“Well, then, they didn't do it, Alice.”
“No, sir. But he has a feel of her and she of him. Bertha, she's heard them at it several times. Tells him to keep his pecker up, she does, keep it in reserve for her. She teases him to madness, the poor boy.”
“She made it up, you fool, all for a sovereign,” Caroline opined.
“Perhaps,” I said. I believed the first half-not the second part. It was not in Lucy's character at all. One goes on instinct in these things.
Besides-she would have cried and cried… And Alice had not mentioned that.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Frequently in the past weeks while I have been at my scribblings, my emendations, crossings-out, addings and subtractings of words and phrases that I thought more felicitous than others, I have been reminded by Caroline that on no account must I omit that tale of Miss Miriam Crampton-Hythe. I had not intended to, of course. My notes had not yet reached that point, but on sufferance, as it were, I tell it now.
The lady was thirty-eight, and I confess that of late I have had as much a penchant for maiden ladies of well-matured curves as I have for the sloe-eyed, winsome girls who are still brought occasionally to the divine sacrifice upon a couch downstairs or in our bed.
The truth of it is that we have acquired quite a reputation in modulating the ways of these delicious things. I shall be chided at saying that and asked why I do not put it more plainly.
“More plainly is not how I wish to put it,” I retort. I have even yet to catch the touch of things; I say this with due modesty. There is positively no describing of the transition of the hand from a stockinged thigh to the frilled leg of the drawers above. Others, I find (for I have occasionally haunted the bookshops in Holywell Street, in London), do not bother with such things. They merely say, “I fucked the girl,” or “felt her tits.” The effort is enormous, I confess, to emulate, in such congregated letters as form words, the sensations of the flesh, the bouncing of warm titties underneath one's chest, the sometimes fretful wrigglings of the legs, the clutchings of one's shoulders that ensue, the pantings from pursed lips.
“Let us tickle up her bottom,” Caroline or Adelaide will often say to me on viewing a new prospect. Such invariably are around eighteen or so, and ripe for it. I am ever amazed at the hoards of words, of dancing images, that crowd into my mind when I hear such. What a perfect delight it is to uncover the pale bottom of a squealing girl! The enchantment is ever new, whatever one may think of it in terms of dull morality.
I stray again, you see, am like a man who one day would eat chocolate cake and another day prefers an orange sponge, creamfilled. A hedonist-yes, I confess it, but will stray no more and will come to Miriam.
In the Spring prior to our meeting her, Miriam apparently had cause to dismiss her two servants and took on another pair-a general house-man in his early thirties, and a maid of younger aspect. I do not doubt that the pair were skilled at reading character in their employers. Miriam appeared to them a figure of considerable loneliness, and isolated in a lonely house. Truth to tell-and as I later read the matter-there was an element of self-flagellation in the lady. In the new parlance of our time, it is lately called “masochism,” though I do not take happily to the word and find it foreign.
Whatever may have been the cause of Miriam's strange submissions, a telling element-as she described-was the apparent devotion that Carrie, the maid, accorded her almost from her first evening there. Even the houseman, Charlie, gazed upon her with a seeming awed devotion- and this in utter counterpoint, I say, to the general indolence and remoteness of the pair she had dismissed, so she reported.
Being thus flattered and cosseted, the pair seemed more to her as cousins rather than mere servants. Hot chocolate was brought to her the moment she awoke, even though she had not ordered it. Her pillows were plumped up; she was made comfortable. Toast that was always warm and well-buttered was presented to her lips.
“The valet would enter my bedroom with the tray while Carrie fussed about me. It was unseemly, of course, yet I permitted it; such was the general air of comforting,” said Miriam, for it is best that I should let her be the narrator in great part. “Being attired only in my nightgown, I would sometimes feel his eyes dwelling on the prominences of my bosom. He would gaze at me gravely, as if with adoration, then retire. A sigh would accompany his exit, and then Carrie, too, would sigh.
“I asked her one day what ailed them and if they were not well enough treated, for the sighs became abundant.”
“'Madame-how can you say such? We cannot do enough for you. Perhaps it is unseemly to speak of affection between servants and Mistress, but we both adore you so. My most fervent prayer is that upon that sad day when I come to leave your service, I may kiss you once.'
“'Carrie, what a strange request!' I said. A vaguely uncomfortable and yet curious feeling seized me. So softly and in such an enamoured manner were the words put that I uttered no remonstrance as she sat upon the bed beside me and gave me an utterly winsome look as if to beg my pardon.
“I cannot help myself, Madame. Were I to kiss you now, would you dismiss me? Pray tell me?'
“My tongue seemed cloved to the roof of my mouth. It was the most astonishing question that had ever been put to me. I endeavoured to speak, but thereat she took the tray from across my lap where I sat in bed and deposited it on a table at the side without rising. Foolishly I thought her to be preparing for me to get up, but in the next instant her hand took hold of my hair at the back and with a horrified cry I felt my head being forced down into the pillow.
“'First I am going to kiss you and feel your breasts. Then I am going to have you,' she declared.
“I opened my mouth to shriek. That was evidently what she wished for. Her lips descended savagely on my own while her free hand thrust down inside my nightgown and began to fondle my naked bosom. Ah, how I heaved and struggled, but so strong was the impression of her mouth over my own that I could not escape it. Her tongue had the temerity to enter my mouth. While so doing, she drew out her hand, leaving my breasts tingling from her touch, thrust the bedclothes down to my ankles and then insinuated her fingers beneath the hem of my nightgown until they had reached first my thighs and then my…”
“Your cunny, darling-say it plain,” said Caroline, then urged her to go on.
“My cunny, yes. I bucked, I tried to kick. The wicked girl was on me like a tigress then. Scooping her black dress up, she fought her way between my flailing legs and brought her thing… her cunny… rubbing up to mine the while she seized my wrist and held them right above my head.
“I moaned her name and told her to get off or I would scream for Charlie.
“'Madam, if you do, I swear he'll come in with his trousers off,' she laughed and ground her oily lovelips fiercely then to mine, kissing my mouth, my nose, my eyes until I knew not whether it was day or night, whether I dreamed it or whether it was real. I knew myself to be succumbing and I hated it. The friction of her pubic hairs to mine excited me. I felt her button like a tiny bud against my own.
“I pleaded with her, sobbed, and worked my legs in vain. I tried to heave her off, but still she clung.
“'Give in to me,' she whispered.-'Never, no' said I, but already the sensations of this amourous combat had fired my veins against my will. My sobs grew weaker and I let her take my lips more easily. The moisture between our mouths, the flickerings of her tongue, excited me as did the rubbings of our most intimate parts, for Carrie-like most servants-wore no drawers. The girl was agile, twisting all about. Our cunnies oiled the more we writhed. I had a feeling in my belly then and in between my legs.