Читать книгу The English Governess - John Glassco - Страница 7

By the end of the following week an avalanche of letters had descended on the sombre mansion in Great Portland Street.

“Devil take that notion I had of advertising,” thought Mr. Lovel. “I can’t wade through all this.”

Nevertheless he had already opened three or four letters and cast his eye over them rapidly, noting that his prime requirement had been very perfectly grasped: the writers all professed their firmness, and left no doubt that they were in fact domestic flagellants possessing a high degree of skill and experience. The very existence of such women was something which the worthy man had never suspected.

“How curious,” he was thinking, when his valet Thomas entered with the announcement that a woman wished to see him.

“A woman? Here?” said Mr. Lovel, taken aback and immediately suspicious. “What sort of a woman?”

“A young sort of woman, sir. What you’d call a young woman, I suppose, sir – only, she’s so – so ...” Thomas seemed at a total loss for words.

Mr. Lovel, who had long known that Thomas’ descriptions partook of a supreme fogginess, reproached himself inwardly for having asked the question, and ordered the lady shown in.

She entered immediately.

Mr. Lovel saw before him a tall young woman in her middle twenties, dressed with quiet elegance. A brunette with a very white skin, she wore her dark, almost black hair in a plain style under her small bonnet, parted from forehead to crown and drawn smoothly back to a heavy chignon at the nape of her strong, graceful neck. Her brow was well-shaped and intellectual, the nose was straight, short and full of energy, the mouth rather wide, with a full underlie, the chin quite prominent. Everything in her face and pose denoted decision and force; but her glance, reserved, serious, even academic, could not conceal the warm brilliance of her violet-grey eyes. She wore a tight-bodiced gown of plain black silk with a full skirt falling from a bustle and coiling around her feet – a costume that revealed a superb bust, a slender waist and wide, well-muscled hips. Mr. Lovel’s practised gaze, fixed for an instant on the latter, pierced the full drapery with ease, appraising the contours beneath it as clearly as if she had been standing nude before him, even to envisioning that centre wherein his own desires for woman were concentrated, the hidden bistre rosebud which he knew must be pouting between those magnificent buttocks. But nothing of this showed in his manner: he had risen and was bowing, waiting for her to introduce herself.

Her voice was low, well-pitched, very even. “Mr. Lovel?”

“Yes.”

“I am Harriet Marwood, sir.”

Mr. Lovel bowed and resumed his interrogatory air.

“I saw your advertisement in The Morning Post, and I have come to see you personally.”

“Ah!” said the man of business, relaxing and expelling his breath. “Ah, excellent! You are the teacher then: the – the governess.”

Miss Marwood bowed.

Mr. Lovel pointed to the desk piled high with letters. “And there, ma’am, are the letters of your competitors. – But in point of fact, it was an excellent idea of yours to come in person, instead of writing. A capital idea! And – mmmm – let me see: you have – you have your certificates, ma’am?”

“I have, sir,” said the young woman, suppressing a faint smile; she opened her reticule and drew out a sheaf of parchments on which Mr. Lovel cast a cursory glance before returning them to her.

“Splendid,” he muttered. “Absolutely splendid. Ummm.” He tugged at his moustache. “And now – as to this matter of – of firmness. You understand what’s needed, of course?”

Miss Marwood’s eyes flickered slightly, and she compressed her lips for an instant before replying. “Certainly.” She paused again. “But I should like to know, sir, the particular reason for a regime of correction. Is it idleness, want of application, a habit of some kind?” Her fine eyes were fixed inquiringly on his.

Mr. Lovel pursed his lips. “It is – well, it’s rather a delicate matter, Miss Marwood,” he said. “But of course you will have to know.” In a brief and constrained manner, and with the use of some circumlocution and euphemism, he informed her of his son’s proclivities and of his expulsion from school.

Miss Marwood nodded calmly. “The habit cannot yet be inveterate,” she said, “seeing he is only fourteen. But it may take some time to break him of it.”

Mr. Lovel looked at her shrewdly; his embarrassment over the subject was already quite dispelled by her businesslike attitude and air of quiet competence. Suddenly his mind was made up. “Then,” he said, “you are prepared to undertake the cure of the boy, as well as his education? You have had experience in these cases?”

“A great deal of experience, Mr. Lovel.”

He released his breath. “Well then, it’s all settled. Would you like to see him?”

Miss Marwood bowed.

She followed him as he hurried along several gloomy passages and down two flights of stairs, until they reached the large dark library on the ground floor.

