the sunshine were so beautifully real and true that except for their deep reaching passionate tenderness human strength could not endure them there were lanes of climbing vines and white violets was it my fancy that brought their thin fragrance to me over piles of billowy clouds there was something there that was old, old as the race those green valleys were the same as when the mists first lifted from the earth as I looked my life stood still my soul shivered faintly as I looked I felt nearer my God to thee though I have no God and everything is away from me nothing tender comes to me still it was nearer my God to thee a voice came out of the far far distant ages and said very gently all these shadows are falling in vain you are blinded and bewildered in the darkness the darkness is deep, deep there is not one dim ray of light your feet falter and stumble you cannot see but the shadows are falling in vain I ask you why is this life not mine I implore and ring my hands and agonizing in treaty and almost it seems sometimes my fingers can grasp these things but there is something cold and strong between them and me oh what is it there was a picture of various castles in Spain they were most beautiful were those castles the lights that shone on the battlements were soft bright lights for one thing I fancied I saw myself and fame with me fame is very fine the sun and moon and stars may go dark in the heavens bitter rain may fall out of the clouds but never mind fame has a sun and moon and gently brilliant stars of her own and these shining once shine always the green river may run dry in the land but fame has a green river that never runs dry one may wander over the face of the earth but fame is herself a refuge one may be a target for stones and mud yes but fame stands near with her arm laid across one's shoulders as no other arm can be laid across one's shoulders fame would fill several empty places fame would continue to fill them for some years fame if you please devil there was a picture of death I saw a figure lying in the midst of a desert that was rather like my sand and barrenness not far off a wolf sat at his haunches and waited for the end a buzzard perched near and waited also they both appeared hungry it seemed as though the end might come quickly let it come kind devil and a wolf and a buzzard are better than an undertaker in some worms although that doesn't matter much and oh there again was the dearest picture of all the red red picture of happiness for me happiness with the sunshine falling on the heaven kissing hills there was I and I loved and was loved the sky out of loneliness to perfect happiness the yellow gold of the glorious hot sun melted and poured over the earth and over everything that was there the river ran and rippled and sang the most sweetly glad song that ever river sang winged things sparkled in the golden light and flew down the sky the wonderful air was over me the wonderful wind was shaking the tree the silent voices in the air rang out like flutes and clarinets and the love of the man devil for me was everywhere above me around me within me it would last for a number of beautiful yellow gold days I out of the anguish of loneliness into this my heart is filled with desire my soul is filled with passion my life is a life of longing all pictures fade before this picture they fade completely when the sun itself faded I gazed over my sand and barrenness with blurred unseeing eyes and wished only with a heavy desolate spirit for the coming of the devil March 21st some people think absurdly enough that to be scotch or descended from the Scottish clans is to be rather strong, rather conservative firm in faith and all that the idea is one that should be completely exploded by this time I think that the scotch as a nation are the most difficult of all to characterize their traits and tendencies cover a wider field than those of any other to be scotch is to be anything there is no man so narrow as a scotchman there is no man so broad as a scotchman there is no mind so versatile as a scotch mind at the same time only a scotch mind is capable of clinging with bulldog tenacity to one idea a scotch heart out of all and through all can be true as death a scotch heart, the same one can be cunning and treacherous as false human hearts are made to be English is to have limits the Germans, the French, the Russians they have all some inevitable attributes to modify their genius but one may be anything anything if one is scotch always I think of the cruel hardened ferocious weather-beaten kilted clan McLean wandering over bleak winter hills fighting the powerful McDonald's and McGregors and generally wiping them from the earth marching away with merrily shrieking pipes in fields of withered blood-soaked heather and all this merely to gather intensified life for me I feel that the causes of my tragedy began long long ago from remote germs my scotch blood added to my genius sense has made me into a dangerous chemical compound by analyzing I have brought an almost clear portrait of myself up before my mind's eyes when I was a child I did not analyze knowingly but the child was the same genius though I am one of the kind that changes wildly and decidedly in the years this weary unhappiness is not a matter of development when I was a child I felt dumbly what I feel now less dumbly at the age of five I used sometimes to weep silently in the night I did not know why it was that I felt my aloneness foreignness to all things I felt the heavy heavy weight of life and I was only five I was only five and it seems a thousand years ago but sometimes back through the long winding unused passages of my mind I hear that silent sobbing of the child and the unarmed wailing of a tiny tired soul it mingles with the bitter nothingness of the grown young woman and oh with it all with it all I am so unhappy there is something subtly scotch in all this but scotch or indian or japanese there is no stopping of the pain end of part 12 part 13 of the story of mary mclean this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Kristen Hughes the story of mary mclean by mary mclean part 13 march 22 I fear do you know fine world that you do not yet know me really well particularly me of the flesh me of the peculiar philosophy and the unhappy spirit you know rather well by now unless you are stupider than I think you are but you might pass me in the street you might spend the day with me and never suspect that I am I though for the matter of that even if I had set before you a most graphic and my newly drawn portrait of myself I am quite certainly clever enough to act a quite different role if I chose when you came to spend the day still if the world at large is to know me unless I desire it to know me without ever seeing me I shall have to bring myself into closer personal range with it and you may rise in your seats and focus your opera glasses stare with open mouth stand on your hind legs and gape I will myself turn on glaring green and orange lights from the wings I believe it's the trivial little facts about anything that describe it the most effectively in vanity fair when Becky Sharp was describing young Crawley in a letter to her friend Amelia she stated that he had hay-colored whiskers and straw-colored hair and knowing this you feel that you know much more about the Crawley than you would if Miss Sharp had not mentioned those things and yet it is but a mere matter of color when you think that Dickens was extremely fond of cats you feel at once that nothing could be more fitting somehow that marvelously mingled humor and pathos and gentle irony seem to go exceedingly well with a fondness for soft green-eyed purring things if you had not read the pathetic humor but knew about Dickens and his warm feline friends you might easily expect such things from him when you read somewhere that Dr. Johnson has said never to have washed his neck and his ears and then go and read some of his powerful original philosophy you say to yourself yes, I can readily believe that this man never troubled himself to wash his neck and his ears I, for my part, having read some of the things he has written cannot reconcile myself to the fact that he ever washed any part of his anatomy I admire Dr. Johnson, though I