The talk turned upon plays-Annesley held it a disgrace that what was really good in London should not attract. “As for that trashy burlesque,” he said.
“Rot, oh rot, my dear fellow,” answered little Walker Bird, settling himself comfortably into an armchair. “You may think it trash, though I know you've been at least a dozen times, but the public love it, and the public deserve to be catered to. Take the men in to-night's audience. They had worked hard during the day, and they had dined heavily when their work was over. They didn't want to think, their tummies were much too full. They wanted to laugh easily, and, above all, to see lots of pretty girls, and feel their old jocks stiffen,”-we four always talked very freely — “and you bet your life they did stiffen tonight. Cunt my dear Annesley, cunt, and lots of it, is what the greater part of this blessed nation wants. There's a certain proportion of the stalls who can take the cunt they see on the stage out to supper afterwards and block it, and a much larger proportion who wish they could, but who go home and block their wives or mistresses, instead. So everybody is satisfied, see?”
Mr. Annesley must have got his finger rather farther than usual up Madame, for she wriggled furiously, then suddenly kissed him all over his face before he could reply- and when he did answer, he agreed with Walker.
Conversation lagged; Annesley was occupied surreptitiously (as he thought) frigging Madame Karl, while I was getting hot as hell watching them, and Walker was getting hotter still, watching me. At last he got up and said he must be going. “Don't hurry,” urged Madame Karl. “I must,” answered Walker, but don't let me hurry you, Annesley, old chap.”
Annesley made no pretense of wishing to hurry, so I saw little Walker to the door.
In the hall he grabbed hold of me, thrust his tongue down my throat till I thought I should have choked, then begged me to let him have a piece.
Well, he got me into the shop, and there, in the darkness, lit only by the furtive street lamp's ray or two that stole over the shutters, the little devil fucked me, on the shop table. He was a good long time about it, he had been drinking, but I quite enjoyed the performance. When it was over he kissed me fervently wiped his cock with his perfumed handkerchief, exacted a promise that I would see him on the morrow, and departed.
I went up to Madame's room, and knocked. No answer. I went in on tip toe. The bed clothes were thrown back, Annesley's trousers were down, Madame Karl's night dress was up, and Annesley's prick was half in her cunt but they were both fast asleep. I switched off the light, and tip-toed off again to my own little bedroom, where I undressed, admired my naked little self in the long glass, read a chapter from one of Madame's naughty books tickled my clitoris a little, though not enough to make semen come, and fell off into the land of dreams.
In the morning I woke up to find Madame by my side. She blushed when my eye met hers. “Of course you know what happened last night, I could not help it. He's gone, got out before the servants were up.”
On the Thursday preceding the Monday we were to open at Oxford. Mr. Restall, in a fit of sweetness towards me, produced I think by the generous effect of some very old, old brandy, asked me if I would care to go with him to a theatrical dance that same evening at the Harmonic theatre.
You bet I accepted. Dances were foreign to my experience, and the theatrical dances promised such gay and unusual experience that I literally jumped at the offer. He bade me look my best, and meet him for supper at the Alcazar Restaurant, opposite the Harmonic, at eleven thirty.
I was there at eleven thirty-five and had fifteen minutes in which to admire the frescoes on the wall.
Then Restall sailed in, to the accompaniment of much bowing and scraping on the part of the attendants, and a considerable addition to the civility shown me. I had been taken, I think, for a lady out on the pick up.
Restall, speaking and behaving in his usual restless, jerky manner, hustled me upstairs and found a table on the balcony.
The supper was a good one; but that is no great matter in the present story. What I want to talk about is that theatrical ball, my first.
Restall likes my dress. I think at first, after he had invited me, he had suffered some doubt as to whether I, being only newly engaged, would turn up in a costume sufficiently worthy of him and the occasion.
But I think that the delicious confection presented me for the ball by Madame Karl not only reassured him, but even astonished him. He kept turning to look at me with obvious pride as we entered the Harmonic theatre.
