Chapter XI.

I meant to write nothing but the truth in these pages; yet now I’m

conscious that my memory has played a trick on me: it is an artist in

what painters call foreshortening: events, that is, which took months to

happen, it crushes together into days, passing, so to speak, from

mountain top to mountain top of feeling, and so the effect of passion is

heightened by the partial elimination of time. I can do nothing more

than warn my readers that in reality some of the love-passages I shall

describe were separated by weeks and sometimes by months, that the

nuggets of gold were occasional “finds” in a desert.

After all, it cannot matter to my “gentle readers” and my good readers

will have already divined the fact, that when you crush eighteen years

into nine chapters, you must leave out all sorts of minor happenings

while recording chiefly the important—fortunately these carry the

message.

It was with my knowledge as with my passions: day after day I worked

feverishly: whenever I met a passage such as the building of the bridge

in Caesar, I refused to burden my memory with the dozens of new words

because I thought, and still think, Latin comparatively unimportant: the

nearest to a great man the Latins ever produced being Tacitus or

Lucretius. No sensible person would take the trouble to master a

language in order to gain acquaintance with the second-rate. But new

words in Greek were precious to me like new words in English and I used

to memorize every passage studded with them save choruses like that of

the birds in Aristophanes, where he names birds unfamiliar to me in

life.

Smith, I found, knew all such words in both languages. I asked him one

day and he admitted that he had read everything in ancient Greek,

following the example of Hermann, the famous German scholar, and

believed he knew almost every word.

I did not desire any such pedantic perfection. I make no pretension to

scholarship of any sort and indeed learning of any kind leaves me

indifferent unless it leads to a fuller understanding of beauty or that

widening of the spirit by sympathy that is another name for wisdom. But

what I wish to emphasize here is that in the first year with Smith I

learned by heart dozens of choruses from the Greek dramatists and the

whole of the “Apologia” and “Crito” of Plato, having guessed then and

still believe that the “Crito” is a model short story, more important

than any of even Plato’s speculations. Plato and Sophocles! it was worth

while spending five years of hard labor to enter into their intimacy and

make them sister-spirits of one’s soul. Didn’t Sophocles give me

Antigone, the prototype of the new woman for all time, in her sacred

rebellion against hindering laws and thwarting conventions, the eternal

model of that dauntless assertion of love that is beyond and above sex,

the very heart of the Divine!

And the Socrates of Plato led me to that high place where man becomes

God, having learned obedience to law and the cheerful acceptance of

Death; but even there I needed Antigone, the twin sister of Bazaroff, at

least as much, realising intuitively that my life-work, too, would be

chiefly in revolt and that the punishment Socrates suffered and Antigone

dared, would almost certainly be mine; for I was fated to meet worse

opponents; after all, Creon was only stupid whereas Sir Thomas Horridge

was malevolent to boot and Woodrow Wilson unspeakable!

Again I am outrunning my story by half a century!

But in what I have written of Sophocles and Plato the reader will

divine, I hope, my intense love and admiration for Smith who led me, as

Vergil led Dante, into the ideal world that surrounds our earth as with

illimitable spaces of purple sky, wind-swept and star-sown!

If I could tell what Smith’s daily companionship now did for me, I would

hardly need to write this book; for like all I have written, some of the

best of it belongs as much to him as to me. In his presence for the

first year and a half, I was merely a sponge, absorbing now this truth,

now that, hardly conscious of an original impulse. Yet all the time,

too, as will be seen, I was advising him and helping him from my

knowledge of life. Our relation was really rather like that of a small,

practical husband with some wise and infinitely learned Aspasia! I want

to say here in contempt of probability that in all our years of

intimacy, living together for over three years side by side, I never

found a fault in him of character or of sympathy, save the one that drew

him to his death.

