The Romances Of Blanche La Mare

CHAPTER TWO

“A pretty woman,” (says the inspired Lentory) “robs humanity if she remains a virgin after her sixteenth birthday. As for the twaddly sentiment that men desire to marry virgins, thank heaven I have been able to put a stoper on that on the slope of the Caucasus.”

“Lentory?” says Gladys, pausing in the middle of her toil, “who the old gentleman is Lentory?”

I refrain from chiding her. I know that the divine Lentory is all too ill known in England.

“Listen, Child,” I answer, “Felix Lentory is the greatest poet of the ages. He was a shepherd on the Caucasian slopes and filled his leisure time with writing. After five years of this desultory work he attracted the attention of a touring Viennese nobleman. The personage attracted as much by the extreme beauty of the shepherd boy as by the genius of his writings, took him back to the city, paid his maintenance and had his works published. Few translations exist in the English language, in fact I do not think that any are for sale publicly. But there remains no doubt but that Felix Lentory is the greatest writer on love that the world knows just at present.”

Gladys did not appear particularly impressed: “Bit of a bugger boy, I suppose?” was her only comment, and with that I had to be content.

“I speak in English,” Madame Karl would frequently say, “I write in English, now-a-days I even think a good deal in English, but breakfast in English I never have done, and I never will.”

Wherefore, when in response to a gently graduated series of knocks on my door I woke on the first morning of my stay at Jermyn Street, it was to find Christine the maid, bearing my cafe complet on a silver tray.

Madame, she informed me, would join me presently, then, as she drew aside the curtains, the crisp, clear winters light ran into the room, and swept what was left of the dustman's sleep from my eyes.

I must say I like breakfasting in bed; the meal is a necessity at the best of it, not a luxury; wherefore it should be consumed with the least inconvenience and the most luxurious surroundings possible. I experienced a delightful feeling of ease that bright morning as I lay in my pretty bed and sipped the coffee. I had to get out of bed for a moment, and went to the window and looked down on the street below. I could see through an open space in the houses opposite to where Piccadilly roared in full flood, the sun glittering on the panels of the carriages and the cabs, bright and cheery and genial and good natured; so it all seemed. One could hardly be otherwise than good tempered on that perfect morning, and in that jolly room-Presently Madame Karl slid into the room, a dream of a little woman in a sort of breakfast jacket which was more than principally openwork in its style. It was just nicely calculated to make an otherwise fired out man feel it incumbent on him to have a final fuck in the morning. Her little round pink breasts were glowing under the openwork, with the nipples showing quite plainly. The contour of her body and legs was more suggestive than if they had been seen quite naked. Of course she did not look absolutely fresh; but she was quite carefully prepared.

She sat on the edge of my bed, displaying 12 inches of pretty leg swathed in black silk stocking, and yawned. “The morning sometimes brings regrets to a widow, my dear Blanche,” she sighed.

I kissed her lips, and I am quite sure that at that minute we both of us thought of other kisses presented by beings bearing a distinctive badge of sex between the thighs.

But about breakfast. Even at Lady Ex-well's, where we were supposed to be very smart, the meal did not approach anything like geniality.

There the massive table used to be littered with a profusion of indigestible dishes, and the sideboard groaned beneath the weight of the cold viands. The woman came down shirted and collared and tailor made gowned, and the talk turned inevitably to the slaughter of beasts. I have only one affectionate memory of the early morning habits of that house, and that was when a new footman, mistaking my bedroom for one of the gentlemen's, marched in with a tray bearing a decanter of brandy, a syphon, and a pint of champagne. Seeing his mistake, the worthy fellow would have fled, but I hailed him in no uncertain tones, and put away my small bottle like the best man in the house. I found out afterward that the midshipman had been monkeying with the boots in the passage, and put a pair of old Sir George's easy twelves outside my virgin portal. However, I kept up my habit of the morning bottle till I found out that the liveried idiot had been inventing gallantries on his part to Lady Exwell's maid, whereupon there was a suspicion of a scandal, and the morning pints had to be stopped. At Sir Thomas Lothmere's the breakfasts were the same solemn and elephantine nature aggravated by the preface of family prayers, read by the arch scamp, George Reynolds.