wash my own neck occasionally when you think of Napoleon amusing himself by taking a child on his knee and pinching it to hear it cry you feel an ecstatic little wave of pleasure at the perfect fitness of things you think of his hard brilliant continuous victories and you suspect that Napoleon Bonaparte lived but to gratify Napoleon Bonaparte when you think of the heavy muscular man smiling pinching the child you are quite sure of it such a method of amusement for that king among men is so exquisitely appropriate that you wonder why you had not thought of it yourself so then yes, I believe strenuously in the efficacy of seemingly trivial facts as portrayers of one's character one's individual humanness now, I will set down for your benefit diverse and varied observations relative to me an interesting one of womankind in nineteen years and curious and fascinating with all well then nearly every day I make me a plate of hot rich fudge with brown sugar I should be an entirely different person if I made it with white sugar and the fudge would not be nearly so good and take it upstairs to my room with a book or a newspaper my mind then takes in a part of what is contained in the book or the newspaper and the stomach of the Maclean takes in all of what is contained in the plate I sit by my window in a miserable uncomfortable stiff back chair but I relieve the strain by resting my feet on the edge of the low bureau usually the book that I read is an old dilapidated bound volume of that erstwhile periodical our young folks it is a thing that possesses a charm for me I never grow tired of it as I eat my nice brown little squares of fudge I read about a boy whose name is Jack Hazard and who J.T. Trowbridge informs the reader is doing his best and who seems to find it somewhat difficult I believe I could repeat pages of J.T. Trowbridge from memory and that ancient bound volume has become a part of my life I stop reading after a few minutes but I continue to eat and gaze at the toes of my shoes which need polishing badly or at the conglomeration of brilliant pictures on my bedroom wall or out of the window at the children playing in the street but mostly I gaze without seeing and my versatile mind is engaged either in nothing or in repeating something over and over such as but the sweet face of Lucy Gray will never more be seen only I am not aware that I have been repeating it until I happen to remember it afterward always the fudge is very good and I eat and eat with unabated relish until all the little squares are gone a very little of my fudge has been known to give some people a most terrific stomach ache but my own digestive organs seem to like nothing better it's so brown, so rich I amuse myself with this for an hour or two in the afternoon then I go downstairs and work awhile there are few things that annoy me so much as to be called a young lady I am no lady as anyone could see by close inspection and the phrase has an odious sound I would rather be called a sweet little thing or a fallen woman or a sensible girl though they would each be equally a lie always I am glad when night comes and I can sleep my mind works busily repeating things while I divest myself of various dusty garments as I remove a dozen or two of hairpins from my head I say within me you are old Father William one would hardly suppose that your eyes is as steady as ever yet you balance an eel on the end of your nose what makes you so awfully clever always I take a little clock to bed with me and hang it by a cord at the head of my bed for company I have named the clock Little Fido because it is so constant and ticks always it is beginning to stand in the same relation to me as J.T. Trowbridge's magazine if I were to go away from here I should take Little Fido and the magazine with me every morning being beautifully hungry after my walk I eat three boiled eggs out of the shell for my breakfast the while I mentally thank the kind providence that invented hens I also eat bits of toast I have my breakfast alone because the rest of the family are still sleeping sitting at a corner of the kitchen table I enjoy those three eggs and those bits of toast usually when I am eating my breakfast I am thinking of three things the varying price of any eggs that are fit to eat of what to do after I've finished my housework and before lunch and of my one friend and I meditatively and gently kick the leg of the table with the heel of my right foot I have beautiful hair in the front of my shirt waist there are nine cambric handkerchiefs cunningly distributed my figure is very pretty to be sure but not so well developed as it will be in five years if I live so long and so I help it out materially with nine cambric handkerchiefs you can see by my picture that my waist curves gracefully out only it is not all flesh some of it is handkerchief it amuses me to do this it is one of my petty vanities likewise by an ingenious arrangement of my striped marine petticoat I contrive to display a more even pair of hips than nature seems to have intended for me at this stage doubtless they also will take on fuller proportions when some years have passed still I am not dissatisfied with them as they are it is not as if they were too well developed in which case I should have need of all my skill in arranging my marine petticoat so as to lessen their effect it is easy enough to add on to these things but one would experience serious difficulty in attempting to take from them I hate the heavy aggressive kind of hips moreover small graceful ones are desirable when one is nineteen the world at large judges you more leniently on that account usually narrow shapely hips may give one an effective youth and harmlessness which is a distinct advantage when for instance one is writing a portrayal and so will be at the world's mercy I believe I should not think of attempting to write a portrayal if I had hips like a pair of saddlebags certainly it would avail me nothing sometimes I look at my face in a mirror and find it not plain but ugly and there are other times when I look and find it not pretty but beautiful with a Madonna like sweetness I told you I might say more about the liver that is within me before I have done well then I will say this that the world if it had a liver like mine would be very different from what it is the world would be many colored and mobile and passionate and nervous and high strong and intensely alive and poetic and romantic and philosophical and egotistic and pathetic and oh racked up to the verge of madness with the spirit of unrest if the world had a liver like mine it is not all of these now it is rather stupid gods and little fishes would not the world be wonderful if all in it were like me and it would be if it had a liver like mine for it is my liver mostly that makes me what I am apart from my genius my liver is fine and perfect but sensitive and well it's a dangerous thing to have within you it is the liver of the Maclean's it is the foundation of the curious castle of my existence and after all fine brave stupid world you may be grateful to the devil that yours is not like it I have seventeen little engraved portraits of Napoleon that I keep in one of my bureau drawers often late in the evening between nine and ten o'clock when I come in from a walk over the sand and barrenness I take these pictures from the drawer and gaze at them carefully a long time and think of that man until I am stirred to the depths and then easily and naturally I fall in love with Napoleon if only he were living now I think to myself I would make my way to him by whatever means and cast myself at his feet I would entreat him with the most passionate humbleness of spirit to take me into his life for three days to be the wife of Napoleon for three days that would be enough for a lifetime I would be much more than satisfied if I could get three such days out of life I suppose a man is either a villain or a fool though some of them seem to be a judicious mingling of both the type of the distinct villain is preferable to a mixture of the two and to a plain fool I like a villain anyway a villain that can be rather tender at times and so then as I look at the pictures I fall in love with the incomparable Napoleon the seventeen pictures are all different