'I did,' I replied, 'and I'm sorry to think you have seen all, for I was hoping someday to afford you the novelty of examining it.'
'Mr. Clinton, how could you have been so wicked? My poor old father is not far from the grave; you might have waited until Eva had been left a widow.'
If you look at me another moment with those flashing eyes I shall do you over in the same way, my pet, I thought.
'Let us sit down and reason, Miss Martinet; you have chosen a strange place for a serious conversation, but it will be infinitely better for you to sit down and then the tall grass will conceal you from view, whereas standing up every country yokel who passes by sees us both, puts his own construction on it, and your reputation is irretrievably ruined.'
'You are perfectly right,' said Zoe. 'I will sit down, especially as I note some uniforms on the road yonder, and they might be officer friends of my father's.'
Zoe sat down and put up her parasol, but the two gentlemen she had remarked came around the head of me road at the same time. They were two lieutenants of the — th, at Dover, and I had been at a ball where I had knocked up against them some little time before.
'Hello! Clinton, what the devil are you-Oh, I say-a petticoat.
Well, I'm damned-alfresco, eh? under the azure dome of heaven. Well, good luck, my boy; but give me a pair of nice clean sheets and native nakedness.' And down the road went the pair, humming a godless tune they had picked up in the camp before Sebastopol a few years before.
I turned to Zoe.
'What a fortunate thing you were out of sight, my dear,' I said, sitting down beside her.
'Yes, it was, indeed,' she said, trying with her short skirt to conceal a shapely ankle, which, in a pair of elegant scarlet stockings, looked simply delicious.
I know it was very rude and ungentlemanly of me, but I could not help remarking aloud what an exquisite tournure the stocking gave to her leg, and enquired whether she thought the colour had anything to do with it.
'Mr. Clinton, I think we had better go,' was all the answer she gave me.
'But, my dear Zoe, I thought you had brought me here to read me a prim lecture on morality?'
'Alas!' she said, sighing, 'I could not tell on poor dear mamma, she is so artless, and-'
'And I am so artful, you would say; but, my dear young lady, I admit to having made a great mistake in intriguing with the general's wife, I can see it now.'
'And I hope,' she said, making a pretty bow, 'that you are contrite?'
'Yes,' I said, 'I am, but shall I explain to you the error I committed?'
'If it will not take too long in the telling.'
'Well, my mistake was in going for the wife, and not the daughter.'
'Mr. Clinton, how can you say such a thing?'
'Zoe, from the moment I first saw your matchless face, your eyes burned into my bosom's core like fire, and now, by heaven, that we are here alone, with none but bright Phoebus as our witness, I must-' Here commenced a struggle in the grass, but it was of short duration.
She threatened to scream, but I hurriedly pointed out that if she accused me of rape I could bring the two young officers as witnesses that I had a lady with me who was sitting on the grass apparently only waiting for it, and besides-but all my entreaties were of no avail. At length, growing desperate, and with a prick on me like a bull's pizzle, I forced her legs apart, and would have ravished her by sheer strength, had she not whispered in my ear — 'For God's sake use a French letter; I'm so afraid of falling in the family way.'
Now I never slip from home without a letter, but I hate using them when I know the cunt is fresh and untainted with any soupcon of forethought. The fact that the request came from one I had supposed a virgin rather astounded me, but I was fully equal to the occasion. Taking one from my waistcoat pocket, and beginning to fit it on, I said, 'Then you've had the root before, Zoe.'
'Yes,' she said, 'once, with a young captain in my pa's regiment at Allahabad, but this was when I was seventeen. He always used them for fear of the consequences.'
By this time I had fitted it, and Zoe showed her perfect readiness to wait patiently for the operation.
'Let me have one peep, darling,' I said.
She laughingly lay back flat on her back, and showed me a large forest of hair, as glossy as a raven's back and as black, while beneath it I saw as neat a little quimbo as one could wish for.
Reader, do you blame me if, after seeing such a sight, I surreptitiously pulled off the letter and let my John Thomas approach his lairau nature. I should have been more than mortal to have refrained. Flesh is a hundred per cent better than a nasty gutta-percha cover, and although Zoe was unaware of what I had done, she showed herself fully appreciative of my premier thrust, though her action took me completely by surprise.
Whether it was the springiness of the soft green grass on which we lay, I know not, but with all my experience I cannot recall to mind any wench, even one having her first grind, who showed such arse-power as Zoe.
The Hindu and English cross must be a good fucking breed, I thought, but scarcely had the fleeting idea passed through my brain than one more vigorous push brought on the crisis of delight.
Zoe, at this point, was working her bottom with what the Yankees would call an 'all-hellfire motion', when she suddenly seemed transported with delight, and kissing my neck, bit me in a frenzy till she actually brought forth blood.
Much as I had enjoyed myself, this was a style of emotion I was not enamoured of, and I screamed out with the pain.
I had got up, leaving Zoe still lying exhausted on the ground, when to my horror I heard a step behind me, and before I could button up found myself confronted by Eva.
I do not know why it should have been so, but although the meteorological record for that year does not return the weather in May as being particularly warm, I found it at least 212° Fahrenheit on that eventful day, in spite of the sea breeze-so not liking tropical heat, I returned to town. I have met Zoe in society since, but poor Eva, after tasting forbidden fruit, and finding it so much sweeter than the withered-up stuff obtainable from her husband's orchard, went wrong again and again, and was finally bowled in the very act-but, luckily for the gay Lothario, the general had left those chased revolvers at home.
CHAPTER 23
Not always have I had the happiness of being fortunate in my amours. It is true that I have managed to escape the dread fate of those poor unfortunate devils whose tools are living witness to the powers of caustic and the lethal weapons of surgery, but I have on occasions been singularly unfortunate, and as the warning voice of my publisher tells me I have little more time or space at my disposal, I will devote the present chapter of this work to detailing a most unpleasant incident of the sort which all people are more or less liable to who go in for promiscuous intercourse to any large extent.
My only sister, Sophy, came up to London with her husband shortly after my return from Folkestone, and although he was a perfect brute of a fellow, and a man I disliked very much, I made myself as agreeable as I could and took a furnished house for them during their stay, near the Regent's Park.
Frank Vaughan, a young architect and a rising man, was one I introduced them to, as my sister had brought a friend, Miss Polly White, with her, who lived near our old home in the country; being anxious for her to see London, her parents had placed her under my sister's guardian wing to do the 'lions' of the metropolis.
Polly was an only daughter, so knowing the old people had a good nest-egg, I thought it would be a capital opportunity to throw Frank in her way.
I told him precisely how matters stood, and advised him to make a match of it.
'The old people are rich,' I said, 'but if they object to you on the score of money, fuck her, my boy, and that will bring them to reason.'
