Eveline

BOOK ONE
Chapter 1

I am considered by those who have the honor of my acquaintance to be a pillar of propriety. I am pointed out by anxious mothers as an excellent example of careful training, combined with the advantages of a Continental finishing course at a most select pensionnat de demoiselles in the environs of Paris. I am the invited of very strict old maids, because I affect to enter into their schemes for the conversion of untold savages, am liberal of purse and reticent of tongue. The latter quality runs in my family. Our history demands an extraordinary amount of it. There are at least two families of high and ancient aristocratic pretensions, whose loud-tongued, drinking, gambling male descendants openly boast that they have never allowed a maiden of their noble line to pass, as such, out of the family and into the arms of her spouse. Ours is a third, only we are not so simple as to publish the fact.

I am not, by any means, a saint in outward seeming. In my appearance and ordinary habits I am not so straight-laced as I am represented. I do not set up for particular formality in my daily pursuits. I am only quiet, observant, always affable, amiable and sometimes a trifle volatile. The men call me dull, and say, "a pretty girl, but you know, dear boy, there is no fun in her. No use to try it on, dear old chappie, you'll only come off second best."

"Fun," in the mind of the society man of the present day, means immorality. They adopt the word because it is a light and gay style of describing the loose conditions which bind together all that they care for in the nature of modern society. At present, society is content to parade itself with a superficial and very flimsy disguise over its naked deformity. In a few years' time, at its present rate of progress, it will work barefaced in the open light of day.

I am not going to moralize; I do not even wish to be a self- appointed censor of the times in which I live. I do not personally care a pin what becomes of society, so long as I succeed in avoiding the arrows of detraction, scorn, and contempt which it launches against any luckless member who has the misfortune to be found out. I hardly think it will do so in my case; at any rate, I take all possible precautions to pursue my silent path of sensual indulgence in obscurity and peace.

My father, Sir Edward L, Baronet, started life a rich man- rich, even in these days of treble millionaires, American heiresses, and other innovations too numerous to mention. He entered the army, served with his regiment in India, and returning to that empire after a short furlough, met and married a nobody with whom he was shut up for a month or more on his voyage out. She was good-looking, tall, and coarse. He soon tired of her. After dragging her about for three months with his regiment, he sent her home to England. I do not know that I inherit any single trait of my mother's personality, and I rejoice to think so. She never cared for me or took any particular notice of me. I had two brothers older than myself. Of the elder, I may speak later, I knew little of him in my childhood. As to Percy, we were companions until I was sent to school and he to Rugby.

I suppose I was always curious and inquiring as a child. I have been told so. Personally I only remember a few prominent incidents of my early childhood. It was not a joyous or even a happy one. My brother and I were thrown much together. He was curious also. Together we secretly investigated the remarkable differences in our physiological structure. We came to the natural conclusion that such opposite developments must be designed for some purpose which at present we did not understand. The tree of knowledge being denied to us, we set about making our own investigations. The result was that we discovered a certain indefinite gratification, even when on being at each end of a large marble bath, our toes encountered certain exposed portions of each other's persons which at all other times we were told we must hide and never talk about. Secretly, also, we mutually inspected these remarkably different developments; it was a new field of investigation and insensibly we enjoyed it. We pursued our studies at such intervals as our privacy and our opportunities permitted. We slept in the same room, and we would steal furtively into each other's beds to whisper and wonder at the delight which the feeling and the caressing of these dissimilarities afforded us. In short, we masturbated each other, until my brother Percy attained a precocious development of his private parts quite sufficient to destroy all vestige of maidenhood in his sister, two years his junior.

Now, Dear Reader, lest you think this was accomplished at his bidding, thereby casting Percy's way the entire amount either of disapproval or credit you would apply toward such an event, depending of course on your own inclinations, let me put this particular question to rest: I not only desired that my initial ravaging occur at his hands, I arranged for it. Indeed, rather feverishly. We happened one warm Sunday to be out on a tedious but vigorous fox hunt, and the pounding gallop soon produced such a humid state of affairs within my breeches that I decided the time had finally come for my deflowering. Thus when deep within a grove and the hounds far ahead, I suddenly let slack my reins and, feigning difficulty with my horse, let it come completely to rest and nibble nervously at the underbrush. Percy, of course, was soon at my side.

