astonished first by his vigor: he thought nothing of a ten mile walk, and on one of our excursions I asked him why he had not given me the nomination I wanted as a midshipman. He was curiously silent and waved the subject aside with, «The Navy for you?
No!» and he shook his head. A few days afterwards, however, he came back to the subject of his own accord. «You asked me,» he began,
«why I didn't send you the nomination for the midshipman's examination. Now I'll tell you. To get on in the British Navy and make a career in it, you should either be well-born or well-off: you were neither. For a youth without position or money, there are only two possible roads up: servility or silence, and you were incapable of both.» «Oh, Governor, how true and how wise of you,» I cried,
«but why, why didn't you tell me? I'd have understood then as well as now and thought the more of you for thwarting me.» «You forget,» he went on, «that I had trained myself in the other road of silence: it is difficult for me even now to express myself.» And he went on with bitterness in voice and accent, «They drove me to silence: if you knew what I endured before I got my first step as lieutenant. If it hadn't been that I was determined' to marry your mother, I could never have swallowed the countless humiliations of my brainless superiors!
What would have happened to you I saw as in a glass. You were extraordinarily quick, impulsive and high- tempered. Don't you know that brains and energy and will power are hated by all the wastrels, and in this world they are everywhere in the vast majority. Some lieutenant or captain would have taken an instantaneous dislike to you that would have grown on every manifestation of your superiority: he would have laid traps for you of insubordination and insolence, probably for months, and then in some port where he was powerful, he would have brought you before a court martial and you would have been dismissed from the Navy in disgrace, and perhaps your whole life ruined. The British Navy is the worst place in the world for genius.»
That scene began my reconciliation with my father; one more experience completed it. I got wet through on one of our walks and next day had lumbago. I went to a pleasant Welsh doctor I had become acquainted with and he gave me a bottle of belladonna mixture for external use. «I haven't got a proper poison bottle,» he added,
«and I've no business to give you this.» (It is forbidden to dispense poisons in Great Britain, save in rough octagonal bottles which betray the nature of their contents to the touch.) «I'll not drink it,»
I said laughing. «Well, if you do,» he said, «don't send for me, for there's more than enough here to kill a dozen men!» I took the bottle and curiously enough we talked belladonna and its effects for some minutes. Richards (that was his name) promised to send me a black draught the same evening, and he assured me that my lumbago would soon be cured, and he was right: but the cure was not effected as he thought it would be. My sister had a girl of all work at this time called Eliza, Eliza Gibby, if I remember rightly. Lizzie, as we called her, was a slight red haired girl of perhaps eighteen with really large chestnut-brown eyes and a cheeky pug nose, and freckled neck and arms. I really don't know what induced me first to make up to her, but soon I was kissing her; when I wanted to touch her sex, however, she drew away, confiding to me that she was afraid of the possible consequences. I explained to her immediately that I would withdraw after the first spasm, and then there would be no more risk.
She trusted me, and one night she came to my room in her night dress.
I took it off with many kisses and was really astounded by her ivory white skin and almost perfect girlish form. I laid her on the edge of my bed, put her knees comfortable under my armpits and began to rub her clitoris: in a moment the brown eyes turned up and I ventured to slip in the head of my sex; to my surprise, there was no maidenhead to break through and soon my sex had slipt into the tightest cunt I had ever met. Very soon I played Onan and like that Biblical hero «spilt my seed upon the ground»-which in my case was a carpet. Then I got into bed with her and practiced the whole art of love as I understood it at that time. A couple of hours of it brought me four or five orgasms and Lizzie a couple of dozen, to judge by hurried breathings, inarticulate cries, and long kissings that soon became mouthings.
Lizzie was what most men would have thought a perfect bedfellow, but I missed Sophy's science and Sophy's passionate determination to give me the utmost thrill conceivable. Still in a dozen pleasant nights we became great friends and I began to notice that, by working in and out very slowly, I could after the first orgasm go on indefinitely without spending again. Alas! I had no idea at the time that this control simply marked the first decrease of my sexual power.