Breakfast undoubtedly is a meal that needs to be tackled in private and in bed. You may say what you will about rosy cheeked, healthy English girls who go flower picking excursions in the garden on an empty stomach, and you may prate about the mushroom that you have plucked yourself, tasting the best-a statement to which I unhesitatingly give the lie-but girls do not look their best at breakfast, and as it is their duty to conceal themselves during the hours when they do not please, let them break their fast in the seclusion of their chambers. Then think of the comfort of it; no horrid clamorous gong to wake one from delightful morning dreams, no enforced appearance at a fixed hour, to be mechanically pleasant to other people who are just as cross as you are yourself; but when you have decided that the right time has come, just a pressure of the bell, and in a few minutes your breakfast, and your letters, which you can read without the suspicion that your next door neighbor is looking over your shoulder.

“I can put in a criticism on the breakfast meal,” interrupts Gladys, “in the shape of a letter from a friend of my brother's addressed to that young gentleman. I found the thing some days afterwards, and her, my dear Blanche, if you want to fill up a bit of the book with no trouble to yourself, it is.'

I naturally allowed the letter: Glady's letters, if they were anything like her usual contributions to the gaiety of nations, ought to be worth publishing in any work.

Here it is: My dear Billy I had a ripe time at the boat race night. We staged, per usual, at the Cri and had the usual stinking dinner. Then of course we made tracks for the Empire. At the Empire I found her. She was but a common trottin of the promenade, but what a trottin. Tall, lissom, sweetly beautiful, and with a development of figure in the breast department, and also in that portion of her just below the end of the tail, which promised great things.

We drank, and I took her away, or rather she took me away, in a cab to some unknown part of Fulham. I was blind, and I remembered little till the morning. Then a frowsy sort of maid of all work brought breakfast. We ate some of it, but I do not care for the feeling of eating buttered toast with cunty fingers.

That, of course, is one way of considering breakfast.

After our little mal in Jermyn Street, we dressed leisurely, each admiring the pretty body of the other. It was strange how firm Madame Karl's skin was, how round her buttocks and her breasts, considering her age and very considerable experience of a gay life. Upon my word, she had nearly as good a figure as I, and at that time I really think that a looking glass seldom reflected more perfect charms than those supplied by Blanche's naked little body. I used to flatter myself, in fact, that if I failed to do any good on the stage, the career of a model in the altogether was always open to me. In fact, once during my stay with Madame, during a period of hard-up-ness and at that time when I was particularly anxious not to touch the dear little Madame for any money, I did put my pride in my pocket and have a round o? the studios. After trying about five I found a man who wanted a model for the figure.

He was very blunt about it. I was consigned behind the screen, and came back naked to the world, to pose before a critical eye, now additionally armed with a pair of glasses. He decided I would do, and I got to work there and then as he had a picture on the stocks. I don't quite know where he intended to exhibit that picture; even the French salon I should have thought, would have shied at it. It represented a pretty girl at her toilet. She was naked, all save her stockings, and she was taking the advice of an elderly man with her, as to which set of underclothes she should select. The flesh tints of the girl were gorgeously done, and the whole thing was full of suggestiveness. The man in the bedroom was fully dressed.

“Still, this is a little apart from the story, isn't it.” interrupted Gladys. “I have been an artist's model myself, but it isn't one of the episodes in my life that I care to dwell on. Still an artist hadn't any of the negative attributes. He was not a mannikin with crinkly skin over him, but a big, bluff young man, fresh from the Slade school, who used to make me pose for an hour or so, then fuck me on the sofa for another hour or so, and finally take me out to a remarkably fine lunch. It was a sweet thing, his penis, a good eight inches long, and perfectly shaped; and the best of it was he knew how to use it so as to give pleasure to the girl as well as to himself. How he could fuck!”

“Talking of penises,” I break in, “what do you consider a really large one?'

“Ten inches, of course, is Brobdlinagian,” answers Gladys, “but I must say that I have met a good many which measured quite eight on the foot rule. Still, after all, the size of a man's weapon is only a matter of curiosity; it is a thing which pleases one to look at, but I don't think at all, the actual length or girth makes any difference to the enjoyment of the fornication. It's the way he uses it.”

I remember a negroe who once-but it's an awful story, and I'll spare you telling- still he had a thing on him which must have measured a good foot. George Reynolds, my seducer, though not a very big man, had a pretty plaything to flatter a girl with.