"A problem with your steed, Eveline?" he asked, bold lips glistening in the dappled sunlight.

"Indeed, my dear brother," I answered, motioning toward its right front leg. "But I'm quite sure it's nothing you could not remedy."

At that, Percy dismounted and stepped toward my horse. As he leaned over to inspect the hoof, I gently but firmly applied my riding crop to his buttocks. His response, quite happily, was predictable. Sweeping me from the horse and into his arms, he announced with a severe smile, "Your steed is ready now, my dear." Off came his breeches. Up stood his prodigious manhood, thick and dark as an oak branch. And after setting himself upon a nearby stump, my dear brother announced, "It is ready for you to mount." And so I did, the wondrous thing I had until now only grasped in my palm now thrust through the slight and silly membrane in a moment of blinding pain that instantly turned to pleasure. And so it would remain long after I'd grasped Percy's member deep within my heaving belly.

Having consummated our interest, we were separated as I have already related. A couple of years at a Brighton seminary exclusively for "the daughters of gentlemen" did not eradicate the lessons in physiology I had already learned. Quite the contrary-I listened while my companions compared notes, and I found most of the girls were equally well informed.

Indeed, one or two of the elder "daughters of gentlemen" informed us of the junior classes, while we listened to the absorbing topic with rapt attention, what a naked man was like with curly hair on his belly, and a thing dangling between his legs which they described as twice the size of my brother Percy's. They went further, and one averred that she had seen and handled one. That they grow quite stiff and stood upright. In that condition men endeavored to thrust them into girls.

I listened and said nothing, and for my pains they called me a little fool and an innocent. Even at that early period of my existence, I had imbibed the instinct of reticence, so generally absent in young women.

Two years of study on all the subjects conventional and impractical to which "the daughters of gentlemen" are subjugated at my age and in such establishments afforded me ample opportunities of acquiring the rudiments of a society education. How much longer I might have remained at the Brighton seminary I know not, but an untoward accident put an end to my career there, as also to the "select establishment" itself.

It happened thus. Among the domestics was a page, who had commenced his duties there as a small boy. As he was a very quiet, well-conducted lad, he remained a long time, and, in fact, grew up to puberty in the house. Nobody seemed to notice the change. The lad waited at table, in gorgeous buttons and claret-colored cloth, and did other useful duties, quite unrestricted, about the premises. One of the elder girls however, whose inquisitive genius had discovered the interesting fact that he had hair on his belly and a thing which stood upright, essayed in secret to take advantage of this development; induced him to put it in her on more than one occasion, with the result that she was discovered to be enceinte. The fact could not be concealed; the Brighton press took it up, and the "select establishment" was closed forever.

My father was at this time on military service in India. Through interest, although comparatively a young man, ever active, he had risen to the command of his regiment. I was not allowed to remain at home. My prayer for a governess was peremptorily refused; my mother could not endure my presence. I was packed off to a pensionnat de demoiselles near Paris. One which had been specially recommended by the mother of two promising and "honorable" young members of a noble house.

It was at this place that I was destined to be initiated into the more practical knowledge of mankind, so far as their sexual instincts and aptitudes are concerned. The house was large, and stood in its own grounds, with a short garden in front leading to the loge du concierge and the great iron gates which closed the establishment to the public road. The lodge was tenanted by a singular individual, a hunchback, who had held the office of janitor for some years. He was a man of some forty-five years of age and stood about four feet and a few inches in his boots. His hump was a sufficient disfigurement, but his ungainly ugliness, his long hair and his huge hands and feet added greatly to his weird appearance. With all this, however, his face was not repulsive, and his manner the reverse of brutal. He was considered a perfectly harmless unfortunate, bore an excellent character, and had the entire confidence of Madame St. C-, proprietress and directress of the pensionnat.

