"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. "Nothing is 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—still she would 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—still she would 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—still she would 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 thousand curses 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: for love 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 thing touches 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, nothing else. If a soul is wearing itself to small shreds by struggling, the more fool it. It is struggling because of things that would never, never struggle 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 its own, 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.