The Story of Mary MacLane | Page 6

like a mountain lioness taking her comfort. I am intensely thankful to the Devil for my two good legs and the full use of them under a short skirt, when, as now, they carry me out beyond the pale of civilization away from tiresome dull people. There is nothing in the world that can become so maddeningly wearisome as people, people, people!
- And so Devil, accept, for my two good legs, my sincerest gratitude. -
I lie on the ground for some minutes and meditate idly. There is a worldful of easy indolent beautiful sensuality in the figure of a young woman lying on the ground under a warm setting sun. A man may lie on the ground--but that is as far as it goes. A man would go to sleep, probably, like a dog or a pig. He would even snore, perhaps--under the setting sun. But then, a man has not a good young feminine body to feel with, to receive into itself the spirit of a warm sun at its setting, on a day in October.--And so let us forgive him for sleeping, and for snoring.
When I again rise to a sitting posture all the brightness has focused itself to the west. It casts a yellow glamor over the earth, a glamor not of joy, nor of pleasure, nor of happiness--but of peace.
The young poplar trees smile gently in the deathly still air. The sage brush and the tall grass take on a radiant quietness. The high hills of Montana, near and distant, appear tender and benign. All is peace--peace. I think of that beautiful oldsong -

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Sweet vale of Avoca! how calm could I rest
In thy bosom of shade -.
But I am too young yet to think of peace. It is not peace that I want. Peace is for forty and fifty. I am waiting for my Experience.
I am awaiting the coming of the Devil.
And now, just before twilight, after the sun has vanished over the edge, is the red, red line on the sky.
There will be days wild and stormy, filled with rain and wind and hail; and yet nearly always at the sun's setting there will be calm--and the red line of sky.
There is nothing in the world quite like this red sky at sunset. It is Glory, Triumph, Love, Fame!
Imagine a life bereft of things, and fingers pointed at it, and eyebrows raised; tossed and bandied hither and yon; crushed, beaten, bled, rent asunder, outraged, convulsed with pain; and then, into this life while still young, the red, red line of sky!
- Why did I cry out against Fate, says the line; why did I rebel against my term of anguish! I now rather rejoice at it; now in my Happiness I remember it only with deep pleasure. -
Think of that wonderful, most admirable, matchless man of steel, Napoleon Bonaparte. He threw himself heavily on the world, and the world has never since been the same. He hated himself, and the world, and God, and Fate, and the Devil. His hatred was his term of anguish.
Then the sun threw on the sky for him a red, red line--the red line of triumph, glory, fame!
And afterward there was the blackness of Night, the blackness that is not tender, not gentle.
But black as our Night may be, nothing can take from us the memory of the red, red sky. "Memory is possession," and so the red sky we have with us always.
Oh Devil, Fate, World--Someone, bring me my red sky! For a little, brief time and I will be satisfied. Bring it to me intensely red, intensely full, intensely alive! Short as you will, but red, red, red!
I am weary--weary, and oh, I want my red sky!
Short as it might be, its memory, its fragrance would stay with me always--always. Bring me, Devil, my red line of sky for one hour and take all, all--everything I possess. Let me keep my Happiness for one short hour and take away all from me forever. I will be satisfied when Night has come and everything is gone.
Oh, I await you, Devil, in a wild frenzy of impatience!
And as I hurry back through the cool darkness of October, I feel this frenzy in every fiber of my fervid woman's-body.

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January 19
I come from a long line of Scotch and Canadian MacLanes. There are a great many MacLanes, but there is usually only one real MacLane in each generation. There is but one who feels again the passionate spirit of the Clans, those barbaric dwellers in the bleak but well-beloved Highlands of Scotland.
I am the real MacLane of my generation. The real MacLane in these later centuries is always a woman. The men of my family never amount to anything worth naming--if one excepts the acme, the zenith, of