Yet, plain as Mrs. Brown’s views were now come out, I had not the heart or spirit to open my eyes to them: still I could not part with my dependence on that beldam, so much did I think myself hers, soul and body: or rather, I sought to deceive myself with the continuation of my good opinion of her, and chose to wait the worst at her hands, sooner than be turned out to starve in the streets, without a penny of money or a friend to apply to these fears were my folly.
While this confusion of ideas was passing in my head, and I sat pensively by the fire, with my eyes brimming with tears, my neck still bare, and my cap fallen off in the struggle, so that my hair was in the disorder you may guess, the villain’s lust began, I suppose, to be again in flow, at the sight of all that bloom of youth which presented itself to his view, a bloom yet unenjoyed and of course not yet indifferent to him.
After some pause, he asked me with a tone of voice mightily softened, whether I would make it up with him before the old lady returned, and all should be well; he would restore me to his affections, at the same time offering to kiss me and feel my breasts. But now my extreme aversion, my fears, my indignation, all acting upon me, gave me a spirit not natural to me, so that breaking loose from him, I ran to the bell and rang it with such violence and effect as to bring up the maid to know what was the matter, or whether the gentleman wanted anything? And before he could proceed to greater extremities, she bounced into the room, and seeing me stretched on the floor, my hair all dishevelled, my nose gushing out blood (which did not a little tragedize the scene) and my odious persecutor still intent of pushing his brutal point, unmoved by all my cries and distress, she was herself confounded and did not know what to do.
As much, however, as Martha might be prepared and hardened to transactions of this sort, all womanhood must have been out of her heart, could she have seen this unmoved. Besides that, on the face of things, she imagined that matters had gone greater lengths than they really had, and that the courtesy of the house had been actually consummated on me, and flung me into the condition I was in: in this notion she instantly took my part and advised the gentleman to go down and leave me to recover myself, and that all would be soon over with me—that when Mrs. Brown and Phoebe, who were gone out, were returned, they would take order for everything to his satisfaction—that nothing would be lost by a little patience with the poor tender thing—that for her part she was frightened—she could not tell what to say to such doings—but that she would stay by me till my mistress came home. As the wench said all this in a resolute tone, and the monster himself began to perceive that things would not mend by his staying, he took his hat and went out of the room murmuring and pitting his brows like an old ape, so that I was delivered from the horrors of his detestable presence.
As soon as he was gone, Martha very tenderly offered me her assistance in anything, and would have got me some hartshorn drops and put me to bed; which last I at first positively refused, in the fear that the monster might return and take me at that disadvantage. However, with much persuasion and assurances that I should not be molested that night she prevailed on me to lie down; and indeed I was so weakened by my struggles, so dejected by my fearful apprehension, so terror-struck, that I had not power to sit up or hardly to give answers to the questions with which the curious Martha plied and perplexed me.
Such too, and so cruel was my fate, that I dreaded the sight of Mrs. Brown as if I had been the criminal and she the person injured, a mistake which you will not think so strange on distinguishing that neither virtue nor principles had the least share in the defence I had made, but only the particular aversion I had conceived against this first brutal and frightful invader of my tender innocence.
I passed then the time till Mrs. Brown came home, under all the agitations of fear and despair that may easily be guessed.
About eleven at night my two ladies came home, and having received rather a favourable account from Martha, who had run down to let them in (for Mr. Crofts, that was the name of my brute, was gone out of the house) after waiting till he had tired his patience for Mrs. Brown’s return, they came thundering up stairs, and seeing me pale, my face bloody, and all the marks of the most thorough dejection, they employed themselves more to comfort and re-inspirit me than in making me the reproaches I was weak enough to fear, I who had so many juster and stronger to retort upon them.
Mrs. Brown withdrawn, Phoebe came presently to bed to me, and what with the answers she drew from me, what with her own method of palpably satisfying herself, she soon discovered that I had been more frightened than hurt; upon which, I suppose being herself seized with sleep and reserving her lectures and instructions till the next morning, she left me, properly speaking, to my unrest: for, later tossing and turning the greatest part of the night, and tormenting myself with the falsest notions and apprehensions of things, I fell, through mere fatigue into a kind of delirious doze, out of which I waked late in the morning, in a violent fever; a circumstance which was extremely critical to reprieve me, at least for a time, from the attacks of a wretch infinitely more terrible to me than death itself.
The interested care that was taken of me during my illness, in order to restore me to a condition of making good the bawd’s engagements or of enduring further trials, had, however, such an effect on my grateful disposition that I even thought myself obliged to my un-doers for their attention to promote my recovery, and, above all, for the keeping out of my sight of that brutal ravisher, the author of my disorder, on their finding I was too strongly moved at the bare mention of his name.
Youth is soon raised; and a few days were sufficient to conquer the fury of my fever; but what contributed most to my perfect recovery and to my reconciliation with life was the timely news that Mr. Crofts, who was a merchant of considerable dealings, was arrested at the King’s suit, for nearly forty thousand pounds, on account of his driving a certain contraband trade, and that his affairs were so desperate, that even were it in his inclination, it would not be in his power to renew his designs upon me: for he was instantly thrown into a prison, which it was not likely he would get out of in haste.