The Harmonic was delightfully arranged for the occasion. The ballroom was of course the stage, enclosed in a woodland scene. At the back perched on a built up mossy bank, was the orchestra, and the pit usually occupied by the orchestra, was filled for this occasion with flowering ferns, forming a hedge between the stage and auditorium. At intervals in the hedge were gaps, and through these gaps were gangways leading down into the stairs, much used as sitting out places by the dancers.
There were of course other sitting out places, and capital ones. The boxes for instance, the big ones on the pit and dress circle tier, though they were fairly easy to see into. Above them, much more private were the boxes on a level with the upper circle and still more delightful were the little boxes only designed to hold two, or at the most three, at the back of the dress circle. And you obtained a fair amount of privacy if you sat out in the gloom of the upper circle.
Restall was at once surrounded by a big crowd and after introducing me to one or two men, abandoned me at once. I was not destined however to linger as a wall flower; I attracted the attention with a nice big handsome gentleman and I was dancing to my delight.
Hardly a girl there that was not pretty, and nary a man who hadn't come to the theater with the manifest purpose of enjoying himself; there was no duty business. All the girls were all well dressed, and none of them was chary of showing the most of their upper-work charms. I marveled how some of them kept their bubbies within those dangerously decollette corsages; I know that I myself had more than once to lift a guardian hand to keep my own nipples from overflowing on to the dress coat of my partner. Not that he would have minded, I dare say.
One man managed to knock down my fan, and was clever enough to get his hand just on to my stocking in the act of picking it up, but I kicked his errant fingers away, and the boy-he was one of the youngest guardsmen possible-blushed and apologized. I had to wait for my supper partner for anything serious to happen.
Walker Bird, who arrived precisely at the supper hour, brought him up to me, and so fascinated was I by his eyes, his figure, and his generally distinguished appearance, that I threw over the man I really should have supped with, without a second thought, and accepted unhesitatingly his suggestion that it was about time all of us felt a little hungry. Walker left us with a murmured, “Keep a brace of pews for me and mine,” and caught us up at the door of the supper room-the big saloon bar transformed for the nonce into a palm embowered eating place-with a cute little chorister from the Harmonic on his arm. I recognized her in a tick, for were not her photographs in every print seller's window, and did not the evening papers keep stock headlines going for her breach of promise cases? She had on a dress worth at least a hundred pounds, and she greeted me simply, after the introduction, with Lord, I could at least speak a bit.
I supped gaily and well; the wine was exhilarating, the food first rate; the surroundings the gayest, and I had my supper partner's leg entwined round my left, and Walker's left leg round my right. It was a round table, and I have no doubt that the little chorister was being endeared in precisely the same manner. We had a quartette of Tsignnes for a separate supper orchestra, and their strains made my little head swim with naughty thoughts. All at once I felt I was sitting on something wet, and I knew that I had come involuntarily, so much so that I welcomed our little friend's suggestion after supper that we should go and put a puff on.
We were alone in the retiring room-“Gay ain't it old dear?” she said, as she drew a stick of red across her pretty little mouth, and then passed it on to me-“makes me feel hot as hell,” she passed her hand up her dress, “I thought as much,” she pursued, “I've spent-what a bleeding waste.”
In one of the W.C.'s I took the chance of wiping my underclothes as dry as possible, for I was in that stage of full bloodedness that I was absolutely determined to have a man that evening-even if I had to ask for it. And so much were the faces of the men altered since supper that I didn't think that event at all probable.
Near the door I found my supper partner and he led me at once into a valse, a deliciously suggestive thing, admirably rendered by the band. He too, was mad for a woman. There was no disguising that fact, for through my dress I could feel his swollen prick pressing against me, he had arranged it up his trousers, pointing to the navel- and I should say very nearly touching that spot, in the careful manner of the man wearing evening dress who realizes that he is likely to be overcome by the outward and visible sign of his manhood-and I don't deny that my little tummy pressed back.
We both danced well, both recklessly and with abandon, and whether it was that the other couples admired our performance so much that they wanted to witness it, or whether the other girls were nervous of becoming an
