My Life and Loves, Book 1

by Frank Harris

  I bowed to the mayor and turned away, but the audience broke into cheers, and Senator Ingalls came over and shook my hand, saying he hoped to know me better, and the cheering went on till I had gotten back to my place and resumed my seat. A few minutes later and I was touched on the back by Professor Smith. As I turned round, he said smiling, «You gave me a good lesson: I'll never make a public speaker and what I said doubtless sounded inconsequent and absurd; but if you'd have a talk with me, I think I could convince you that my theory will hold water.» «I've no doubt you could,» I broke in, heartily ashamed of having made fun of a man I didn't know; «I didn't grasp your meaning, but I'd be glad to have a talk with you.» «Are you free tonight?» he went on; I nodded. «Then come with me to my rooms.

  These ladies live out of town and we'll put them in their buggy and then be free. This is Mrs…» he added, presenting me to the stouter lady, «and this, her sister, Miss Stephens.» I bowed and out we went, I keeping myself resolutely in the background till the sisters had driven away: then we set off together to Professor Smith's rooms for our talk. If I could give you a complete account of that talk, this poor page would glow with wonder and admiration, all merged in loving reverence. We talked, or rather Smith talked, for I soon found he knew infinitely more than I did, was able indeed to label my creed as that of Mill, «a bourgeois English economist,» he called him with smiling disdain. Ever memorable to me, sacred indeed, that first talk with the man who was destined to reshape my life and inspire it with some of his own high purpose. He Introduced me to the communism of Marx and Engels and easily convinced me that land and its products, coal and oil, should belong to the whole community, which should also manage all industries for the public benefit. My breath was taken away by his mere statement of the case and I thrilled to the passion in his voice and manner, though even then I wasn't wholly convinced.

  Whatever topic we touched on, he illumined; he knew everything, it seemed to me, German and French and could talk Latin and classic Greek as fluently as English. I had never imagined such scholarship, and when I recited some verses of Swinburne as expressing my creed, he knew them too, and his pantheistic hymn to Hertha as well. And he wore his knowledge lightly as the mere garment of his shining spirit! And how handsome he was, like a sun-god! I had never seen anyone who could at all compare with him. Day had dawned before we had done talking: he told me he was the professor of Greek in the state university and hoped I would come and study with him when the schools opened again in October. «To think of you as a cowboy,» he said, «is impossible. Fancy a cowboy knowing books of Vergil and poems of Swinburne by heart; it's absurd: you must give your brains a chance and study.» «I've top little money,» I said, beginning to regret my loan to my brother. «I told you I am a Socialist,» Smith retorted smiling. «I have three or four thousand dollars in the bank; take half of it and come to study,» and his luminous eyes held me: it was true, after all; my heart swelled, jubilant there were noble souls In this world who took little thought of money and lived for better things than gold. «I won't take your money,» I said, with tears burning. «Every herring should hang by its own head in these democratic days; but if you think enough of me to offer such help, I'll promise to come, though I fear you'll be disappointed when you find how little I know, how ignorant I am. I've not been in school since I was fourteen.» «Come, we'll soon make up for the time lost,» he said. «By the bye, where are you staying?» «The Eldridge House,» I replied. He brought me to the door and we parted; as I turned to go, I saw the tall, slight figure and the radiant eyes, and I went away into a new world that was the old, feeling as if I were treading on air. Once more my eyes had been opened as at Overton Bridge to the beauties of nature; but now to the splendor of an unique spirit. What luck! I cried to myself, to meet such a man! It really seemed to me as if some god were following me with divine gifts! And then the thought came: This man has chosen and called you very much as Jesus called his disciples: «Come, and I will make you fishers of men!» Already I was dedicated heart and soul to the new gospel. But even that meeting with Smith, wherein I reached the topmost height of golden hours, was set off, so to speak, by another happening of this wonder-week. At the next table to me in the dining room I had already remarked once or twice a little, middle-aged, weary looking man who often began his breakfast with a glass of boiling water and followed it up with a baked apple drowned in rich cream. Brains, too, or sweetbreads he would eat for dinner, and rice, not potatoes: when I looked surprised, he told me he had been up all night and had a weak digestion. Mayhew, he said, was his name, and explained that if I ever wanted a game of faro or euchre or indeed anything else, he'd oblige me. I smiled; I could ride and shoot, I replied, but I was no good at cards. The day after my talk with Smith, Mayhew and I were both late for supper: I sat long over a good meal and as he rose, he asked me if I would come across the street and see his «lay-out.» I went willingly enough, having nothing to do. The gambling saloon was on the first floor of a building nearly opposite the Eldridge House: the place was well kept and neat, thanks to a colored bartender and waiter and a nigger for all work. The long room, too, was comfortably furnished and very brightly lit-altogether an attractive place. As luck would have it, while he was showing me around, a lady came in. Mayhew after a word or two introduced me to her as his wife. Mrs. May-hew was then a woman of perhaps twenty-eight or thirty, with tall, lissom, slight figure and interesting rather than pretty face: her features were all good, her eyes even were large and blue-grey; she would have been lovely if her coloring had been more pronounced. Give her golden hair or red or black and she would have been a beauty; she was always tastefully dressed and had appealing, ingratiating manners. I soon found that she loved books and reading, and as Mayhew said he was going to be busy, I asked if I might see her home. She consented smiling and away we went. She lived in a pretty frame house standing alone in a street that ran parallel to Massachusetts Street, nearly opposite to a large and ugly church. As she went up the steps to the door, I noticed that she had fine, neat ankles and I divined shapely limbs. While she was taking off her light cloak and hat, the lifting of her arms stretched her bodice and showed small, round breasts: already my blood was lava and my mouth parched with desire.

