The Story of Mary MacLane | Page 3

I manage only to exist.
- Poor little Mary MacLane,--what might you not be?
What wonderful thing might you not do? But held down, half-buried, a seed fallen in barren ground, alone, uncomprehended, obscure--poor little Mary MacLane!
- Weep, world,--whydon't you--for poor little Mary MacLane.
Had I been born a man I would by now have made a deep impression of myself on the world--on some part of it. But I am a woman, and God, or the Devil, or Fate, or whosoever it was, has flayed me of the thick outer skin and thrown me out into the midst of Life--has left me a lonely damned thing filled with the red, red blood of ambition and desire, but afraid to be touched, for there is no thick skin between my sensitive flesh and the world's fingers.
But I want to be touched.
Napoleon was a man and though sensitive his flesh was safely covered.
But I am a woman, awakening, and upon awakening and looking about me, I would fain turn and go back to sleep.
There is a pain that goes with these things when one is a woman, young and all alone.
I am filled with an ambition. I wish to give to the world a naked Portrayal of Mary MacLane: her wooden heart, her good young woman's-body, her mind, her soul.
I wish to write, write, write!
I wish to acquire that beautiful benign gentle satisfying thing--Fame. I want it--oh, I want it! I wish to leave all my obscurity, my misery,--my weary unhappiness behind me forever.
I am deadly, deadly tired of my unhappiness.
I wish this Portrayal to be published and launched into that deep salt sea--the world. There are some there surely who will understand it and me.
Can I be that thing which I am--can I be possessed of a peculiar rare genius, and yet drag my life out in obscurity in this uncouth, warped, Montana town!
It must be impossible! If I thought the world contained nothing more than that for me--oh, what should I do! Would I make an end of my dreary little life now? I fear I would. I am a philosopher--and a coward. And it were infinitely better to die now in the high-beating pulses of youth than to drag on, year after year, year after year, and find oneself at last a stagnant old woman, spiritless, hopeless, with a declining body, a declining mind,--and nothing to look back on except the visions of things that might have been--and the weariness.
I see the picture. I see it plainly. Oh, kind Devil, deliver me from it!
Surely there must be in a world of manifold beautiful things something among them for me.
And always while I am still young, there is that dim light, the Future. But it is indeed a dim, dim light, and ofttimes there's a treachery in it.

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January 15
So then yes. I find myself at this stage of womankind and nineteen years, a genius, a thief, a liar--a general moral vagabond, a fool more or less, and a philosopher of the peripatetic school. Also I find that even this combination can not make one happy. It serves, however, to occupy my versatile mind, to keep me wondering what it is a kind Devil has in store for me.
A philosopher of my own peripatetic school--hour after hour I walk over the desolate sand and dreariness among tiny hills and gulches on the outskirts of this mining town; in the morning, in the long afternoon, in the cool of the night. And hour after hour, as I walk, through my brain some long, long pageants march: the pageant of my fancies, the pageant of my unparalleled egotism, the pageant of my unhappiness, the pageant of my minute analyzing, the pageant of my peculiar philosophy, the pageant ofmy dull, dull life,--and the pageant of the Possibilities.
We three go out on the sand and barrenness: my wooden heart, my good young woman's-body, my soul. We go there and contemplate the long sandy wastes, the red, red line on the sky at the setting of the sun, the cold gloomy mountains under it, the ground without a weed, without a grass-blade even in their season--for they have years ago been killed off by the sulphur smoke from the smelters.
So this sand and barrenness forms the setting for the personality of me.

* * *

January 16
I feel about forty years old.
Yet I know my feeling is not the feeling of forty years. These are the feelings of miserable, wretched youth.
Every day the atmosphere of a house becomes unbearable, so every day I go out to the sand and the barrenness. It is not cold, neither is it mild. It is gloomy.
I sit for two hours on the ground by the side of a pitiably small narrow stream of water. It is not even a natural stream. I