Chapter 4
Three days later I was seated alone in my late uncle's library. How strange it was to be there in those familiar surroundings, looking at the long curtains of red velvet, the shelves of leather-bound books, the inlaid chess table with the red and white Chinese chessmen, the heavy desk of oak, the oils of Bingham and Cassat, and the log fire blazing in the hearth. It was not really cold enough for a fire, but I had given instructions for it to be lit all the same. It made the room more cheerful. I was seated in front of the fire in my late uncle's big winged chair, reading a volume of Poe, one of my favorites.
Since my arrival, I had explored the grounds, penetrating even into the copse where Anna and I had so often lain together during those bright summer afternoons, and examined the stump of tree, now blackened by wind and weather, our tree, which Uncle Harris had caused to be felled because he was afraid of its antiquity. Indeed, there was nothing of former significance which I had not minutely re-examined.
It was nearly midnight. The servants were all in bed.
Lewis had left two hours before. He had dined with me that night. He had spoken of Anna.
She and her husband, Inez, it seemed, planned to move to Georgia in three weeks' time. Lewis was sorry he had been unable to get them to leave immediately. He was sure that I would have preferred it that way; such a painful link with the past was better broken at once. Unfortunately, however, the house they were going to in Georgia would not be vacated for another three weeks. Well, there it was. Meanwhile, he suggested that it would be better if I didn't see Anna.
At that moment I began positively to dislike Elmer Lewis. If he thought he was going to arrange my life for me in accordance with his own skim-milk precepts, he was mistaken. I intended to visit Anna the very next day. Lewis could think what he liked.
I was glad, however, that the departure had been delayed for three weeks. That would give me ample time to change Anna's mind for her. For I intended to put into operation at once my plan to be with Anna, and it would be much less trouble to have her in the neighborhood than to be forced to search for her in the state of Georgia.
I thanked Lewis warmly as he left for his kind attention to this affair of clearing Anna out of the neighborhood. I don't think he caught the undercurrent of irony in my voice. When he was gone, I called Mrs. Kelly, the housekeeper, to the study and posed a number of questions to her. I apologized for bringing her down.
I told her that having been away for a long time and that as I intended now to settle down on the estate I wanted to hear what had been going on in the neighborhood during my absence. I asked a few innocent questions to begin with, questions the answers to which didn't interest me in the slightest. Then I asked her about Dr. Meadows, pretending not to know of his death. She told me he was dead.
"Poor Dr. Meadows!" I exclaimed. "He was our family physician, you know. He was very kind to me when I was a boy."
Mrs. Kelly nodded sympathetically. I had created a good impression on her since my arrival.
"And there was a girl, at least a woman," I continued. "She was my governess for some years. Anna was her name, I think. I wonder what ever became of her?"
Mrs. Kelly had pursed her thin lips.
I raised an eyebrow, questioningly.
"She's still in the neighborhood, sir, at the old Cromarty place," said my housekeeper after a pause,"-with that husband of hers. Inez, they call him. An evil man if you want my opinion!"
"Oh? Why do you say that, Mrs. Kelly?"
"Oh, there's been many stories, sir," said Mrs. Kelly in her old-worldly way. "Not that I listen to gossip myself, but there's no good in that man. Ask anyone."
"What does he do for a living?"
"Steals. He's been chased off your grounds more than once, sir, for poaching. I don't think he's done a hard day's work in his life!"
I smiled. "He's often about these grounds, then?"
She nodded, almost triumphantly, I thought.
"And what about Anna?"
Again this middle-aged Irish woman whom Lewis had employed to run the house during my absence pursed her lips.
"A woman who'll put up with a man like Inez...." she began.
I waited for her to go on.
She was flushed, as though Anna's behavior came to her as a direct personal insult.
"Well, sir, there's not much I can say. But she's hardly the type of woman I'd invite to my house if you take my meaning."
"Perfectly, Mrs. Kelly," I said blandly, making a mental note that I should have to get rid of this disapproving old bitch at the first opportunity, "but tell me, do they have any children?"
She shook her head.
"Miss Coogan-that's the district nurse-is a good friend of mine. There's been three miscarriages in that house in five years. Not that I'm suggesting anything...."
I nodded.