However, to get back once more to the tale. A few days after my disappointing interview with Lewis, Madame told me she thought it quite time an excursion was made to the agents. To gain that end she first proposed to introduce me to a journalist friend of hers who had some little influence in theatrical circles.

Madame showed me the paper with which her friend was connected, a publication bound in an offensively light green color, and labeled “The Moon” in heavy black lettering. I knew the paper, it was one of Charley Lathmere's favorites. It contained weekly stories, under the heading of “What the Man in the Moon Thinks” that suited Charley's taste exactly. They were very much up to date and frequently improper, wherefore it was with considerable surprise that I subsequently learned that they were all written by an elderly widowed lady, resident in Scotland.

We found the office of the “Moon” at last in a small street running from the Strand, and Madame sent her card in.

The office boy took her card through an inner door and we heard the sound of his voice, but none answering. Some minutes passed, but dead silence reigned in the room within. Then Madame, who was becoming impatient, signed to me to follow, and herself followed the boy through the door. We found ourselves in a large, comfortably furnished room that looked on to a small courtyard and was quite apart from the distracting noises of the outside world. In the center of the room stood a square table of considerable size, bearing a large variety of newspapers, a whiskey bottle, several syphons, and a half dozen glasses or so. In three armchairs in various corners of the room, sat three men all fast asleep. One of them was tall and fair, his face was clean shaven, and he was rather haggard, he was dressed a little elaborately, and wore a large buttonholes in the lapel of his frockcoat I should have guessed his age to be about twenty six. A second was of medium size, and might have been any age. His hair fell in thick masses about the sides of his head, his mustache were twisted upwards with an assumption of ferocity but in his sleep it was easy to see that he was really a very mild man. In the best armchair, and nearest the fire, sat a little man whom I took to at once. He was short, and of a well rounded, comfortable figure, but it was in the extreme youthfulness of his appearance, that lay his charm. His hair was long, and fell in carefully disposed ringlets over his forehead into his blue eyes. His whole chubby countenance was wrapped in a seraphic smile, and in his left hand he still grasped a tumbler. He was snoring somewhat and with each snore the smile broadened across his face; doubtless he was dreaming some happy boyish fancy, and his spirit was wandering in some pure noble land, far away from the worldly turmoil of the Strand.

“The long one is Mr. Annesley,” said Madame, and advancing towards him she prodded him sharply in the ribs with her umbrella. He uncurled like a coiled spring that is suddenly released, and stood bolt upright, his hands instinctively seeking his hair to see if it was neatly brushed.

“My dear Madame Karl,” he ejaculated, “a thousand pardons for the condition of the men in the Moon, but it is the day after publishing day, you see, and we are taking a well deserved rest. Will you come with me into the next room?”

I followed them rather reluctantly, for I was anxious to see what the little man was like when awake. We came into a comfortable little room wherein sat a young lady who was doing her hair before a glass, on the table before her lay several envelopes addressed to the editresses of ladies papers.

“This is Lilly,” said Mr. Annesley, “Lilly of the Valley,” we call her, because she toils not, etc., but it is not quite fair, because, though she does not toil, and probably, if you set her before a spinning wheel she'd think it was sort of a new bicycle, yet she spins the most excellent yarns to undesirable callers.”

“Oh, Mr. Annesley,” said the girl, “you do tell them,” and finishing the tying of her hair with a determined twist, she left the room. Almost immediately we heard the sound of a smart blow on flesh followed by a short boyish cry.

“That's nothing,” said Mr. Annesley, that's only Lilly's way of telling the boy to go and stand outside while she sits in his chair. And now, Madame Karl, I am very much at your service, what can I do for you?”

“First of all,” said Madame, “let me introduce you to Miss Blanche La Mare, a protegee of mine, who wants to go on the stage.”

Mr. Annesley squeezed my hand most affectionately, and then answered. “That is at once a very easy and a very difficult job, as doubtless you know, Madame Karl. Miss La Mare is very pretty and I am sure very clever but unfortunately that is not all that managers want. Has she seen anyone yet?”

I hesitated to speak of Lewis, but Madame took up the tale for me, and moreover told it with some circumstance and just a little exageration. The young man did not seem surprised, but he did not on the other hand seem very confident that I should find the agents much more demurely behaved.

It was suggested that we should lunch first; then I might make my visit to an agent Mr. Annesley knew. The fat little man, Walker Bird, was awakened to make our party a square one, and we hansomed off to a place called Estlakes.