  «You look at me strangely!» she said, swinging round from the long mirror with a challenge on her parted lips. I made some inane remark: I couldn't trust myself to speak frankly; but natural sympathy drew us together. I told her I was going to be a student, and she wanted to know whether I could dance. I told her I could not, and she promised to teach me: «Lily Robins, a neighbor's girl, will play for us any afternoon. Do you know the steps?» She went on, and when I said, «No,» she got up from the sofa, held up her dress and showed me the three polka steps, which she said were waltz steps, too, only taken on a glide. «What pretty ankles you have!» I ventured, but she appeared not to hear me. We sat on and on and I learned that she was very lonely: Mr. Mayhew away every night and nearly all day and nothing to do in that little dead-and-alive place. «Will you let me come in for a talk sometimes?» I asked. «Whenever you wish,» was her answer. As I rose to go and we were standing opposite to each other by the door, I said: «You know, Mrs. Mayhew, in Europe when a man brings a pretty woman home, she rewards him with a kiss.»

  «Really?» she scoffed, smiling; «that's not a custom here.»

  «Are you less generous than they are?» I asked, and the next moment I had taken her face in my hands and kissed her on the lips.

  She put her hands on my shoulders and left her eyes on mine.

  «We're going to be friends,» she said; «I felt it when I saw you: don't stay away too long!» «Will you see me tomorrow afternoon?»

  I asked. «I want that dance lesson!» «Surely,» she replied. «I'll tell Lily in the morning.» And once more our hands met: I tried to draw her to me for another kiss; she held back with a smiling,

  «Tomorrow afternoon!» «Tell me your name» I begged, «so that I may think of it.» «Lorna,» she replied,
«you funny boy!» I went my way with pulses hammering, blood aflame and hope in my heart.

  Next morning I called again upon Smith but the pretty servant («Rose,» she said her name was), told me that he was nearly always at Judge Stephens', «five or six miles out,» she thought it was. «They always come for him in a buggy,» she added. So I said I'd write and make an appointment, and I did write and asked him to let me see him next morning. That same morning Willie recommended to me a pension kept by a Mrs. Gregory, an English woman, the wife of an old Baptist clergyman, who would take good care of me for four dollars a week. Immediately I went with him to see her and was delighted to find that she lived only about a hundred yards from Mrs. Mayhew, on the opposite side of the street. Mrs. Gregory was a large, motherly woman, evidently a lady, who had founded this boarding house to provide for a rather reckless husband and two children, a big pretty girl, Kate, and a lad a couple of years younger. Mrs. Gregory was delighted with my English accent, I believe, and showed me special favor at once by giving me a large outside room with its own entrance and steps into the garden. In an hour I had paid my bill at the Eldridge House and had moved in. I showed a shred of prudence by making Willie promise Mrs. Gregory that he would turn up each Saturday with the five dollars for my board; the dollar extra was for the big room. In due course I shall tell how he kept his promise and discharged his debt to me. For the moment everything was easily, happily settled. I went out and ordered a decent suit of ordinary tweeds and dressed myself up in my best blue suit to call upon Mrs. Mayhew after lunch.

  The clock crawled, but on the stroke of three I was at her door: a colored maid admitted me. «Mrs. Mayhew,» she said in her pretty singing voice, «will be down right soon: I'll go and call Miss Lily.»

  In five minutes Miss Lily appeared, a dark slip of a girl with shining black hair, wide, laughing mouth, temperamental thick, red lips, and grey eyes fringed with black lashes; she had hardly time to speak to me when Mrs. Mayhew came in. «I hope you two'll be great friends,» she said prettily. «You're both about the same age,» she added. In a few minutes Miss Lily was playing a waltz on the Steinway and with my arm around the slight, flexible waist of my inamorata I was trying to waltz. But alas! after a turn or two I became giddy and in spite of all my resolutions had to admit that I should never be able to dance. «You have got very pale,» Mrs.

