“‘Give me three grains of corn, mother,Give me three grains of corn,’Twill keep the little life I haveTill the coming of the morn.I am dying of hunger and cold, mother,Dying of hunger and cold,And half the agony of such a deathMy lips have never told.“‘It has gnawed like a wolf at my heart, mother,A wolf that is fierce for blood,All the livelong day and the night,beside—Gnawing for lack of food.I dreamed of bread in my sleep, mother,And the sight was heaven tosee—I awoke with an eager, famishing lip,But you had no bread for me.“‘How could I look to you, mother,How could I look to youFor bread to give to your starving boy,When you were starving, too?For I read the famine in your cheekAnd in your eye so wild,And I felt it in your bony hand,As you laid it on your child.“‘The queen has lands and gold, mother,The queen has lands and gold,While you are forced to your empty breastA skeleton babe tohold—A babe that is dying of want, mother,As I am dying now,With a ghastly look in its sunken eyeAnd the famine upon its brow.“‘What has poor Ireland done, mother,What has poor Ireland done,That the world looks on and sees us die,Perishing one by one?Do the men of England care not, mother,The great men and the high,For the suffering sons of Erin’sisle,—Whether they live or die?“‘There’s many a brave heart here, mother,Dying of want and cold,While only across the channel, mother,Are many that roll in gold.There are great and proud men there, mother,With wondrous wealth to view,And the bread they fling to their dogs to-nightWould bring life to me and you.“‘Come nearer to my side, mother,Come nearer to my side,And hold me fondly, as you heldMy father when he died.Quick, for I can not see you, mother,My breath is almost gone.Mother, dear mother, ere I die,Give me three grains of corn!’“What do you think,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “is it not full of power and poetry and pathos?”“Yes, it could not in itself be better,” I replied. “And it has the simplicity.”“And pretends nothing,” said Annabel Lee.“And who wrote it?” I asked.“Oh, some forgotten Englishwoman,” said Annabel Lee. “I believe her name was Edwards. She perhaps wrote a poem, now and then, and died.”“And are the poems forgotten, also?” I inquired.“Yes, forgotten, except by a few. But when they remember them, they remember them long.”“Then which is better, to be remembered, and remembered shortly, by the multitudes; or to be forgot by the multitudes and remembered long by the one or two?”“It is incomparably better to be remembered long by the one or two,” said Annabel Lee. “To be forgotten by any one or anything that once remembered you is sorely bitter to the heart.”IXRELATIVE“DO YOU think, Annabel Lee,” I said to her on a day that I felt depressed, “that all things must really be relative, and that those which are not now properly relative will eventually become so, though it gives them acute anguish?”The face of Annabel Lee was placid, and also the sea. The one glanced down upon me from the shelf, and the other spread away into the distance.Were that face and that sea relative? Surely they could not be, since those two things in their very nature might go ungoverned. Do not universal laws, in extreme moments, give way?“Relative!” said Annabel Lee. “Nothingis relative. I tell you nothing is relative. I am come out of Japan. In Japan, when I was very new to everything, there was an ugly frog-eyed woman who washed me and anointed me and dressed me in silk, the while she pinched my little white arms cruelly, so that my little red mouth writhed with the pain. Also the frog-eyed woman looked into my suffering young eyes with her ugly frog-eyes so that my tiny young soul was prodded as with brad-nails. The frog-eyed woman did these things to hurt me—she hated me for being one of the very lovely creatures in Japan. She was a vile, ugly wretch.“That was not relative. I tell you that was not relative,” said Annabel Lee.“If I had been an awkward, overgrown, bloodless animal and that frog-eyed woman had pinched my little white arms—stillshewould have been a vile, ugly wretch.“If I had been a vicious spirit and that frog-eyed woman had looked into my vicious eyes with her ugly frog-eyes—stillshewould have been a vile, ugly wretch.“If I had been a hateful little thing, instead of a gently-bred, gently-living, pitiful-to-the-poor maiden, and that frog-eyed woman had hated me with all her frog-heart—stillshewould have been a vile, ugly wretch.“If that frog-eyed woman had stood alone in Japan with no human being to compare her to—still the frog-eyed woman would have been a vile, ugly wretch.“She has left her horrid frog-mark on my fair soul. Not anything beneath the worshiped sun can ever blot out the horrid frog-mark from my fair soul. A thousandcurses on the ugly, frog-eyed woman,” said Annabel Lee, tranquilly.“Then that, for one thing, is not relative,” I said. “But perhaps that is because of the power and the depth of your eyes and your fair soul. Where there are no eyes and no fair souls—at least where the eyes and the fair souls can not be considered as themselves, but only as things without feeling for life—then are not things relative?”“Nothing is relative,” said Annabel Lee. “If your dog’s splendid fur coat is full of fleas and you caress your dog with your hands, then presently you may acquire numbers of the fleas. You love the dog, but you do not love the fleas. You forgive the fleas for the love of the dog, though you hate them no less. So then that is not relative. If that were relative you would love the fleas a little for the same reason that you forgive them: forlove of your dog. Forgiveness is a negative quality and can have no bearing on your attitude toward the fleas.”Having said this, Annabel Lee gazed placidly over my head at the sea.When her mood is thus tranquil, she talks graciously and evenly and positively, and is beautiful to look at.My mind was now in much confusion upon the subject in question. But I felt that I must know all that Annabel Lee thought about it.“What would you say, Annabel Lee,” said I, “to a case like this: If a soul were at variance with everything that touches it, everything that makes life, so that it must struggle through the long nights and long days with bitterness, is not that because the soul has no sense of proportion, and has not made itself properly relative to each and everything that is?—relative, so that when one hard thingtouches it, simultaneously one soft thing will touch it; or when it mourns for dead days, simultaneously it rejoices for live ones; or when its best-loved gives it a deep wound, simultaneously its best enemy gives it vivid pleasure.”“Nothing is relative,” again said Annabel Lee. “Nothing can be relative. Nothing need be relative. If a soul is wearing itself to small shreds by struggling days and nights, that is a matter relating peculiarly to the soul, and to nothing else,nothingelse. If a soul is wearing itself to small shreds by struggling, the more fool it. It is struggling because of things that would never,neverstruggle because of it. In truth, not one of them would move itself one millionth of an inch because of so paltry a thing as a soul.”I looked at Annabel Lee, her hair, her hands and her eyes. As I looked, I was reminded of the word “eternity.”A human being is a quite wonderful thing, truly—and great—there’s none greater.Annabel Lee is a person who always says truth, for, for her, there is nothing else to say.She has reached that marvelous point where a human being expects nothing.“If the days of a life, Annabel Lee,” I said, “are made bright because of two other lives that are dear to it, and if the life happens upon a day when the thought of the two whom it loves makes its own heart like lead, then what can there be to smooth away its weariness, in heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth?”“Foolish life,” said my friend Annabel Lee. “There is no pain in Japan like what comes of loving some one or some thing. And if the some one or the some thing is the only thing the life can call itsown, then woe to it. The things it needs are three: a Lodging Place in heaven above; a Bit of Hardness in the earth beneath; a Last Resort in the waters under the earth. These three—but no life has ever had them.”“In the end,” I said, “when all wide roadways come together, and all heavy hearts are alert to know what will happen, then will there not indeed be one grand adjustment, and life and all become at once magnificently relative?”“Never; it can’t be so. Nothing is relative,” said Annabel Lee, on a day that I felt depressed.XMINNIE MADDERN FISKETO-DAY my friend Annabel Lee and I went to the theater and we saw a wonderful and fascinating woman with long dark-red hair upon the stage.She is attractive, that red-haired woman—adorably attractive. And she reminds one of many things.Annabel Lee was greatly interested in her acting, and was charmed with herself—and so was I.“Do you suppose she finds life very delightful?” I said to my friend.“I don’t suppose,” my friend replied, “she is of the sort that considers whether or not life is delightful. Probably her work is hard enough to keep her out of mischief of any kind.”Whereupon we both fell to thinking how fortunate are they whose work is hard enough to keep them out of mischief of any kind.“But there must be,” I said, “some months, perhaps in the summer, when she doesn’t work. I have heard that some actors take houses among the mountains and do their own housework for recreation.”“I,” said Annabel Lee, “can not quite imagine this woman with the red hair making bread and scouring pans and kettles for pleasure. But very likely she sometimes goes into the country for vacations, and I can fancy her doing the various small enjoyable things that celebrities can afford to do—like wading barefooted in a narrow brooklet, or swinging high and recklessly in a barrel-stave hammock.”“And since she is so adorable on thestage,” I exclaimed, “how altogether enchanting she would be wading in the brooklet or swinging in the barrel-stave hammock—she with the long, red hair! Perhaps it would even be braided down her back in two long tails.”It is a picture that haunts me—Mrs. Fiske in the midst of her vacation doing the small enjoyable things.“Of course,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “we don’tknowthat she doesn’t spend her vacations in a fine, conventional, stupid yacht, or at some magnificent, insipid American or English country house. We can only give her the benefit of the doubt.”