and all alike I fall in love with each picture separately in one he is ugly and unattractive and strong I fall in love with him in another he is cruel and heartless and utterly selfish and strong I fall in love with him in a third he has a fat pudgy look and is quite insignificant and strong I fall in love with him in a fourth he is grandly sad and full of despair and strong I fall in love with him in the fifth he is greasy and greedy and common looking and strong I fall in love with him in the sixth he is masterly and superior and exalted and strong I fall in love with him in the seventh he is romantic and beautiful and strong I fall in love with him in the eighth he is obviously sensual and reeking with uncleanliness and strong I fall in love with him in the ninth he is unearthly and mysterious and unreal and strong I fall in love with him in the tenth he is black and sullen-browed and ill-humoured and strong I fall in love with him in the eleventh he is inferior and trifling and inane and strong I fall in love with him in the twelfth he is rough and ruffianly and uncouth and strong I fall in love with him in the thirteenth he is little and wolfish and vile and strong I fall in love with him in the fourteenth he is calm and confident and intellectual and strong I fall in love with him in the fifteenth he is vacillating and fretful and his mouth is like a woman's and still he is strong I fall in love with him in the sixteenth he is slow and heavy and brutal and strong I fall in love with him in the seventeenth he is rather tender and strong I fall vividly in love with him Napoleon was rather like the devil, I think, as I sit in the straight-back chair with my feet on the bureau and gaze long and intently at the seventeen pictures late in the evening then I weirdly put them away, maddened with the sense of nothingness and take little Fido and go to bed Sometimes, early in the evening, just before dinner, I sit in the stiff-backed chair with my elbows on the windowsill and my head resting on one hand and I look out of the window at a pile of stones and a barrel of lime These are in the vacant lot next to this house I fix my eyes intently on the pile of stones and the barrel of lime and I fix my thoughts on them also and some of my widest thoughts come to me then I feel an overwhelming wave of a kind of pantheism which at the moment I feel it begins slowly to grow less and less and continues in this until it finally dwindles to a pile of stones and a barrel of lime I feel at the moment that the universe is a pile of stones and a barrel of lime They alone are the real things Take anything at any point and deceive yourself into thinking that you are happy with it Look at it heavily Dig down underneath the layers and layers of rose-colored mists and you will find that your thing is a pile of stones and a barrel of lime A struggle or two, a fight, an agony, a passing and then the only real things A pile of stones and a barrel of lime Damn everything Afterward you will find that you've done all your damning for naught Nothing worthy of damnation except a pile of stone and a barrel of lime and they are not damnable They have never harmed you and moreover they alone are the real things Julius Caesar made many wars Sir Francis Drake went sailing over the seas It was all child's play and counts for nothing Here are the pile of stones and a barrel of lime And so this is how it is early in the evening just before dinner When I sit in the comfortable chair with my elbows on the window sill and my head resting on one hand I have two pictures of Marie Bashkertsev high upon my wall Often I lean my head on the back of the chair with my feet on the bureau always with my feet on the bureau and look at these pictures In one of them she is eighteen years old and wears a green frock which is extremely becoming of which fact the person inside of it seems fully aware The other picture is taken from her last photograph when she was twenty-four Marie Bashkertsev is a very beautiful creature and evidently she is not obliged to arrange a Maureen petticoat over her plumpness She has a wonderfully voluptuous look for a woman of eighteen years In the later picture Vanity is written in every line of her graceful form and in every feature of that charming face The picture fairly yells I am Marie Bashkertsev and oh I am splendid And as I look at the pictures I am glad for though she was admirable and splendid and all she was no such genius as I She had a genius of her own it is true but the Bashkertsev with her voluptuous body and her attractive personality is after all a bit ordinary My genius though not powerful is rare and deep and no one has ever had or ever will have a genius like it Marie McClain if you live if you live my darling the world will one day recognize your genius and when once the world has recognized such genius as this oh then no one will ever think of profaning it by comparing it with any Bashkertsev but I would gladly give up this genius eagerly, gladly at once and forever for one dear bright day free from loneliness The portraits of the Bashkertsev are certainly beautiful but there is something about them that is well not common but bourgeois at the least as if she were a German waitress of unusual appearance or an aristocratic shop girl or a nurse with good taste who would walk out on pleasant forenoons wheeling a go-kart something of that sort Perhaps it is because her neck is too short or because her wrists are too muscular looking I thank a gracious devil as I look up at the pictures that I have not those particular points and that particular bourgeois air I am bound to confess that I have one of my own but mine is Highland Scotch and anyway I am Mary MacLean Marie Bashkertsev is beautiful enough however that she can easily afford to look rather second rate I like to look at my two pictures of her I value money literally for its own sake I like the feeling of dollars and quarters rubbing softly together in my hand always it reminds me of those lovely chestfuls of gold that Captain Kidd buried no one seems to know just where usually I keep some fairly clean dollars and quarters to handle money is so nice I say to myself if you think fine world that I am always interesting and striking and admirable always original showing up to good advantage in a company of persons and all why then you are beautifully mistaken there are times to be sure when I can rivet the attention of a crowd heavily upon myself but mostly I am the very least among all the idiots and fools I show up to the poorest possible advantage of several ways that are mine there is one that gives me a distinct and hopeless air of insignificance I have seen people having met me for the first time glance carelessly at me as if they were quite sure I had not an idea in my brain if I had a brain as if they wondered why I had been asked there as if they were fully aware that they had but to fiddle and it would dance sometimes before this highly intellectual gathering breaks up I managed to make them change their minds with astonishing suddenness but nearly always I don't bother about it at all I go among people occasionally because it amuses me it may be a literary club where they talk theosophy or it may be a Cornish dance where they have pasty and saffron cake and the chief amusement is sending beer bottles at various heads or it may be a ladylike circle of married women with cerise silk drop skirts and white kid gloves drinking chocolate in the afternoon and talking about something shocking and often as I say I am the least of them genius is an odd thing when certain of my skirts need sewing they don't get sewed I simply pin the rents in them together and it lasts as long or longer than if I had seated myself in my stiff back chair with a needle and thread and mended them like a sensible girl I hate a sensible girl though I have never yet hurriedly pinned up a torn flounce of several inches of skirt binding without saying softly to myself using a trite, expressive phrase certainly it's a hell of a way to do still I never take a needle and mend my garments I couldn't anyway I never learn to sew and I don't intend ever to learn it reminds me too much of a constipated dressmaker and so I pin up the torn places though as I say, I never