“Richard! Ricky!” called Mr. Lovel. “Where are you, my boy? Deuce take this darkness! Ah, there he is. Come here, Richard, and meet your governess.”

Richard, who had been lost in a vaguely sensual dream in a dark corner of the great room, rose and came forward uncertainly.

Miss Marwood placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed him gently towards the single great leaded window through which the weak winter daylight filtered. For a few long moments she gazed deeply into his face.

She had at once noted his beauty and grace; and she had also marked the downcast gaze, the air of lassitude and the clear ethereal pallor which denoted only too clearly the slave of constant self-abuse. Now, however, she seemed to be sounding the depths of his character itself, to be discovering the springs of his impulse, to be reading his very soul. The boy’s great blue eyes, as if he were hypnotised, could not withdraw from her penetrating gaze; and Mr. Lovel himself watched the examination with a feeling of fascination. –Ah, what would either have thought had they known what was going on behind the white forehead of the young governess? Something like a smile merely curved her full lips for an instant, but did not develop further.

“I am delighted to meet you, Richard,” she said. Then, turning to Mr. Lovel, “It will be difficult, sir, but you need have no doubt of my eventual success. When would you wish me to come?”

“Why, as soon as possible, Miss Marwood. The poor boy is bored to death. He does nothing all day long either, and that’s bad for him too. He’s not naughty otherwise – a little lazy perhaps – idle, independent, you know. But all in all, a good boy.” He smiled. “All he needs is firm handling.”

Miss Marwood bowed.

“Yes, yes. A firm hand, that’s all. And where are you stopping at present, ma’am?”

“I am at an hotel, sir, in Fitzroy Square. I have been there for almost a week, since I came up from Hampshire.”

“Quite, quite. Then, if you will, go and fetch your boxes and things as soon as you can. Ah, so you’re from Hampshire, are you? Very interesting. My people come from there too. I’ve still a small property down there, in fact. Now you must excuse me, I am already due at the office. Au revoir, Miss Marwood, I hope to see you here this evening.” He held out his hand.

“I shall be back inside the hour, sir,” she said, clasping his fingers firmly. Then she passed her hand, plump and feminine for all its strength, over Richard’s cheek, making him tremble and blush to the whites of his eyes.

Mr. Lovel and the governess went out, leaving Richard alone once more in the great dim room. He lit the lamp, chose a book of historical tales, and sat down to read until it was time for dinner. But the words danced before his eyes: his head was so full of Miss Marwood that there was room for nothing else.

He hardly knew whether it had been joy or fear he had felt when her hands were weighing on his shoulders, her fingers caressing his cheek. Ah, that glance that had seemed to pierce to the very depths of his being! For those moments when she had looked into his eyes, he had thought his heart was about to stop beating.

What had she meant to say to him, with that gesture and that smile? He asked himself. A kind of promise, he decided; but whether of good or evil he could not tell. The gaze of those violet-grey eyes had gone through him like a flame, that was all he knew. And now this woman would be living with him, he thought: living with him.

His hand had already strayed downwards and begun to caress the finger of flesh swelling beneath the tight white cloth of his trousers. His eyes closed ...

And suddenly it seemed that instead of welcoming this change in his life, he found it a matter of vexation. All his ways and habits would be upset: no longer would he be able to read, to dream and play when and how he wished. She would be there, giving him orders, interfering with him, interrupting his solitary pleasures ... But perhaps she would be easy – and nice, he thought, very nice: then, if he was good, might she not kiss him? This thought affected him with a sudden weakness, and his penis swelled still further. He had read stories where beautiful women clasped children in their arms and kissed them: this had seemed to him a thing of such unspeakable sweetness that his head had swum at the mere idea. Ah, he thought now, his breath quickening, to be held and kissed like that! Already he had opened his trousers and begun stroking his member. As it slowly erected he took up his favourite pose, his parted legs twined around the legs of the chair, his feet braced on the rungs, his gaze fixed on his penis itself in a kind of dreamy and almost fatuous admiration.