“Yes, the benefit of the doubt,” I replied.How fascinating she was, to be sure, with her personality merged in that of Mary Magdalene!The Magdalene is no longer a shadowyideal with a somewhat buxom body, scantily draped, with indefinite hair and with the lifeless beauty that the old masters paint. Nor is she quite the woman of the scriptures who is presented to one’s mind without that quality which is called local coloring, and with too much of the quality that is ever present with the women in the scriptures—a something between uncleanness and final complete redemption.No, Mary Magdalene is Mrs. Fiske, a slight woman still in the last throes of youth, with two shoulders which move impatiently, expressing indescribable emotions of aliveness and two lips which perform their office—that of coloring, bewitching, torturing, perfuming, anointing the words that come out of them. Apart from these lips, Mary Magdalene’s face has a wonderfully round and childish look, and her two round eyes at first sightgive one an idea of positive innocence. In the Magdalene’s face—and in that of an actor of Mrs. Fiske’s range—these are a beautifully delicate incongruity.And my friend Annabel Lee has told me that the strongest things are the delicate incongruities—the strongest in all this wide world. Because they make you consider—and considering, you wait.With such a pair of round, innocent eyes of some grayish color—who can blame Mary Magdalene?In the latter acts of the play these eyes go one step farther than innocence: they do hunger and thirst after righteousness. And, ah, dear heaven (you thought to yourself), how well they did it! To hunger and thirst after righteousness—not herself, but her eyes. That was this Mary Magdalene’s art.This Mary Magdalene, though she is indeed in the last throes of youth—withoutreference to the years she may know—has yet beneath her chin a very charming roundness of flesh which one day obviously will become a double chin. Just now it is enchanting. There are feminine children of seven and eight with round faces, who have just that fullness beneath the chin, and beneath the chin of Mary Magdalene—and added to her eyes—it carries on the idea of innocence and inexperience to a rare good degree. Any other woman actor would have long since massaged this fullness away. Forsooth, perhaps this is the one woman actor who could wear such a thing with beauty.Mary Magdalene’s hair in its deep redness is scornful and aggressive in the first acts of the play. In the latter acts it assumes a marvelous patheticness. And, if you like, there is a world of patheticness in red hair.If Mary Magdalene’s hair were of a different color—if the bronze shadows were yellow, or gray, or black, or brown shadows—her lips and her shoulders were in vain.On the stage Mary Magdalene stands with her back to her audience—she stands, calm and placid, for three or four minutes before the rising and falling curtain, graciously permitting all to admire and feast their eyes upon the red of her hair.“She knows,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “that she can make her face bewitching—and she knows also that her hair is bewitching without being so made. And she chooses that the world at large shall know it, too.”She has will-power, has Mary Magdalene. It is her will, her strength, her concentration of all her power to herself that makes her thus bewitching—andthat seduces the brains of those who sit watching her as she moves upon the stage.She controls all her mental and physical features with metallic precision—except her hair, and that she leaves uncontrolled to do its own work. It does its work well.She has cultivated that mobileness of her lips, probably with hard work and infinite patience—and she makes them damp and brilliant with rouge. She rubs the soft, thick skin of her face with layers of grease. She loads her two white arms with limitless powder. And the two childish eyes are exceeding heavy-laden as to lid and lash with black crayon. One experiences a revulsion as one contemplates them through a glass. Her voice in the days of her youth had drilled into it the power to thrill and vibrate, and to become exquisitely tender upon occasion,and now it does the bidding of its owner with docility and skill. Since its owner has forcefulness and a power of selfish concentration, the voice is mostly magnetic and cold and strong. It is magnetic and cold and strong and contemptuous when its owner says, “My curse upon you!” When its owner’s eyes do hunger and thirst after righteousness the voice brings a miserable, anguished feeling to the throats of those who sit listening. Every emotion that the voice betrays is transmitted to the seduced brains of those who sit listening. The red-haired woman works her audience up to some torturing pitches—the while herself blandly and cold-bloodedly earning an honest livelihood by the sweat of her brow.Forsooth, it’s always so.If all the red-haired woman’s scorn and anguish were real, the audience would sit unmoved. If the red-haired woman’sscorn and anguish were real it would strike inward—instead of outward toward the audience—and the audience would not know. If the red-haired woman’s scorn and anguish were real, it would not seem real and would be very uninteresting. And that very likely is the reason why the scorn and anguish of other red-haired women—and of black-haired, and brown-haired, and yellow-haired, and gray-haired, and pale-haired women, who are not working on the stage—is so uninteresting and ineffectual. It is real, and they can not act it out, and so it doesn’t seem real—and you don’t have to pay money to see it done.To make it seem real they must need go at it cold-bloodedly, and work it up, and charge you a round price for it.Mary Magdalene isn’t here to do this, but Mrs. Fiske takes her place and does it for her.She does it exquisitely well.Could Mary Magdalene herself—she of the Bible—be among those who sit watching, she would surely marvel and admire.Meanwhile, for myself, I have two visions of this Mary Magdalene.One—in one of the acts wherein her eyes do hunger and thirst after righteousness—when she sits before a small table and lifts her pathetic, sweet voice with the words, “When the dawn breaks, and the darkness shall flee away”; and then she stands and the red hair is equally pathetic and twofold bewitching, and she says again, “When the dawn breaks, and the darkness shall flee away.” And the other vision is of her in the country in the midst of a summer day, under a summer sky, swinging high and recklessly in a barrel-stave hammock.XILIKE A STONE WALLMY FRIEND Annabel Lee has told me there are bitterer things in store for me than I have known yet.Times I have wondered what they can be.“When you have come to them,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “they will be so bitter and will fit so well into your life that you will wonder that you did not always know about them, and you will wonder why you did not always have them.”“The bitterest things I have known yet,” I said, “have had to do with the varying friendship of one or another whom I have loved.”“Varying friendship?” said Annabel Lee. “But friendship does not vary.”“No, that is true,” I rejoined. “I mean the varying deception I have had from some whom I have loved.”“In time,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “you will love more, and your deceiving will be all at once, and bitterer. It will be a rich experience.”“Why rich?” I inquired.“Because from it,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “you will learn to not see too much, to not start out with faith, in fact, to take the goods that the gods provide and endeavor to be thankful for them. Your other experiences have been poverty-stricken in that respect. They leave you with rays of hope, without which you would be better off. They are poor and bitter. What is to come will be rich and bitterer. Their bitterness will prevent you from appreciating the richness ofthem—until perhaps years have come and taken them from immediately before your eyes. As soon as they are where you can not see them, you can consider them and appreciate their richness.”“Whatever they may be,” I made answer, “I do not think I shall ever be able to appreciate their richness.”“Then you will be very ungrateful,” said my friend Annabel Lee.I looked hard at her—and she looked back at me. There are times when my friend Annabel Lee is much like a stone wall.“Yes,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “if you ever feel to express proper gratitude for the good things of this life, be sure that you express your gratitude for the right thing. Very likely you will not have a great deal of gratitude, and you must not waste any of it—but what you do have will be of the most excellentquality. For it will accumulate, and the accumulation will all go to quality. And the things for which you are to be grateful are the bitternesses you have known. If you have had it in mind ever to give way to bursts of gratitude for this air that comes from off the salt sea, for that line of pearls and violets that you see just above the horizon, for the health of your body, for the sleep that comes to you at the close of the day, for any of those things, then get rid of the idea at once. Those things are quite well, but they are not really given to you. They are merely placed where any one can reach them with little effort. The kind fates don’t care whether you get them or not. Their responsibility ends when they leave them there. But the bitternesses they give to each person separately. They give you yours, Mary MacLane, for your very own. Don’t saytheynever think of you.”“I’ve no intention of saying it,” said I.“You will find,” said my friend Annabel Lee—without noticing my interruption, and with curious expressions in her voice and upon her two red lips—“you will find that these bitternesses come from time to time in your life, like so many milestones. They are useful as such—for of course you like to take measurements along the road, now and again, to see what progress you have made. Along some parts of the road you will find your progress wonderful. If you are appreciative and grateful, at the last milestone you have come to thus far you will express your measure of gratitude to the kind fates. That is, no—” said my friend Annabel Lee, “you will not do thisatthe milestone, but after you have passed it and have turned a corner, and so can not see it even when you look back.”