fail to make use of the quaint expressive phrase all of which a reasonably astute reader will recognize as an important point in the portraying of any character whether mine or the Queen of Spades I had for my dinner today some whole wheat bread some liver and bacon and some green, green early asparagus while I was eating these the world seemed a very nice place indeed I never see people walking along on the opposite side of the street as I sit by my window without wondering who they are and how they live and how ugly they would look if their bodies were not adorned with clothes always I feel certain that some of them are bow-legged and sometimes I see a woman in a fearful state of Decibel walk across the vacant lot next to this a plague on me I say then to myself if I ever become middle-aged and if my entire being seems to tip up in the front and if I go about with no stays so that when I tie an apron around my waist my upper fatness hangs over the band like a natural blouse and so I could go on riding all night these seemingly trivial but really significant details relating to the outer genius but these will answer these to anyone who knows things will be a revelation sometimes you know things fine brave world you must know likewise that though I do ordinary things when I do them they cease to be ordinary I make fudge and a sweet girl makes fudge but there are ways and ways of doing things this entire affair of the fudge is one of my unique points no sweet girl makes fudge and eats it as I make fudge and eat it so it is but oh who is to understand all this who will understand any of this portrayal my unhappy soul has delved in shadows far far beyond and below end of part 13 part 14 of the story of Mary MacLean this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Kristen Hughes the story of Mary MacLean by Mary MacLean part 14 March 23rd my philosophy I find after very little analysis approaches precariously near to sensualism it is wonderful how many sides there can be to just one character nature with all those suns and all those hilltops and all those rivers and all those stars is inscrutable, intangible, maddening it affects one with unutterable joy and anguish but no one can ever begin to understand what it means human nature is yet more inscrutable and nothing appears on the surface one can have no idea of the things buried in the minds of one's acquaintances and mostly they are fools and have no idea themselves of what germs are in themselves of what they are capable and in most minds it is true the dormant devils never awaken and never are known it is another sign of my analytical genius that I, age 19 recognize the devils in my character I have not the slightest wish since things are as they are with me to rid myself of them there is in me much more of evil than good genius like mine must needs have with it manifold bad I have in me the germ of every crime I have no desire to destroy these germs I should be glad indeed to have them develop into a ravaging disease something in this dreadful confusion would then give way my wooden heart and my soul would cry out in the darkness less heavily, less bitterly they want something they know not what I give them poison they snatch it and eat it hungrily then they are not so hungry they become quieter the ravaging disease soothes them to sleep it descends on them like rain in the autumn when I hurry over my sand and barrenness my vivid passions come to me or when I sit and look at the horizon when I walk slowly I consider calmly the question of how much evil I should need to kill off my finer feelings to poison thoroughly the soul of unrest and this wooden heart so that they would never more be conscious of two brilliant lights and to make myself over into a quite different creature a little evil would do a little of a fine good quality I should like a man to come it is always a man have you ever noticed whatever one contemplates when one is of woman kind and young I should like a man to come I said calmly to myself today as I walked slowly over my barrenness a perfect villain to come and fascinate me and lead me with strong gentle allurements to what would be technically termed my ruin and as the world views such things it would be my ruin but as I view such things it would not be ruin it would bring a new lease on life yes I should like a man to come any man so that he is strong and thoroughly a villain and so that he fascinates me particularly he must fascinate me there must be no falling in love about it I doubt if I could fascinate him but I should ask him quite humbly to lead me to my ruin I have never yet seen the man who would not readily respond to such an appeal this villain would be no exception I would then jerk my life out of this nothingness by the roots farewell a long farewell I would say then I would go forth with the man to my ruin the man would be bad to his heart's core and after living but a short time with him my shy, sensitive soul would be irretrievably poisoned and polluted the defilement of so sacred and beautiful a thing as marriage is surely the darkest evil that can come to a life and so everything within me that had turned toward that too bright light would then drink deep of the lease of death the thirst of this incessant unrest and longing this weariness of self would be quenched completely my life would be like fertile soil planted thickly with rank wild mustard on every square inch of soil there would be a dozen sprouts of wild mustard there would be no room, no room at all for an anemone to grow if one should start up instantly it would be choked and overrun with wild mustard but no anemone would start up my life now is a life of pain and revolt my life darkened and partly killed would be more than content to drift along with the current oh it would be a rest the Christians sing there is rest for the weary on the other side of Jordan where the tree of life is blooming but that rest of course is for the Christians my rest will have to come on this side of the Jordan let the impress of a thoroughly evil and strong man be stamped upon my inner life and I am convinced there would come a wonderful settled quiet over it its spirit would be broken, it would rest why not? I have no virtue sense nothing to me is of any consequence except to be rid of this unrest and pain yes, surely I might rest the coming of the man-devil would bring rest but I am fool enough to think that marriage, the real marriage, is possible for me this other thing is within the reach of everyone of fools and geniuses alike and of all that come between and so I want a fascinating wicked man to come and make me positively rather than negatively wicked I feel a terrific wave of utter weariness my life lies fallow I am tired of sitting here the sand and barrenness is grey with age and I am grey with age happiness the red of the sunset sky is the intense desire of my life but I will grasp eagerly anything else that has offered me anything the poisoning of my soul the passing of my unrest would rouse my mental power the genius would receive a wonderful impetus from it you would marvel good world at the things I should write not that they would be exalted not that they would surge upward do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? but they would be marvels of fire and intensity I should no longer exhaust much of my energy and grinding, grinding within the things that would come of the thorns and thistles would excite your astonishment and admiration though they be not grapes and figs and as for me, the real me the creature imbued with a sense of intense femininity with a spirit of an intense sense of love with a spirit like that of the Magdalena who loved too much with the very soul of unrest and nothingness this thing would vanish swiftly into oblivion and I should go down a dark world and feel not March 25th one of the remarkable points about my life is that it is so completely hopelessly alone a lonely, lonely life this book of mine contains but one character myself there is also the devil as a possibility and there is also the anemone lady my dearest beloved as a memory I have read books that were written to portray but one character and there were various people brought in to help in the portraying but my one friend