If I had only known, I would have cut out all the Lizzies that infested my life and reserved myself for the love that was to oust the mere sex urge. Next door to us lived a doctor's widow with two daughters, the eldest a medium-sized girl with large head and good grey eyes, hardly to be called pretty, though all girls were pretty enough to excite me for the next ten years or more. This eldest girl was called Molly, a pet name for Maria. Her sister Kathleen was far more attractive physically: she was rather tall and slight, with a lithe grace of figure that was intensely provocative. Yet, though I noted all Kathleen's feline witchery, I fell prone for Molly. She seemed to me both intelligent and witty: she had read widely, too, and knew both French and German. She was as far above all the American girls I had met in knowledge of books and art as she was inferior to the best of them in bodily beauty. For the first time my mind was excited and interested and I thought I was in love, and one late afternoon or early evening on Castle Hill I told her I loved her and we became engaged. Oh, the sweet folly of it all! When she asked me how we should live, what I intended to do, I had no answer ready, save the perfect self-confidence of the man who had already proved himself in the struggle of life. Fortunately for me, that didn't seem very convincing to her. She admitted that she was three years older than I was, and if she had said four, she would have been nearer the truth; and she was quite certain that I would not find it so easy to win in England as in America: she underrated both my brains and my strength of will. She confided to me that she had a hundred a year of her own, but that, of course, was wholly inadequate. So, though she kissed me freely and allowed me a score of little privacies, she was resolved not to give herself completely. Her distrust of my ability and her delightfully piquant reserve heightened my passion, and once I won her consent to an immediate marriage. At her best, Molly was astonishingly intelligent and frank. One night alone together in our sitting-room, which my father and sister left to us, I tried my best to get her to give herself to me. But she shook her head. «It would not be right, dear, till we are married,» she persisted. «Suppose we were on a desert island,» I said, «and no marriage possible?» «My darling,» she said, kissing me on the mouth and laughing aloud, «don't you know, I should yield then without your urging: you dear! I want you, Sir, perhaps more than you want me.» But she wore closed drawers and I didn't know how to unbutton them at the sides; and though she grew intensely and quickly excited, I could not break down the final barrier. In any case, before I could win, Fate used her shears decisively. One morning I reproached Lizzie for not bringing me up a black draught Doctor Richards had promised to send me. «It's on the mantlepiece in the dining-room,» I said, «but don't trouble, I'll get it myself,» and I ran down as I was. An evening or two later I left the belladonna mixture the doctor had made up for me on the chimney piece. Like the black draught, it was dark brown in color and in a similar bottle. Next morning Lizzie woke me and offered me a glassful of dark liquid. «Your medicine,» she said, and, half asleep still, I told her to leave the breakfast tray on the table by my bed, and then drained the glass she offered to me. The taste awoke me; the drink had made my whole mouth and throat dry. I sprang out of bed and went to the looking glass. Yes! Yes! The pupils of my eyes were unnaturally distended: had she given me the whole draught of belladonna, instead of black draught? I still heard her on the stairs, but why waste time in asking her? I went over to the table, poured out cup after cup of tea and drained them; then I ran down to the dining-room, where my sister and father were at breakfast. I poured out their tea and drank cups full of it in silence: then I asked my sister to get me mustard and warm water and met my father's question with a brief explanation and request. «Go to Dr. Richards and tell him to come at once. I've drunk the belladonna mixture by mistake; there's no time to lose.» My father was already out of the house! My sister brought me the mustard and I mixed a strong dose with hot water and took it as an emetic, but it didn't work. I went upstairs to my bedroom again and put my fingers down my throat over the bath: I retched and retched, but nothing came: plainly the stomach was paralyzed. My sister came in crying. «I'm afraid there's no hope, Nita,» I said. «The Doctor told me there was enough to kill a dozen men, and I've drunk it all fasting; but you've always been good and kind to me, dear, and death is nothing.» She was sobbing terribly, so to give her something to do, I asked her to fetch me a kettle full of hot water. She vanished downstairs to get it and I stood before the glass to make up my accounts with my own soul. I knew now it was the belladonna I had taken, all of it on an empty stomach: no chance; in ten minutes I should be insensible, in a few hours dead.
Dead! Was I afraid? I recognized with pride that I was not one whit afraid or in any doubt. Death is nothing but an eternal sleep, nothing! Yet I wished that I could have had time to prove myself and show what was in me! Was Smith right? Could I indeed have become one of the best heads in the world? Could I have been with the