Now I must leave him for the moment and turn again to Mrs. Mayhew. Of

course I went to her that next afternoon even before three. She met me

without a word so gravely that I did not even kiss her: but began

explaining what Smith was to me and how I could not do enough for him

who was everything to my mind as she was (God help me!) to my heart and

body, and I kissed her cold lips while she shook her head half sadly.

“We have a sixth sense, we women, when we are in love”, she began: “I

feel a new influence in you; I scent danger in the air you bring with

you: don’t ask me to explain: I can’t; but my heart is heavy and cold as

death.... If you leave me, there’ll be a catastrophe: the fall from such

a height of happiness must be fatal.... If you can feel pleasure away

from me, you no longer love me. I feel none except in having you, seeing

you, thinking of you—none. Oh! why can’t you love like a woman loves,

No! like I love: it would be heaven; for you and you alone satisfy the

insatiable; you leave me bathed in bliss, sighing with satisfaction,

happy as the Queen of Heaven!”

“I have much to tell you, new things to say”, I began in haste.

“Come upstairs,” I broke in interrupting myself “I want you as you are

now, with the color in your cheeks, the light in your eyes, the

vibration in your voice, come!”

And she came like a sad sybil. “Who gave you the tact?” she began while

we were undressing, “the tact to praise always?” I seized her and stood

naked against her body to body: “What new thing have you to tell me?” I

asked, lifting her into the bed and getting in beside her, cuddling up

to her warmer body.

“There’s always something new in my love,” she cried, cupping my face

with her slim hands and taking my lips with hers.

“Oh, how I desired you yesternoon, for I took the letter to your house

myself and I heard you talking in your room perhaps with Smith”, she

added, sounding my eyes with hers; “I’m longing to believe it; but when

I heard your voice, or imagined I did, I felt the lips of my sex open

and shut and then it began to burn and itch intolerably. I was on the

point of going in to you; but instead, turned and hurried away, raging

at you and at myself—.”

“I will not let you even talk such treason,” I cried, separating her

soft thighs, as I spoke, and sliding between them. In a moment my sex

was in her and we were one body, while I drew it out slowly and then

pushed it in again, her naked body straining to mine.

“Oh” she cried, “as you draw out, my heart follows your sex in fear of

losing it and as you push in again, it opens wide in ecstasy and wants

you all, all—” and she kissed me with hot lips.

“Here is something new,” she exclaimed, “food for your vanity from my

love! Mad as you make me with your love-thrusts, for at one moment I am

hot and dry with desire, the next wet with passion, bathed in love, I

could live with you all my life without having you, if you wished it, or

if it would do you good. Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” I replied, continuing the love-game; but occasionally withdrawing

to rub her clitoris with my sex and then slowly burying him in her cunt

again to the hilt.

“We women have no souls but love,” she said faintly, her eyes dying as

she spoke:

“I torture myself to think of some new pleasure for you, and yet you’ll

leave me, I feel you will, for some silly girl who can’t feel a tithe of

what I feel or give you what I give—.” She began here to breathe

quickly: “I’ve been thinking how to give you more pleasure; let me try.

Your seed, darling, is dear to me: I don’t want it in my sex; I want to

feel you thrill and so I want your sex in my mouth, I want to drink your

essence and I will—” and suiting the action to the word she slipped down

in the bed and took my sex in her mouth and began rubbing it up and down

till my seed spirted in long jets, filling her mouth while she swallowed

it greedily.

“Now do I love you, Sir!” she exclaimed, drawing herself up on me again

and nestling against me: “wait till some girl does that to you and

you’ll know she loves you to distraction or better still to

self-destruction.”

“Why do you talk of any other girl!” I chided her, “I don’t imagine you

going with any other man, why should you torment yourself just as

causelessly?”