“But why shall I express gratitudethere?” I inquired in a tone that must have been rather lifeless.“Why?” repeated my friend Annabel Lee. “Because you will have grown in strength on account of these milestones; because you will have learned to take all things tranquilly. Why, after the very last milestone I daresay you would be able to sit with folded hands if a house were burning up about your ears!”“Which must indeed be a triumph,” said I.“A triumph?—a victory!” said my friend Annabel Lee—with still more curious expressions. “And the victories are not what this world sees”—which reminded me of things I used to hear in Sunday-school ever so many years ago. “You remember the story of the Ten Virgins? Taking the story literally,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “the lot of the five Foolish Virgins is much the more fortunate.There was a rare measure of bitterness for them when they found themselves without oil for their lamps at a time when oil was needed. They gained infinitely more than they lost. As for the five Wise Virgins—well,Iwouldn’t have been one of them underanycircumstances,” said my friend Annabel Lee. “Fancy the miserable, mean, mindless, imaginationless, selfish natures that could remain unmoved by the simplicity of the appeal, ‘Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out.’ It must now,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “be a hundred times bitterer for them to think of being handed down in endless history as demons of selfishness—and they are now where they can not, presumably, measure their bitterness by milestones of progress.”“So then, yes,” said my friend Annabel Lee—“whatever else you may do as yougo through life, remember to save up your gratitude for the bitternesses you have known—and remember that foryouthe bitterest is yet to come.”“Haveyou, Annabel Lee,” I asked, “already known the bitterest that can come—and canyousit with your hands folded in the midst of a burning house?”“Not I!” said my friend Annabel Lee, and laughed gayly.Again I looked hard at her—and she looked back at me.Certainly there are times when my friend Annabel Lee is like a stone wall.XIITO FALL IN LOVE“ILOVED madly,” said my friend Annabel Lee. “There came one down out of the north country that was dark and strong and brave and full of life’s fire. All my short life had been bathed in summer. I had dreamed my thirteen years beneath cherry-blossoms upon a high hill.“But at the coming of this man from the north country I opened my two sloe-eyes, and the world turned white—exquisite, rapturous, divine white.“And afterward all was heavy gray.“Away from the high hill of the cherry-blossoms there lay a stretch of red barren waste with towering rocks—and beyond that a quiet, quiet sea that was only blue.“At the left of the high hill of the cherry-blossoms there was a mountain covered with green ivy—dark green ivy that defined its own green shape against the brilliant yellow sky behind it. Green and yellow, green and yellow, green and yellow, said the sky and the mountain covered with ivy.“The high hill of the cherry-blossoms was colored with all the colors of Japan.“I lived there with people—my mother and my father and some others—all with pale faces and sloe-eyes.“But some of them were very ugly.“Then came one down out of the north country that was dark and strong and brave and full of life’s fire.“He was ugly, but his face was perfect.“Straightway I fell in love with this one. Of all things in Japan, what a thing it is to fall in love!“Where the red barren waste lay spreadbelow me I saw manifold softnesses, like a dove’s breast, like a fawn’s eyes, like melted lilies, and the towering, gloomy rocks were the home of violet dreams.“In the deep green of the ivy mountain my soul found rest at nightfall among mystery and shadow. It wandered there in marvelous peace. And the coolness and damp and the low muttering of the wind and the night birds went into it with a stirring, powerful influence. Also the voices out of the very long ago came from among the green, dark ivy, and from the crevices of gray stones beneath it, and they told me true things in the stillness.“From the deepness of the brilliant yellow sky—the yellow of burnished brass—there came legion earth-old contradictions. And wondrous paradox and parallel that had not been among the cherry-blossoms appeared to me as mymind contemplated these. I said, Am I thus in love because that I am weak, or that I am strong? For I see here that it is both weakness and strength. And I said, Am I myself when I do this thing? or was that I who lived among the cherry-blossoms? I said, Who am I? What am I?“Below all there was the blue, broad sea. This sea gave out a white mist that rose and spread over the earth. I knew that I was in love, once and for all.“The world was white. The world was beautiful. The world was divine.“Life shone out of the mist unspeakable in its countless possibilities. Voices spoke near me and infinite voices called to me from afar—they sounded clear and faint and maddening-soft and tender, and the soul of me answered them with deafening, joyous silent music.“He from the north country that was dark and strong and brave and full oflife’s fire came, some days, to the high hill of the cherry-blossoms. He spoke often and of many things. He spoke to people—to my mother and to my father, and to others. And rarely he spoke to me. Rarely he looked at me. He had been in the great world. He knew wonderful women and wonderful men. He had been touched with all things.“What a human being was he!“And of all things in Japan, what a thing it is to fall in love!“When three days had gone my heart knew rapture beyond any that it had dreamed. It knew the mysteries and the fullnesses.“After three days the world turned to that divine white, and was white for seven days.“And afterward all was heavy gray.“The one from the north country returned back to the north country.“Of all things in Japan, what a thing it is to fall in love!“I was not in love with this one because he was a man, or because he was strange and fascinating—but because he was a glorious human being.“My heart was not turned to this one to marry him. Marrying and giving in marriage are for such as are in love unconsciously.“To see this one from the north country—to hear his voice—that was life and all for me—life and all.“But he was gone.“He left a silence and a weariness.“These came and crowded out the white from my heart, and themselves found lodgment there.“And all was heavy gray.“The picture of life and the mystery and shadow that was revealed to me when the world was white has nevergone. It has filled me in the days of my youth with an old terror.“Of all things in Japan, what a thing it is to fall in love!“To fall in love!”—said my friendAnnabelLee, the while her two eyes and her two white hands, in their expression, their position, told of a thing that is heart-breaking to see.XIIIWHEN I WENT TO THE BUTTE HIGH SCHOOL“THERE was a time,” I said to my friend Annabel Lee, “when I went to the Butte High School. I think of it now with mingled feelings.”“You were younger then,” said my friend Annabel Lee.“I was younger, and in those days I still looked upon life as something which would one day open wide and display wondrous and beautiful things for me. And meanwhile I went every day to the Butte High School. I found it a very interesting place—much more interesting than I have since found the broad world. I was sixteen and seventeen and eighteen, and things were not brilliantly colored,and so I made much with a vivid fancy of all that came in my path.”“And what do you, now that you are one-and-twenty?” said my friend Annabel Lee.“I sit quietly,” I replied, “and wish not, and wait not—and look back upon the days in the Butte High School with mingled feelings.”“Also unawares,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “you still think things relating to that which is one day to open wondrously for you. But, never mind,” she added hastily, as I was about to say something, “tell me about the Butte High School.”“’Twas a place,” said I, “where were gathered together manifold interesting phenomena, and where I studied Vergil, and grew fond of it, and was good in it; and where I studied geometry, and was fond of it, and knew less about it each day that I studied it;—and always Istudied closely the persons whom I met daily in the Butte High School. I recall very clearly each member of the class of ninety-nine. My memory conjures up for me some quaint and fantastic visions against picturesque backgrounds that appeal to my sense of delicate incongruity, especially so since viewed in this light and from this distance.”“What are some of them?” said my friend Annabel Lee.“There is one,” said I, “of a girl whom always in my mind I called The Shad, for that she was so bland, and so flat, and so silent,—and she had a bad habit of asking me to write her Latin exercises, which perhaps was not so much like a shad as like a person; and there is one of a girl who spent the long hours of the day in writing long, long letters to her love, but knew painfully little about the lessons in the class-rooms; and there is one of a girlwho brought to school every day a small flask of whiskey to cheer her benighted hours,—she was daily called back and down by the French teacher on account of her excessively bad French, and life had looked dull for her were it not for the flask’s pungent contents; there is one of a strange-looking, tawny-headed girl who sat across the narrow aisle from me in the assembly-room during my last year in school, who kept her desk neatly piled with the works (she called them works) of Albert Ross—and after she had read them, very kindly she would lean over and repeat the stories, with quotations verbatim, for my benefit;—her standing in her classes was not brilliant, but in Albert Ross she was thorough; there is one of a clever, pretty girl who was malicious—exquisitely malicious in all her ways and deeds, and seemingly no thought entered her head that was notfraught with it,—she was malicious in algebra, malicious in literature, malicious in ancient history, malicious in physical culture, malicious in the writing of short themes—and when it so chanced that I made a failure in a recitation, or was stupid, she would look up at me and smile very sweetly and maliciously; and there is one of a girl whose quaint and voluble profanity haunts me still. And especially there is in my memory a picture of all these on our graduating day, receiving each a fine white diploma rolled up and neatly tied with the class colors—a picture of these and the others,—we were fifty-nine in all. And the diplomas stated tacitly, in heavily engrossed letters, that we had all been good for four years and had fulfilled every requirement of the Butte High School. So we had, doubtless—but how much some of us had done for which in our diplomas we were notgiven credit! In truth, nothing was stated in them, in engrossed lettering, about courses in love-letters, or profanity, or malice, and Albert Ross was not in the curriculum.