Supper at the Gregory’s was almost over when I entered the dining-room: Kate and her mother and father and the boy Tommy were seated at the end of the table, taking their meal: the dozen guests had all finished and disappeared. Mrs. Gregory hastened to rise and Kate got up to follow her mother into the neighbouring kitchen.
“Please don’t get up!” I cried to the girl, “I’d never forgive myself for interrupting you: I’ll wait on myself or on you”, I added smiling, “if you wish anything — ”
She looked at me with hard, indifferent eyes and sniffed scornfully: “If you’ll sit there”, she said, pointing to the other end of the table, “I’ll bring you supper: do you take coffee or tea?”
“Coffee, please,” I answered and took the seat indicated, at once making up my mind to be cold to her while winning the others. Soon the boy began asking me had I ever seen any Indians — “in war-paint and armed, I mean” he added eagerly.
“Yes and shot at them, too”, I replied smiling. Tommy’s eyes gleamed — “Oh tell us!” he panted and I knew I could always count on one good listener!
“I’ve lots to tell, Tommy,” I said, “but now I must eat my supper at express rate or your sister’ll be angry —” I added as Kate came in with some steaming food: she pulled a face and shrugged her shoulders with contempt.
“Where do you preach?” I asked the grey-haired father, “my brother says you’re really eloquent — ”
“Never eloquent,” he replied deprecatingly, “but sometimes very earnest perhaps, especially when some event of the day comes to point the Gospel story — “ he talked like a man of fair education and I could see he was pleased at being drawn to the front.
Then Kate brought me fresh coffee and Mrs. Gregory came in and continued her meal and the talk became interesting, thanks to Mr. Gregory who couldn’t help saying how the fire in Chicago had stimulated Christianity in his hearers and given him a great text. I mentioned casually that I had been in the fire and told of Randolph Street Bridge and the hanging and what else I saw there and on the lakefront that unforgettable Monday morning.
At first Kate went in and out of the room removing dishes as if she were not concerned in the story, but when I told of the women and girls half-naked at the lakeside while the flames behind us reached the zenith in a red sheet that kept throwing flame-arrows ahead and started the ships burning on the water in front of us, she too stopped to listen.
At once I caught my cue, to be liked and admired by all the rest; but indifferent, cold to her. So I rose as if her standing enthralled had interrupted me and said:
“I’m sorry to keep you: I’ve talked too much, forgive me!” and betook myself to my room in spite of the protests and prayers to continue of all the rest. Kate just flushed; but said nothing.
She attracted me greatly: she was infinitely desirable, very good-looking and very young (only sixteen, her mother said later) and her great hazel eyes were almost as exciting as her pretty mouth or large hips and good height. She pleased me intimately but I resolved to win her altogether and felt I had begun well: at any rate she would think about me and my coldness.
I spent the evening in putting out my half-dozen books, not forgetting my medical treatises, and then slept, the deep sleep of sex recuperation.
The next morning I called on Smith again where he lived with the Reverend Mr. Kellogg, who was the Professor of English History in the University, Smith said. Kellogg was a man of about forty, stout and well-kept, with a faded wife of about the same age. Rose, the pretty servant, let me in: I had a smile and warm word of thanks for her: she was astonishingly pretty, the prettiest girl I had seen in Lawrence: medium height and figure with quite lovely face and an exquisite rose-leaf skin! She smiled at me; evidently my admiration pleased her.
Smith, I found, had got books for me, Latin and Greek–English dictionaries, a Tacitus too and Xenophon’s Memorabilia with a Greek grammar: I insisted on paying for them all and then he began to talk. Tacitus he just praised for his superb phrases and the great portrait of Tiberius — “perhaps the greatest historical portrait ever painted in words.” I had a sort of picture of King Edward the Fourth in my romantic head, but didn’t venture to trot it out. But soon, Smith passed to Xenophon and his portrait of Socrates as compared with that of Plato. I listened all ears while he read out a passage from Xenophon, painting Socrates with little human touches: I got him to translate every word literally and had a great lesson, resolving when I got home, I’d learn the whole page by heart. Smith was more than kind to me: he said I’d be able to enter the Junior Class and thus have only two years to graduation. If Willie gave me back even five hundred dollars, I’d be able to get through without care or work.
Then Smith told me how he had gone to Germany after his American University: how he had studied there and then worked in Athens at ancient Greek for another year till he could talk classic Greek as easily as German. “There were a few dozen Professors and students” he said, “who met regularly and talked nothing but classic Greek: they were always trying to make the modern tongue just like the old.” He gave me a translation of “Das Kapital” of Marx, and in fifty ways inspired and inspirited me to renewed effort.
I came back to the Gregorys for dinner and discussed in my own mind whether I should go to Mrs. Mayhew’s as I had promised or work at Greek: I decided to work and then and there made a vow always to prefer work, a vow more honored in the breach, I fear, than in the observance. But at least I wrote to Mrs. Mayhew excusing myself and promising her the next afternoon. Then I set myself to learn by heart the two pages in the “Memorabilia”.