is gone and there is no person who enters into my life in the very least I am always alone I might mingle with people intimately every hour of my life still I should be alone always alone, alone not even a god to worship how do I bear this? how do I get through the days and days and oh when it comes over me what frightful rage what long agony of my breaking heart what utter woe when the stars shine down upon me with cold hatred when miles and miles of barrenness stretch out around me and envelop me in their weary, weary nothingness when the wind blows over me like the breath of a vicious giant when the ugly, ugly sun radiates centuries of hard heavy bitterness around me from its stinging rays when the sky maddens me with its cold careless blue when the rivers that are flowing over the earth send echoes to me of their hateful voices when I hear wild geese honking in bitter wailing melody when bristling edges of jagged rocks cut sharply into my tired life when drops of rain fall on me and pierce me like steel points when the voices in the air shriek little-minded malice in my ears when the green of nature is the green of spitefulness and cruelty when the red, red of the setting sun burns and consumes me with its horrid feverish effervescence when I feel the all-hatred of the universe for its poor little earthbugs then it is that I approach nearest to rest the softnesses are my unrest I do not want those bitter things but I must have them if I would rest I want the softnesses and I want rest oh dear faint soul, it is hard, hard for us we are sick with loneliness March 26th now and again I have torturing glimpses of a paradise and I feel my soul in its pain every moment of my life otherwise how gladly would I deny the existence of a soul and a life to come for my soul is beset with nothingness and the paradise that shows itself is not for me March 28th hatred after all is the easiest thing of all to bear if you have been forgotten by the one who must have made you and if you have been left alone of human beings all your life all your nineteen years then when at last you see someone looking toward you with beautiful eyes and extending to you a beautiful hand and showing you a beautiful heart wherein is just a little of beautiful sympathy for you for you oh that is harder than anything to bear harder than the loneliness and the bitterness others are nearer and nearer but one would be hurt often often for the sake of the beautiful things yes, one would gladly be hurt long and often I shall never forget how it was with me when I first saw the beautiful eyes of my dearest anemone lady when they were looking gently at me and the beautiful hand and the beautiful heart the awakening of my wracked soul is hardly more heavily laden with passion and pain I shall never forget though I feel away from her also she is the only one out of all to look gently at me let me writhe and falter with pain let me go mad but oh world full of people for the love of your God give me out of this seething darkness only one beautiful human hand to touch mine with love one beautiful human heart to know the aching sad loneliness of mine one beautiful human soul to mingle with mine in long, long rest for a human being my soul wails a human being to love me oh to know just once what it is to be loved nineteen years without one faint shadow of love is moldy crumbling age is gray with the dust of centuries how long have I lived how long must I live I am shrieking at you cold stupid world for the long, long waiting the millions of human beings I am a human being and there is no one, no one, no one who can know this that has not felt it you do not know, you cannot know surely I do not ask too much but whether or not it is too much I cannot go through the years without it oh I cannot you have lived your nineteen years fine world and you have lived through some after years but in your nineteen years there was someone to love you it is that that counts since you have had that someone in your nineteen years can you understand what life is to me me in my loneliness my wailing, waiting soul burns with but one desire to be loved oh to be loved March 29th I am making the world my confessor in this portrayal my mind is fairly bursting with egotism and pain and in writing this I find a merciful outlet I have become fond of my portrayal often I lay my forehead and my lips caressingly upon the pages and I wish to let you know that there is in existence a genius an unhappy genius a genius starving in Montana in the barrenness but still a genius I am a creature the like of which you have never before happened upon you have never suspected that there is such a person I know that there is not such another as I said in the beginning the world contains not my parallel I am a fantasy an absurdity a genius had I been one of the beasts that perish I had been likewise a fantasy I think I should have been a small animal composite of a pig, a leopard and a skunk an animal that I fancy would be uncanny to look upon but admirable for a pet however I am not one of the beasts that perish I am human that is another remarkable point I have heard persons say that they can hardly believe I am quite human I am the most human creature that ever was placed on the earth the geniuses are always more human than the herd almost a perfection of humanness is reached in me this by itself makes me extraordinary the rarest thing in the world I find is the quality of humanness humanity and humanness are much less rare it is a brave thing to understand something of what we see indeed it is an exceedingly brave thing the one who said that had surely gone out on the highways and byways and found how little he could understand to understand oneself is not so brave a thing to go in among the hidden grey shadows of the deep things is a fool's errand it is not from choice that I do it no one carries a millstone around her neck from choice when I see what is among the hidden grey shadows when I see a vision of myself I am seized with a strange sick terror a fool's errand but one that I must need go and for that matter I myself am a fool yet to know oneself is a rare fine art I analyze myself now I analyzed myself when I was three years old the only difference is that at the age of three I was not aware that I analyzed it is true that is a great difference now I know that I am analyzing at nineteen and now I know that I analyzed at three and at the age of nineteen I know that I am a genius a genius who does not know that he is a genius is no genius a drunken man might stagger up to a piano and accidentally play music that vibrates to the soul that touches upon the mysteries but he does not know his power and he is no genius I am an awakening go mad there from I know that I am a genius more than any genius that has lived I have a feeling that the world will never know this and as I think of it I wonder if angels are not weeping somewhere because of it end of part 14 part 15 of the story of Mary MacLean this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Kristen Hughes the story of Mary MacLean by Mary MacLean part 15 March 31st she only said my life is dreary he cometh not she said she said I am a weary a weary I would that I were dead all day long this heart-sickening song of Mariana has been reeling and swimming in my brain I awoke with it early in the morning and it is still with me now in the lateness I wondered at times during the day why that very gentle and devilishly persistent refrain did not drive me insane or send me into convulsions I tried vainly to fix my mind on a book I began reading Mill on the Floss but that weird poem was not to be foiled it bewitched my brain now as I write I hear twenty voices chanting in a sad minor key twenty voices that fill my brain with sound to the bursting point he cometh not he cometh not he cometh not that I were dead I am a weary a weary that I were dead that I were dead he cometh not that I were dead it is maddening in that it is set sublimely to the music of my own life now that I have written it I can hope that it may leave me if it follows me through the night and if I awake to another day of it the chords of my overworked mind will surely break but let me thank the kind devil it is leaving me now it is as if tons were