Mrs. Brown, who had touched his fifty guineas, advanced to so little purpose, and lost all hopes of the remaining hundred, began to look upon my treatment of him with a more favourable eye; and as they had observed my temper to be perfectly tractable and conformable to their views, all the girls that composed her flock were suffered to visit me and had their cue to dispose me, by their conversation, to a perfect resignation of myself to Mrs. Brown’s direction.
Accordingly they were let in upon me, and all that frolic and thoughtless gaiety in which those giddy creatures consume either leisure made me envy a condition of which I only saw the fair side; insomuch, that the being one of them became even my ambition: a disposition which they all carefully cultivated; and I wanted now nothing but to restore my health, that I might be able to undergo the ceremony of the initiation.
Conversation, example, all, in short, contributed in that house to corrupt my native parity, which had taken no root in education, whilst now the inflammable principal of pleasure, so easily fired at my age, made strange work within me, and all the modesty I was brought up in the habit (not the instruction) of, began to melt away, like dew before the sun’s heat; not to mention that I made a vice of necessity, from the constant fears I had of being turned out to starve.
I was soon pretty well recovered, and at certain hours allowed to range all over the house, but cautiously kept from seeing any company till the arrival of Lord B——, from Bath, to whom Mrs. Brown, in respect to his experienced generosity on such occasions, proposed to offer the perusal of that trinket of mine, which bears so great an imaginary value; and his lordship being expected in town in less than a fortnight, Mrs. Brown judged I would be entirely renewed in beauty and freshness by that time, and afforded her the chance of a better bargain than she had driven with Mr. Crofts.
In the meantime, I was so thoroughl
y, as they call it, brought over, so tame to their whistle, that, had my cage door been set open, I had no idea that I ought to fly anywhere, sooner than stay where I was; nor had I the least sense of regretting my condition, but waited very quietly for whatever Mrs. Brown should order concerning me; who on her side, by herself and her agents, took more than the necessary precautions to lull and lay asleep all just reflections on my destiny.
Preachments of morality over the left shoulder, a life of joy painted in the gayest colours; caresses, promises, indulgent treatment; nothing, in short, was wanting to domesticate me entirely and to prevent my going out anywhere to get better advice; alas! I dreamed of no such thing.
Hitherto I had been indebted only to the girls of the house for the corruption of my innocence: their luscious talk, in which modesty was far from respected, their description of their engagements with men, had given me a tolerable insight into the nature and mysteries of their profession, at the same time that they highly provoked an itch of florid warm-spirited blood through every vein; but above all, my bed fellow Phoebe, whose pupil I more immediately was, exerted her talents in giving me the first tinctures of pleasure: whilst nature, now warmed and wantoned with discoveries so interesting, piqued a curiosity which Phoebe artfully whetted, and leading me from question to question of her own suggestion, explained to me all the mysteries of Venus. But I could not long remain in such a house as that, without being an eye-witness of more than I could conceive from her descriptions.
One day, about twelve at noon, being thoroughly recovered of my fever, I happened to be in Mrs. Brown’s dark closet, where I had not been half an hour, resting upon the maid’s bed, before I heard a rustling in the bed-chamber, separated from the closet only by two sash doors, before the glasses of which were drawn two yellow damask curtains, but not so close as to exclude the full view of the room from any person in the closet.
I instantly crept softly and posted myself so, that seeing everything minutely, I could not myself be seen; and who should come in but the venerable mother Abbess herself! handed in by a tall, brawny young Horse-grenadiers, moulded in the Hercules style: in fine, the choice of the most experienced dame, in those affairs, in all London.
Oh! how still and hush did I keep at my stand, lest any noise should baulk my curiosity, or bring Madam into the closet!
But I had not much reason to fear either, for she was entirely taken up with her present great concern, that she had no sense of attention to spare to anything else.
Droll was it to see that clumsy fat figure of her’s flop down on the foot of the bed, opposite to the closet door so that I had a full front view of all her charms.
Her paramour sat down by her. He seemed to be a man of very few words, and a great stomach; for proceeding instantly to essentials, he gave her some hearty smacks, and thrusting his hands into her breasts, disengaged them from her stays, in scorn of whose confinement they broke loose, and sagged down, navel-low at least. A more enormous pair did my eyes never behold, nor of a worse colour, flagging, soft, and most lovingly contiguous: yet such as they were, this great beef-eater seemed to paw them with a most unenviable lust, seeking in vain to confine or cover one of them with a hand scarce less than a shoulder of mutton. After toying with them thus some time, as if they had been worth it, he laid her down pretty briskly, and canting up her petticoats, made barely a mask of them to her broad red face, that blushed with nothing but brandy.
As he stood on one side, unbuttoning his waistcoat and breeches, her fat brawny thighs hung down, and the whole greasy landscape lay fairly open to my view; a wide open mouthed gap, overshaded with a grizzly bush, seemed held out like a beggar’s wallet for its provision.
