Maurice's Day-Book
We are 'between lives' in a strange, new way. Despite the badinage, assurances, all is not well. This irks. It should not. Is all spoiled? Maude is her daughter, after all, not mine. I may be kin but am not blood-kin to the girl.
Maude is provocative, besides, and gives me sidelong looks which do not help when Eveline is present, for I think she notices. I resolved to speak to Maude again, finding myself much between two stools, and thought thereby to quell my own desires by speaking to her sternly. Alas, she has her mother's ways. It did not work out as I thought. Perhaps in truth it worked out as I hoped. The human mind is, after all, a maze of 'Will' and 'Will not'- that cannot be helped. We all are as we are and must accept the fact.
Maude said that she would go to town today to buy some stockings and some shoes. For my part I said that I would be about the farm and would not be an hour or so. Taking horse, I followed Maude and caught her on the road, coming alongside her carriage and signalling our driver to stop at the next village, which he did. Maude thereupon got out and asked me with a knowing smile what I was at. I did not answer her at first but took her in a nearby inn, asked for a room and led her up.
'What is to do?', she asked and took her bonnet off. A comedy then followed, if such it can be called. We were to behave ourselves I said. I carried no conviction in my words, as well she knew.-'I know. I understand', she said, then looked towards the bed and added, 'You may kiss me, though. You said you would'.
A silence followed. For a moment we two stood apart.- 'I wouldn't tell Mama, you know', she said, and stepped towards me, put her arms about my neck. Lord help me, in a moment we were down upon the bed, my hand beneath her skirt, her legs apart. Her tongue was wet and long within my mouth. She drew her further knee up, let me feel her quim.
'You have no drawers on, Maude'.
'I knew that you would follow me. Mama was naughty, watching. Why should I not be? Oh, let me touch your prick. I want to, please!'
'You bitch! How quickly have you learned!'
'I have good tutors, do I not?',-and all this said while down my trousers went, my cock couched in her smooth, warm palm and all a-sudden fever of desire. Ah, what a feline animal she proves to be! And I… I could not help myself. Her stockings rubbed my bared thighs as I entered her. Obscene words poured from both of us. The gentlemen had had her bottom, yes. She liked it, and I could as well. Her cunny was a mouth of hungriness much as her lips were under mine. Brazen her wriggling, wild her eyes. She wound her legs up round my hips and moaned her pleasure as we came in torrid torrents of ecstatic bliss, then lay a-panting, quiet and still the while I kissed her powdered cheeks.
'The coachman may suspect if we two dally long', I said at last.
'I know'. Her voice was sulky about that. She had a moody look as we both dressed and tidied up ourselves again.-'You do not love me after all', she said. Shades of her mother!
“Why do you think I did it to you?', I flared up. Oh, what a stupid thing to say!
'Oh, I thought you did it with me', she declared and swept out of the room, I following like some ridiculous suitor, much put out, and in a dungeon and confused. I rode straight off, came home and knew not how to be.
'What IS the matter with you?', Eveline asked. Maude, fortunately, did not return for a whole hour, so nothing was suspected, though there was no cause to be. I do not want another 'party' yet and have told Eveline so. She looked relieved. I am sure she knows it is because of Maude.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Deirdre's Day-Book
A week having passed since I visited Eveline, I decided to call upon her again. Intuition must have led me there. Oh, what a tizzy she was in! My suspicions as to Maurice and Maude were not unfounded after all. She had discovered them together in the summerhouse-foolish as they were to do it there, and these of course are my words and not hers.
Eveline sensed something as women do, pretended to go out and then went back. Not finding them in the house, she searched the grounds and saw all there was to see through a window of the garden-room. Maude, brazen as she is, was kneeling on the floor upon a mat, skirt up and no drawers on. Maurice was naked to his shirt and knelt behind her with his penis well embedded up between her bottom cheeks.
'My god, they were enjoying it', said Eveline, and wept. I had a mind to comfort her and smack her face at the same time-for what hypocrisy is here!
'Why, first of all you let him…', I began. She interrupted me and said, 'I know, I know. I was at fault. I thought that it would cure them in some wise-and so did you, my dear', she threw at me.
'Indeed, indeed', I said and sighed. I confess I had forgotten it was my idea, so much stirs in me nowadays.
As it appears, she marched straight in (and oh, the shock to both of them that must have been!), and just at the moment when Maurice was close upon his climax, too. Indeed, despite alarms he did not even stop, she says! Maude squealed and tried to pull away. He would not have it so and held her in, and even gritted out to Eveline, 'My love-come here!'
'Did you?', I asked. I tried to make a joke of it. Alas, she was not in the mood.
'You are on their side!', she declared, and fell into hysterics then, but calmed after I kissed and comforted her. She had stood there but for a moment, then walked out again and locked the house on them for several hours- forbade the servants even to open up to them.
This happened just the day before. Since then there has been silence in the house, Maude's bedroom door locked every night by Eveline (I did not tell her I have done the same with Richard, too) and Maurice despatched to a guest room to sleep.
Strange as the turns of life may be, I decided on the spot what I would do. That is to say, I shall go home- and take Maude with me, I told Eveline. Her eyes lit up. Her whole expression changed.
'Oh, Deirdre, will you do this for me? Yes!', she burst. Maude was upstairs 'in hiding' all the time. Bold as she may be with Maurice, she shows no effrontery with her Mama, and came down cautious as a cat who thinks that danger lurks somewhere.
'Maude, I understand that you would like to have a holiday', I said. She blinked. I noticed that she did not sit, and realised the discipline that Eveline has her under. Hands twisting, she stood quiet, and so I told her of my intentions, couching each phrase somewhere in-between commands and quite polite requests. She could stay for several months, I said-would like the countryside, would have good friends in Amy, Sylvia and Richard, too. Her eyes glinted a little at his name. It shall not be, though, as she thinks.
We leave on Friday. Meanwhile I have written and told Phillip so-also have sent a note to Muriel and Sylvia. How wonderful to be among my own things once again! I am more determined than I was before to have things my way. Phillip must respond to me or he will have his own bed just as Maurice has-though I do not think in Eveline's case that that will last for long. She will forgive him once Maude is away.
'Deal with her kindly, will you not?', asked Eveline anxiously. Her mood turned when she knew what was to be.
'You can have parties now again', I said.
'Perhaps. I think our lives have changed now, Deirdre'.
I think not-not in the long run. Leopards do not change their spots. Shall I?
Muriel's Day-Book
Deirdre to return! I am surprised at that. I had a note by messenger today-and such a ride he had of it. Two days upon the road. We paid the fellow well and lodged him in an inn. Jane says that I am growing soft The second criticism she has made of me. I hope we are not getting quarrelsome.-'So much has changed', says Deirdre, and I wonder what she means?
Phillip is beside himself upon the news, and Sylvia has such a guilty look that I had to spend an hour or two placating her. Her Mama would need to know nothing of her naughtiness, I said, at which she looked relieved. Jane