She shook her head: “My fears are prophetic”, she sighed, “I’m willing

to believe it hasn’t happened yet though—Ah God, the torturing thought!

the mere dread of your going with another drives me crazy; I could kill

her, the bitch: why doesn’t she get a man of her own? How dare she even

look at you?” and she clasped me tightly to her. Nothing loath, I pushed

my sex into her again and began the slow movement that excited her so

quickly and me so gradually for even while using all my skill to give

her the utmost pleasure, I could not help comparing and I realised

surely enough that Kate’s pussy was smaller and firmer and gave me

infinitely more pleasure; still I kept on for her delight. And now again

she began to pant and choke and as I continued ploughing her body and

touching her womb with every slow thrust she began to cry inarticulately

with little short cries growing higher in intensity till suddenly she

squealed like a shot rabbit and then shrieked with laughter, breaking

down in a storm of sighs and sobs and floods of tears.

As usual, her intensity chilled me a little; for her paroxysm aroused no

corresponding heat in me, tending even to check my pleasure by the

funny, irregular movements she made!

Suddenly I heard steps going away from the door, light stealing steps:

who could it be! The servant? or—?

Lorna had heard them too, and though still panting and swallowing

convulsively, she listened intently while her great eyes wandered in

thought. I knew I could leave the riddle to her: it was my task to

reassure and caress her.

I got up and went over to the open window for a breath of air and

suddenly I saw Lily run quickly across the grass and disappear in the

next house: so she was the listener! When I recalled Lorna’s gasping

cries, I smiled to myself. If Lily tried to explain them to herself, she

would have an uneasy hour, I guessed.

When Lorna had dressed, and she dressed quickly, and went downstairs

hastily to convince herself, I think, that her darky had not spied on

her, I waited in the sitting-room: I must warn Lorna that my “studies”

would only allow me to give one day a week to our pleasures.

“Oh!” she cried, turning pale as I explained, “didn’t I know it!”

“But Lorna,” I pleaded, “didn’t you say you could do without me

altogether if ’twas for my good!”

“No, no, no! a thousand times no!” she cried, “I said if you were with

me always, I could do without passion; but this starvation fare once a

week! Go, go!” she cried, “or I’ll say something I’ll regret. Go!” and

she pushed me out of the door and thinking it better in view of the

future, I went.

The truth is, I was glad to get away: novelty is the soul of passion.

There’s an old English proverb: “fresh cunt, fresh courage.” On my way

home I thought oftener of the slim, dark figure of Lily than of the

woman every hill and valley of whose body was now familiar to me,

whereas Lily with her narrow hips and straight flanks must have a tiny

sex I thought;—“D—n Lily” and I hastened to Smith.

We went down to supper together and I introduced Smith to Kate: they

were just polite; but when she turned to me she scanned me curiously,

her brows lifting in a gesture of “I know what I know” which was to

become familiar to me in the sequel.

After supper I had a long talk with Smith in his room, a heart to heart

talk which altered our relations.

I have already mentioned that Smith got ill every fortnight or so. I had

no inkling of the cause, no notion of the scope of the malady. This

evening he grew reminiscent and told me everything.

He had thought himself very strong, it appeared, till he went to Athens

to study. There he worked prodigiously and almost at the beginning of

his stay came to know a Greek girl of a good class who talked Greek with

him and finally gave herself to him passionately. Being full of youthful

vigor always quickened by vivid imaginings, he told me that he usually

came the first time almost as soon as he entered and that in order to

give his partner pleasure, he had to come two or three times and this

drained and exhausted him. He admitted that he had abandoned himself to

this fierce love-play day after day in and out of season. When he

returned to the United States, he tried to put his Greek girl out of his

head; but in spite of all he could do, he had love-dreams that came to

an orgasm and ended in emissions of seed about once a fortnight. And

after a year or so these fortnightly emissions gave him intense pains in

the small of his back which lasted some twenty-four hours, evidently

till some more seed had been secreted. I could not imagine how a

fortnightly emission could weaken and distress a young man of Smith’s

vigor and health; but as soon as I had witnessed his suffering I set my

wits to work and told him of the trick by which I had brought my

wet-dreams to an end in the English school.