“And the president of the school board doled out those diplomas, with a short, set speech for each, one wet June day—but he was not aware how insignificant they were.“And my mind likewise conjures up a vision of two with whom I used to take what we called tramps, during our last year in the High School—far down and out of Butte, on Saturdays and other days when school was not. I remember those two and those tramps exceeding well—nor can I think with but four years gone that the two themselves have forgotten. One of these was an individual whose like I have not since known. She reminded me sometimes of Cleopatra andsometimes of Peg of Limmavaddy. She was of Irish ancestry and had a long black mane of hair braided down behind, and two conscious and lurid eyes of the kind that is known as Irish blue. She had brains enough within her head, but did not study overmuch. Her ways of going through life were often very dubious. She weighed a great many pounds. Her experience of the world was large, and to me she was fascinating. For herself, she was always rather afraid of me—so much afraid, in truth, that if I said a funny thing she must need laugh—with a forced and fictitious merriment; if I told her she had no soul, she must need agree with me abjectly, though she was a good Catholic; if I frowned upon her, she shivered and was silent. Fanciful names and frocks (though this lady’s frocks were always fanciful in ways) were selected for these tramping expeditions. This one’sfanciful name was called Muddled Maud. For no particular reason, I believe—but she wore it well. The other member of our trio was of a less extraordinary type. She was stout as to figure, and she knew a great deal about some things. She was very good in history, and at home she could make pie and cake and bread. It is true that her cake sometimes stuck, and sometimes sank in the middle, and when she carved a fowl she could not always hit the joints. And she was one of the kind that always pronounces picture, “pitcher.” She was also known as a very sensible girl. I can see her now with a purple ribbon around her neck and a brown rain-coat on coming into the High School on a wet morning. When we went tramping she usually wore an immense gray-white, mother-hubbard gown, belted in at the waist, and a wide flat hat, which made her look rather likea toad-stool. Her fanciful name was Emancipated Eva. Emancipated, in truth, she was. In the High School she was dignified and sedate, but on our tramps she would frequently skip like a young lamb, and frisk and gambol down there in the country.“She who was called Muddled Maud likewise frisked and gamboled—and always she personified my idea of the French nounabandon.“Also I frisked and gamboled in those days far down in the country.“The fanciful name selected for me was Refreshment Rosanna—and I can not tell why. But it was thought a good name for a lady tramp. We started on these tramps at six in the morning. We would rise from our beds at five, and at ten minutes before six I would meet Muddled Maud at the corner of Washington and Quartz streets, below her house. Togetherwe would go down east Park street to the home of Emancipated Eva. Then we walked seven miles or eight away into the open and the wild.“We took things along to eat—sometimes a great many things and sometimes a few. Times Muddled Maud would have but a curious-looking jelly-roll, and Emancipated Eva would come laden with hard bits of beef, and I could show but a plate of fudge. But other times there were tarts and meat-pies and turnovers, and deviled ham and deviled chicken and deviled veal and deviled tongue and deviled fish of divers kinds, and some bottles of nut-brown October ale, and sardinesa l’huile, and green, green olives. Only the more there was, the harder to carry. But, times, Muddled Maud would carry much with little effort—she would adorn herself with the luncheon—a long bit of sausage-link about her neck like achain, and upon her hat, held securely with bonnet-pins, fat yellow lemons, and two bananas crossed in front like the tiny guns on a soldier’s hat, and bunches of Catawba grapes scattered here and there, and pears hanging by their little stems behind.“The too early morning prevented all from being seen by the inhabitants of Butte, and we did not venture home again until came the friendly darkness.“Those were fascinating expeditions—and whose was the glory? Mine was the glory. ’Twas I who invented them. ’Twas I who knew there was none so fitted for a so delicate absurdity as she we called Muddled Maud; and after her, none so fitted as the fair, the good-natured, the Emancipated; and together with them both, I. And I led them forth, and I led them back, and I said things should be thus and so, and straightwaythey were thus and so. And we enjoyed it, and clear air was in our lungs and life was in our veins, for we had each but eighteen years and were full of youth. But most of all ’twas fascinating because we were three of three widely differing manners of living and methods of reasoning. For I was not like Emancipated Eva, nor yet like Muddled Maud; and Emancipated Eva was not like me, nor yet like Muddled Maud; and Muddled Maud was not like Emancipated Eva, nor yet like me.“To be sure, there were some things in my ordering which neither the one nor the other found enchanting. Why should the MacLane do all the ordering? they murmured between themselves, but they dared not openly revolt, so all went well.“But now these are gone.“The three of us were graduated from the Butte High School with the fifty-nineothers of ninety-nine, and had each a fine white diploma, and went our ways.“She who was like Cleopatra and Peg of Limmavaddy is teaching a school, according to the last that I heard, in the north of Montana; and she that was Emancipated Eva has long since gone to California, and is married, and keeps a house; and for me—I am here, far off from Butte, with you, Annabel Lee, some things having been done meanwhile.“But though the two are gone, I warrant they have not forgotten. They have not forgotten the Butte High School, nor the class of ninety-nine, nor the tramps we went, nor their tyrant, me.“And I daresay they all remember their Butte High School—she of the love-letters, she of the whiskey-flask, she the student of Albert Ross, she of the profanity, she of the malice, The Shad,—and all the nine-and-fifty, the young femininepersons and the young masculine persons. Some are married, and some are flown, and some of them are grown up and different, ‘and some of them in the churchyard lie, and some are gone to sea.’“But whenever I’ve a fancy to shut my eyes and look back, I can see them all, a quaint company.“Also, whenever I’ve a fancy to shut my eyes and look back to life when it was unspeakably brilliant in possibilities to look forward to, and was marked in parti-colored checks and rings, it fetches me to the days when I went to the Butte High School and studied geometry and Vergil. Only I’m glad I’m not there now.”“What for?” said my friend Annabel Lee.“It is rather pitiful and dreadful to think of having been seventeen, and to have gone every day to the Butte HighSchool and imagined how wonderful-beautiful life would be some day,” said I, and all at once felt very weary.XIV“AND MARY MACLANE AND ME”THERE are times in a number of days when my friend Annabel Lee and I enjoy a cigarette together. My friend Annabel Lee, with her cigarette, her petite much-colored form wrapped round in clouds of thin, exquisite gray, is more than all suggestive and inscrutable. She leans her two elbows on something and looks out at me.I with my cigarette am nothing but I with my cigarette. I enjoy it, but am not beautiful with it, nor fascinating.But my friend Annabel Lee is all that my imagination can take in. Under the influence of the thin, exquisite gray she grows fanciful, and subtly and indefinitelyshe meets me somewhere, and extends me her hand for a moment.“Don’t you know,” said my friend Annabel Lee, with her cigarette, “that old song that goes:
“‘Give me three grains of corn, mother,Give me three grains of corn,’Twill keep the little life I haveTill the coming of the morn.I am dying of hunger and cold, mother,Dying of hunger and cold,And half the agony of such a deathMy lips have never told.“‘It has gnawed like a wolf at my heart, mother,A wolf that is fierce for blood,All the livelong day and the night,beside—Gnawing for lack of food.I dreamed of bread in my sleep, mother,And the sight was heaven tosee—I awoke with an eager, famishing lip,But you had no bread for me.“‘How could I look to you, mother,How could I look to youFor bread to give to your starving boy,When you were starving, too?For I read the famine in your cheekAnd in your eye so wild,And I felt it in your bony hand,As you laid it on your child.“‘The queen has lands and gold, mother,The queen has lands and gold,While you are forced to your empty breastA skeleton babe tohold—A babe that is dying of want, mother,As I am dying now,With a ghastly look in its sunken eyeAnd the famine upon its brow.“‘What has poor Ireland done, mother,What has poor Ireland done,That the world looks on and sees us die,Perishing one by one?Do the men of England care not, mother,The great men and the high,For the suffering sons of Erin’sisle,—Whether they live or die?“‘There’s many a brave heart here, mother,Dying of want and cold,While only across the channel, mother,Are many that roll in gold.There are great and proud men there, mother,With wondrous wealth to view,And the bread they fling to their dogs to-nightWould bring life to me and you.“‘Come nearer to my side, mother,Come nearer to my side,And hold me fondly, as you heldMy father when he died.Quick, for I can not see you, mother,My breath is almost gone.Mother, dear mother, ere I die,Give me three grains of corn!’
