I have one friend--of that Friendship that is real and is inlaid
with the beautiful thing Truth. And because it has the beautiful
thing Truth in it, this my one Friendship is somehow above and
beyond me; there is something in it that I reach after in vain--for
I have not that divinely beautiful thing Truth. Have I not said
that I am a thief and a liar? But in this Friendship nevertheless
there is a rare, ineffably sweet something that is mine. It is the
one tender thing in this dull dreariness that wraps me round.
Are there many things in this cool-hearted world so utterly exquisite
as the pure love of one woman for another woman?
My one friend is a woman some twelve or thirteen years older than I.
She is as different from me as is day from night. She believes in
God--that God that is shown in the Bible of the Christians. And she
carries with her an atmosphere of gentleness and truth. The while I
am ready and waiting to dedicate my life to the Devil in exchange
for Happiness--or some lesser thing. But I love Fannie Corbin with
a peculiar and vivid intensity, and with all the sincerity and
passion that is in me. Often I think of her, as I walk over the
sand in my Nothingness, all day long. The Friendship of her and
me is a fair, dear benediction upon me, but there is something in
it--deep within it--that eludes me. In moments when I realize this,
when I strain and reach vainly at a thing beyond me, when indeed
I see in my mind a vision of the personality of Fannie Corbin, it
is then that it comes on me with force that I am not good.
But I can love her with all the ardor of a young and passionate
heart.
Yes, I can do that.
For a year I have loved my one friend. During the eighteen years
of my life before she came into it I loved no one, for there was
no one.
It is an extremely hard thing to go through eighteen years with no
one to love, and no one to love you--the first eighteen years.
But now I have my one friend to love and to worship.
I have named my friend the “anemone lady,” a name beautifully
appropriate.
The anemone lady used to teach me literature in the Butte High
School. She used to read poetry in the class-room in a clear, sweet
voice that made one wish one might sit there forever and listen
to it.
But now I have left the high school, and the dear anemone lady has
gone from Butte. Before she went she told me she would be my friend.
Think of it--to live and have a friend!
My friend does not fully understand me; she thinks much too well
of me. She has not a correct idea of my soul’s depths and shallows.
But if she did know them she would still be my friend. She knows
the heavy weight of my unrest and unhappiness. She is tenderly
sympathetic. She is the one in all the world who is dear to me.
Often I think, if only I could have my anemone lady and go and live
with her in some little out-of-the-world place high up on the side
of a mountain for the rest of my life--what more would I desire? My
friendship would constitute my life. The unrest, the dreariness,
the Nothingness of my existence now is so dull and gray by contrast
that there would be Happiness for me in that life, Happiness softly
radiant, if quiet--redolent of the fresh, thin fragrance of the
dear blue anemone that grows in the winds and rains of spring.
But Miss Corbin would doubtless look somewhat askance at the idea
of spending the rest of her life with me on a mountain. She is
very fond of me, but her feeling for me is not like mine for
her, which indeed is natural. And her life is made up mostly of
sacrifices--doing for her fellow-creatures, giving of herself. She
never would leave this.
And so, then, the mountainside and the solitude and the friend with
me are, like every good thing, but a vision.
“Thy friend is always thy friend; not to have, nor to hold, nor to
love, nor to rejoice in: but to remember.”
And so do I remember my one friend, the anemone lady--and think
often about her with passionate love.
January 21.
Happiness, don’t you know, is of three kinds--and all are transitory.
It never stays, but it comes and goes.
There is that happiness that comes from newly-washed feet, for
instance, and a pair of clean stockings on them, particularly
after one has been upon a tramp into the country. Always I have
identified this kind of happiness with a Maltese cat, dipping a
hungry, stealthy, sensual tongue into a bowl of fresh, thick cream.
There is that still happiness that has come to me at rare times
when I have been with my one friend--and which does very well for
people whose feelings are moderate. They need wish for nothing
beyond it. They could not appreciate anything deeper.
And there is that kind of happiness which is of the red sunset sky.
There is something terrible in the thought of this indescribable mad
Happiness. What a thing it is for a human being to be _happy_--with
the red, red Happiness of the sunset sky!
It’s like a terrific storm in summer with rain and wind, beating quiet
water into wild waves, bending great trees to the ground,--convulsing
the green earth with delicious pain.
It’s like something of Schubert’s played on the violin that stirs
you within to exquisite torture.
It’s like the human voice divine singing a Scotch ballad in a manner
to drag your soul from your body.
But there are no words to tell it. It is something infinitely above
and beyond words. It is the kind of Happiness the Devil will bring
to me when he comes,--to me, to _me_! Oh, why does he not come now
when I am in the midst of my youth! Why is he so long in coming?
Often you hear a dozen stories of how the Devil was most ready
and willing to take all from some one and give him his measure of
Happiness. And sometimes the person was innately virtuous and so
could not take the Happiness when it was offered. But Happiness is
its own justification, and it should be eagerly grasped when it
comes.
A world filled with fools will never learn this.
And so here I stand in the midst of Nothingness waiting and longing
for the Devil, and he doesn’t come. I feel a choking, strangling,
frenzied feeling of waiting--oh, why doesn’t my Happiness come! I
have waited so long--so long.
