Emily: Or, the voluptuous delights of a once-innocent young lady

CHAPTER 3

'It is Arnold', said Papa. I felt dismayed and disarrayed. 'Oh? Why then did not the maid come?', asked I and felt a thrill of wonderment and apprehension coursing through my veins at my impertinence. 'Mary is not to be found, the valet has injured his leg, and… Why do you ask?' 'I beg your pardon, Papa; I did not think'. I felt a guilt at what had passed and also had a sense of irritation to be disturbed at such a moment, dress up and my calves on view. 'Indeed? Have you a fever? You appear to me quite flushed'. His look absorbed me, and I had the strangest feeling that I saw him and yet saw him not. His eyes became transparent. Through them I could see again the merriment outside, against the wall, and wondered if it, too, were in his head, in my strange fancy, though he could not know. 'I was playing, father, and I just came up'. 'You are beyond such sport now, are you not?

Your activities henceforth should be otherwise. Give thought to it, my dear, for Arnold has a serious intent-I do believe he has. Indeed, he has spoken of intentions, privately to me, of which I find approval.

Are you of the same mind-to wed?' I turned my back on him. Dismay showed in my eyes. Arnold was four years older than myself. His father was a merchant, though so rich that Society forgave him that. His mother was a little vulgar, so I thought- his sisters strange.

'Papa, he has not-' 'Not what?' Approaching me as he then did, I hunched my shoulders and I blushed. It seemed an oddity to say what I then needed to. Mama I might have said it to, but not Papa.

'He has not even kissed me yet'. So tightly and with such embarrassment the words came that my throat was as a tube from which one squeezes water, urging out the drops. 'Not kissed, not kissed? Such is not to be taken as a token or a promise. Many people kiss whose thoughts are at the same time of another-hence there then is little value to it, or they may have but a passing fancy for the moment, upon which-having savoured the lips they sought-they find the least fulfilment therein. Arnold will inherit much. The only son, you know'. 'I know that, yes, Papa'. I did not turn, I would not turn. I hated what he said, or had no liking for it at the least.

'I am to be sold, then? Am I to be sold?' My bitterness surprised me, yet I could not help but say. James had leaned against the wall. The maid had succoured, sucked, him. There was freedom there. Against the wall, against the sunlit wall. Mary would not be immured in marriage just for that. 'It is the way of things that women are given in marriage, Emily'. 'Is it?' My ire was up, and such as I had never known before. I, meek in Papa's presence always, was a rebel now. I had my cause. The swallows flew against the tall blue sky all summer long and never landed. Never had I seen one need to rest upon a bough. I wished, I wished, to be as them-to fly, to fly. 'I have often kissed you, Emily. 'Tis but a token- not a promise never to be broken'. His voice was softer. I did not receive the strictures, reprimand, I had expected. Face to face we stood, I turning, twirled, by guiding hands and brought to face, nose tickled by his black cravat, my hair a little rumpled and no powder on my cheeks. 'It is not the same', I mumbled, knowing not how I should put my arms, my hands. I let them fall, held them against my skirt. 'You must be guided by your elders, Emily. Mark this kiss-it shall be no more, no less, than others are'. So saying, he lifted up my chin. Uncomprehending (I could not do otherwise) I allowed his lips to fall, full fall, upon my own, O lightly at the first but then they pressed, merged, moistened, mouths became as one mouth yet were two. I felt a dizziness and clutched his arms. His chest absorbed the firmly jellied pressure of my breasts. My shoulders were enfolded-the whole length of my slim body pressed to his; his thighs were tree-trunks to my own. Hands shaped my back and pondered at my bottom's bulb, tasting the twin globes that they found beneath my dress. One minute, two perhaps, we breathed, thus breathed, upon each other's tongue, and there was wilderness and wildness in my mind, a hollow sounding as of songs I never heard before. Weak were my knees, my bottom plumlike poised upon his palms. 'In such a moment…' Thickly did he speak, lips parting slowly from my own, and turned away, hands trembling faintly on the windowsill, I felt as a lone tree where once a forest stood. 'You should brush your hair', he said, his back to me. Awkwardly moving then, he turned towards my door, touched at the handle and then hesitated, I feeling as one who had somehow vaguely sinned, and he the victim. 'Brush my hair, Papa, yes'. If I continued to look at him he would not leave, I thought, and knew not why I thought. In such small fragments of time it is as if something tangible, a cord, a chain, secures both speakers and is stretched almost to tautness, but not quite. 'And you will speak with Arnold, speak with him?' 'If you so wish, Papa, I shall'. The words, for no reason I could think of, brought a sigh from him. If I were naked now, I wished to say, madness possessing me-the bizarre turn that my mind had often taken since my greater youth. Do the thoughts of all turn in such labyrinths where dreams and devils lurk, competing, each with tickets in their hands for entertainments one should never see? 'I wish…' He spoke, he sighed again, was gone, the impress of my bottom on his palms, the weight still tingling on his fingertips. Yet if I thought that… Did I think it then, or was the moment like to an old dress that one discovers and recovers, furbishes anew with other buttons, other ribbons, lace replaced? Arnold awaited me-the tall, the spare. I had seen James' stiff prick and thought of Arnold's as a thin and withered one, a stalk that drooped and never showed its pride, his testicles all shrunken underneath. Fear of the sun, the open light.

