At this very moment Harriet and Richard had just returned in a cab from the registry office where the clerical dexterity of a magistrate had made them one.
The youth was in a fever of impatience to assert his marital rights: whenever he turned his eyes on the tall young woman who had so recently been his governess and who was now his wife, his gaze lit up with desire and his breath came with a shorter respiration.
Now, for almost the first time that day, he noticed her appearance and was aware of her clothes, –the tight frogged jacket edged with fur, the frilled and scalloped skirt, the bonnet which was no more than a bandeau of fur and velvet tied round her high, tilted chignon. Now too he noticed the startling increase in her beauty during the last year.
And indeed Harriet, at the age of thirty, was a strikingly beautiful woman. Though she still held her tall figure very erect, all angularity and stiffness had disappeared from her carriage, just as the lines of her mouth had become fuller and softer without losing any of their air of firmness and decision; her face, older now and more rounded in its contours, had the increased charm of maturity; while the glance of the violet-grey eyes was characterised less by the stern energy of her girlhood than by a certain quiet confidence, an assurance so marked as to give the expression of her whole face a certain voluptuous placidity, even to suggest that this assurance was allied with the rich and thoughtful sensuality lurking just behind her eyes.
Oh, the youth was thinking, to believe that I am about to possess this magnificent creature – soon, soon – this very night!
But Harriet had her own plans for their first married encounter. After dinner was finished that evening she rose and fixed him with her great grey eyes.
“I am going to retire now, Richard,” she said. “You will not help me to undress tonight. You will simply come to my room at ten o’clock. Do you understand?”
He had already risen before she began speaking. His disappointment was all too evident; but, long broken to the habit of unquestioning obedience, he dropped his eyes with a murmur of assent.
At the appointed hour, naked under his dressing-gown, he tapped at her door and was bidden to enter. The curtains were drawn, the room was bathed in the subdued light of a single shaded lamp, and Harriet, in a loose white negligee, was seated in a large armchair beside the fire. He paused, dazzled by the appearance she presented, struck silent by the breathtaking loveliness of her face. His untutored glance could not tell that Harriet had, for this occasion, made use of certain artificial aids to beauty.
She remained silent under his gaze, keeping her own eyes fixed on the fire with an air of dreamy absorption, letting the flickering firelight cast its glistening reflection under her long eyelashes. When she spoke at last, still not looking at him, it was in a low thoughtful voice.
“This is our wedding night, my dear, and I hope you are thoroughly imbued with the sense of its solemnity for both of us in the years to come. Richard, you may have some preconceived ideas of the roles of man and wife, ideas influenced by the generally held view that it is the man who is instigator and leader in the tender relations that must subsist between them. If you have any such ideas, you may put them out of your head immediately.”
She paused, and turned her calm gaze on him for the first time. “For you must realise that in this marriage of ours it is I who will rule, and you who will obey; above all in the matter of our most intimate connections. Do you understand?”
Still only half grasping the import of her words, he lowered his eyes. “Yes, Harriet,” he murmured.
“Good. You must also realise that it is my sensations and my wishes which wilt take precedence at all time. It will be your concern, above everything else, to give me pleasure: your own pleasure is of quite secondary importance. I understand that to bring this home to you I shall have to instruct you in your proper behaviour towards me, for you know absolutely nothing of a woman’s needs and desires. Perhaps you think that the possession and employment of a male organ is all that is required to make you a suitable partner for a passionate woman like myself. If you do so, you are wrong.”
She paused, uncrossed her legs slowly and parted her thighs. “You have never yet seen my genitals, Richard, and I believe that your course of instruction had best begin by your doing so.” She paused once again, taking the edges of her robe in either hand. “Go down on your knees, Richard.” He obeyed breathlessly. Harriet lifted the white robe above her waist. There was a short silence.
Richard gazed at a vulva of surpassing beauty, — a pair of small lips surmounted by a clitoris of unusual prominence and surrounded by fine curly hair as black as night. Deliberately, Harriet parted the lips with her fingers, disclosing the moist pink flesh of the interior. When she spoke her voice was low and compelling.
“Look well, Richard. For this will be for you, from now on, not the source or avenue of your pleasure, not the sign even of my sex and the index of my sensuality, but something much more. It will be for you, from now on and for always, an object of adoration. Your sole concern will be to minister to it in every way. It does not matter that at present you know nothing of those ways. Just as I have taught you many things in the past when I was your governess, I will teach you the ways in which you must please me now that I am your wife. Do you follow me?”
His throat was dry; he could not speak, but merely nodded. His eyes were fixed between her thighs, as if they could never leave this region wherein his whole desire and worship were now concentrated. He heard Harriet speaking as if in a dream.
“There are other areas of sensation in my body to whose pleasure you will also be expected to contribute,” she said quietly, “but you will learn about them, and what each requires, later on. This evening you will begin by bringing me satisfaction in this very centre of my desires ...”
She lifted her body slightly, raising and placing her thighs on either of the wide padded arms of the chair she sat in, bringing the beautiful clitoris into still greater prominence.
“Bring your head between my knees now,” she said. “And now open your lips and kiss me there with your whole mouth. That is all I require of you at this time.”
As he brought his lips to the exquisite cleft, he received an intoxicating odour which seemed to breathe from it; almost fainting with rapture, he pressed his mouth to it and then, actuated by some instinct or atavistic intelligence, darted his tongue deeply within the warm and musky confínes. He received at the same time the message of her aroused senses, and the light pressure of her hand on his head as if in conscious recognition of his impromptu caress.
