“Isn't that curious,” he said. “My own mother and father are here tonight, and I've a similar impulse to take you to them. But let's resist, Clarissa. I don't think it will matter, one way or another…”
A shadow flitted across his face. Strange thing, that shadow, in conjunction with something else. His skin, you see, was quite bronzed-he evidently spent a good deal of time in the outdoors-but he suddenly seemed to pale beneath the bronze, which I either saw with my own eyes or somehow otherwise discerned it. In any case, the shadow and the paling gave me pause. Something was amiss, and I'd no idea what it was. I was frightened. “Hugh,” I said. “Yes?” He gazed down at me with that special fondness that alone is love, and I knew I wanted to erect a barrier between us and the rest of the world-I wanted to protect him from any threat, and I felt his feeling toward me was exactly that, as well. “What is it, Hugh?” I asked.
He looked at me quizzically. “What is what?” “Hugh, I want you to know there's nothing-nothing in the world-that you need conceal from me.” He grinned lightly, as if there were a little sailboat on his lips. “What about all those things we conceal from ourselves, Clarissa? What are we to do with them?” I gazed at him anxiously. “I don't know,” I said. “Well,” he said, “no matter.” “No, it is a matter.” Hugh bade a passing footman pause and, from the tray he bore, Hugh took two shallow glasses of champagne and directed me to a small alcove where for the time being we could be out of the restless ebb and flow of the guests.
His own restless eyes challenged mine. “Clarissa, I know it's been said countless times before, and felt innumerable times before that, but it does seem strange to me that I seem to have known you for a terribly long time and that I can say anything at all to you or do anything at all with you…” “Anything, My Lord,” I said quietly. “Anything.” We gazed at each other for what seemed like split infinities, the brilliance of the gaslight dimmed in the alcove so that I really could not discern the feverishness that had overtaken his features, but the heat of it was somehow transmitted to me.
So-I touched his hand. It seemed terribly dry, terribly cool-and listless. Again I was frightened. We finished the champagne at hand and Hugh brought us two more glasses. We were beginning to chuckle immoderately, even though I felt that fright in the background.
“If there's enough of this,” Hugh said, gesturing at the champagne, “then even those things we conceal from ourselves become of small consequence.” “Is that altogether true?” I asked quietly.
He smiled wryly then. “No, not really. And, you know, I don't mind in the least your taking issue, Clarissa…” For the moment, no one was passing the alcove. Hugh drew me to him, held me close, laid his cheek next to mine and then kissed me-kissed me briefly, almost flutteringly, almost-the analogy actually occurred to me then-almost like a moth attracted to bright flame, the moth destined to die… “Oh, Hugh,” I said. “Darling Hugh.”
“Sweet Clarissa,” he said. I hesitated, but then I felt it terribly urgent that I know, even though I knew it awkward to ask.
“Hugh…” “Yes?” “What are you concealing from yourself?” “Clarissa, how could I possibly know?” “I've a sense that you do.” He laughed. “We're quarreling.” I blushed.
“Hugh, really. There's something you're hiding, and I must know what it is.” “Given your presumption,” he said, “why must you know?”
“I might be able to do something about it.” “If there is anything one can do about it,” he said lightly. “Don't you think I ought to be the judge of that?” “Not exclusively,” I said. “Not any more.” He gazed at me a long time quite impassively. There was no clue on his features as to what he might be thinking or feeling. I felt baffled, frustrated, choked off. Finally Hugh said, “There's nothing particularly that you ought to know.” “All right!” I said testily. I turned away from him. Daringly he placed his hands on my breasts and brought me around again and kissed me squarely, heavily, sensually. There was no mothlike fluttering, no brevity. It was a long kiss, done regardless of who might be walking by the alcove, and in doing so he brought my body hard against his.
