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 of them--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 excellent quality. 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 say _they_ never
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 this _at_ the 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 gratitude there?” 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,
_I_ wouldn’t have been one of them under _any_ circumstances,”
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 you go through life, remember to save up your gratitude
for the bitternesses you have known--and remember that for _you_
the bitterest is yet to come.”
“Have _you_, Annabel Lee,” I asked, “already known the bitterest
that can come--and can _you_ sit 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.