“Yes, my dear,” she murmured. “Now take my clitoris between your lips and suck it firmly ... So.” And she sank back luxuriously in her chair.
For the next five minutes, under her laconic directions, Richard licked and sucked and kissed the superb vulva with greedy enjoyment. Never, he thought, had he tasted such bliss as in the performance of this sensual exercise for the pleasure of the woman he idolised. He drank in the sound of her sighs and moans, feasted on the message conveyed by the undulations of her hips, the shuddering of her ventral muscles and the very twitchings of his own responsive organ itself as it slid between his legs, throbbing with the tension of his desire and his craving to ejaculate; but it was only when Harriet reached her crisis, and clasping his head tightly between her quivering thighs discharged her own spending in his mouth, that he realised that she was on this occasion quite careless of any pleasure but her own.
Her praise and gratitude for his efforts made him some amends. But he was stricken with dismay when a few minutes later, again parting her thighs, she bade him resume his efforts.
This time she was even more exigent. In tones of increasing urgency, she ordered him to redouble the speed and penetration of his caresses; and when, with the muscles of his tongue almost numb with fatigue, he felt himself at last unable to respond, she suddenly exploded with wrath.
“Wretched boy,” she said, suddenly drawing herself up, “you did not think I meant what I said to you earlier, did you? I see there is still only one way for you to learn ...” And picking up the whip she lashed his back and sides savagely. “Now, down with your head and finish my pleasure properly!”
He gasped with pain; and then, calling on all the resources of his strength, he buried his face between her thighs and brought her to the orgasm again ...
Twice more that night he was obliged to repeat this service before she was satisfied. By this time his tongue was painful and swollen, his buttocks were smarting from the repeated strokes of the whip, and the unachieved desire of his own body was swallowed up in the aching fatigue of every nerve in his loins.
Harriet, her body once more covered, looked at him with a faint smile. “You see, Richard,” she said, “that the duties of a husband are not all they are popularly represented to be. In your case, indeed, they have so far brought you more pain than pleasure. Come here now and tell me: you are a little disappointed, are you not?”
As she had done so often in the past, she drew him between her knees; her hands went between his legs and began stroking his pendent member.
He tried to smile, then suddenly put his hands to his face and burst into tears.
“Come now,” laughed Harriet, “you are not a very gallant bridegroom at the moment. Let me see if I cannot restore you at least to a more manly appearance.”
In spite of his shame, misery and fatigue, his penis was soon standing stiffly under her skilful hands.
“See now,” she said, “now you look a little better. You are feeling a little better too, is it not so?”
His only answer was to throw himself into her arms in a passion of reawakened desire. His lips began to thrust blindly against her body.
She laughed again. “Well, Richard, what does this mean?”
“Harriet, Harriet,” he cried, “please do not be so cruel ... Now that we are married, am I not–are you not going to–to let me—” He was unable to finish, and with one hand he gestured miserably towards his straining member.
“To let you put it into me?” she said dryly. “Why, no, Richard. We are not ready for that yet.”
“N–not ready? But I don’t understand! I thought–I thought...”
“You thought you were going to enjoy me and spend in me, did you not? Well, Richard, that is out of the question at the moment.”
He looked at her in numb bewilderment.
She suddenly became serious. “Listen to me, Richard. Listen very carefully. You know,” she said in a low voice, “there is one aspect of our marriage that I have never discussed with you. It is a matter on which modesty might well oblige me to keep silent, but which, I believe, should be properly aired before we go any further.”
“Yes, Harriet,” he murmured.
“It is the question of children.”
He looked up at her in dismay, and was about to speak when she checked him.
“I must tell you, my dear, that we shall have no children. I do not wish it.”
His heart leapt up joyfully. “Why, Harriet – of – of course not. I had never thought of it, and — and really, I do not wish for children either. It shall be as you say.”
She smiled with genuine amusement at his declaration. “I am glad to hear you say so, my boy. But to ensure there shall be none, we must take proper measures, you know.”
He laid his head on her knees. “I – I know nothing of these matters, Harriet. But I am willing to do whatever you say...”
Her voice continued quietly. “Thank you, my dear. I will tell you what is. You must submit to a trifling piece of surgery before I can be entirely yours. That is all.”
He looked up, his face suddenly transfigured. “And that is all? Then — then you will make – make me happy after all? You will – give yourself to me once this is done?”
“Yes, Richard,” she said quietly.
“Then let it be soon–soon!” he cried. “For I cannot wait...”
She leaned over and embraced him tenderly. “Dear Richard,” she said, “I also am impatient to give myself to you.”
The words, combined with the renewed pressure of her hand between his thighs, made his penis stand once again.
“Then, Harriet,” he murmured, “will you not – not play with me tonight? I need it – oh so badly ...”
“Masturbate you?” she said coolly. “Why no, my dear, I think not. It will be better for you to possess yourself in patience until you are in the condition where I can be safely and entirely yours. It will not be long. Now kiss me goodnight and go to your room. And be sure you behave yourself.”
“Oh Harriet,” he murmured, as he raised his lips from hers, “you know you have cured me of that habit long ago, that I simply cannot give myself pleasure any more.
She laughed. “And is not that as it should be? Are you not glad of a circumstance that makes you entirely mine in thought and deed?”