I, Mary MacLane/Chapter 56
THE Necklace which God long ago hung round the white neck of my Soul is composed of little-seeming curses, like precious and semi-precious gems. They are polished smooth as if by age, as if by wear, as if by fingering and as if by brisk industrious rubbing.
The Necklace is at once beautiful and ugly. The gems are in color chiefly blues and greens—with grays, lavenders, drabs and mauves. But mostly blues and greens. They make a circlet of small stones strung at short intervals as if on a strong thin gold wire, with two large tawdry pretty pendants hung in front. One of the pendants is my fertile phase of Weakness and the other my odd encompassing Folly. The smaller stones are seventeen in number and their names and natures are these:
the first is Dishonesty which makes ghosts of half my life.
the second is Pretense, hard and genuine stone, which keeps me from being all-ways sincere even to anyone who knows me and whom I know: who loves me and whom I love.
the third is Fear which makes me who scorn all leonine dangers cringe and crawl for Trifles of life incredibly little.
the fourth is Sensuality which burns and bursts across my Mind, half-missing my Body.
the fifth is Anxiety, strange flawed green stone—by it I worry, tortured and wildly wavering, about the passing hours of my life: where they are going, where they are taking me.
the sixth is Amativeness, extraordinary deep-tinted warm false gem—it makes me love someway amorously some person I meet and fancy: an intimate tragedy, crucial and trivial.
the seventh is Fatigue of the spirit itself, gray sad stone, meaning terrible sensations of age in my young flesh.
the eighth is Incongruity, the sense and feeling of it, round blue stone—it kills what might be art and constructiveness and excellence in me.
the ninth is Acquiescence, worn dull stone—it has kept me all the ages from the salvation of heated luminous strife.
the tenth is Sensitiveness, pale-toned stone—by it the fingers of life touch me too suddenly, too sharply, too tensely to do me the good they might.
the eleventh is Doubt, frail opalescent stone—by it my delight in the sunny Spring wind against my cheek is qualified with dubious surprise: by it I half-disbelieve in moon and stars and in long country roads stretched out solitary, lovely, drenched in sunset.
the twelfth is Self-consciousness, blue-and-green stone—it robs me of the comfort and self-respect of feeling any motive in me to be un-ulterior.
the thirteenth is Introspection, beautiful-beautiful blue-green stone—it pays for its place in beauty but by it I lose the building, the substance, the matter of living.
the fourteenth is Intensity—too vivid vision, too vivid taste for some details of life—little hot-looking cool-feeling stone—by it I undervalue and overvalue, dwell upon surfaces, missing the serene feel and possession of precious solidness.
the fifteenth is Isolation, pale purple stone—it makes me feel never at home, never at ease, never belonging—a subtle insulation—in this sheltered peopled world.
the sixteenth is Bewilderment, mixed-tinted stone—by it I wonder what is truth with truth seeming that moment fluttering soft-plumed wings at my throat.
the seventeenth is—it has no name—the Feel-of-Me, bright blue-green stone, lovely and loathesome—by it I've lost my way, I've felt all and only Me when I might have groped outward, hand and foot, and found a wind-swept path to go in: I was always blurred by Me.
A small Necklace, all dull gleams and unusual tints, strung finely and strongly and beautifully on shining gold. The sweet Soul droops like a wilted lily under even its slight weight. Strong fine rivets hold it firm-clasped and the weight of the two charming imitation pendant-stones keep it gracefully in place. My loved and lovely Soul has worn it through the ages: manacle, shackle.
How long more—God may know but does not tell me.
It's only a Necklace. And my Soul is a Soul!
Even under the frail galling burden of the flesh the Soul of me to-morrow could tear off that Necklace and crumble it to airless nothing.
It does not: but could.