Smith at once consented to try my remedy and as the fortnight was about

up, I went at once in search of whipcord, and tied up his unruly member

for him night after night. For some days the remedy worked, then he went

out and spent the afternoon and night at Judge Stevens’ and he was ill

again. Of course, there had been no connection: indeed, in my opinion,

it would have been much better for Smith if there had been, but the

propinquity of the girl he loved and, of course, the kissings that are

always allowed to engaged couples by American custom, took place

unchecked and when he went to sleep, his dreaming ended in an orgasm.

The worst of it was that my remedy having prevented his dreaming from

reaching a climax for eighteen or twenty days, he dreamed a second time

and had a second wet dream, which brought him to misery and even

intenser pain than usual.

[Illustration]

I combatted the evil with all the wit I possessed. I got Ned Stevens to

lend the Professor a horse; I had Blue Devil out and we went riding two

or three times a week. I got boxing gloves too and soon either Ned or I

had a bout with Smith every day: gradually these exercises improved his

general health; and when I could tie on the whipcord every night for a

month or two, he put on weight and gained strength surprisingly.

The worst of it was that this improvement in health always led to a day

or two spent with his betrothed, which undid all the good. I advised him

to marry and then control himself rigorously; but he wanted to get well

first and be his vigorous self again. I did all I knew to help him but

for a long time I had no suspicion that an occasional wet-dream could

have serious consequences. We used to make fun of them as schoolboys:

how could I imagine—but as it is the finest, most highly strung natures

that are most apt to suffer in this way, I will tell what happened step

by step: suffice it to say here that he was in better health when

staying with me at the Gregory’s than he had been before and I

continually hoped for a permanent improvement.

After our talk that first night in Gregory’s, I went downstairs to the

dining-room, hoping to find Kate alone: I was lucky: she had persuaded

her mother, who was tired, to go to bed and was just finishing her

tidying up.

“I want you so, Kate,” I said, trying to kiss her: she drew her head

aside: “That’s why you’ve kept away all afternoon” I suppose; and she

looked at me with sidelong glance. An inspiration came to me: “Kate”, I

exclaimed, “I had to be fitted for my new clothes!” “Forgive me”, she

cried at once, that excuse being valid: “I thought, I feared—oh I’m

suspicious without reason, I know, am jealous without cause, there! I

confess!” and the great hazel eyes turned on me full of love.

I played with her breasts, whispering “When am I to see you naked, Kate?

I want to; when?” “You’ve seen most of me!” and she laughed joyously!

“All right,” I said, turning away, “if you are resolved to make fun of

me and be mean to me—”

“Mean to you!” she cried, catching me and swinging me round, “I could

easier be mean to myself. I’m glad you want to see me, glad and proud,

and tonight, if you’ll leave your door open, I’ll come to you: mean,

oh—’and she gave her soul in a kiss.

“Isn’t it risky?” I asked.

“I tried the stairs this afternoon,” she glowed, “they don’t creak: no

one will hear, so don’t sleep or I’ll surprise you”—By way of sealing

the compact, I put my hand up her clothes and caressed her sex; it was

hot and soon opened to me.

“There now, Sir, go!” she smiled, “or you’ll make me very naughty and I

have a lot to do!”

“How do you mean ‘naughty’,” I said, “tell me what you feel? please!”

“I feel my heart beating”, she said, “and, and—oh! wait till tonight and

I’ll try to tell you, dear!” and she pushed me out of the door.

For the first time in my life I notice here that the writer’s art is not

only inferior to reality in keenness of sensation and emotion; but also

more same, monotonous even, because incapable of showing the tiny, yet

ineffable differences of the same feeling which difference of

personality brings with it. I seem to be repeating myself in describing

Kate’s love after Mrs. Mayhew’s, making the girl’s feelings a fainter

replica of the woman’s. In reality the two were completely different.