lifted from my brain April 2nd how can anyone bring a child into the world and not wrap it round with a certain wondrous tenderness that will stay with it always there are persons whose souls have never entered into them my mother has some fondness for me for my body because it came of hers that is nothing, nothing a hen loves its egg a hen April 3rd this evening in the slow deepening dusk I sat by my window and spent an hour in passionate conversation with the devil I fancied I sat with my hands folded and my feet crossed on an ugly but comfortable red velvet sofa in some nondescript room and the fascinating man-devil was seated near in a frail willow chair he had willingly come to pass the time of day with me he was in a good humored mood and I amused and interested him and for myself I was extremely glad to see the devil sitting there and felt vividly as always but I sat quietly enough the fascinating man-devil has fascinating steel-grey eyes and they looked at me with every variety of glance from quizzical to tender it were easy, oh how easy to follow those eyes to the earth's end the devil leaned back in the frail willow chair and looked at me and now that I am here, Mary MacLean, he said, what would you? I want you to marry me, I replied at once and I want it more than ever anything was wanted since the world began so I am flattered, said the devil and smiled gently and chantingly at that smile I was ravished and transported and a spasm of some rare emotion thrilled all the little nerves in me from my heels to my forehead and yet the smile was not for me but rather somewhat at my expense but, he went on, you must know it is not my custom to marry women I am sure it is not, I agreed and I do not ask to be peculiarly favoured anything that you may give me, however little, will constitute marriage for me and would marriage itself be so smaller thing? asked the devil marriage, I said, would be a great, oh, a wonderful thing and the most beautiful of all I want what is good according to my lights and because I am a genius, my lights are many and far reaching what do your lights tell you? the devil man inquired they tell me this that nothing in the world matters unless love is with it and if love is with it and it seems to the virtuous a barren and infamous thing still because of the love it partakes of the very highest and have you the courage of your convictions? he said if you offered me, I replied, that which to the blindly virtuous seems the worst possible thing it would yet be for me the red red line on the sky my heart's desire, my life, my rest you are the devil, I have fallen in love with you I believe you have, said the devil, and how does it feel to be in love sitting composately on the ugly red velvet sofa with my hands folded and my feet crossed I attempted to define that wonderful feeling it feels, I said, as if sparks of fire and ice crystals ran riot in my veins with my blood as if a thousand pinpoints pierced my flesh and every other point a point of pleasure and every other point a point of pain as if my heart were laid to rest in a bed of velvet and cotton wool but kept awake by sweet violin arias as if milk and honey and the sweet blossoms of the cherry flowed into my stomach and then vanished utterly as if strange beautiful worlds lay spread out before my eyes alternately in dazzling light and complete darkness with chaotic rapidity as if auras root were sprinkled in the folds of my brain as if sprigs of dripping wet sweet fern were stuck inside my hot linen collar as if, well, you know I ended suddenly very good, said the devil you are in love and you say you are in love with me oh, with you I exclaimed with suppressed violence the effort to suppress this violence cost me pounds of nerve power but I kept my hands still quietly folded and my feet crossed and it was a triumph of self-control I want you to marry me I added despairingly and you think, he inquired that apart from the opinion of the wise world it would be a suitable marriage a suitable marriage, I exclaimed I hate a suitable marriage no, it would not be suitable it would be bohemian, outlandish, adorable the devil smiled this time the smile was for me and oh, the long old overpowering enchantment of the smile of steel grey eyes the steel grey eyes of the devil it is one of those things that one remembers you are a beautifully frank little feminine creature, he said frankness is in these days a lost art yes, I am beautifully frank, I replied out of countless millions of the devils anointed I am one to acknowledge myself but with all you are not true, said the man devil I am a liar, I answered you are a liar, surely, he said but you stay with your lies to stay with anything is truth it is so, I replied nevertheless I am false as woman can be but you know what you want oh yes, I said I know what I want I want you to marry me and why? because I love you that seems an excellent reason certainly said the devil and I want to be happy for once in my life, I said I have never been happy and if I could be happy for once for one gold day I should be satisfied and I should have that to remember in the long years and you are a strangely pathetic little animal said the devil I am pathetic, I said I clasped my hands very tightly for I know that I am pathetic and for this reason I am the most terribly pathetic of all in the world poor little Mary MacLean said the devil he leaned toward me he looked at me with those strange wonderful tender divine steel grey eyes poor little Mary MacLean he said again in a voice that was like the grey dawn and the eyes, the glance of the steel grey eyes entered into me and thrilled me through and through it frightened and soothed me it racked and comforted me it ravished me with inconceivable gentleness so that I bent my head down and sobbed as I breathed don't you know, you little thing said the man devil softly compassionate your life will be very hard for you always harder when you are happy than when you go into nothingness I know, I know nevertheless I want to be happy I sobbed I felt a rush of an old thick heavy anguish it is day after day it is week after week it is month after month it is year after year it is only time going and going there is no joy there is no lightness of heart it is only the passing of days I am young and all alone always I have been alone when I was five I lay in the damp grass and tortured myself to keep back tears and through the long cold lonely years till now and now all the torture does not keep back the tears there is no one nothing to help me bear it it is more than pathetic when one is nineteen in all young new feeling and sees nothing anywhere except long dark lonely years behind her and before her no one that loves me and long long years I stopped the grey eyes were fixed on me oh they were the steel grey eyes and they had a look in them the long bitter pageant of my nothingness mingled with this look and the coming together of these was like the joining of two halves I do not know which brings me the deeper pain the loneliness and weariness of my sand and barrenness or the look in the steel grey eyes but as always I would gladly leave all and follow the eyes to the world's end they are like the sun's setting and they are like the pale beautiful stars and they are like the shadows of the earth and the sky that come together in the dark why? asked the devil are you in love with me? you know so much so much I answered I think it must be that the wisdom of the spheres is in your brain so then you must understand me because no one understands all these smoldering feelings my greatest agony is you must need know the very finest of them and your eyes oh it's no matter why I'm in love with you it's enough that I am and if you married me I would make you happier than you are I am not happy at all said the man devil I am merely contented contentment I said in place of happiness is a horrid feeling not one of your countless advocates loves you they all serve you faithfully and well but with it all they hate you always people hate their tyrant you are my tyrant but I love you absorbingly, madly happiness for me would be to live with you and see you made happy by the overwhelming flood of my love it interests me, he said you are a most interesting