I had Walker Bird for my cab companion. I think the other man would have very much liked to have leered after me, but Madame captured him at once and he had no choice but go gently.

I expected the fat little man to improve the occasion, and he certainly did not disappoint me. The street was too open and the luncheon place so crowded that kissing was out of the question, but he made no bones about squeezing my hand affectionately.

I was glad when Mr. Annesley said after lunch that I should come at once with him to see an agent.

Mr. Rufus, the agent, inhabited the first and second floors of a house in the Strand. The doors on either side of his offices opened into bars, and about them were grouped numbers of shabby men whom no one would have any difficulty in recognizing as actors. They all wore long coats, in some cases decorated about the collar and cuffs with fur of a very dubious origin, but in most cases extremely thin and bare. Within the bars I could see a number of ladies, whose costumes seemed to have been designed by an enthusiast of the kaleidoscope, and whose hats rivalled in their plumed splendor the paradise birds of the tropical regions. Their talk was loud and shrill, and could easily be heard in the street without.

“Chorus girls,” said Mr. Annesley, laconically, “they get thirty-five a week, and are expected to fill one of two stalls every evening, if they don't they get the sack, so you see they have in duty bound to get to know a lot of Johnnies.”

“Now then, Evans,' he said, to the young man in the outer office, “I've brought a young lady who has to see Mr. Rufus at once-at once, do you understand? Cut along in and tell him.”

In a few minutes the clerk returned with the message that Mr. Rufus would see us directly. Presently a door swung open, and the excellent Mr. Rufus appeared in person. For a moment, I thought that the poor man would be torn to pieces, for the attendant nymphs gathering up their skirts with one simultaneous and mighty rustle, like all the brown paper in the world being rolled up into a ball, bore down upon the devoted agent and besieged him with shrilly phrased interrogations.

As soon as we went to his room, he cordially welcomed Mr. Annesley, but of me he took not the slightest notice; he did not even ask me to sit down, though he had comfortably buried himself in a large and well padded armchair. Mr. Annesley began to explain the purport of our visit. It was barely finished, when Mr. Rufus condescended to turn to me.

“Well, my dear,” he said, “Mr. Annesley speaks very highly of you, and your appearance is decidedly in your favor. You can read music at sight, I suppose?”

I nodded.

“And sing?”

I nodded again.

“Well,” he continued, “you've just looked in at an opportune time. I've got to fill the chorus of a company that's just going out, and if you care to have the job, you can. Thirty shilling a week you begin on, but a girl like you ought not to stop long at that. Now, I shall expect you here at 11:30 on Monday to meet Mr. Restall, the manager. Good-bye, Miss La Mar, you'd better get out this way, and if you like, when you come again, you can come up this back staircase; ring the bell at the bottom, and you'll be let in. Mind you, this is a special favor.”

I accepted the offer of the engagement; as a matter of fact, I had come prepared to accept anything, and left Mr. Rufus by his private staircase. And so, in this way, I put my foot on the first rung of the dramatic ladder.

Annesley met me again outside, and asked me to have a drink with him. I wasn't very anxious to go into a public bar, but from what I saw of the ladies who were to be my theatrical companions, I gathered that it was a pretty usual thing to do. What would my reverend father, I wondered, have thought of his little daughter, had he watched her through the threshold of that glittering rendezvous.

We went into a small compartment, which we had to ourselves-in fact there was little room for anyone else there-and after a minute or two Mr. Annesley remembered with a start that he had left his notebook in the agent's office. “God forbid that anyone look into it,” he exclaimed, and then begged me to wait while he went back to Rufus'.

I could scarcely refuse, so sat perched on my high stool, sipping my whiskey and soda, and watching as well as I could the flirtations of the pretty barmaids and the customers in the other little boxes. Suddenly I became aware of a low toned conversation in the next compartment to mine, and by reason of a crack in the dividing wall. I could hardly help hearing it.

The man talking were obviously actors, and their conversation dealt with the theatrical tours they had just returned from. I give it just as it came from their lips, bad language and all. It was a revelation to me; I had not supposed before that any class of men could be so utterly mean in giving away the secrets of favors received from the other sex.

Said actor No. 1: “How did you get on with the girls in your show? Had a pretty warm time, I suppose?”

“My word, they were warm ones,” was the answer. “I started out meaning to live alone, but before two weeks, I had keeping house for me little Dolly Tesser.”