Mrs. Mayhew’s feelings long repressed flamed with the heat of an

afternoon in July or August; while in Kate’s one felt the freshness and

cool of a summer morning, shot through with the suggestion of heat to

come. And this comparison even is inept because it leaves out of the

account, the effect of Kate’s beauty, the great hazel eyes, the rosied

skin, the superb figure. Besides there was a glamour of the spirit about

Kate: Lorna Mayhew would never give me a new note that didn’t spring

from passion; in Kate I felt a spiritual personality and the thrill of

undeveloped possibilities. And still using my utmost skill, I haven’t

shown my reader the enormous superiority of the girl and her more

unselfish love. But I haven’t finished yet.

Smith had given me “The Mill on the Floss” to read; I had never tried

George Eliot before and I found that this book almost deserved Smith’s

praise. I had read till about one o’clock when my heart heard her; or

was it some thrill of expectance? The next moment my door opened and she

came in with the mane of hair about her shoulders and a long dressing

gown reaching to her stockinged feet. I got up like a flash; but she had

already closed the door and bolted it; I drew her to the bed and stopped

her from throwing off the dressing-gown: “let me take off your stockings

first”, I whispered, “I want you all imprinted on me!”

The next moment, she stood there naked, the flickering flame of the

candle throwing quaint arabesques of light and shade on her beautiful

ivory body: I gazed and gazed: from the navel down she was perfect; I

turned her round and the back too, the bottom even was faultless though

large; but alas! the breasts were far too big for beauty, too soft to

excite! I must think only of the bold curve of her hips, I reflected,

the splendor of the firm thighs, the flesh of which had the hard outline

of marble and her—sex? I put her on the bed and opened her thighs: her

pussy was ideally perfect.

At once I wanted to get into her; but she pleaded: “please, dear, come

into bed: I’m cold and want you.” So in I got and began kissing her.

Soon she grew warm and I pulled off my nightshirt and my middle finger

was caressing her sex that opened quickly: “E—E!” she said drawing in

her breath quickly: “it still hurts.” I put my sex gently against hers,

moving it up and down slowly till she drew up her knees to let me in;

but as soon as the head entered, her face puckered a little with pain

and as I had had a long afternoon, I was the more inclined to forbear

and accordingly I drew away and took place beside her:

“I cannot bear to hurt you,” I said, “love’s pleasure must be mutual.”

“You’re sweet!” she whispered, “I’m glad you stopped; for it shows you

really care for me and not just for the pleasure!” and she kissed me

lovingly.

“Kate, reward me,” I said, “by telling me just what you felt when I

first had you” and I put her hand on my hot stiff sex to encourage her.

“It’s impossible,” she said, flushing a little, “there was such a throng

of new feelings; why, this evening waiting in bed for the time to pass

and thinking of you, I felt a strange prickling sensation in the inside

of my thighs that I never felt before and now”—and she hid her glowing

face against my neck, “I feel it again!”

“Love is funny, isn’t it?” she whispered the next moment: “now the

pricking sensation is gone and the front part of my sex burns and

itches, Oh! I must touch it!”

“Let me,” I cried, and in a moment I was on her, working my organ up and

down on her clitoris, the porch, so to speak, of Love’s temple. A little

later she herself sucked the head into her hot, dry pussy and then

closed her legs as if in pain to stop me going further; but I began to

rub my sex up and down on her tickler, letting it slide right in, every

now and then, till she panted and her love-juice came and my weapon

sheathed itself in her naturally. I soon began the very slow and gentle

in-and-out movements which increased her excitement steadily while

giving her more and more pleasure, till I came and immediately she

lifted my chest up from her breasts with both hands and showed me her

glowing face. “Stop, boy,” she gasped, “please: my heart’s fluttering

so! I came too, you know, just with you” and indeed I felt her trembling

all over convulsively.

I drew out and for safety’s sake got her to use the syringe, having

already explained its efficacy to her; she was adorably awkward and when

she had finished I took her to bed again and held her to me, kissing

her. “So you really love me, Kate!”