"Well, thank you for bringing me up to date, Mrs. Kelly. You've been most helpful. I've been away for such a long time I'm out of touch with everything."
"Oh, there's a great deal more to tell, sir," Mrs. Kelly said enthusiastically.
"I'm sure there is," I said quickly, "but I don't want to keep you out of your bed any longer. In fact it was very inconsiderate of me to call you at this hour...."
"Not at all, sir, not at all!"
I smiled. "And anyway, I have some important letters to write. Must attend to business, eh?"
"Yes, indeed, sir!" Mrs. Kelly chirped.
"Good night then."
"Good night, sir."
When she had gone, I poured myself a glass of brandy and settled comfortably by the fire. So Anna lived in the old Cromarty cottage? Well, that was interesting. It was not more than a hundred yards from the east boundary of the estate. No wonder Inez was tempted to do a bit of poaching from time to time.
In the morning I would ride over and see her.
What would she be like? I could hardly contain myself. At this moment, her beautiful white thighs relaxed, she would be sleeping not more than half a mile away. To think of it! I felt as an old voyager must have felt when his sailing ship after perilous adventures in foreign ports and on the high seas finally sailed up the home sound.
I closed my eyes.
"Anna, my darling, I am coming to you...."
At breakfast, to keep my mind off things, I made an inventory of my servants. There were six altogether, not many for an estate of this size, but all were new, that is to say, they had been selected by my counselor and friend, Elmer Lewis.
Mrs. Kelly without question would have to go, and the sooner the better, for even if she were to prove faithful to me rather than to Lewis, I could not bear her moralizing and her thousand and one old adages. And anyway, she had proven herself unfriendly towards Anna, her future mistress, unwittingly doing herself out of her job.
Then there were the two maids, the one who served at table, a breathless little brunette with soft, provocative haunches, Milly Brown, pleasant enough and even interesting, and Mona, a thin redhead with green eyes and a very pale complexion, who acted as chambermaid. Of the two, I was more interested in the latter. She had a strange, elfin quality about her. Well, for the moment, I would keep them both. With Mrs. Kelly out of the way, I would have a better chance to get to know them.
As for the cook, she was a fat blonde Swede, whose name was Kirstin. She looked like a masseuse, was about forty years of age and from the look she gave me when I first entered the kitchen was just the kind of woman I wanted in my employment. Kirstin was all right, and from what I had gathered in the short time I had been home, I surmised that there was no love lost between her and Mrs. Kelly. All the better. Kirstin could stay.
The other two were men. As there were only two horses now, a grey mare and a black gelding, neither of them of particular value, there was not enough work for a full-time stableman. One of the men, Henry, looked after the horses and acted as gamekeeper. I didn't like the look of him. He had fair hair, freckles, honest blue eyes, and looked as though he would have been shocked by a pair of French knickers. That kind of man, I could hardly retain in my service.
Cliff, on the contrary, appeared to be just the kind of man I wanted. He was dark, with a low forehead and narrowly-spaced eyes, and he seemed to be a deplorably bad gardener, that is to say he knew nothing of his job and would probably not be averse to making up for it in other ways; just the type of mean wretch who could be bribed, and who, if his services were well rewarded, would think twice about opening his mouth to anyone. I liked Cliff. He was very rightly suspicious of a world in which he was forced to earn his living as a gardener, especially as he had probably never seen a garden before his arrival on the estate. He looked more like an ex-jailbird. And so I decided that Cliff could stay. by the time I had finished shuffling all this over in my mind I had finished breakfast. Now it was time to go to see Anna. The reorganization of the household could wait until the afternoon.
I sent Milly with instructions to Henry to saddle the mare, and ten minutes later I mounted and moved off at a canter down the front drive. I glanced to the left at the black stump of the elm as I passed. Well, there were other elms, and there would be plenty of time to cut our initials over again.
I came out through the wood directly opposite the little cottage where old Cromarty and his wife used to live. I reined in the mare and sat still in the saddle, gazing at the trickle of almost colorless smoke which sidled up from the red brick chimney. Anna lived there. I had arrived at last....
I urged the mare on at a walk, savoring those last few minutes which led towards the woman to whom I was eternally bound, to whom I had committed and recommitted myself each night before I slept. I would allow nothing now to stand in my way, not Inez, not Lewis, not even Anna herself. I would make her accept me.