This admiration, we must say, was not without a genuine foundation. His puerile organ, which gave no promise of ever attaining the gross proportions of his father’s, was already an instrument of extraordinary beauty: slightly longer and more slender than the average boy’s at this age, it stood out firmly from between his legs with a gentle upward curve, an effect of lightness and aspiration that was almost Gothic in its rigid springing line, and formed a harmonious and crowning adjunct to the entire architecture of his body. The bulb itself, now round, distended and with the fraenum tautly stretched, was in perfect proportion to the smooth shaft bearing it aloft, with no hint of a common or clublike coarseness; the exquisite double line of the twin lobes swept with the firmness of drapery up from the snugly fitting collar studded with the tiny sensitive spiculae of sensation to the sturdy arch of the cleft, where it culminated in a dainty urethral eye shaped like a perfect tear; the colour of the bulb itself, a very fine and uniform rose, melted into the paler pink of the fine preputial skin which, now reversed, covered the faintly ridged neck with its soft and almost transparent veil. It was an instrument made rather to receive pleasure than to give it, –the kind that women no sooner see than they wish to take it in their mouths rather than their wombs, to suck it for its own pleasure rather than feel it stirring in them for their own.

Now, under the accustomed ministrations of his fingers, the whole shaft was quivering slightly throughout its length, testifying to the exquisite sensations the tender underside of the fraenum was receiving, and giving an impression of almost conscious enjoyment; the testicles, drawn up tautly beneath the member itself, were clasped in his left hand which was kneading them in time with the luxurious rhythmic stroke of the right hand ... Seen thus, he presented a picture full of the most effete and wayward charm: the warm lamplight seemed to make still more touching this splendid self-indulgence of a boy whose languid beauty was immeasurably enhanced by his shameless concentration on the act of pleasure.

Richard was at an age when the orgasm comes promptly at call; in less than a minute his member had discharged copiously in his hand.

He sat quietly for a few minutes, relishing the pleasure he had given himself, and recalling the image of Miss Marwood’s kisses which he had so naively called up to excite himself; then he remembered that she was not simply a beautiful woman, but a governess. And all at once this word ’governess’ distracted him with its suggestion of authority, even of despotism, and his thoughts wandered again.

At school he had had a little friend, fresh from home. Like all small boys, they had sucked and fingered each other’s genitals at every opportunity; but in the intervals of this fascinating practice his friend had told fearful stories of his own nursery governess, of her strictness, her savage and instant punishment of the delightful practice of masturbation. These stories of the birch and riding-whip had troubled Richard greatly. Instinctively he feared all women – and since then, governesses most of all.

Well, and now he had a governess himself! What would he do if she tried to treat him in the same way? But no; that was out of the question. His friend, the little boy at school, had been scarcely eleven years old. He, Richard, was over fourteen: he was no longer a baby.

He tried once again to read, but found he could not. He closed the book, walked up and down, and then went to the window and tried to look out into the dark rain-washed street through the lozenges of particoloured glass-first through an orange one, then a blue, then a red. Through each piece of glass the world outside wore a different aspect.

But this game soon wearied him. He went back into the darkness of his corner, yawned, and looked at the old grandfather clock whose pendulum marked the passage of time with its heavy and monotonous tick. She had said she would return in an hour. But what time was it when she had come? He did not know. All he knew was that he was awaiting the sight of her again in a fever of longing. As he began thinking of her face, her figure, her eyes, the touch of her hand, the force of his attraction was inevitably channelled into the slow renewed tumescence of his flesh, and after a while his hand strayed downwards once more to the opening of his trousers ...

At the very moment of his second ejaculation he heard the front door open and the sound of footsteps ringing in the hall outside, and the clear vibrant voice of Harriet Marwood giving orders to the cabman about her luggage. –Ah, he had just achieved his orgasm in time! He adjusted his clothing swiftly, then went to the door, opened it a few inches and peered out. He had a radiant vision of his governess as she stood in the brightly lit hall, dressed in a long green mackintosh-cape, wet and shining, her beautiful face glowing like a flower within the closely-fitting shirred hood. Then, to his astonishment, the voice of his father was heard, and he closed the door again quietly.

“Ah, you are more than prompt, Miss Marwood!” cried the man of business. “I remembered I had not shown you your room, and I have waited to do you this courtesy. A thousand pardons for my forgetfulness! Yes, hang up your cape here. What a sensible garment you have chosen for our beastly climate! So smart, so practical... This way, up this way please. And now I’ll leave you with the boy, eh? Do with him as you see fit, he is entirely your charge, you are quite at home.”

“Thank you, sir. At what time shall I have dinner served?”

“Hmm – mm. Dinner, – oh yes, dinner. My word, you must arrange with Cook to have dinner whenever you wish. I never dine at home, you know. And I lunch in the City nearly every day. Ah, business, business! Never at home,” he exclaimed, waving his hands. “Always on the go!”

He disappeared. And Harriet Marwood understood, from the fact of his having waited for her return, how anxious her employer was to delegate his paternal responsibility, and saw that she herself was in effect absolute mistress of this house which she had just entered.