“‘Give me three grains of corn, mother,Give me three grains of corn,’Twill keep the little life I haveTill the coming of the morn.I am dying of hunger and cold, mother,Dying of hunger and cold,And half the agony of such a deathMy lips have never told.“‘It has gnawed like a wolf at my heart, mother,A wolf that is fierce for blood,All the livelong day and the night,beside—Gnawing for lack of food.I dreamed of bread in my sleep, mother,And the sight was heaven tosee—I awoke with an eager, famishing lip,But you had no bread for me.“‘How could I look to you, mother,How could I look to youFor bread to give to your starving boy,When you were starving, too?For I read the famine in your cheekAnd in your eye so wild,And I felt it in your bony hand,As you laid it on your child.“‘The queen has lands and gold, mother,The queen has lands and gold,While you are forced to your empty breastA skeleton babe tohold—A babe that is dying of want, mother,As I am dying now,With a ghastly look in its sunken eyeAnd the famine upon its brow.“‘What has poor Ireland done, mother,What has poor Ireland done,That the world looks on and sees us die,Perishing one by one?Do the men of England care not, mother,The great men and the high,For the suffering sons of Erin’sisle,—Whether they live or die?“‘There’s many a brave heart here, mother,Dying of want and cold,While only across the channel, mother,Are many that roll in gold.There are great and proud men there, mother,With wondrous wealth to view,And the bread they fling to their dogs to-nightWould bring life to me and you.“‘Come nearer to my side, mother,Come nearer to my side,And hold me fondly, as you heldMy father when he died.Quick, for I can not see you, mother,My breath is almost gone.Mother, dear mother, ere I die,Give me three grains of corn!’
“‘Give me three grains of corn, mother,Give me three grains of corn,’Twill keep the little life I haveTill the coming of the morn.I am dying of hunger and cold, mother,Dying of hunger and cold,And half the agony of such a deathMy lips have never told.
“‘It has gnawed like a wolf at my heart, mother,A wolf that is fierce for blood,All the livelong day and the night,beside—Gnawing for lack of food.I dreamed of bread in my sleep, mother,And the sight was heaven tosee—I awoke with an eager, famishing lip,But you had no bread for me.
“‘How could I look to you, mother,How could I look to youFor bread to give to your starving boy,When you were starving, too?For I read the famine in your cheekAnd in your eye so wild,And I felt it in your bony hand,As you laid it on your child.
“‘The queen has lands and gold, mother,The queen has lands and gold,While you are forced to your empty breastA skeleton babe tohold—A babe that is dying of want, mother,As I am dying now,With a ghastly look in its sunken eyeAnd the famine upon its brow.
“‘What has poor Ireland done, mother,What has poor Ireland done,That the world looks on and sees us die,Perishing one by one?Do the men of England care not, mother,The great men and the high,For the suffering sons of Erin’sisle,—Whether they live or die?
“‘There’s many a brave heart here, mother,Dying of want and cold,While only across the channel, mother,Are many that roll in gold.There are great and proud men there, mother,With wondrous wealth to view,And the bread they fling to their dogs to-nightWould bring life to me and you.
“‘Come nearer to my side, mother,Come nearer to my side,And hold me fondly, as you heldMy father when he died.Quick, for I can not see you, mother,My breath is almost gone.Mother, dear mother, ere I die,Give me three grains of corn!’
“What do you think,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “is it not full of power and poetry and pathos?”
“Yes, it could not in itself be better,” I replied. “And it has the simplicity.”
“And pretends nothing,” said Annabel Lee.
“And who wrote it?” I asked.
“Oh, some forgotten Englishwoman,” said Annabel Lee. “I believe her name was Edwards. She perhaps wrote a poem, now and then, and died.”
“And are the poems forgotten, also?” I inquired.
“Yes, forgotten, except by a few. But when they remember them, they remember them long.”
“Then which is better, to be remembered, and remembered shortly, by the multitudes; or to be forgot by the multitudes and remembered long by the one or two?”
“It is incomparably better to be remembered long by the one or two,” said Annabel Lee. “To be forgotten by any one or anything that once remembered you is sorely bitter to the heart.”
“DO YOU think, Annabel Lee,” I said to her on a day that I felt depressed, “that all things must really be relative, and that those which are not now properly relative will eventually become so, though it gives them acute anguish?”
The face of Annabel Lee was placid, and also the sea. The one glanced down upon me from the shelf, and the other spread away into the distance.
Were that face and that sea relative? Surely they could not be, since those two things in their very nature might go ungoverned. Do not universal laws, in extreme moments, give way?
“Relative!” said Annabel Lee. “Nothingis relative. I tell you nothing is relative. I am come out of Japan. In Japan, when I was very new to everything, there was an ugly frog-eyed woman who washed me and anointed me and dressed me in silk, the while she pinched my little white arms cruelly, so that my little red mouth writhed with the pain. Also the frog-eyed woman looked into my suffering young eyes with her ugly frog-eyes so that my tiny young soul was prodded as with brad-nails. The frog-eyed woman did these things to hurt me—she hated me for being one of the very lovely creatures in Japan. She was a vile, ugly wretch.
“That was not relative. I tell you that was not relative,” said Annabel Lee.
“If I had been an awkward, overgrown, bloodless animal and that frog-eyed woman had pinched my little white arms—stillshewould have been a vile, ugly wretch.
“If I had been a vicious spirit and that frog-eyed woman had looked into my vicious eyes with her ugly frog-eyes—stillshewould have been a vile, ugly wretch.
“If I had been a hateful little thing, instead of a gently-bred, gently-living, pitiful-to-the-poor maiden, and that frog-eyed woman had hated me with all her frog-heart—stillshewould have been a vile, ugly wretch.
“If that frog-eyed woman had stood alone in Japan with no human being to compare her to—still the frog-eyed woman would have been a vile, ugly wretch.
“She has left her horrid frog-mark on my fair soul. Not anything beneath the worshiped sun can ever blot out the horrid frog-mark from my fair soul. A thousandcurses on the ugly, frog-eyed woman,” said Annabel Lee, tranquilly.
“Then that, for one thing, is not relative,” I said. “But perhaps that is because of the power and the depth of your eyes and your fair soul. Where there are no eyes and no fair souls—at least where the eyes and the fair souls can not be considered as themselves, but only as things without feeling for life—then are not things relative?”
“Nothing is relative,” said Annabel Lee. “If your dog’s splendid fur coat is full of fleas and you caress your dog with your hands, then presently you may acquire numbers of the fleas. You love the dog, but you do not love the fleas. You forgive the fleas for the love of the dog, though you hate them no less. So then that is not relative. If that were relative you would love the fleas a little for the same reason that you forgive them: forlove of your dog. Forgiveness is a negative quality and can have no bearing on your attitude toward the fleas.”
Having said this, Annabel Lee gazed placidly over my head at the sea.
When her mood is thus tranquil, she talks graciously and evenly and positively, and is beautiful to look at.
My mind was now in much confusion upon the subject in question. But I felt that I must know all that Annabel Lee thought about it.
“What would you say, Annabel Lee,” said I, “to a case like this: If a soul were at variance with everything that touches it, everything that makes life, so that it must struggle through the long nights and long days with bitterness, is not that because the soul has no sense of proportion, and has not made itself properly relative to each and everything that is?—relative, so that when one hard thingtouches it, simultaneously one soft thing will touch it; or when it mourns for dead days, simultaneously it rejoices for live ones; or when its best-loved gives it a deep wound, simultaneously its best enemy gives it vivid pleasure.”
“Nothing is relative,” again said Annabel Lee. “Nothing can be relative. Nothing need be relative. If a soul is wearing itself to small shreds by struggling days and nights, that is a matter relating peculiarly to the soul, and to nothing else,nothingelse. If a soul is wearing itself to small shreds by struggling, the more fool it. It is struggling because of things that would never,neverstruggle because of it. In truth, not one of them would move itself one millionth of an inch because of so paltry a thing as a soul.”
I looked at Annabel Lee, her hair, her hands and her eyes. As I looked, I was reminded of the word “eternity.”
A human being is a quite wonderful thing, truly—and great—there’s none greater.
Annabel Lee is a person who always says truth, for, for her, there is nothing else to say.
She has reached that marvelous point where a human being expects nothing.
“If the days of a life, Annabel Lee,” I said, “are made bright because of two other lives that are dear to it, and if the life happens upon a day when the thought of the two whom it loves makes its own heart like lead, then what can there be to smooth away its weariness, in heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth?”
“Foolish life,” said my friend Annabel Lee. “There is no pain in Japan like what comes of loving some one or some thing. And if the some one or the some thing is the only thing the life can call itsown, then woe to it. The things it needs are three: a Lodging Place in heaven above; a Bit of Hardness in the earth beneath; a Last Resort in the waters under the earth. These three—but no life has ever had them.”