There are persons who say to me that I ought not to think of the
Devil, that I ought not to think of Happiness--Happiness for me
would be sure to mean something wicked (as if Happiness could ever
be wicked!); that I ought to think of being good. I ought to think
of God. These are persons who help to fill the world with fools. At
any rate their words are unable to affect me. I can not distinguish
between right and wrong in this scheme of things. It is one of the
lines of reasoning in which I have gotten to the edge, the end. I
have gotten to the point to which all logic finally leads. I can
only say, What is wrong? What is right? What is good? What is evil?
The words are merely words, with word-meanings.
Truth is Love, and Love is the only Truth, and Love is the one
thing out of all that is real.
The Devil is really the only one to whom we may turn, and he exacts
payment in full for every favor.
But surely he will come one day with Happiness for me.
Yet, oh, how can I wait!
To be a woman, young and all alone, is hard--_hard_!--is to want
things, is to carry a heavy, heavy weight.
Oh, damn! damn! damn! Damn every living thing, the world!--the
universe be damned!
Oh, I am weary, weary! Can’t you see that I am weary and pity me
in my own damnation?
January 22.
It is night. I might well be in my bed taking a needed rest. But
first I shall write.
To-day I walked far away over the sand in the teeth of a bitter
wind. The wind was determined that I should turn and come back,
and equally I was determined I would go on. I went on.
There is a certain kind of wind in the autumn to walk in the midst
of which causes one’s spirits to rise ecstatically. To walk in the
midst of a bitter wind in January may have almost any effect.
To-day the bitter wind swept over me and around me and into the
remote corners of my brain and swept away the delusions, and buffeted
my philosophy with rough insolence.
The world is made up mostly of nothing. You may be convinced of
this when a bitter wind has swept away your delusions.
What is the wind?
Nothing.
What is the sky?
Nothing.
What do we know?
Nothing.
What is fame?
Nothing.
What is my heart?
Nothing.
What is my soul?
Nothing.
What are we?
We are nothing.
We think we progress wonderfully in the arts and sciences as one
century follows another. What does it amount to? It does not teach
us the all-why. It does not let us cease to wonder what it is that
we are doing, where it is that we are going. It does not teach us
why the green comes again to the old, old hills in the spring; why
the benign balm-o’-Gilead shines wet and sweet after the rain;
why the red never fails to come to the breast of the robin, the
black to the crow, the gray to the little wren; why the sand and
barrenness lies stretched out around us; why the clouds float high
above us; why the moon stands in the sky, night after night; why
the mountains and valleys live on as the years pass.
The arts and sciences go on and on--still we wonder. We have not yet
ceased to weep. And we suffer still in 1902, even as they suffered
in 1802, and in 802.
To-day we eat our good dinners with forks.
A thousand years ago they had no forks.
Yet, though we have forks, we are not happy. We scream and kick
and struggle and weep just as they did a thousand years ago--when
they had no forks.
We are “no wiser than when Omar fell asleep.”
And in the midst of our great wondering, we wonder why some of us
are given faith to trust without question, while the rest of us
are left to eat out our life’s vitals with asking.
I have walked once in summer by the side of a little marsh filled
with mint and white hawthorn. The mint and white hawthorn have with
them a vivid, rare, delicious perfume. It makes you want to grovel
on the ground--it makes you think you might crawl in the dust all
your days, and well for you. The perfume lingers with you afterward
when years have passed. You may scream and kick and struggle and
weep right lustily every day of your life, but in your moments of
calmness sometimes there will come back to you the fragrance of a
swamp filled with mint and white hawthorn.
It is meltingly beautiful.
What does it mean?
What would it tell?
Why does the marsh, and the mint and white hawthorn, freeze over
in the fall? And why do they come again, voluptuous, enticing, in
the damp spring days--and rack the souls of wretches who look and
wonder?
You are superb, Devil! You have done a magnificent piece of work. I
kneel at your feet and worship you. You have wrought a perfection,
a pinnacle of fine, invisible damnation.
The world is like a little marsh filled with mint and white
hawthorn. It is filled with things likewise damnably beautiful.
There are the green, green grass-blades and the gray dawns; there
are swiftly-flowing rivers and the honking of wild geese, flying
low; there are human voices and human eyes; there are stories of
women and men who have learned to give up and to wait; there is
poetry; there is Charity; there is Truth.
The Devil has made all of these things, and also he has made human
beings who can feel.
Who was it that said, long ago, “Life is always a tragedy to those
who feel”?
In truth, the Devil has constructed a place of infinite torture--the
fair green earth, the world.
But he has made that other infinite thing--Happiness. I forgive him
for making me wonder, since possibly he may bring me Happiness. I
cast myself at his feet. I adore him.
The first third of our lives is spent in the expectation of Happiness.
Then it comes, perhaps, and stays ten years, or a month, or three
days, and the rest of our lives is spent in peace and rest--with
the memory of the Happiness.
Happiness--though it is infinite--is a transient emotion.
It is too brilliant, too magnificent, too overwhelming to be a
lasting thing. And it is merely an emotion. But, ah--_such_ an
emotion! Through it the Devil rules his domains. What would one
not do to have it!
I can think of no so-called vile deed that I would scruple about if
I could be happy. Everything is justified if it gives me Happiness.
The Devil has done me some great favors; he has made me without a
conscience, and without Virtue.
For which I thank thee, Devil.
At least I shall be able to take my Happiness when it comes--even
though the piles of nice distinctions between it and me be mountains
high.
But meanwhile, the world, I say, and the people are nothing, nothing,
nothing. The splendid castles, the strong bridges, that we are
building are of small moment. We can only go down the wide roadway
wondering and weeping, and without where to lay our heads.
January 23.