When I became intimate with my fellow pupils, I learned that they were quite as well acquainted with natural phenomena as my old friends at Brighton, indeed more than one of the French girls made no scruple of boasting of her exploits. One in particular spoke openly of her acquaintance with a certain playfellow of the other sex, who had obtained from her such favors as only lovers are permitted. The concierge was allowed to eke out his small revenue by the harmless privilege of retailing sweets, chocolate, etc., to the pensionnaires. The girls, during the hours of recreation, would return from his little den in the lodge with red cheeks, and their mouths full of sugar-plums.

I never had the child's weakness for bonbons. I was not fond of them. The concierge and myself remained strangers for a considerable time after my arrival. I often noticed that the man took extra trouble to salute me in passing. He offered such civilities as were decorous and polite. The girls spoke sometimes of little commissions which they had given him to perform for them. I soon found he was considered a sort of safe intermediary between the world at large and the elder girls.

When I crossed from Dover to Calais, en route for Paris in charge of a governess who collected the English pupils, I chanced to sit next to two gentlemen who conversed together of Voltaire and his works. I possessed a girl's natural curiosity-I listened. One exclaimed how he recognized the biting sarcasm of his style. He quoted the account given of the great king's private vices. The other cited Addison to show how little concern the great Frenchman had for virtue in itself. It was a pretty dispute. They raised their voices. I made notes, and determined to read Voltaire and judge for myself. I did not want bonbons-I wanted Voltaire.

One afternoon, I passed the door of the lodge. It was not closed. The concierge had an inner room. There was a curtain across the door between the two. I had seen one of the girls go in a few minutes before. I entered after her. All being silent, I peeped through a corner of the heavy curtain. The hunchback was standing sideways to me, inclined a little towards the curtain. She was sitting in his big chair before him. Her clothes were disarranged and her legs and her white belly uncovered. The man's big paw was between her thighs. He was fingering her pretty slit.

What struck me most was that he had in front a huge and naked limb. It was quite twice the size of Percy's. It was very straight and stiff. The young girl was sucking the big lead-colored knob which was rolling in and out of her mouth. He was wriggling backwards and forwards, so that sometimes almost all of the knob appeared. Then he bore forward, so that nearly the whole of it went in between her red lips. Both her little hands were clasped round his long thing. She bent her head forward in little bobs. She met his movements. Both were too much occupied to think of the curtain. They thought themselves safe. His eyes were half shut. He had a satanic expression of enjoyment on his face. His lips were apart. His breath came in loud hissing sobs. On the table was a packet of bonbons.

There are certain trifling things one hears when young which make a long and lasting impression. They remain for quite a lifetime. Such was the Brighton girl's description: "A man with curly hair on his belly, and a thing twice the size of my brother Henry's, which got stiff and stood up straight." Here was one at last. The very thing of which the Brighton girl had told us.

I remained still and looked on. They were only some ten feet from me. They had no idea of my presence. He breathed hard and fast. The girl seemed to like the tickling of the paw which moved crab-like about her thighs. Presently she stopped. She drew back from the shining thing which stood smoking in front of her young face. He said something which I could not catch. The hunchback's limb was quite nine inches long and very thick; it was as much as she could do to clasp it in her delicate hands. He pushed it towards her lips again and pointed to the packet of sweets. She took the terrible morsel once more into her pretty mouth. He continued his touches. He put his right hand upon the back of her head and pressed her to him. The whole of the big knob was now covered by her moist lips. Suddenly he struck her hands from their hold and took his limb between his finger and thumb. He drew forward her head with one hand and held her close. He pushed forward. She tried to extricate herself. In vain she struggled. The man's thing was firmly held in place in her mouth. He began gasping and stamping on the tiled floor. She choked and struggled. He looked ready to drop. Slowly he withdrew his limb, which was now drooped like a dying flower. It was dripping with a white froth. The girl began spitting and coughing. I thought she would have been sick. I turned away, and stealing out, ran up to the house.

That night I dreamed of a man's belly covered with hair, and a long thick limb which dangled between his legs, and could on occasion stand upright, quite twice as big as my brother Percy's.