“Really,” she said, “you don’t know how much!”

“I’ll try never to suspect anything or be jealous again,” she went on,

“it’s a hateful feeling, isn’t it? But I want to see your class-room:

would you take me up once to the University?”

“Why, of course”, I cried, “I should be only too glad; I’ll take you

tomorrow afternoon, or better still”, I added, “come up the hill at four

o’clock and I’ll meet you at the entrance.”

And so it was settled and Kate went back to her room as noiselessly as

she had come.

The next afternoon I found her waiting in the University Hall ten

minutes before the hour; for our lectures beginning at the hour always

stopped after forty-five minutes to give us time to be punctual at any

other class-room. After showing her everything of interest, we walked

home together laughing and talking, when, a hundred yards from Mrs.

Mayhew’s, we met that lady, face to face. I don’t know how I looked, for

being a little shortsighted I hadn’t recognized her till she was within

ten yards of me; but her glance pierced me. She bowed with a look that

took us both in, I lifted my hat and we passed on.

“Who’s that?” exclaimed Kate, “what a strange look she gave us!”

“She’s the wife of a gambler,” I replied as indifferently as I could,

“he gives me work now and then” I went on, strangely forecasting the

future. Kate looked at me probing, then: “I don’t mind; but I’m glad

she’s quite old!”

“As old as both of us put together!” I added traitorously, and we went

on.

These love-passages with Mrs. Mayhew and Kate, plus my lessons and my

talks with Smith, fairly represent my life’s happenings for this whole

year from seventeen to eighteen, with this solitary qualification that

my afternoons with Lorna became less and less agreeable to me. But now I

must relate happenings that again affected my life.

I hadn’t been four months with the Gregorys when Kate told me that my

brother Willie had ceased to pay my board for more than a fortnight; she

added sweetly:

“It doesn’t matter, dear, but I thought you ought to know and I’d hate

any one to hurt you, so I took it on myself to tell you.” I kissed her,

said it was sweet of her, and went to find Willie; he made excuses

voluble but not convincing and ended up by giving me a cheque while

begging me to tell Mrs. Gregory that he, too, would come and board with

her.

The incident set me thinking. I made Kate promise to tell me if he ever

failed again to pay what was due and I used the happening to excuse

myself to Lorna. I went to see her and told her that I must think at

once of earning my living. I had still some five hundred dollars left

but I wanted to be beforehand with need: besides it gave me a good

excuse for not visiting her even weekly. “I must work!” I kept repeating

though I was ashamed of the lie.

“Don’t whip me, dear!” she pleaded; “my impotence to help you is painful

enough; give me time to think. I know Mayhew is quite well off: give me

a day or two, but come to me when you can. You see, I’ve no pride where

you are concerned: I just beg like a dog for kind treatment for my

love’s sake. I wouldn’t have believed that I could be so transformed. I

was always so proud: my husband calls me ‘proud and cold’, me cold! It’s

true I shiver when I hear your voice, but it’s the shivering of fever.

When you came in just now unexpectedly and kissed me, waves of heat

swept over me: my womb moved inside me. I never felt that till I had

loved you and now, of course, my sex burns—I wish I were cold: a cold

woman could rule the world—

“But no! I wouldn’t change. Just as I never wished to be a man, never;

though other girls used to say they would like to change their sex; I,

never! And since I’ve been married, less than ever. What’s a man? His

love is over before ours begins—”

“Really?” I broke in grinning.