“In the end,” I said, “when all wide roadways come together, and all heavy hearts are alert to know what will happen, then will there not indeed be one grand adjustment, and life and all become at once magnificently relative?”
“Never; it can’t be so. Nothing is relative,” said Annabel Lee, on a day that I felt depressed.
TO-DAY my friend Annabel Lee and I went to the theater and we saw a wonderful and fascinating woman with long dark-red hair upon the stage.
She is attractive, that red-haired woman—adorably attractive. And she reminds one of many things.
Annabel Lee was greatly interested in her acting, and was charmed with herself—and so was I.
“Do you suppose she finds life very delightful?” I said to my friend.
“I don’t suppose,” my friend replied, “she is of the sort that considers whether or not life is delightful. Probably her work is hard enough to keep her out of mischief of any kind.”
Whereupon we both fell to thinking how fortunate are they whose work is hard enough to keep them out of mischief of any kind.
“But there must be,” I said, “some months, perhaps in the summer, when she doesn’t work. I have heard that some actors take houses among the mountains and do their own housework for recreation.”
“I,” said Annabel Lee, “can not quite imagine this woman with the red hair making bread and scouring pans and kettles for pleasure. But very likely she sometimes goes into the country for vacations, and I can fancy her doing the various small enjoyable things that celebrities can afford to do—like wading barefooted in a narrow brooklet, or swinging high and recklessly in a barrel-stave hammock.”
“And since she is so adorable on thestage,” I exclaimed, “how altogether enchanting she would be wading in the brooklet or swinging in the barrel-stave hammock—she with the long, red hair! Perhaps it would even be braided down her back in two long tails.”
It is a picture that haunts me—Mrs. Fiske in the midst of her vacation doing the small enjoyable things.
“Of course,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “we don’tknowthat she doesn’t spend her vacations in a fine, conventional, stupid yacht, or at some magnificent, insipid American or English country house. We can only give her the benefit of the doubt.”
“Yes, the benefit of the doubt,” I replied.
How fascinating she was, to be sure, with her personality merged in that of Mary Magdalene!
The Magdalene is no longer a shadowyideal with a somewhat buxom body, scantily draped, with indefinite hair and with the lifeless beauty that the old masters paint. Nor is she quite the woman of the scriptures who is presented to one’s mind without that quality which is called local coloring, and with too much of the quality that is ever present with the women in the scriptures—a something between uncleanness and final complete redemption.
No, Mary Magdalene is Mrs. Fiske, a slight woman still in the last throes of youth, with two shoulders which move impatiently, expressing indescribable emotions of aliveness and two lips which perform their office—that of coloring, bewitching, torturing, perfuming, anointing the words that come out of them. Apart from these lips, Mary Magdalene’s face has a wonderfully round and childish look, and her two round eyes at first sightgive one an idea of positive innocence. In the Magdalene’s face—and in that of an actor of Mrs. Fiske’s range—these are a beautifully delicate incongruity.
And my friend Annabel Lee has told me that the strongest things are the delicate incongruities—the strongest in all this wide world. Because they make you consider—and considering, you wait.
With such a pair of round, innocent eyes of some grayish color—who can blame Mary Magdalene?
In the latter acts of the play these eyes go one step farther than innocence: they do hunger and thirst after righteousness. And, ah, dear heaven (you thought to yourself), how well they did it! To hunger and thirst after righteousness—not herself, but her eyes. That was this Mary Magdalene’s art.
This Mary Magdalene, though she is indeed in the last throes of youth—withoutreference to the years she may know—has yet beneath her chin a very charming roundness of flesh which one day obviously will become a double chin. Just now it is enchanting. There are feminine children of seven and eight with round faces, who have just that fullness beneath the chin, and beneath the chin of Mary Magdalene—and added to her eyes—it carries on the idea of innocence and inexperience to a rare good degree. Any other woman actor would have long since massaged this fullness away. Forsooth, perhaps this is the one woman actor who could wear such a thing with beauty.
Mary Magdalene’s hair in its deep redness is scornful and aggressive in the first acts of the play. In the latter acts it assumes a marvelous patheticness. And, if you like, there is a world of patheticness in red hair.
If Mary Magdalene’s hair were of a different color—if the bronze shadows were yellow, or gray, or black, or brown shadows—her lips and her shoulders were in vain.
On the stage Mary Magdalene stands with her back to her audience—she stands, calm and placid, for three or four minutes before the rising and falling curtain, graciously permitting all to admire and feast their eyes upon the red of her hair.
“She knows,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “that she can make her face bewitching—and she knows also that her hair is bewitching without being so made. And she chooses that the world at large shall know it, too.”
She has will-power, has Mary Magdalene. It is her will, her strength, her concentration of all her power to herself that makes her thus bewitching—andthat seduces the brains of those who sit watching her as she moves upon the stage.
She controls all her mental and physical features with metallic precision—except her hair, and that she leaves uncontrolled to do its own work. It does its work well.
She has cultivated that mobileness of her lips, probably with hard work and infinite patience—and she makes them damp and brilliant with rouge. She rubs the soft, thick skin of her face with layers of grease. She loads her two white arms with limitless powder. And the two childish eyes are exceeding heavy-laden as to lid and lash with black crayon. One experiences a revulsion as one contemplates them through a glass. Her voice in the days of her youth had drilled into it the power to thrill and vibrate, and to become exquisitely tender upon occasion,and now it does the bidding of its owner with docility and skill. Since its owner has forcefulness and a power of selfish concentration, the voice is mostly magnetic and cold and strong. It is magnetic and cold and strong and contemptuous when its owner says, “My curse upon you!” When its owner’s eyes do hunger and thirst after righteousness the voice brings a miserable, anguished feeling to the throats of those who sit listening. Every emotion that the voice betrays is transmitted to the seduced brains of those who sit listening. The red-haired woman works her audience up to some torturing pitches—the while herself blandly and cold-bloodedly earning an honest livelihood by the sweat of her brow.
Forsooth, it’s always so.
If all the red-haired woman’s scorn and anguish were real, the audience would sit unmoved. If the red-haired woman’sscorn and anguish were real it would strike inward—instead of outward toward the audience—and the audience would not know. If the red-haired woman’s scorn and anguish were real, it would not seem real and would be very uninteresting. And that very likely is the reason why the scorn and anguish of other red-haired women—and of black-haired, and brown-haired, and yellow-haired, and gray-haired, and pale-haired women, who are not working on the stage—is so uninteresting and ineffectual. It is real, and they can not act it out, and so it doesn’t seem real—and you don’t have to pay money to see it done.
To make it seem real they must need go at it cold-bloodedly, and work it up, and charge you a round price for it.
Mary Magdalene isn’t here to do this, but Mrs. Fiske takes her place and does it for her.
She does it exquisitely well.
Could Mary Magdalene herself—she of the Bible—be among those who sit watching, she would surely marvel and admire.
Meanwhile, for myself, I have two visions of this Mary Magdalene.
One—in one of the acts wherein her eyes do hunger and thirst after righteousness—when she sits before a small table and lifts her pathetic, sweet voice with the words, “When the dawn breaks, and the darkness shall flee away”; and then she stands and the red hair is equally pathetic and twofold bewitching, and she says again, “When the dawn breaks, and the darkness shall flee away.” And the other vision is of her in the country in the midst of a summer day, under a summer sky, swinging high and recklessly in a barrel-stave hammock.
MY FRIEND Annabel Lee has told me there are bitterer things in store for me than I have known yet.
Times I have wondered what they can be.
“When you have come to them,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “they will be so bitter and will fit so well into your life that you will wonder that you did not always know about them, and you will wonder why you did not always have them.”
“The bitterest things I have known yet,” I said, “have had to do with the varying friendship of one or another whom I have loved.”
“Varying friendship?” said Annabel Lee. “But friendship does not vary.”
“No, that is true,” I rejoined. “I mean the varying deception I have had from some whom I have loved.”
“In time,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “you will love more, and your deceiving will be all at once, and bitterer. It will be a rich experience.”
“Why rich?” I inquired.
“Because from it,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “you will learn to not see too much, to not start out with faith, in fact, to take the goods that the gods provide and endeavor to be thankful for them. Your other experiences have been poverty-stricken in that respect. They leave you with rays of hope, without which you would be better off. They are poor and bitter. What is to come will be rich and bitterer. Their bitterness will prevent you from appreciating the richness ofthem—until perhaps years have come and taken them from immediately before your eyes. As soon as they are where you can not see them, you can consider them and appreciate their richness.”
“Whatever they may be,” I made answer, “I do not think I shall ever be able to appreciate their richness.”