Suddenly, as if to greet me, I saw Anna step over the threshold with a wooden bucket in her hand. She had walked out a few paces before she saw me. She put down the bucket and stared.
I dismounted, and without waiting to tether the horse, walked quickly towards her. "Saul!"
"Anna!"
A moment later we were fast in one another's arms.
"Oh, Saul! You shouldn't have come!" she whispered through her tears.
I kissed them away, allowing my whole body to lean against this soft, but powerfully muscled woman, and my hands ran up and down her back, caressing, loving.
"Come inside!" she said suddenly. "Someone might see us!"
I allowed myself to be led by the hand into the cottage.
As soon as the door closed behind us, I took her in my arms again and crushed my mouth against hers. Her full lips opened and the hot wetness of her mouth mingled with my own.
"You've grown up," she whispered as soon as she managed to free her mouth. "Oh, Saul, it's so good to see you!"
"Darling," I said between kisses, "I've come back to you ... I belong to you! ... I'll never leave you again!"
"Oh, Saul!"
She freed herself and sat down on a chair.
"It's no good, Saul, it's no good! You know that! They'll never let us be together!"
My jaw tightened. "Who's they?"
"Oh, you know, Saul! Inez and Mr. Lewis ... neither of them would allow it!"
The hair rose at the back of my neck. I held out my hands, palms upwards and fingers spread.
"I'll strangle them with these hands!" I said quietly, and I looked into her eyes.
"Don't talk like that!" she said quickly. "Oh God, you should never have come!"
"Anna," I said quietly, "I killed my uncle for you. You asked me to show you that I loved you. I worship you! You have no right to ask me to live without you ... As for Inez and Lewis, let me take care of them!"
"Oh no, Saul!" I laughed suddenly.
"It might not be necessary to kill them, Anna!"
And then she was laughing too, and I sank down beside her chair and laid my head in her lap. I felt her fingers moving in my hair and I felt relaxed, utterly.
"Little Saul!" she said almost to herself, "I never thought you would grow up!"
"I've grown up for you, Anna...."
"Yes," she said, her fingers tightening in my hair, and then, simply, she added: "For me."
When she said it, I lifted her cotton dress up over her white thighs and exposed her naked sex with its shell-pink clitoris and gleaming black hairs. The thighs were fuller, the same dusky white, with the same sweet smell of fresh sweat that I remembered. I was kneeling between them, gazing with adoration at the soft milky tub of her lower belly down which now, as she had matured, a fine spine of black hair ran, from her navel to her crotch. I leaned forward and with little nibbling kisses, like a sheep grazing, moved my lips down from her broad, sweating belly to the hot, mucous, hairy mass at her crotch. She twitched in her chair, her soft white buttocks shuddering, slithering forwards to bear her pulsing lust deep into my mouth. Only the small of her back now remained in the chair. Her buttocks, thighs and legs jutted out horizontally and I supported them in my arms. Mad with desire now, she held my head firmly at its doting work, and her heavy thighs closed about my ears, the buttock muscles tightening, of urgency, of necessity.
Gently then I drew her onto the stone floor, my mouth still buried deep in the rising fluids of her crotch, and I felt her buck, and buck, and buck, as she rose on my worshipping tongue to her first whimpering spasm.
The pressure of the thighs relaxed then, and rolling me onto my back, she squatted over my mouth, with little pulsing movements making her passion-soaked hairs dance on my lips. My tongue swayed under her soft, hairy cleft like a charmed snake, and I was hungry for her to descend so that I might again contain the soft, dripping flesh in my mouth.
She stood up, allowing the skirt of her dress to fall down and obscure her thighs.
"Come over to the bed," she said. She was breathing heavily and looking down at me strangely.
I followed her over.
She slipped out of her dress and unhooked her brassiere. Then she lay down, entirely nude, on her back on the bed.
I was now able to examine her body. It had thickened. The muscles had become heavier over the years. The hairs at her soft, almost pudgy armpits she had allowed to grow, thick, black, and coiling like soft strands of wool.
She was looking at me, curious, appraising.
"Lick me all over," she said softly. "Start at my toes."
