Chapter X. Some Study, More Love
Supper at the Gregorys' was almost over when I entered the dining room: Kate and her mother and father and the boy Tommy were seated at the end of the table, taking their meal. The dozen guests had all finished and disappeared. Mrs. Gregory hastened to rise and Kate got up to follow her mother into the neighboring kitchen. «Please don't get up!» I cried to the girl. «I'd never forgive myself for interrupting you. I'll wait on myself or on you,» I added smiling, «if you wish anything.» She looked at me with hard, indifferent eyes and sniffed scornfully. «If you sit there,» she said, pointing to the other end of the table, «I'll bring your supper; do you take coffee or tea?» «Coffee, please,» I answered, and took the seat indicated, at once making up my mind to be cold to her while winning the others. Soon the boy began asking me had I ever seen any Indians-«In war-paint and armed, I mean,» he added eagerly.
«Yes, and shot at them, too,» I replied smiling. Tommy's eyes gleamed. «Oh, tell us!» he panted, and I knew I could always count on one good listener! «I've lots to tell, Tommy,» I said.
«But now I must eat my supper at express rate, or your sister'll be angry-» I added, as Kate came in with some steaming food: she pulled a face and shrugged her shoulders with contempt. «Where do you preach?» I asked the grey-haired father. «My brother says you're really eloquent.» «Never eloquent,» he replied deprecatingly,
«but sometimes very earnest, perhaps, especially when some event of the day comes to point the Gospel story.» He talked like a man of fair education and I could see he was pleased at being drawn to the front.
Then Kate brought me fresh coffee, and Mrs. Gregory came in and continued her meal; and the talk became interesting, thanks to Mr.
Gregory, who couldn't help saying how the fire in Chicago had stimulated Christianity in his hearers and given him a great text. I mentioned casually that I had been in the fire and told of Randolph Street Bridge and the hanging and what else I saw there and on the lake-front that unforgettable Monday morning. At first Kate went in and out of the room, removing dishes as if she were not concerned in the story, but when I told of the women and girls half-naked at the lakeside, while the flames behind us reached the zenith in a red sheet that kept throwing flame-arrows ahead and started the ships burning on the water in front of us, she, too, stopped to listen. At once I caught my cue, to be liked and admired by all the rest, but indifferent, cold to her. I rose, as if her standing enthralled had interrupted me, and said: «I'm sorry to keep you: I've talked too much, forgive me!» and betook myself to my room in spite of the protests and prayers to continue of all the rest. Kate just flushed, but said nothing. She attracted me greatly: she was infinitely desirable, very good looking and very young (only sixteen, her mother said later), and her great hazel eyes were almost as exciting as her pretty mouth or large lips and good height. She pleased me intimately, but I resolved to win her altogether and felt I had begun well: at any rate, she would think about me and mycoldness. I spent the evening in putting out my half-dozen books, not forgetting my medical treatises, and then slept the deep sleep of sex recuperation. The next morning I called on Smith again, where he lived with the Reverend Mr. Kellogg, who was the Professor of English History in the university, Smith said. Kellogg was a man of about forty, stout and well kept, with a faded wife of about the same age. Rose, the pretty servant, let me in; I had a smile and warm word of thanks for her: she was astonishingly pretty, the prettiest girl I had seen in Lawrence: medium height and figure with quite lovely face and an exquisite rose-leaf skin! She smiled at me; evidently my admiration pleased her.
Smith, I found, had got books for me, Latin and Greek-English dictionaries, a Tacitus, too, and Xenophon's Memorabilia with a Greek grammar: I insisted on paying for them all and he began to talk.
Tacitus he just praised for his superb phrases and the great portrait of Tiberius- «perhaps the greatest historical portrait ever painted in words.» I had a sort of picture of King Edward the Fourth in my romantic head, but didn't venture to trot it out. But soon, Smith passed to Xenophon and his portrait of Socrates as compared with that of Plato. I listened all ears while he read out a passage from Xenophon, painting Socrates with little human touches: I got him to translate every word literally and had a great lesson, resolving, when I got home, I'd learn the whole page by heart. Smith was more than kind to me: he said I'd be able to enter the junior class and thus have only two years to graduation. If Willie gave me back even five hundred dollars, I'd 6e able to get through without care or work.