feminine philosopher and your philosophy is after my own heart in its lack of virtue it is to be hoped you are not intellectual which is an unpardonable trait indeed I am not, I replied intellectual people are detestable they have pale faces and bad stomachs and bad livers and if they are women their corsets are sure to be too tight and probably black and if they are men they are soft which is worse and they never by any chance know what it means to walk all day in the rain or to roll around on the ground in the dirt and above all they never fall in love with the devil they are tiresome the devil agreed if I were to marry you how long would you be happy for three days you are wise he said you are wonderfully wise in some things though you are still very young I am wise I answered being of womankind in nineteen years I am more than ready to give up absolutely anything that is good in the world's sight though they are contemptible things enough in my own for love all for love therefore I am wise also I am a fool because I am a genius your logic is good logic said the devil my logic oh I don't care anything about logic I said with sudden complete weariness I felt buried and wrapped round and round in weariness everything lost its color everything turned cold at this moment said the devil you feel as if you cared for nothing at all but if I chose I could bring about a transfiguration I could kiss your soul into paradise I answered yes without emotion an hour said the devil is not very long but we know it is long enough to suffer in and go mad in and live in and be happy in and the world contains a great many hours now I am leaving you it is likely I may never come again and it is likely that I may come again it all vanished I sat by my window in the gloom it is dreary I said but yes the world contains a great many hours April 4th I have asked for bread sometimes and I have been given a stone oh it is a bitter thing oh it is pitious pitious I find that I am not far apart from human beings I can still be crushed wounded stunned by the attitude of human beings today I looked for human kindness and I was given coldness I repel human beings I asked for bread and I was given a stone oh it is bitter bitter oh is there a thing in the wide world more bitter where are you I am crushed wounded stunned and oh I am alone end of part 15 part 16 of the story of Mary MacLean this is LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Kristen Hughes the story of Mary MacLean by Mary MacLean part 16 April 10th I have a sense of humor that partakes in the divine in life for there are things even in this chaotic irony that are divine my genius is not divine my patheticness is not divine my philosophy is not divine nor my originality nor my audacity of thought these are peculiarly of the earth but my sense of humor it is humor that is far too deep to admit of laughter it is humor that makes my heart melt with a high unequaled sense of pleasure and ripple down through my body like old yellow wine a rare tone in a person's voice a densely wrathful expression in a pair of slate-colored eyes a fine fine shade of comparison and contrast between a word in a conversation and an angle worm pattern in a calico dressing jacket these are things that make me conscious of divine emotion one day last summer an Italian peddler woman stopped at the back door and rested herself I stood in the doorway and the peddler woman and I talked she had a dirty white handkerchief tied over her head as all Italian peddler women do and she had a telescope for lease brown soap and combs and pencils and china buttons on blue cards and bean shooters and tax and dream books and mouth organs and green glass beads and juice harps there is something fascinating about a peddler woman's telescope for lease this peddler woman wore a black satine wrapper and an ancient cape she said that she would like to stop and rest a while and I told her she might I'd always wanted to talk to a peddler woman and my mother never would allow one in the house is it nice to be a peddler I asked her it ain't bad replied the peddler woman do you make a great deal of money I next inquired sometimes I do and sometimes I don't said the woman she spoke with an accent that while it sounded Italian still showed unmistakably that she had lived in butte well do you make just enough to live on or have you saved some money I asked I got four hundred dollars in the bank she replied I've been peddling eight years eight years of trampling around in all kinds of weather I said your philosophy must be parapetetic too haven't you ever had rheumatism in your knees I got rheumatism in every joint in my body said the woman I have to lay off sometimes have you a husband I wish to know I had a man oh yes said the peddler woman and where is he back home in Italy why doesn't he come out here and work for you I asked yes why don't he said the woman dad a man he's damn lucky when he can get enough to eat he is why don't you send him some money to pay his way out since you've saved so much I inquired holy god said the peddler woman I work hard for dad a money I save every cent I ain't going now to throw it away I ain't dad a man he's all right where he is he is what did you marry him for I asked the peddler woman looked at me with that look which seems to convey the information that curiosity once killed a cat for what I persisted for love I marry him when I was young girl and he was young too yes but what did you do it for was he awfully nice and did he say awfully sweet things to you he was damn sweet oh yes said the peddler woman she grinned and I was young and you liked it when you were young and he was sweet didn't you yes I guess so I was young she answered the fact that one is young seems to imply the Italian peddler mind a lacking in some essential points and don't you like your man now I asked dad a man he's all right in Italy he is replied the woman well I observed if I had a man who had been damn sweet once when I had been young but who was not sweet anymore I think I should leave him in Italy too you'll get a man someday soon said the peddler woman I was interested to know that they all do oh yes she said but you likely to be better off peddler and I tell you yes I think it would be amusing to be a peddler for a while I said but I should want the man too as long as he was damn sweet the peddler woman picked up the telescope for these yes she remarked a man he's sweet two days three days then holy god he never work he get a drunk he make a rough house he raise hell the peddler woman nodded at me and limped out of the yard the telescope valise was heavy when she walked every muscle in her body seemed to be pressed into service she had a heavy solid look she seemed as though she might weigh three hundred pounds though she was not large the afternoon sun shone down brightly on her dirty white handkerchief on her brown face on her brown brass ringed hands on her black satine wrapper on her ancient cape as I watched her out of sight I thought to myself two days three days then holy god he never work he get a drunk he make a rough house he raise hell I was conscious of an intense humor that was so far beyond laughter that it was too deep even for tears but I felt tears vaguely as I watched the peddler woman limping up the road it was not pathos it was humor humor my emotion was one of vivid pleasure pleasure at the sight of the woman and at the telescope valise and at her conversation supplemented by my own this emotion is divine and I cannot grasp it as I looked after the Italian peddler woman it came to me with sudden force that the earth but that it is touched here and there brilliantly with divine fingers long and often as I've sat in intense silent passion and gazed at the red red sunset sky I have never then felt the sense of the divine it comes only through humor it comes only with things like an Italian peddler woman in a black satine wrapper and an ancient cape my soul how heavily it goes life is a journey up a springtime hill and at the top we wonder why we are there have mercy on me I implore in a dull idea that the journey is so long so long and a human being is less than an atom the solid heavy figure of an Italian peddler woman with a telescope valise limping away in the