I laid myself down beside her and bent my head over her left foot, tracing a spiderweb caress on the hard skin of her soles, rising or falling suddenly between the toes, feathering across her instep, to her ankle and to her beautiful swelling white calf. I was out of time then, doting, annihilated and geared to her will, tasting each hair, each pore, its sweetness and its sweat. And soon I was moving up again, past her dimpled knees and within the soft white gate of her thighs. At that moment, she raised her knees, allowing my tongue access to the tender under-thighs, the smooth chubs of flesh where legs and torso joined, and to the lemon-yellow crevice against which the blue-black hair was smoothly set. Round on her warm spreading belly next, all senses at the tip of my tongue as it traced for the second time the fine line of hair between sex and navel. Fine hairs, like dust almost, clung to the slabs of flesh below her rib-cage. I moved softly over them, like a careful gardener with a mower.
"My breasts...." she whispered huskily.
I approached them from one side, up from the satin-soft hollow of her hip. Her breasts were fuller than I had known them, rounder, but still firm, and the teats, in spite of the fact that she had no children, had been developed to the size of smallish grapes. She breathed outwards heavily as I took one of them in my mouth and sucked avidly. I was transported, wrapped entirely in the warm body of this woman to whom I had chosen again to be committed. Her hands clutched at my hair, urging me to put every nerve of a doting power into my homage. When the breast was erect, I moved to the other one, applying my lips abandonedly to the sweet nipple.
"Take off your clothes...."
As quickly as I could, I divested myself of them entirely. And then, naked, and with a more urgent erection than ever before I laid myself almost breathless beside her.
She raised one arm, exhibiting the soft mass of hair at her armpit.
"Under my arm...."
I teased and parted the hairs with my tongue, seeking the pink-white flesh beneath, grazing my cheek against them as I might have rubbed against a cat.
She turned over and kissed me passionately on the lips, her dark eyes open and gazing curiously into my own. Her smile, when our lips came apart, was suggestive.
"Do you love me, Saul?"
"Do you not know I do?"
"How do you love me?"
"I worship you, Anna!"
She almost purred. Her eyes twinkled with amusement.
"Lick me again, first," she said.
I hesitated for I didn't know what she meant until she moved upwards slightly in the bed and swung one heavy white thigh over my shoulder. I felt my face crushed against her sopping wet sex. And then her thighs tightened as though she meant to strangle me.
"Suck me!" she commanded.
Once again my mouth broke into her smooth, slimy vagina and my straining tongue made doting pressures against its walls. Her warm breath was deep. One of my hands lay on her soft white belly.
"I remember the first time you did this, Saul," she whispered between gasps. "I had forgotten that you belonged to me...."
And with that, she tightened the pressure of her thighs. This time I could actually feel the boiling issue of her sex as it rose to its second climax in my mouth. I sighed deeply and relaxed among the warm pressure of her flesh.
She pulled me up until my mouth was on hers. Her eyes were still open and a faint amusement lingered in them.
"F ... me now," she said softly.
How can I describe the relief, the ecstasy I experienced as my painful erection was sucked through hairs, through the soft, soapy lather of her lust, deep into her hot pulsing belly! The infinite tenderness of her! The breaking of her heavy thighs as they opened to support my hips!
"Darling...."
"F ... me...." she whispered.
I rode there, balancing on her soft gymbals, gyrating voluptuously with the thick root of my sex crushing against her delirious clitoris. She seemed to enjoy that pressure most of all, her hands moving like fluttering birds on my back. And then, finally, I felt her stiffen beneath me, the lower part of her torso like a huge maw erect, the buttock muscles tight and prising upwards, lifting, her hands seizing my own buttocks and gripping them frantically towards her, and her final scream, which began huskily, almost soundlessly at the back of her throat, and rose up through her mouth, gaining momentum, sound, ecstasy, as it spluttered wildly from her full, red, grimacing lips and as though by sympathetic magic caused me to burst like a volcanic gusher deep into her womb.
"Oooooh...."
Like a tigress she was up, scratching, snarling, forcing my shoulders flat on the bed with her knees, and then blackness, the soft, seething, pulpy mass of her descending on my face as though to suffocate me. And then, jerking her hips, her fingers clutching my scalp, she painted my face with the overflowing brush of her sex.
We were dressed.
I was sitting in a chair opposite her. "I can't, Saul."