“I know her-pretty girl.”

“You're right; and you should see her with her clothes off, old man! A perfect peach, I can assure you. She was a bit shy at first, but I soon taught her all the tricks. My word, she is a bloody fine fuck!”

“Young, isn't she?”

“Oh, quite a kid, about seventeen-over the legal age though-you don't catch me making any mistake of that sort again. She wasn't a virgin, she'd been wrong with a conductor in the Gay Coquette crowd.”

“What, that syphilitic beast?”

“He hasn't got it really, but talking syph, have you heard the tale of Humphreys and his landlady's daughter?”

“No.”

“Well, he struck a place with an uncommonly pretty girl to wait. She was the landlady's daughter, and he hadn't been in the room three days before he was into her. Then on the fourth day, she didn't show up. He asked the old woman what was the matter.”

“Oh, Mary's very bad,” she said, “we've had to send her to the doctor, he says she's got syphilis.”

“You can bet old Humphreys nipped round to the chemist pretty sharp, bout a bottle of black wash and kept bathing the old man all day. On the next day however, the old girl turns to him as she's taking away his breakfast and says: “Oh, I made a mistake-n what I told you about Mary yesterday, it is erysipelas.”

At that moment Annesley returned, so I was spared any more from the actors on the other side of the bar.

Annesley wanted me to go back to the office with him, but I was too excited at the prospect of my engagement and I wanted to hurry home to tell Madame Karl-but I did not get back.

It happened like this. There was the usual block to the Strand traffic at the bottom corner of the street, and, gazing idly out of my hansom, I saw the long haired poet with whom I had behaved so oddly during the darkness at the musician's flat. He saw me too, and fled recklessly through traffic to gain my side; he asked no invitation, but seating himself murmured: “This is indeed a direct intervention of providence,' and told the cabman an address which I surmised to be that of his flat-it turned out to be so.

We drove rapidly down the Strand, and went down Arundel Street, in which street, the poet said he had a nest that almost touched the sky. It certainly nearly did, and as that particular block of buildings boasted no lift, it was a tired and panting little Blanche that at length gained the sixth floor. The poet apologized for the absence of the elevator, but immediately afterwards congratulated himself on none being there, for having a lift, he said, means also having a porter, and porters are horrid gossipy scandal mongering beings.

The front door passed, we found ourselves in a small hall, almost dark, save for the little light it gained from a heavily shaded electric globe which shed a discreet radiance upon an admirable painting of the Venus. A touch from the poet's fingers caused me to halt before the picture, and, as I gazed on it I felt his arms tighten round my waist, and his lips press gently upon my neck.

Here in this room was decadence indeed; all heavy curtains, little of the light of the day, heavy scents again, and soft cushions everywhere. I sank down on a luxurious couch and waited events. He crouched at my side and began to kiss me; very slowly, but very deliriously and lovingly; his breath was scented with some pleasant Oriental flavor, a flavor which soothed my nostrils. Slowly his hand made its way over my calves and over my drawers; at the some time that he was feeling for the bare flesh of my thigh I was beginning to fumble with his buttons, and almost at the same moment that his fingers touched my clitoris, I had the naked flesh of his penis in my hand. It was very large and stout, a legacy of his north country parentage doubtless-and it throbbed amazingly.

For a few moments we felt each other without a word, overcome by our delicious sensations-and I made the next step toward a nearer intimacy by undoing his braces and buttons and sliding the front part of his trousers down till I could let my hand wander underneath his balls. That stung him into action. He freed himself from me, stood up and began to undress rapidly; in about a moment he stood before me stark naked and another moment saw me in the same condition.

We had only one fuck, but we lay there naked for hours, kissing and talking. I wanted more, and I hinted for it, but he would not. “Another time, little girl,” was all he would vouchsafe. At last the falling shadows warned me that I must get back to Madame Karl, and I let him dress me. He gave me a little miniature on ivory of himself, and made an appointment for that day week, the day which coincided with my first rehearsal with the Restall Company. I made him get me a cab, and gave the Jermyn Street address. I felt full of lust as I sat back on the cushions of the hansom, and suddenly as we came into Trafalgar Square, the remembrance of the woman I had met that night of my first arrival at school, her invitation and her address came back to me. I recollected her promise to find me a dress, should I come to see her. Without a moments further thought I pushed the trap and gave the driver her street and number.