Despite the intervening textures, the thicknesses of my silks and satins, and those of Hugh's tight trousers, I registered the ridge of the man's generative organ- and a vertigo momentarily afflicted me. I recognized that the organ was puny in diameter but that the extent of it was spectacular-suitable, I told myself in a conceit, to coil as a hempen rope, except that its rigidity would disarm such an arrangement. Again I thought of the equipment of certain dogs… My eyes widened, I held my lips away from Hugh and put him at arm's length. I peered down at his thighs. “Really?” I said. “I can't quite believe it.” “Skeptical creatures, virgins,” he said, grinning. “You might just as damned well know,” I said, “that I don't subscribe to that malaise.” He became mock-serious.
“Then you've exercised with a long series of men,” he said, resting his chin on the knuckles of his hand. I shook my head violently. I had to take him seriously-my wit failed me where my own body, and his, was concerned. “No,” I said miserably. “No. There was only one, really, and he was a long time ago…” I gazed down at my folded hands. “And I didn't love him,” I added, relying on a whisper. “You needn't feel guilty,” Hugh said. “I shan't tell a soul.” I stamped my foot. “I don't feel at all guilty,” I said, “and you can tell anybody you please-” “I've made you angry, Clarissa. I am sorry.” “I wish you wouldn't be, Hugh. I can express any feelings I like to you, but that won't affect my love.
I could hate you but never stop loving you. I might wish you dead but that would never affect my actions in seeing to it that you stayed alive forever…” “Eyes the color of emeralds,” he mused. “Hair the color of Charon's calling. The mantle of the skeleton pure milk…” He rested a hand on my arse, and my knees began to shake. His voice sank to just above a hush. “May I milk you, sweet Clarissa?
Clarissa of the black and green and white-” “Yes,” I said raspingly, “you may milk me. You may pull at me, knead me, roll me on the floor-you may hang me, if you-if that gives you pleasure…” I went on in that idiotic fashion until I ran out of all the violent verbs I could think of. Then, anticlimactically, I appended in something close to a whimper, “Please take me to your rooms tonight, Hugh… I will make excuses to my mother and father.” He trembled visibly. “No,” he said, paling. “As beautiful as you are, Clarissa-no. I can't-don't you understand?” “What's there to understand?” I said dully, wearily, hopelessly. “When you say that, Hugh, it's obvious you don't want me-not really. There's something repelling you-” “That's not true,” he said. The other guests, in their rounds, were smiling at us now as they passed, as if to say, “What a handsome couple-that enchanting black-haired beauty with that slim blond young man who might have just come out of Gainsborough.” Or Beardsley, possibly, I thought, except that the latter might imply decay, rot, putrescence-and I was appalled that I was thinking in such a fashion. Was there something I was sensing and could not give consciousness to? I didn't know, not at that point.
“I want you,” he said, adding, “more than anything I've ever wanted. I am not repelled an iota, Clarissa.” “Then why won't you take me to your quarters? Is there another woman there? Or another man?” I put in anxiously. Viscount Kinsteares was suddenly moved to raucous laughter. “I do have a man there,” he said finally. “My valet, Heeg- Aaron Heeg. You could not want a more puritanical creature…” “He would not approve of me, Hugh. I think I understand, but I must point out that there must be moral agreement between master and man before third parties, such as women, can appear comfortably on the scene.” His features clouded. “I'm afraid, Clarissa, you understand very little, but I assure you that's not your doing. It's mine.” As it turned out, I let Hugh Kinsteares put me off. After all, I did not want to take the chance of his not seeing me at all, which he implied might be the alternative to my insistence that he take me to his flat. I should not have let him put me off-his roots would not have grown so deep within me, nor would the final agony have been so catastrophic. We went everywhere together-everywhere, that is, where we were not likely to be noticed, and we met at rendezvous: which our respective parents would not be likely to have much knowledge of. They had no idea Hugh and I were seeing each other regularly or irregularly, and would never suspect, for example, that we would spend long hours at the British Museum with the Elgin Marbles-the fabulous statuary Lord Elgin had brought back with him from Greece. Or that, when spring came, we enjoyed-mainly because we were together-the fireworks at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens; and, when the summer was almost upon us, punting on the Thames. The summer precipitated matters. I was scheduled, of course, to accompany my mother and father to our retreat in Cornwall.