“Not you, my beloved!” she cried, “oh, not you; but then you are more

than man! Come, don’t let us waste time in talk. Now I have you, take me

to our Heaven. I’m ready, ‘ripe-ready’ is your word: I go to our bed as

to an altar. If I’m only to have you even less than once a week, don’t

come again for ten days: I shall be well again then and you can surely

come to me a few days running: I want to reach the heights and hug the

illusion, cramming one hot week with bliss and then death for a

fortnight. What rags we women are! Come, dear, I will be your sheath and

you shall be the sword and drive right into me—But I’ll help you”, she

cried suddenly: “Was it that girl told you, you owed money for food? (I

nodded and she glowed.) Oh, I’ll help, never fear! I never liked that

girl: she’s brazen and conceited and—Oh! Why did you walk with her?”

“She wanted to see the University”, I said, “and I could not well refuse

her.” “Oh, pay her” she cried, “but don’t walk with her. She’s a common

thing, fancy her mentioning money to you, my dear!”

That same evening I got a note from Lorna, saying her husband wanted to

see me.

I met the little man in the sitting-room and he proposed that I should

come to his rooms every evening after supper and sit in a chair near the

door reading; but with a Colt’s revolver handy so that no one could rob

him and get away with the plunder.

“I’d feel safer”, he ended up, “and my wife tells me you’re a sure shot

and used to a wild life: what do you say? I’d give you sixty dollars a

month and more than half the time you’d be free before midnight.”

“It’s very kind of you”, I exclaimed with hot cheeks, “and very kind of

Mrs. Mayhew too: I’ll do it and I beg you to believe that no one will

bother you and get away with a whole skin”, and so it was settled.

Aren’t women wonderful! In half a day she had solved my difficulty and I

found the hours spent in Mayhew’s gambling rooms were more valuable than

I had dreamed. The average man reveals himself in gaming more than in

love or drink and I was astonished to discover that many of the

so-called best citizens had a flutter with Mayhew from time to time. I

don’t believe they had a fair deal, he won too constantly for that; but

it was none of my business so long as the clients accepted the results:

and he often showed kindness by giving back a few dollars after he had

skinned a man of all he possessed.

Naturally the fact that I was working with her husband threw me more

into Mrs. Mayhew’s society: twice or so a week I had to spend the

afternoon with her, and the constraint irked me. Kate, too, objected to

my visits: she had too much pride to speak openly but one day she had

seen me go in to Mrs. Mayhew’s and I think divined the rest; for at

first she was cold to me and drew away even from my kisses: “you’ve

chilled me”, she cried, “I don’t think I shall ever love you again

entirely.” But when I got into her and really excited her, she suddenly

kissed me fervently and her glorious eyes had heavy tears in them. “Why

do you cry, dear?” I asked. “Because I cannot make you mine as I am all

yours!” she cried. “Oh!” she went on, clutching me to her, “I think the

pleasure is increased by the dreadful fear—and the hate—oh, love me and

me only, love mine!” Of course, I promised fidelity; but I was surprised

to feel that my desire for Kate, too, was beginning to cool.

The arrangement with the Mayhews came to an unexpected and untimely end.

Mayhew now and then had a tussle with another gambler and after I had

been with him about three months, a gambler from Denver had a great

contest with him and afterwards proposed that they should join forces

and Mayhew should come to Denver. “More money to be made there in a

week”, he declared, “than in Lawrence in a month.” Finally he persuaded

Mayhew, who was wise enough to say nothing to his wife till the whole

arrangement was fixed. She raved but could do nothing save give in, and

so we had to part. Mayhew gave me one hundred dollars as a bonus, and

Lorna one unforgettable, astonishing afternoon which I must now try to

describe.

I did not go near the Mayhews’ the day after his gift, leaving Lorna to

suppose that I looked upon everything as ended. But the day after that I

got a word from her, an imperious:

“Come at once, I must see you!”

Of course I went though reluctantly.

As soon as I entered the room she rose from the sofa and came to me: “if

I get you work in Denver, will you come out?”

“How could I?” I asked in absolute astonishment, “you know I’m bound

here to the University and then I want to go into a law-office as well:

besides I could not leave Smith: I’ve never known such a teacher: I

don’t believe his equal can be found anywhere.”