But I soon had my eyes called off by a more striking object that entirely engrossed them.
Her sturdy stallion had now unbuttoned, and produced naked, stiff and erect, that wonderful machine, which I had never seen before, and which, for the interest my own seat of pleasure began to take furiously in it, I stared at with all the eyes I had. However, my senses were too much flurried, too much concentered in that now burning spot of mine, to observe anything more than in general the make and turn of that instrument; from which the instinct of nature, yet more than all I had heard of it, now strongly informed me, I was to expect that supreme pleasure which she had placed in the meeting of those parts so admirably fitted for each other.
Long, however, the young spark did not remain before giving it two or three shakes, by way of brandishing it, he threw himself upon her, and his back being now towards me, I could only take his being engulfed for granted, by the directions he moved in, and the impossibility of missing so staring a mark; and now the bed shook, the curtains rattled so that I could scarce hear the sighs and murmurs, the heaves and pantings that accompanied the action, from the beginning to the end; the sound and sight of which thrilled to the very soul of me, and made every vein of my body circulate liquid fires: the emotion grew so viol-lent that it almost intercepted my respiration.
Prepared then, and disposed as I was by the discourse of my companions, and Phoebe’s minute detail of everything, no wonder that such a sight gave the last dying blow to my native innocence.
Whilst they were in the heat of the action, guided by nature only, I stole my hand up my petticoats, and with fingers on fire, seized and yet more inflamed that center of all my senses; my heart palpitated, as if it would force its way through my bosom; I breathed with pain; I twisted my thighs, squeezed and compressed the lips of that virgin slit, and following mechanically the example of Phoebe’s manual operation on it, as far as I could find admission, brought on at last the critical ecstasy, the melting flow, into which nature, spent with excess of pleasure, dissolves and dies away.
After which my senses recovered coolness enough to observe the rest of the transaction between this happy pair.
The young fellow had just dismounted, when the old lady immediately sprung up, with all the vigour of youth, derived, no doubt, from her late refreshment; and making him sit down, began in her turn to kiss him, to pat and pinch his cheeks, and play with his hair: all which he received with an air of indifference and coolness that showed him to be much altered from what he was when he first went on to the breach.
My pious governess, however, not being above calling in auxiliaries, unlocks a little case of cordials that stood near the bed, and made him pledge her in a very plentiful dram; after which, and a little amorous parley, Madam set herself down upon the same place, at the bed’s foot; and the young fellow standing sidewise by her, she, with the greatest effrontery imaginable, unbuttons his breeches, and removing his shirt, draws out his affair, so shrunk and diminished, that I could not but remember the difference, now crest-fallen, or just faintly lifting its head. But our experience matron very soon, by chaffing it with her hands, brought it to swell to that size and erection I had before seen it up to.
I admired then, upon a fresh account, and with a nicer survey, the texture of that capital part of man: the flaming red head as it stood uncapped, the whiteness of the shaft, and the shrub growth of curling hair that embrowned the foots of it, the roundish bag that dangled down from it, all exacted my eager attention and renewed my flame. But, as the main affair was now at the point the industrious dame had laboured to bring it to, she was not in the humour to put off the payment of her pains, but laying herself down, drew him gently upon her, and thus they finished, in the same manner as before, the old last act.
This over, they both went out lovingly together, the old lady having first made him a present, as near as I could observe, of three or four pieces; he being not only her particular favourite on account of his performances, but a retainer to the house; from whose sight she had taken great care hitherto to secret me, lest he might not have had patience to wait for my lord’s arrival, but have insisted on being his taster, which the old lady was under too much subjection to him to dare dispute with him; for every girl of the hou
se fell to him in course, and the old lady only now and then got her turn, in consideration of the maintenance he had, and which he could scarce be accused of not earning from her.
As soon as I heard them go downstairs, I stole up softly to my own room, out of which I had luckily not been missed; there I began to breathe more free, and to give a loose to those warm emotions which the sight of such an encounter had raised in me, I laid me down on the bed, stretched myself out, joining and ardently wishing, and requiring any means to divert or allay the rekindled rage and tumult of my desires, which all pointed strongly to their pole: man. I felt about the bed as if I sought for something that I grasped in my waking dream, and not finding it, could have cried for vexation; every part of me plowing with simulated fires. At length, I resorted to the only present remedy, that of vain attempts at digitation, where the smallness of the theatre did not yet afford room enough for action, and where the pain my fingers gave me, in striving for admission, though they procured me a slight satisfaction for the present, started an apprehension which I could not be easy till I had communicated to Phoebe and received her explanations upon it.
The opportunity, however, did not offer till next morning, for Phoebe did not come to bed till long after I was gone to sleep. As soon then as we were both awake, it was but in course to bring our lay-abed chat to hand, on the subject of my uneasiness: to which a recital of the love scene I had thus, by chance, been spectatress of, served for a preface.
Phoebe could not hear it to the end without more than one interruption by peals of laughter, and my ingenuous way of relating matters did not a little heighten the joke to her.
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