Then Smith told me how he had gone to Germany after his American Diversity: how he had studied there and then worked in Athens at ancient Greek for another year till he could talk classic Greek as easily as German. «There were a few dozen professors and students,» he said, «who met regularly and talked nothing but classic Greek: they were always trying to make the modern tongue just like the old.» He gave me a translation of Das Kapital of Marx, and in fifty ways inspired and inspirited me to renewed effort. I came back to the Gregorys' for dinner and discussed in my own mind whether I should go to Mrs. Mayhew's, as I had promised, or work at Greek. I decided to work and then and there made a vow always to prefer work, a vow more honored in the breach, I fear, than in the observance. But at least I wrote to Mrs. Mayhew, excusing myself, and promising her the next afternoon. I set myself to learn by heart the two pages in the Memorabilia. That evening I sat near the end of the table; the head of it was taken by the university professor of physics, a dull pedant! Every time Kate came near me I was ceremoniously polite:
«Thank you, very much! It is very kind of you!» and not a word more.
As soon as I could, I went to my room to work. Next day at three o'clock I knocked at Mrs. Mayhew's: she opened the door herself. I cried, «How kind of you!» and once in the room drew her to me and kissed her time and time again: she seemed cold and numb. For some moments she didn't speak, then: «I feel as if I had passed through fever,» she said, putting her hands through her hair, lifting it in a gesture I was to know well in the days to come. «Never promise again if you don't come; I thought I should go mad: waiting is a horrible torture! Who kept you-some girl?» and her eyes searched mine.
I excused myself; but her intensity chilled me. At the risk of alienating my girl readers, I must confess this was the effect her passion had on me. When I kissed her, her lips were cold. But by the time we had got upstairs, she had thawed. She shut the door after us gravely and began: «See how ready I am for you!» and in a moment she had thrown back her robe and stood before me naked. She tossed the garment on a chair; it fell on the floor. She stooped to pick it up with her bottom toward me: I kissed her soft bottom and caught her up by it with my hand on her sex. She turned her head over her shoulder: «I've washed and scented myself for you, Sir: how do you like the perfume? and how do you like this bush of hair?» and she touched her mount with a grimace. «I was so ashamed of it as a girl: I used to shave it off, that's what made it grow so thick, I believe.
One day my mother saw it and made me stop shaving. Oh! how ashamed of it I was: it's animal, ugly,-don't you hate it? Oh, tell the truth!» she cried, «Or rather, don't; tell me you love it.» «I love it,» I exclaimed, «because it's yours!» «Oh, you dear lover,» she smiled, «you always find the right word, the flattering salve for the sore!» «Are you ready for me,» I asked, «ripe-ready, or shall I kiss you first and caress pussy?» «Whatever you do will be right,» she said. «You know I am rotten-ripe, soft and wet for you always!» All this while I was taking off my clothes; now I too was naked. «I want you to draw up your knees,» I said: «I want to see the Holy of Holies, the shrine of my idolatry.» At once she did as I asked. Her legs and bottom were well-shaped without being statuesque: but her clitoris was much more than the average button: it stuck out fully half an inch and the inner lips of her vulva hung down a little below the outer lips. I knew I should see prettier pussies.
Kate's was better shaped, I felt sure, and the heavy, madder-brown lips put me off a little. The next moment I began caressing her red clitoris with my hot, stiff organ: Lorna sighed deeply once or twice and her eyes turned up; slowly I pushed my prick in to the full and drew it out again to the lips, then in again, and I felt her warm love-juice gush as she drew up her knees even higher to let me further in. «Oh, it's divine,» she sighed, «better even than the first time,» and, when my thrusts grew quick and hard as the orgasm shook me, she writhed down on my prick as I withdrew, as if she would hold it, and as my seed spirted into her, she bit my shoulder and held her legs tight as if to keep my sex in her. We lay a few moments bathed in bliss. Then, as I began to move again to sharpen the sensation, she half rose on her arm. «Do you know,» she said, «I dreamed yesterday of getting on you and doing it to you, do you mind if I try?» «No, indeed!» I cried. «Go to it, I am your prey!» She got up smiling and straddled kneeling across me, and put my cock into her pussy and sank down on me with a deep sigh. She tried to move up and down on my organ and at once came up too high and had to use her hand to put my Tommy in again; then she sank down on it as far as possible. «I can sink down all right,» she cried, smiling at