“Then you will be very ungrateful,” said my friend Annabel Lee.
I looked hard at her—and she looked back at me. There are times when my friend Annabel Lee is much like a stone wall.
“Yes,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “if you ever feel to express proper gratitude for the good things of this life, be sure that you express your gratitude for the right thing. Very likely you will not have a great deal of gratitude, and you must not waste any of it—but what you do have will be of the most excellentquality. For it will accumulate, and the accumulation will all go to quality. And the things for which you are to be grateful are the bitternesses you have known. If you have had it in mind ever to give way to bursts of gratitude for this air that comes from off the salt sea, for that line of pearls and violets that you see just above the horizon, for the health of your body, for the sleep that comes to you at the close of the day, for any of those things, then get rid of the idea at once. Those things are quite well, but they are not really given to you. They are merely placed where any one can reach them with little effort. The kind fates don’t care whether you get them or not. Their responsibility ends when they leave them there. But the bitternesses they give to each person separately. They give you yours, Mary MacLane, for your very own. Don’t saytheynever think of you.”
“I’ve no intention of saying it,” said I.
“You will find,” said my friend Annabel Lee—without noticing my interruption, and with curious expressions in her voice and upon her two red lips—“you will find that these bitternesses come from time to time in your life, like so many milestones. They are useful as such—for of course you like to take measurements along the road, now and again, to see what progress you have made. Along some parts of the road you will find your progress wonderful. If you are appreciative and grateful, at the last milestone you have come to thus far you will express your measure of gratitude to the kind fates. That is, no—” said my friend Annabel Lee, “you will not do thisatthe milestone, but after you have passed it and have turned a corner, and so can not see it even when you look back.”
“But why shall I express gratitudethere?” I inquired in a tone that must have been rather lifeless.
“Why?” repeated my friend Annabel Lee. “Because you will have grown in strength on account of these milestones; because you will have learned to take all things tranquilly. Why, after the very last milestone I daresay you would be able to sit with folded hands if a house were burning up about your ears!”
“Which must indeed be a triumph,” said I.
“A triumph?—a victory!” said my friend Annabel Lee—with still more curious expressions. “And the victories are not what this world sees”—which reminded me of things I used to hear in Sunday-school ever so many years ago. “You remember the story of the Ten Virgins? Taking the story literally,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “the lot of the five Foolish Virgins is much the more fortunate.There was a rare measure of bitterness for them when they found themselves without oil for their lamps at a time when oil was needed. They gained infinitely more than they lost. As for the five Wise Virgins—well,Iwouldn’t have been one of them underanycircumstances,” said my friend Annabel Lee. “Fancy the miserable, mean, mindless, imaginationless, selfish natures that could remain unmoved by the simplicity of the appeal, ‘Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out.’ It must now,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “be a hundred times bitterer for them to think of being handed down in endless history as demons of selfishness—and they are now where they can not, presumably, measure their bitterness by milestones of progress.”
“So then, yes,” said my friend Annabel Lee—“whatever else you may do as yougo through life, remember to save up your gratitude for the bitternesses you have known—and remember that foryouthe bitterest is yet to come.”
“Haveyou, Annabel Lee,” I asked, “already known the bitterest that can come—and canyousit with your hands folded in the midst of a burning house?”
“Not I!” said my friend Annabel Lee, and laughed gayly.
Again I looked hard at her—and she looked back at me.
Certainly there are times when my friend Annabel Lee is like a stone wall.
“ILOVED madly,” said my friend Annabel Lee. “There came one down out of the north country that was dark and strong and brave and full of life’s fire. All my short life had been bathed in summer. I had dreamed my thirteen years beneath cherry-blossoms upon a high hill.
“But at the coming of this man from the north country I opened my two sloe-eyes, and the world turned white—exquisite, rapturous, divine white.
“And afterward all was heavy gray.
“Away from the high hill of the cherry-blossoms there lay a stretch of red barren waste with towering rocks—and beyond that a quiet, quiet sea that was only blue.
“At the left of the high hill of the cherry-blossoms there was a mountain covered with green ivy—dark green ivy that defined its own green shape against the brilliant yellow sky behind it. Green and yellow, green and yellow, green and yellow, said the sky and the mountain covered with ivy.
“The high hill of the cherry-blossoms was colored with all the colors of Japan.
“I lived there with people—my mother and my father and some others—all with pale faces and sloe-eyes.
“But some of them were very ugly.
“Then came one down out of the north country that was dark and strong and brave and full of life’s fire.
“He was ugly, but his face was perfect.
“Straightway I fell in love with this one. Of all things in Japan, what a thing it is to fall in love!
“Where the red barren waste lay spreadbelow me I saw manifold softnesses, like a dove’s breast, like a fawn’s eyes, like melted lilies, and the towering, gloomy rocks were the home of violet dreams.
“In the deep green of the ivy mountain my soul found rest at nightfall among mystery and shadow. It wandered there in marvelous peace. And the coolness and damp and the low muttering of the wind and the night birds went into it with a stirring, powerful influence. Also the voices out of the very long ago came from among the green, dark ivy, and from the crevices of gray stones beneath it, and they told me true things in the stillness.
“From the deepness of the brilliant yellow sky—the yellow of burnished brass—there came legion earth-old contradictions. And wondrous paradox and parallel that had not been among the cherry-blossoms appeared to me as mymind contemplated these. I said, Am I thus in love because that I am weak, or that I am strong? For I see here that it is both weakness and strength. And I said, Am I myself when I do this thing? or was that I who lived among the cherry-blossoms? I said, Who am I? What am I?
“Below all there was the blue, broad sea. This sea gave out a white mist that rose and spread over the earth. I knew that I was in love, once and for all.
“The world was white. The world was beautiful. The world was divine.
“Life shone out of the mist unspeakable in its countless possibilities. Voices spoke near me and infinite voices called to me from afar—they sounded clear and faint and maddening-soft and tender, and the soul of me answered them with deafening, joyous silent music.
“He from the north country that was dark and strong and brave and full oflife’s fire came, some days, to the high hill of the cherry-blossoms. He spoke often and of many things. He spoke to people—to my mother and to my father, and to others. And rarely he spoke to me. Rarely he looked at me. He had been in the great world. He knew wonderful women and wonderful men. He had been touched with all things.
“What a human being was he!
“And of all things in Japan, what a thing it is to fall in love!
“When three days had gone my heart knew rapture beyond any that it had dreamed. It knew the mysteries and the fullnesses.
“After three days the world turned to that divine white, and was white for seven days.
“And afterward all was heavy gray.
“The one from the north country returned back to the north country.
“Of all things in Japan, what a thing it is to fall in love!
“I was not in love with this one because he was a man, or because he was strange and fascinating—but because he was a glorious human being.
“My heart was not turned to this one to marry him. Marrying and giving in marriage are for such as are in love unconsciously.
“To see this one from the north country—to hear his voice—that was life and all for me—life and all.
“But he was gone.
“He left a silence and a weariness.
“These came and crowded out the white from my heart, and themselves found lodgment there.
“And all was heavy gray.
“The picture of life and the mystery and shadow that was revealed to me when the world was white has nevergone. It has filled me in the days of my youth with an old terror.
“Of all things in Japan, what a thing it is to fall in love!
“To fall in love!”—said my friendAnnabelLee, the while her two eyes and her two white hands, in their expression, their position, told of a thing that is heart-breaking to see.
“THERE was a time,” I said to my friend Annabel Lee, “when I went to the Butte High School. I think of it now with mingled feelings.”
“You were younger then,” said my friend Annabel Lee.
“I was younger, and in those days I still looked upon life as something which would one day open wide and display wondrous and beautiful things for me. And meanwhile I went every day to the Butte High School. I found it a very interesting place—much more interesting than I have since found the broad world. I was sixteen and seventeen and eighteen, and things were not brilliantly colored,and so I made much with a vivid fancy of all that came in my path.”
“And what do you, now that you are one-and-twenty?” said my friend Annabel Lee.
“I sit quietly,” I replied, “and wish not, and wait not—and look back upon the days in the Butte High School with mingled feelings.”
“Also unawares,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “you still think things relating to that which is one day to open wondrously for you. But, never mind,” she added hastily, as I was about to say something, “tell me about the Butte High School.”
“’Twas a place,” said I, “where were gathered together manifold interesting phenomena, and where I studied Vergil, and grew fond of it, and was good in it; and where I studied geometry, and was fond of it, and knew less about it each day that I studied it;—and always Istudied closely the persons whom I met daily in the Butte High School. I recall very clearly each member of the class of ninety-nine. My memory conjures up for me some quaint and fantastic visions against picturesque backgrounds that appeal to my sense of delicate incongruity, especially so since viewed in this light and from this distance.”