Nor was I the only one who thought such thoughts. That evening, long after Arnold had departed, Mama asked me what he said. 'He said to marry me', I said. When there is bitterness, one spares one's words. Some women spill them out, but I do not. 'Is he equipped?' asked Jane. Covering up her mouth she spoke, and laughed. 'It is not needful so to ask', Mama replied. I looked beyond them through the window where the sun in its slow falling rendered up a last illumination to an elm. I felt its bark, its roughness, from a distance-felt the long, slow, soft-slow flow of sap, felt it within.

'When I marry Arnold, if I do, then you may see it, too', said I.

'Oh, really, do not speak so', Mama said and left the room. Her skirts swoosh-swished in walking as she walked. 'Even so, she will listen at the door', said Jane, and whispered, 'May I see Arnold's really, if you do?' 'You may, you might. I have not seen it yet. Mama told me that such jollities may be contained if one knows how to go about it, is discreet. I have seen a penis in its rising, seen. Have you?' 'In the dark corners of the house and by the wells of stairs at dusk, I have'. 'Whose, then? Oh, tell me whose?' 'Whose did you see?' 'Oh-ho, can't tell you-honestly, I daren't. You are extremely naughty sometimes, Jane'.

'I know. But when one's thighs are felt, the urge to touch in turn is quite intrinsic, is it not? I love to have my bottom held and soothed. Do you?' 'Sometimes when I am kissed I do. But never has my dress been drawn up yet, has yours?' She knew my story-telling for the blush upon my cheeks and touched them, felt them warm and kissed my nose, tip of my nose she kissed and then my brow. 'Once in the stable, Emily, and only once, my drawers broke and they fell, fell to my ankles like a fallen crown, mouth open and my face aflame.

He felt me, felt between my thighs, skirt heavy, looped across his arm. Mama said we might take domestic pleasures as we find them, did she not? The male must be the master totally, or else must be a pet to be handled just as we. She said that, said'. 'I know. The thought is absolutely awesome, is it not? Yet desperately exciting. Who was in the stable with you? Who?' 'Do you not know? Is innocence your veil'? Mama asked. 'If you have been mastered, Jane, then speak not of it. In your womanhood surrender as you must, your legs apart. When one is woken, stirred from early sleep, hips upward turned, the bedclothes all cast down and nightgown raised, hand clamped around one's mouth, how can one squeal or dare to try? He nests his cock in me and holds it in, his balls tight up to me until I'm still. And then he pumps me as I wriggle, breathing hot upon his palm. The first time-oh!-my eyes were wild as starlings at the first shots of the guns in the far fields beyond, beyond'. 'You let him do it to you now?' Our tongue tips touched. Hands fluttered, sought uncertainly, then fell.

'He smacks my legs to keep them open sometimes- does'. 'Oh, is it…? Tell me who! Oh, tell me do. You can do it with Arnold if I marry him. I shall, I think. I came this afternoon, I almost did!'

'Often enough you will. O treasured bliss it is! Play with yourself tonight and think of it. At dinner parties here-I was abed the last time, but I know. 'Know what?' Mama had entered, cast her gaze on us, and in particular on me. 'How nice your dinner parties are, Mama', I interjected quickly, and Jane squeezed my hand, said it was true, and then herself went out. 'Do not tell her too much', Mama said. She caused me then to blush and fiddle with my gown.

'Those who are too loose with their tongues lose self-possession, Emily. Bear that in mind always. What date have you then fixed?'

'I have not, Mama'. 'Do it soon, my love. Many are the preparations that we have to make. September is a good month, is it not?' 'Yes, Mama'. I was close to tears, although she knew it not. The long night on the bed upstairs seemed long gone then. I wanted once again a tongue between my thighs. Upon retiring, Papa met me on the stairs and escorted me along the corridor. 'It is September, then', he said-had clearly listened, or Mama had told him so. 'September, yes'. The sad song of the year. Dying of leaves and winds that wait on the horizon's rim. A dolefulness was on me and I wished again to cry. My room received me as rooms do receive-the furniture that waits to speak and yet cannot, most stolid of all servants that one knows. Wanting to throw myself upon the carpet, plead with it to bear my footsteps still, and ever on. He closed my door and leaned against it. Eveline would lean to hers and hear me if I did not whisper in the night. 'When you kiss, Emily, keep your lips apart'.

Mama said legs, had said to Jane so, but I said it only in my head and kept a deep, soft blankness in my eyes.

'Yes, Papa'. 'If I show you-were to show'. The room was frozen, and the furniture was blind. 'I… I will keep my lips apart, Papa. A little, just a little, yes'. 'Yes… ah… Goodnight, then, Emily, goodnight.' 'Goodnight, Papa.' My drawers off, playing with myself, when he had gone, had gone. I heard-I thought I heard-a cry, faint cry, from Jane's room and a squeaking, bumping of her bed. And then I slept, I slept, I slept.