That evening I sat near the end of the table; the head of it was taken by the University Professor of Physics, a dull pedant!
Every time Kate came near me I was ceremoniously polite: “Thank you very much! It is very kind of you!” and not a word more. As soon as I could, I went to my room to work.
Next day at three o’clock I knocked at Mrs. Mayhew’s: she opened the door herself: I cried, “how kind of you” and once in the room drew her to me and kissed her time and time again: she seemed cold and numb.
For some moments she didn’t speak, then: “I feel as if I had passed through fever”, she said, putting her hands through her hair, lifting it in a gesture I was to know well in the days to come: “Never promise again if you don’t come: I thought I should go mad: waiting is a horrible torture! Who kept you? — some girl?” and her eyes searched mine.
I excused myself; but her intensity chilled me. At the risk of alienating my girl-readers, I must confess this was the effect her passion had on me. When I kissed her, her lips were cold. But by the time we had got upstairs, she had thawed: she shut the door after us gravely and began: “See how ready I am for you!” and in a moment she had thrown back her robe and stood before me naked: she tossed the garment on a chair; it fell on the floor: she stooped to pick it up with her bottom to me: I kissed her soft bottom and caught her up by it wih my hand on ‘her sex. She turned her head over her shoulder:
“I’ve washed and scented myself for you, Sir: how do you like the perfume? and how do you like this bush of hair?” and she touched her Mount with a grimace; “I was so ashamed of it as a girl: I used to shave it off: that’s what made it grow so thick. I believe: one dav my mother saw it and made me stop shaving; oh, how ashamed of it I was: it’s animal, ugly: — don’t you hate it? Oh! tell the truth!” she cried, “or rather, don’t; tell me you love it”.
“I love it,” I exclaimed, “because it’s yours!”
“Oh you dear Lover,” she smiled, “you always find the right word, the Battering salve for the sore!”
“Are you ready for me?” I asked, “ripe-ready or shall I kiss you first and caress pussy?”
“Whatever you do, will be right,” she said, “you know I am rotten-ripe, soft and wet for you always.”
All this while I was taking off my clothes: now I too was naked.
“I want you to draw up your knees,” I said: “I want to see the Holy of Holies, the shrine of my idolatry”.
At once she did as I asked. Her legs and bottom were well-shaped without being statuesque; but her clitoris was much more than the average button: it stuck out fully half an inch and the inner lips of her vulva hung down a little below the outer lips. I knew I should see prettier pussies. Kate’s was better shaped, I felt sure, and the heavy, madder-brown lips put me off a little.
The next moment I began caressing her red clitoris with my hot, stiff organ: Lorna sighed deeply once or twice and her eyes turned up; slowly I pushed my prick in to the full and drew it out again to the lips, then in again and I felt her warm love-juice? gush as she drew up her knees even higher to let me further in: “Oh, it’s divine”, she sighed, “better even than the first time”, and when my thrusts grew quick and hard as the orgasm shook me, she writhed down on my prick as I withdrew, as if she would hold it, and as my seed spirted into her, she bit my shoulder and held her legs tight as if to keep my sex in her. We lay a few moments bathed in bliss. Then as I began to move again to sharpen the sensation, she half rose on her arm: “Do you know”, she said, “I dreamed yesterday of getting on you and doing it to you: do you mind, if I try — “ “No, indeed!” I cried, “go to it: I am your prey!” She got up smiling and straddled kneeling across me and put my cock into her pussy and sank down on me with a deep sigh. She tried to move up and down on my organ and at once came up too high and had to use her hand to put my Tommy in again; then she sank down on it as far as possible: “I can sink down all right”, she cried smiling at the double meaning, “but I cannot rise so well! What fools we women are, we can’t master even the act of love; we are so awkward!”
‘Your awkwardness, however, excites me,” I said.
“Does it?” she cried, “then I’ll do my best”, and for some time she rose and sank rhythmically; but as her excitement grew, she just let herself lie on me and wiggled her bottom till we both came. She was flushed and hot and I couldn’t help asking her a question:
“Does your excitement grow to a spasm of pleasure?” I asked, “or do you go on getting more and more excited continually?”
“I get more and more excited,” she said, “till the other day with you for the first time in my life the pleasure became unbearably intense and I was hysterical, you wonder-lover!”
Since then I have read lascivious books in halt a dozen languages and they all represent women coming to an orgasm in the act, as men do, followed by a period of content; which only shows that the books are all written by men and ignorant, insensitive men at that. The truth is hardly one married woman in a thousand is ever brought to her highest pitch of feeling: usually, just when she begins to feel, her husband goes to sleep. If the majority of husbands satisfied their wives occasionally, the Woman’s Revolt would soon move to another purpose: women want above all a lover who loves to excite them to the top of their bent. As a rule men through economic con ditions marry so late that they have already half exhausted their virile power before they marry. And when they marry young they are so ignorant and so self-centered that they imagine their wives must be satisfied when they are. Mrs. Mayhew told me that her husband had never excited her really. She denied that she had ever had any acute pleasure from his embraces.