  Mayhew said, «you must sit down on the sofa a little while.» Slowly the giddiness left me; before I had entirely recovered Miss Lily with kindly words of sympathy had gone home, and Mrs. Mayhew brought me in a cup of excellent coffee; I drank it down and was well at once.

  «You should go in and lie down,» said Mrs. Mayhew, still full of pity. «See,» and she opened a door, «there's the guest bedroom all ready.» I saw my chance and went over to her. «If you'd come too,» I whispered, and then, «The coffee has made me quite well: won't you, Lorna, give me a kiss? You don't know how often I said your name last night, you dear!» And in a moment I had again taken her face and put my lips on hers. She gave me her lips this time and my kiss became a caress; but in a little while she drew away and said, «Let's sit and talk; I want to know all you are doing.» So I seated myself beside her on the sofa and told her all my news. She thought I would be comfortable with the Gregorys. «Mrs. Gregory is a good woman,» she added, «and I hear the girl's engaged to a cousin: do you think her pretty?» «I think no one pretty but you, Lorna,» I said, and I pressed her head down on the arm of the sofa and kissed her. Her lips grew hot: I was certain. At once I put my hand down on her sex; she struggled a little at first, which I took care should bring our bodies closer, and when she ceased struggling I put my hands up her dress and began caressing her sex: it was hot and wet, as I knew it would be, and opened readily. But in another moment she took the lead.

  «Some one might find us here,» she whispered. «I've let the maid go: come up to my bedroom,» and she took me upstairs. I begged her to undress: I wanted to see her figure; but she only said, «I have no corsets on; I don't often wear them in the house. Are you sure you love me, dear?» «You know I do!» was my answer. The next moment I lifted her on to the bed, drew up her clothes, opened her legs and was in her. There was no difficulty and in a moment or two I came, but went right on poking passionately; in a few minutes her breath went and came quickly and her eyes fluttered and she met my thrusts with sighs and nippings of her sex. My second orgasm took some time and all the while Lorna became more and more responsive, till suddenly she put her hands on my bottom and drew me to her forcibly while she moved her sex up and down awkwardly to meet my thrusts with a passion I had hardly imagined. Again and again I came and the longer the play lasted the wilder was her excitement and delight. She kissed me hotly, foraging and thrusting her tongue into my mouth. Finally she pulled up her chemise to get me further into her and, at length, with little sobs, she suddenly got hysterical and, panting wildly, burst into a storm of tears. That stopped me: I withdrew my sex and took her in my arms and kissed her; at first she clung to me with choking sighs and streaming eyes, but, as soon as she had won a little control, I went to the toilette and brought her a sponge of cold water and bathed her face and gave her some water to drink-that quieted her. But she would not let me leave her even to arrange my clothes. «Oh, you great, strong dear,» she cried, with her arms clasping me. «Oh, who would have believed such intense pleasure possible: I never felt anything like it before; how could you keep on so long? Oh, how I love you, you wonder and delight. «I am all yours,» she added gravely.

  «You shall do what you like with me: I am your mistress, your slave, your plaything, and you are my god and my love! Oh, darling! Oh!»

  There was a pause while I smiled at her extravagant praise, then suddenly she sat up and got out of bed. «You wanted to see my figure»; she exclaimed, «here it is, I can deny you nothing; I only hope it may please you,» and in a moment or two she showed herself nude from head to stocking. As I had guessed, her figure was slight and lissom, with narrow hips, but she had a great bush of hair on her Mount of Venus and her breasts were not so round and firm as Jessie's: still she was very pretty and well-formed with the fines attaches (slender wrists and ankles), which the French are so apt to overestimate. They think that small bones indicate a small sex; but I have found the exceptions are very numerous, even if there is such a rule. After I had kissed her breasts and navel and praised her figure, she disappeared in the bathroom, but was soon with me again on the sofa which we had left an hour or so before. «Do you know,» she began,

  «my husband assured me that only the strongest young man could go twice with a woman in one day? I believed him; aren't we women fools?

  You must have come a dozen times!» «Not half that number,» I replied, smiling. «Aren't you tired?» was her next question.

  «Even I have a little headache,» she added. «I never was so wrought up; at the end it was so intense; but you must be tired out.»

  «No,» I replied, «I feel no fatigue, indeed, I feel the better for our joy ride!» «But surely you're an exception!» she went on.

  «Most men have finished in one short spasm and leave the woman utterly unsatisfied, just excited and no more.» «Youth,» I said, «that, I believe, makes the chief difference.» «Is there any danger of a child?» she went on. «I ought to say 'hope,'«she added bitterly, «for I'd love to have a child, your child,» and she kissed me. «When were you ill last?» I asked. «About a fortnight ago,» she replied. «I often thought that that had something to do with it.»