“What are some of them?” said my friend Annabel Lee.
“There is one,” said I, “of a girl whom always in my mind I called The Shad, for that she was so bland, and so flat, and so silent,—and she had a bad habit of asking me to write her Latin exercises, which perhaps was not so much like a shad as like a person; and there is one of a girl who spent the long hours of the day in writing long, long letters to her love, but knew painfully little about the lessons in the class-rooms; and there is one of a girlwho brought to school every day a small flask of whiskey to cheer her benighted hours,—she was daily called back and down by the French teacher on account of her excessively bad French, and life had looked dull for her were it not for the flask’s pungent contents; there is one of a strange-looking, tawny-headed girl who sat across the narrow aisle from me in the assembly-room during my last year in school, who kept her desk neatly piled with the works (she called them works) of Albert Ross—and after she had read them, very kindly she would lean over and repeat the stories, with quotations verbatim, for my benefit;—her standing in her classes was not brilliant, but in Albert Ross she was thorough; there is one of a clever, pretty girl who was malicious—exquisitely malicious in all her ways and deeds, and seemingly no thought entered her head that was notfraught with it,—she was malicious in algebra, malicious in literature, malicious in ancient history, malicious in physical culture, malicious in the writing of short themes—and when it so chanced that I made a failure in a recitation, or was stupid, she would look up at me and smile very sweetly and maliciously; and there is one of a girl whose quaint and voluble profanity haunts me still. And especially there is in my memory a picture of all these on our graduating day, receiving each a fine white diploma rolled up and neatly tied with the class colors—a picture of these and the others,—we were fifty-nine in all. And the diplomas stated tacitly, in heavily engrossed letters, that we had all been good for four years and had fulfilled every requirement of the Butte High School. So we had, doubtless—but how much some of us had done for which in our diplomas we were notgiven credit! In truth, nothing was stated in them, in engrossed lettering, about courses in love-letters, or profanity, or malice, and Albert Ross was not in the curriculum.
“And the president of the school board doled out those diplomas, with a short, set speech for each, one wet June day—but he was not aware how insignificant they were.
“And my mind likewise conjures up a vision of two with whom I used to take what we called tramps, during our last year in the High School—far down and out of Butte, on Saturdays and other days when school was not. I remember those two and those tramps exceeding well—nor can I think with but four years gone that the two themselves have forgotten. One of these was an individual whose like I have not since known. She reminded me sometimes of Cleopatra andsometimes of Peg of Limmavaddy. She was of Irish ancestry and had a long black mane of hair braided down behind, and two conscious and lurid eyes of the kind that is known as Irish blue. She had brains enough within her head, but did not study overmuch. Her ways of going through life were often very dubious. She weighed a great many pounds. Her experience of the world was large, and to me she was fascinating. For herself, she was always rather afraid of me—so much afraid, in truth, that if I said a funny thing she must need laugh—with a forced and fictitious merriment; if I told her she had no soul, she must need agree with me abjectly, though she was a good Catholic; if I frowned upon her, she shivered and was silent. Fanciful names and frocks (though this lady’s frocks were always fanciful in ways) were selected for these tramping expeditions. This one’sfanciful name was called Muddled Maud. For no particular reason, I believe—but she wore it well. The other member of our trio was of a less extraordinary type. She was stout as to figure, and she knew a great deal about some things. She was very good in history, and at home she could make pie and cake and bread. It is true that her cake sometimes stuck, and sometimes sank in the middle, and when she carved a fowl she could not always hit the joints. And she was one of the kind that always pronounces picture, “pitcher.” She was also known as a very sensible girl. I can see her now with a purple ribbon around her neck and a brown rain-coat on coming into the High School on a wet morning. When we went tramping she usually wore an immense gray-white, mother-hubbard gown, belted in at the waist, and a wide flat hat, which made her look rather likea toad-stool. Her fanciful name was Emancipated Eva. Emancipated, in truth, she was. In the High School she was dignified and sedate, but on our tramps she would frequently skip like a young lamb, and frisk and gambol down there in the country.
“She who was called Muddled Maud likewise frisked and gamboled—and always she personified my idea of the French nounabandon.
“Also I frisked and gamboled in those days far down in the country.
“The fanciful name selected for me was Refreshment Rosanna—and I can not tell why. But it was thought a good name for a lady tramp. We started on these tramps at six in the morning. We would rise from our beds at five, and at ten minutes before six I would meet Muddled Maud at the corner of Washington and Quartz streets, below her house. Togetherwe would go down east Park street to the home of Emancipated Eva. Then we walked seven miles or eight away into the open and the wild.
“We took things along to eat—sometimes a great many things and sometimes a few. Times Muddled Maud would have but a curious-looking jelly-roll, and Emancipated Eva would come laden with hard bits of beef, and I could show but a plate of fudge. But other times there were tarts and meat-pies and turnovers, and deviled ham and deviled chicken and deviled veal and deviled tongue and deviled fish of divers kinds, and some bottles of nut-brown October ale, and sardinesa l’huile, and green, green olives. Only the more there was, the harder to carry. But, times, Muddled Maud would carry much with little effort—she would adorn herself with the luncheon—a long bit of sausage-link about her neck like achain, and upon her hat, held securely with bonnet-pins, fat yellow lemons, and two bananas crossed in front like the tiny guns on a soldier’s hat, and bunches of Catawba grapes scattered here and there, and pears hanging by their little stems behind.
“The too early morning prevented all from being seen by the inhabitants of Butte, and we did not venture home again until came the friendly darkness.
“Those were fascinating expeditions—and whose was the glory? Mine was the glory. ’Twas I who invented them. ’Twas I who knew there was none so fitted for a so delicate absurdity as she we called Muddled Maud; and after her, none so fitted as the fair, the good-natured, the Emancipated; and together with them both, I. And I led them forth, and I led them back, and I said things should be thus and so, and straightwaythey were thus and so. And we enjoyed it, and clear air was in our lungs and life was in our veins, for we had each but eighteen years and were full of youth. But most of all ’twas fascinating because we were three of three widely differing manners of living and methods of reasoning. For I was not like Emancipated Eva, nor yet like Muddled Maud; and Emancipated Eva was not like me, nor yet like Muddled Maud; and Muddled Maud was not like Emancipated Eva, nor yet like me.
“To be sure, there were some things in my ordering which neither the one nor the other found enchanting. Why should the MacLane do all the ordering? they murmured between themselves, but they dared not openly revolt, so all went well.
“But now these are gone.
“The three of us were graduated from the Butte High School with the fifty-nineothers of ninety-nine, and had each a fine white diploma, and went our ways.
“She who was like Cleopatra and Peg of Limmavaddy is teaching a school, according to the last that I heard, in the north of Montana; and she that was Emancipated Eva has long since gone to California, and is married, and keeps a house; and for me—I am here, far off from Butte, with you, Annabel Lee, some things having been done meanwhile.
“But though the two are gone, I warrant they have not forgotten. They have not forgotten the Butte High School, nor the class of ninety-nine, nor the tramps we went, nor their tyrant, me.
“And I daresay they all remember their Butte High School—she of the love-letters, she of the whiskey-flask, she the student of Albert Ross, she of the profanity, she of the malice, The Shad,—and all the nine-and-fifty, the young femininepersons and the young masculine persons. Some are married, and some are flown, and some of them are grown up and different, ‘and some of them in the churchyard lie, and some are gone to sea.’
“But whenever I’ve a fancy to shut my eyes and look back, I can see them all, a quaint company.
“Also, whenever I’ve a fancy to shut my eyes and look back to life when it was unspeakably brilliant in possibilities to look forward to, and was marked in parti-colored checks and rings, it fetches me to the days when I went to the Butte High School and studied geometry and Vergil. Only I’m glad I’m not there now.”
“What for?” said my friend Annabel Lee.
“It is rather pitiful and dreadful to think of having been seventeen, and to have gone every day to the Butte HighSchool and imagined how wonderful-beautiful life would be some day,” said I, and all at once felt very weary.
THERE are times in a number of days when my friend Annabel Lee and I enjoy a cigarette together. My friend Annabel Lee, with her cigarette, her petite much-colored form wrapped round in clouds of thin, exquisite gray, is more than all suggestive and inscrutable. She leans her two elbows on something and looks out at me.
I with my cigarette am nothing but I with my cigarette. I enjoy it, but am not beautiful with it, nor fascinating.
But my friend Annabel Lee is all that my imagination can take in. Under the influence of the thin, exquisite gray she grows fanciful, and subtly and indefinitelyshe meets me somewhere, and extends me her hand for a moment.
“Don’t you know,” said my friend Annabel Lee, with her cigarette, “that old song that goes: