THIS evening in the slow-deepening dusk I sat by my window and spent an hour in passionate conversation with the Devil. I fancied I sat, with my hands folded and my feet crossed, on an ugly but comfortable red velvet sofa in some nondescript room.
And the fascinating man-devil was seated near in a frail willow chair.
He had willingly come to pass the time of day with me. He was in a good-humored mood, and I amused and interested him. And for myself, I was extremely glad to see the Devil sitting there and felt vividly as always. But I sat quietly enough.
The fascinating man-devil has fascinating steel-gray eyes, and they looked at me with every variety of glance—from quizzical to tender.
It were easy—oh, how easy—to follow those eyes to the earth's ends.
The Devil leaned back in the frail willow chair and looked at me.
"And now that I am here, Mary MacLane," he said, "what would you?"
"I want you to marry me," I replied at once. "And I want it more than ever anything was wanted since the world began."
"So? I am flattered," said the Devil, and smiled gently, enchantingly.
At that smile I was ravished and transported, and a spasm of some rare emotion thrilled all the little nerves in me from my heels to my forehead. And yet the smile was not for me but rather somewhat at my expense.
"But," he went on, "you must know it is not my custom to marry women."
"I am sure it is not," I agreed, "and I do not ask to be peculiarly favored. Anything that you may give me, however little, will constitute marriage for me."
"And would marriage itself be so small a thing?" asked the Devil.
"Marriage," I said, "would be a great, oh, a wonderful thing, and the most beautiful of all. I want what is good according to my lights, and because I am a genius my lights are many and far-reaching."
"What do your lights tell you?" the man-devil inquired.
"They tell me this: that nothing in the world matters unless love is with it, and if love is with it and it seems to the virtuous a barren and infamous thing, still—because of the love—it partakes of the very highest."
"And have you the courage of your convictions?" he said.
"If you offered me," I replied, "that which to the blindly virtuous seems the worst possible thing, it would yet be for me the red, red line on the sky, my heart's desire, my life, my rest. You are the Devil. I have fallen in love with you."
"I believe you have," said the Devil. "And how does it feel to be in love?"
Sitting composedly on the ugly red velvet sofa, with my hands folded and my feet crossed, I attempted to define that wonderful feeling.
"It feels," I said, "as if sparks of fire and ice crystals ran riot in my veins with my blood; as if a thousand pin-points pierced my flesh, and every other point a point of pleasure, and every other point a point of pain; as if my heart were laid to rest in a bed of velvet and cotton-wool but kept awake by sweet violin arias; as if milk and honey and the blossoms of the cherry flowed into my stomach and then vanished utterly; as if strange, beautiful worlds lay spread out before my eyes, alternately in dazzling light and complete darkness with chaotic rapidity; as if orris-root were sprinkled in the folds of my brain; as if sprigs of dripping-wet sweet-fern were stuck inside my hot linen collar; as if—well, you know," I ended suddenly.
"Very good," said the Devil. "You are in love. And you say you are in love with me."
"Oh, with you!" I exclaimed with suppressed violence. The effort to suppress this violence cost me pounds of nerve-power. But I kept my hands still quietly folded and my feet crossed, and it was a triumph of self-control. "I want you to marry me," I added despairingly.
"And you think," he inquired, "that apart from the opinion of the wise world, it would be a suitable marriage?"
"A suitable marriage!" I exclaimed. "I hate a suitable marriage! No, it would not be suitable. It would be Bohemian, outlandish, adorable!"
The Devil smiled.
This time the smile was for me. And, oh, the long, old, overpowering enchantment of the smile of steel-gray eyes!—the steel-gray eyes of the Devil!
It is one of those things that one remembers.
"You are a beautifully frank, little feminine creature," he said. "Frankness is in these days a lost art."
"Yes, I am beautifully frank," I replied. "Out of countless millions of the Devil's anointed I am one to acknowledge myself."
"But withal you are not true," said the man-devil.
"I am a liar," I answered.
"You are a liar, surely," he said, "but you stay with your lies. To stay with anything is Truth."
"It is so," I replied. "Nevertheless I am false as woman can be."
"But you know what you want."
"Oh, yes," I said, "I know what I want. I want you to marry me."
"And why?"
"Because I love you."
"That seems an excellent reason, certainly," said the Devil.
"I want to be happy for once in my life," I said. "I have never been happy. And if I could be happy once for one gold day, I should be satisfied, and I should have that to remember in the long years."
"And you are a strangely pathetic little animal," said the Devil.
"I am pathetic," I said. I clasped my hands very tightly. "I know that I am pathetic: and for this reason I am the most terribly pathetic of all in the world."
"Poor little Mary MacLane!" said the Devil. He leaned toward me. He looked at me with those strange, wonderfully tender, divine steel-gray eyes. "Poor little Mary MacLane!" he said again in a voice that was like the Gray Dawn. And the eyes—the glance of the steel-gray eyes entered into me and thrilled me through and through. It frightened and soothed me. It racked and comforted me. It ravished me with inconceivable gentleness so that I bent my head down and sobbed as I breathed.
"Don't you know, you little thing," said the man-devil, softly-compassionate, "your life will be very hard for you always—harder when you are happy than when you go in Nothingness?"
"I know—I know. Nevertheless I want to be happy," I sobbed. I felt a rush of an old thick, heavy anguish. "It is day after day. It is week after week. It is month after month. It is year after year. It is only time going and going. There is no joy. There is no lightness of heart. It is only the passing of days. I am young and all alone. Always I have been alone: when I was five and lay in the damp grass and tortured myself to keep back tears; and through the long, cold, lonely years till now—and now all the torture does not keep back the tears. There is no one—nothing—to help me bear it. It is more than pathetic when one is nineteen in all young, new feeling and sees Nothing anywhere—except long, dark, lonely years behind her and before her. No one that loves me and long, long years."
I stopped. The gray eyes were fixed on me. Oh, they were the steel-gray eyes!—and they had a look in them. The long, bitter pageant of my Nothingness mingled with this look and the coming together of these was like the joining of two halves.
I do not know which brings me the deeper pain—the loneliness and weariness of my sand and barrenness, or the look in the steel-gray eyes. But as always I would gladly leave all and follow the eyes to the world's end. They are like the sun's setting. And they are like the pale, beautiful stars. And they are like the shadows of earth and sky that come together in the dark.
"Why," asked the Devil, "are you in love with me?"
"You know so much—so much," I answered. "I think it must be that. The wisdom of the spheres is in your brain. And so, then, you must understand me. Because no one understands all these smouldering feelings my greatest agony is. You must need know the very finest of them. And your eyes! Oh, it's no matter why I'm in love with you. It's enough that I am. And if you married me I would make you happier than you are."
"I am not happy at all," said the man-devil. "I am merely contented."
"Contentment," I said, "in place of Happiness, is a horrid feeling. Not one of your countless advocates loves you. They all serve you faithfully and well, but with it all they hate you. Always people hate their tyrant. You are my tyrant, but I love you absorbingly, madly. Happiness for me would be to live with you and see you made happy by the overwhelming flood of my love."
"It interests me," he said. "You are a most interesting feminine philosopher—and your philosophy is after my own heart, in its lack of virtue. It is to be hoped you are not 'intellectual,' which is an unpardonable trait."
"Indeed, I am not," I replied. "Intellectual people are detestable. They have pale faces and bad stomachs and bad livers, and if they are women their corsets are sure to be too tight, and probably black, and if they are men they are soft, which is worse. And they never by any chance know what it means to walk all day in the rain, or to roll around on the ground in the dirt. And, above all, they never fall in love with the Devil."
"They are tiresome," the Devil agreed. "If I were to marry you how long would you be happy?"
"For three days."
"You are wise," he said. "You are wonderfully wise in some things, though you are still very young."
"I am wise," I answered. "Being of womankind and nineteen years, I am more than ready to give up absolutely everything that is good in the world's sight, though they are contemptible things enough in my own, for love. All for love. Therefore I am wise. Also I am a fool."
"Why are you a fool?"
"Because I am a genius."
"Your logic is good logic," said the Devil.
"My logic—oh, I don't care anything about logic," I said with sudden complete weariness. I felt buried and wrapped round and round in weariness. Everything lost its color. Everything turned cold.
"At this moment," said the Devil, "you feel as if you cared for nothing at all. But if I chose I could bring about a transfiguration. I could kiss your soul into Paradise."
I answered, "Yes," without emotion.
"An hour," said the Devil, "is not very long. But we know it is long enough to suffer in, and go mad in, and live in, and be happy in. And the world contains a great many hours. Now I am leaving you. It is likely that I may never come again, and it is likely that I may come again."
It all vanished. I still sat by my window in the gloom. "It is dreary," I said.
But yes. The world contains a great many hours.