We sway to the couch and lie for a minute, bound by our burning arms, breasts crushed together.
I release myself and begin to weave a mesh of kisses over her: the eyes, the hair, the perfect mouth, the breasts that have no shadow of fault, past the tiny coiling navel where the skin is increasingly sensitive, so quivering more with every kiss. (I always want to call a woman I love a harp.) At last the kiss that seals them all! Her body is convulsed with the intensity of the sensation.
Stressful little moans come from her throat blended with endearing names.
Her hands caress me frantically. We draw closer together. Her mouth finds my sensitive places. Incredible pleasure. Somewhere in my mind there is this thought: What a beautiful piece of work a sculptor who dared would make of this perverse intertwining of two figures in lesbic passion! Both bodies are fair enough, firm and young and supple-muscled. It must have been done by the ancients.
Cool rills of perspiration create separate tiny thrills where they traverse the skin. The quivering of her limbs, the bitter salts of her body on my tongue and lips, the sweet pressure and motion of her mouth, shake me into a scarlet blindness. The mounting sensations make me think of melodies I have heard, growing and growing to a crescendo and ending with the sudden silence that symbolizes the crisis.
We seem to flutter down from a far height and lie exquisitely quivering with the pleasure of perfect passion.
I raise myself a little and, gently now, lay little kisses along the limbs, the hips, upward over the breasts, across the throat back to the lips and grateful eyes. She is still-like a marble girl. I barely know her until she circles me with her arms and whispers, "Lover! Sweet, little burning lover!"
I can think of no name to call her that would harmonize with the reverence that fills me for her beauty and the intensity of the pleasures we have enjoyed. I kneel beside her and kiss her hands.
It seems to be almost a law that we love those who respond to us and worship all that gives us pleasure-pleasure in its very widest sense.
Vice-! The thought amuses me. There are only vicious people.
Marguerite rises, goes and pours out something, then returning, crouches beside me, and holds up one of her little glasses to my lips with enchanting grace.
Then we go and lie on the bed, she bringing Verlaine for me to read to her, while she strokes my body, resting her cheek against one of my breasts.
If the spirit of Verlaine lurked anywhere in the room, I am certain there was approval in its nebulous heart.
And Regina on the morrow-Regina!
CHAPTER VI
'Tis a very good world to live in,
To lend or to spend or to give in;
But to beg or to borrow or get a man's own, 'Tis the very worst world that ever was known.
It was through my sojourn in South Africa in 1896 that I came to know the world of modern finance, where millions sometimes are made or lost in a day by speculation. It was in Johannesburg that I first got acquainted with this characteristic of the time.
Long before meeting him, I had heard of Barney Barnato: every one in the Rand Club knew the sturdy little middle-aged man, who was said to be worth twenty millions and was considered by many to be the true rival of Rhodes and Beit. Ten or twelve years before he had landed in Kimberley with the proverbial five pound note. How had he made such a fortune in so short a tune? His presence and speech were against him; he was commonly dressed and spoke like an uneducated Cockney, dropped his "h's" and made grammatical howlers in almost every sentence. Rhodes after all was "someone," while Barnato was plainly a rank "outsider," to use the ordinary English phrase.
It was said of Barney that in early days at Kimberley he had got a living by showing off as a fighter: he would put a square of carpet on the ground and bet that no one could stand up to him on it for five minutes. One rough miner after the other used to take on the job, but they soon found that little Barnato was really hard to beat, and they usually lost their money and took a good deal of punishment into the bargain.
Barnato soon bought claim after claim in Kimberley, and working as he had fought, with all his heart, quickly became one of the richest men in the camp.
From the beginning he was inconceivably mean: he never paid for a drink- always pretended that he had no loose cash about him. A story was told of him that always seemed to me to paint him to the life. Going to the Kimberley races once, he answered some jest made at his expense by saying that he would bet he could make a thousand pounds before the evening.
Several people bet with him. When he got to the race course, Barnato went up to a woman who was selling lemonade and drinks and asked her how much she expected to make during the day. She said, "Perhaps ten pounds."
"I'll give you twenty," he said, "for your stock, and five for yourself-is it a deal?"
The woman consented and Barnato began to sell her stock, and he did it with such humor and such understanding of almost every miner who came up that he soon had a great crowd about him and sold out at fabulous prices, getting higher and higher sums toward the end of the day; and finally achieved his aim and made his clear thousand pounds, besides the bets he had also won.
His common cockney English endeared him to the ordinary miner, but his knowledge of life and men was extraordinary; his energy extraordinary, too, as was his self-confidence. I have told the story how Rhodes and Beit bought him out at Kimberley; but Barnato soon established himself in Johannesburg as one of the great mine owners and made another huge fortune. Yet he only gambled when he was sure to win. I was once at a game of baccarat in his house where nearly a quarter of a million changed hands in two hours while Barney, having shed his boots, dozed on a sofa in the room.
I remember his telling me once that he was worth twenty-five millions. "My boy," he added, "I have made three millions in one day." I always thought that that was the day when he sold his claims in Kimberley to Rhodes and Beit.
I am giving no portrait of him, and yet I liked Barney Barnato, for he was really likable in spite of his meanness about petty sums. He told me one day how he had given one hundred pounds for his first claim in the diamond mine of Kimberley: he worked day and night at it with his niggers, and when he got down, a month later, to the blue ground where the stones were found, he made ten thousand pounds in the first hour. "Thirty good diamonds," he said.
"I could hardly believe my ears when I was offered eight thousand pounds for them; but I didn't sell them till I got the round ten thousand-about half their real worth, I should think."
"The week after, I bought three adjoining claims and since then my bank balance has grown pretty rapidly; I'm not complaining. I remember on my first day on the carpet in Kimberley, I had to fight like a wildcat with a big miner, and all for five quid-a change, eh?"
Every one knows how Barney Barnato bucked against the falling market in Johannesburg, brought about by Rhodes's schemes. He was said to have lost a million. I met him once near the end when he told me how Rhodes and Beit had kept him out and how he had bought on a f ailing market and lost his money. "My dear Barney," I said, "one of these days you will make another fortune. What's a million to you?"
"A million!" he snarled, "A million to me-it's ten hundred thousand pounds, you-!" There was something mad in his glare. It suddenly came to me that Barney had worn his mind out, and when he hurried into an inner room, muttering to himself, I felt sure that if he didn't soon win to self-control, he would come to grief. I perhaps read Barney correctly because I, too, had suffered from nerves and knew how essential it was to cure them. I may say here that constant change of scene and companionship, and the determination to take life easy for awhile are the best cures; but poor Barnato stuck to his work till the last.