“Shall I make you hysterical again!” I asked, out of boyish vanity, “I can, you know!”
“You mustn’t tire vourself! she warned, “my husband taught me long ago that when a woman tires a man, he gets a distaste for her and I want your love, your desire, dear, a thousand times more even that the delight you give me — ”
“Don’t be afraid”, I broke in, “you are sweet, you couldn’t tire me: turn sideways and put your left leg up, and I’ll just let my sex caress your clitoris back and forth gently; every now and then I’ll let it go right in until our hairs meet.” I kept on this game perhaps half an hour until she first sighed and sighed and then made awkward movements with her pussy which I sought to divine and meet as she wished when suddenly she cried:
“Oh! Oh! hurt me, please! hurt me, or I’ll bite you! Oh God, oh, oh” — panting, breathless till again the tears poured down!
“You darling!” she sobbed, “how you can love! Could you go on forever!”
For answer I put her hand on my sex: “Just as naughty as ever”, she exclaimed, “and I am choking, breathless, exhausted! Oh, I’m sorry”, she went on, “but we should get up, for I don’t want my help to know or guess: niggers talk — ”
I got up and went to the windows; one gave on the porch but the other directly on the garden. “What are you looking at?” she asked coming to me. “I was just looking for the best way to get out if ever we were .surprised”, I said, “if we leave this window open i can always drop into the garden and get away quickly.”
“You would hurt yourself’, she cried.
“Not a bit of it”, I answered, “I could drop half as far again without injury, the only thing is, I must have boots on and trousers, or those thorns of yours would give me gip!”. . . . “You boy”, she exclaimed laughing: “I think after your strength and passion. it is your boyishness I love best” — and she kissed me again and again.
“I must work”, I warned her, “Smith has given me a lot to do.” “Oh, my dear”, she said, her eyes filling with tears, “that means you won’t come tomorrow or”, she added hastily, “even the day after.”
“I can’t possibly”, I declared, “I have a good week’s work in front of me; but you know I’ll come the first afternoon I can make myself free and I’ll let you know the day before, sweet!” She looked at me with tearful eyes and quivering lips: “love is its own torment!” she sighed while I dressed and got away quickly.
The truth was I was already satiated: her passion held no tiling new in it: she had taught me all she could and had nothing more in her, I thought; while Kate was prettier and much younger and a virgin. Why shouldn’t I confess it! It was Kate’s virginity attracted me irresistibly: I pictured her legs to myself, her hips and thighs and her sex: she wouldn’t have a harsh bush of hairs; already I felt the silken softness of her triangle: would it be brown or have strands of gold in it like her hair!
The next few days passed in reading the books Smith had lent me, especially “Das Kapital”, the second book of which, with its frank exposure of the English factory system, was simply enthralling: I read some of Tacitus, too, and Xenophon with a crib and learned a page of Greek every day by heart, and whenever I felt tired of work, I laid siege to Kate. That is, I continued my plan of campaign: one day I called her brother into my room and told Mm true stories of buffalo hunting and of fighting with Indians; another day I talked theology with the father or drew the dear mother out to tell of her girlish days in Cornwall: “I never thought I’d come down to work like this in my old age; but then children take all and give little; I was no better as a girl; I remember” — and I got a scene of her brief courtship!
I had won the whole household long before I said a word to Kate beyond the merest courtesies. A week or so passed like this till one day I held them all after dinner while I told the story of our raid into Mexico. I took care, of course, that Kate was out of the room. Towards the end of my tale, Kate came in: at once I hastened to the end abruptly and after excusing myself, went into the garden.
Half an hour later I saw she was in my room tidying up; I took thought and then went up the outside steps. As soon as I saw her, I pretended surprise: “I beg your pardon”, I said, “I’ll just get a book and go at once; please don’t let me disturb you!” and I pretended to look for the book.
She turned sharply and looked at me fixedly: “Why do you treat me like this?” she burst out, shaking with indignation.
“Like what?” I repeated, pretending surprise. You know quite well”, she went on angrily, hastily: at first I thought it was chance, unintentional; now I know you mean it. Whenever you’re talking or telling a story, as soon as I come into the room you stop and hurry away as if you hated me. Why? Why?” she cried with quivering lips, “What have I done to make you dislike me so?” and the tears gathered in her lovely eyes.
I felt the moment had come: I put my hands on her shoulders and looked with my whole soul into her eyes: “Did you never guess, Kate, that it might be love, not hate?” I asked.
“No, no!” she cried, the tears falling, “love doesn’t act like that!”
“Fear to miss love does, I can assure you”, I cried, “I thought at first that you disliked me and already I had begun to care for you”, (my arms went round her waist and I drew her to me) “to love you and w............