She nodded her head: “I see”, she sighed, “I suppose it’s impossible;

but I must see you”, she cried, “if I haven’t the hope, what do I say!

the certainty of seeing you again, I shan’t go. I’d rather kill myself!

I’ll be a servant and stay with you, my darling, and take care of you! I

don’t care what I do so long as we are together: I’m nearly crazed with

fear that I shall lose you.”

“It’s all a question of money”, I said quietly, for the idea of her

staying behind scared me stiff: “if I can earn money, I’d love to go to

Denver in my holidays. It must be gorgeous there in summer six thousand

odd feet above sea-level: I’d delight in it.”

“If I send you the money, you’ll come?” she asked briefly.

I made a face: “I can’t take money from—a love”, (I said “love” instead

of “woman”: it was not so ugly) I went on, “but Smith says he can get me

work and I have still a little: I’ll come in the holidays.”

“Holy days they’ll be to me!” she said solemnly, and then with quick

change of mood, “I’ll make a beautiful room for our love in Denver; but

you must come for Christmas, I could not wait till midsummer: oh, how I

shall ache for you—ache!”

“Come upstairs”, I coaxed and she came, and we went to bed: I found her

mad with desire; but after I had brought her in an hour to hysteria and

she lay in my arms crying, she suddenly said: “he promised to come home

early this afternoon and I said I’d have a surprise for him. When he

finds us together like this, it’ll be a surprise, won’t it?”

“But you’re mad!” I cried, getting out of bed in a flash, “I shall never

be able to visit you in Denver if we have a row here!”

“That’s true”, she said as if in a dream, “that’s true: it’s a pity: I’d

love to have seen his foolish face stretched to wonder; but you’re

right. Hurry!” she cried and was out of the room in a twinkling.

When she returned, I was dressed.

“Go downstairs and wait for me”, she commanded, “on our sofa. If he

knocks, open the door to him; that’ll be a surprise, though not so great

a one as I had planned”, she added, laughing shrilly.

“Are you going without kissing me?” she cried when I was at the door,

“Well, go, it’s all right, go! for if I felt your lips again, I might

keep you.”

I went downstairs and in a few moments she followed me. “I can’t bear

you to go!” she cried, “how partings hurt!” she whispered. “Why should

we part again, love mine?” and she looked at me with rapt eyes.

“This life holds nothing worth having but love; let us make love

deathless, you and I, going together to death. What do we lose? Nothing!

This world is an empty shell! Come with me, love, and we’ll meet Death

together!”

“Oh, I want to do such a lot of things first”, I exclaimed, “Death’s

empire is eternal; but this brief taste of life, the adventure of it,

the change of it, the huge possibilities of it beckon me—I can’t leave

it.” “The change!” she cried with dilating nostrils while her eyes

darkened, “the change!”

“You are determined to misunderstand me,” I cried, “is not every day a

change?”

“I am weary”, she cried, “and beaten: I can only beg you not to forget

your promise to come—ah!” and she caught and kissed me on the mouth: “I

shall die with your name on my lips”, she said, and turned to bury her

face in the sofa cushion. I went: what else was there to do?

I saw them off at the station: Lorna had made me promise to write often,

and swore she would write every day and she did send me short notes

daily for a fortnight: then came gaps ever lengthening: “Denver society

was pleasant and a Mr. Wilson, a student, was assiduous: he comes every

day”, she wrote. Excuses finally, little hasty notes, and in two months

her letters were formal, cold; in three months they had ceased

altogether.

The break did not surprise me: I had taught her that youth was the first

requisite in a lover for a woman of her type: she had doubtless put my

precepts into practice: Mr. Wilson was probably as near the ideal as I

was and very much nearer to hand.

The passions of the senses demand propinquity and satisfaction and

nothing is more forgetful than pleasures of the flesh. If Mrs. Mayhew

had given me little, I had given her even less of my better self.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

HARD TIMES AND NEW LOVES