afternoon sunshine is more convincing of the things that are then would be the sound of the wailing of legions of lost souls could it be heard for the world must be amused and the world's wind listeth as it bloweth April 11th I write a great many letters to the dear anemone lady I send some of them to her and others I keep to read myself I like to read letters that I have written particularly that I have written to her this is a letter that I wrote two days ago to my one friend to you and don't you know my dearest my friendship with you contains other things it contains infatuation and worship and bewitchment and idolatry and a tiny altar in my soul chamber whereupon is burning sweet incense in a little dish of blue and gold yes all of these my life is made up of many outpourings all the outpourings have one point of coming together you are the point of coming together there is no other you are the anemone lady you are the one whom I may love to think that the world contains one beautiful human being for me to love it is wonderful my life is longing for the sight of you my senses aching for lack of an anemone to diffuse itself among them a year ago when you were in the high school often I used to go over there when you would be going home so that my life could be made momentarily replete by the sight of you you didn't know I was there only a few times when I spoke to you and now it is that I remember you oh my dearest you are the only one in the world we are two women you do not love me but I love you you have been wonderfully beautifully kind to me you are the only one who has ever been kind to me there is something delirious in this something of the nameless quantity it is old grief and woe to live nineteen years and to remember no person ever to have been kind but what is it do you think at the end of nineteen years to come at last upon one who is wonderfully beautifully kind those persons who have had someone always to be kind to them can never remotely imagine how this feels sometimes in these spring days when I walk miles down into the country to the little wet gulch of the sweet flags I wonder why it is that this thing does not make me happy she is wonderfully beautifully kind I say to myself and she is the anemone lady she is wondrously kind and though she is gone nothing can ever change that but I am not happy oh my one friend what is the matter with me what is this feeling why am I not happy but how can you know you are beautiful I am a small vile creature always I wake to this fact when I think of the anemone lady I am not good but you are kind to me you are kind to me you are kind to me you have written me two letters the anemone lady came down from her high places and wrote me two letters it is said that God is somewhere it may be so but God has never come down from his high places to write me two letters dear do you see you are the only one in the world Mary MacLean April 12th oh the dreariness the nothingness day after day week after week it is dull and gray and weary it is dull, dull, dull no one loves me the least in the world my life is dreary he cometh not I am unhappy it rains the blue sky is weeping but it is not weeping because I am unhappy I hate the blue sky and the rain and the wet ground and everything this morning I walked far away over the sand and these things made me think they loved me and that I loved them but they fooled me everything fools me I am a fool no one loves me there are people here but no one loves me no one cares it is I and the barrenness it is I young and all alone pitiful heaven but no heaven is not pitiful heaven also has fooled me more than once there is something for everyone that I have ever known some tender thing but what is there for me what have I to remember out of the long years the blue sky is weeping but not for me the rain is persistent and heavy as damnation it falls on my mind and it maddens my mind it falls on my soul and it hurts my soul everything hurts my soul it falls on my heart and it warps the wood in my heart of womankind in nineteen years a philosopher of the peripatetic school a thief a genius a liar and a fool and unhappy and filled with anguish and hopeless despair what is my life oh what is there for me there has always been nothing there will always be nothing there was a miserable damnable wretched lonely childhood itself has passed but the pain of it has not passed the pain of it is with me and is added to the pain of now it is pain that never lets myself be forgotten the pain of the childhood was the pain of nothing the pain of now is the pain of nothing oh the pathetic belesque tragedy of nothing it is belesque but it is none the less tragedy it is tragedy that eats its way inward it is only I in the sand and barrenness I have never a tender thing in my life this has never a grass blade I want a human being to love me I have need of it I am starving to death for lack of it bitterest salt tears surge upward sobs are shaking themselves out from the depths oh the salt is bitter I might lay me down and weep all day and all night and the salt would grow more and more bitter nothingness is more bitter still it is a belesque tragedy that is the most tragic of all it is an inward dying that never ends it is the bitterness of death added to the bitterness of life what hell is there like that of one weak little human being placed on the earth and left alone there are people who live and enjoy but my soul and I we find life too bitter and too heavy to carry alone too bitter and too heavy oh that I and my soul might perish at this moment forever April 13th I am sitting writing out on my sand and barrenness the sky is pale and faded now in the west but a few minutes ago there was the same old time always new miracle of roses and glints and gleams of silver and green and a river in vermilions and purples and lastly the deer the beautiful the red red line there also are heavy black shadows I have given my heart into the keeping of this and still as always I look at it and feel it all with thrilling passion and await the devil's coming Longvois October 28th 1901 and so there you have my portrayal it is the record of three months of nothingness those three months are very like the three months that preceded them to be sure and the three months that followed them and like all the months that have come and gone with me since time was there is never anything different nothing ever happens now I will send my portrayal into the wise wide world it may stop short at the publisher or it may fall stillborn from the press or it may go farther indeed and be its own undoing that's as maybe I will send it what else is there for me if not this book and oh that someone may understand it I am not good I am not virtuous I am not sympathetic I am not generous I am merely and above all a creature of intense passionate feeling I feel everything it is my genius it burns me like fire my portrayal in its analysis and egotism and bitterness will surely be of interest to some whether to that one alone who may understand it or to some who have themselves left alone or to those three whom I on three dreary days asked for bread and who each gave me a stone and whom I do not forgive for that is the bitterest thing of all it may be to all of these but none of them nor anyone can know the feeling made of relief and pain and despair that comes over me at the thought of sending all this to the wise it is bits of my wooden heart broken off and given away it is strings of amber beads taken from the fair neck of my soul it is shining little gold coins from out of my mind's red leather purse it is my little old life tragedy it means everything to me do you see it means everything to me it will amuse you how's your interest it will stir your curiosity some sorts of persons will find it ridiculous it will puzzle you but am I to suppose that it will also awaken compassion in cool indifferent hearts and will the sand and barrenness look so unspeakably gray and dreary to coldly criticalize as to mine and shall my bitter little story fall easily and comfortably upon undisturbed ears and linger for an hour and be forgotten will the wise wide world itself give me in my outstretched hand a stone end of part 16 an end of the story of Mary MacLean by Mary MacLean