"But why can't you? Good God, you don't love him, do you?" She flushed.
"I don't know," she said. "I don't know what I feel. It's just that he has a kind of power over me, like an animal, like a beast...."
"And me?"
"You know I love you, Saul. I've loved you ever since you were a little boy." I smiled bitterly.
The sound of her voice now made me feel sick. Did she think I had need of sentiment? I began to see at that moment that Anna was not the woman I had created for myself in my imagination. She was another man's woman, his thing. And I began to see what I would have to do. I knew I was in the clutch of an obsession.
"I'm going now, Anna. But remember, I won't allow you to leave the district."
"There's nothing we can do...." she repeated in her resigned voice.
I felt a slight twitch within me, like the turning of a compass needle. The situation as I knew very well was not insoluble. I had already come upon the answer.
On the ride back to the house, I weighed it over in my mind.
Immediately after lunch, which was served to me by Milly in the dining room, I sent for Mrs. Kelly and informed her of my decision to dispense with her services.
She was mortally shocked.
"But why, sir! What have I done? I demand at least to know what you've got against me! In all my working days this has never happened to me before! The very idea!"
"And I'm sorry it has to happen now, Mrs. Kelly, believe me. But a man is entitled to choose his own servants. You were chosen by Mr. Lewis, and his taste is perhaps not mine. It's quite simple and there is really nothing more to be said."
"The very idea!"
"I'd like you to leave at once, Mrs. Kelly. I shall instruct Cliff to drive you into town in the car. Of course I shall give you two months' wages in lieu of notice."
"Well, I must say! You have no right to treat me in this way! I have never been treated in this way in my life before!"
"That will be all, Mrs. Kelly. I have neither the time nor the desire to argue with you. You may go now."
"I'll speak to Mr. Lewis about this! You see if I don't!"
"That is entirely your own affair, Mrs. Kelly. Meanwhile, be good enough to leave the premises."
"Well, of all the nerve!"
"G..e..t o..u..t, Mrs. Kelly!"
That did it. She bustled out, calling to God and man to witness her humiliation.
I rang for Milly.
She came in nervously. I smiled. No doubt she had already heard what had happened and would be worrying about her own position.
"Please send Henry to me, Milly."
"Yes sir!"
Henry came about five minutes later, a pleasant expression on his freckled face.
I informed him shortly that I was dispensing with his services.
He took it more calmly than Mrs. Kelly had.
"When do I leave?"
"Today if possible. I will pay you two months' wages in lieu of notice. I'm sorry, Henry, but my mind is made up."
"That's O.K.," he said. "I hear Mrs. Kelly got the sack too. I can ride into town with her."
"Just as you wish, Henry. If you need a reference, write me for it."
"Thanks," he said. "It won't be necessary."
"Just as you wish. Come to the library for your money before you go."
"O.K."
I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the grounds.
As I was walking back towards the house along the front drive Cliff came abreast of me in the car. He had just returned from town where he had driven Mrs. Kelly and Henry.
He was excessively polite.
"Will you need the car again tonight, Mr. Folsrom?"
"Not tonight, Cliff."
"Then I'll put it away in the garage."
"Do that ... Oh, and by the way, Cliff...."
"Yes sir?"
"That man Inez, is he on the grounds much?"
"I've seen him four or five times in the last couple of weeks, usually at night."
"Does he take much away with him?"
"A few rabbits mostly, sometimes a bird or two, but this is not the season."
"Of course not. But he's around here all the same?"
"Yes," Cliff said. "I saw him last night."
I nodded.
"Chase him out if you see him," I said unconcernedly. "We don't want him hanging around the estate."
"I sure will, Mr. Folsrom!"
And he drove in front of me up the drive, past the house, towards the garage. The old Buick was still a smart car. Anyway, unless Lewis came across with more money I wouldn't be able to afford a new one.
Almost as soon as I got into the house, Lewis rang.
Mrs. Kelly had been to see him.
"Did you have any particular reason for getting rid of her, Saul?"
"No. I simply wish to choose my own servants."
"Of course, but she's a good woman, you know, very efficient housekeeper."
"That's not the point, Mr. Lewis. I just felt I wouldn't get on well with her."
"Mmm. I think you've made a mistake. I've known her a long time."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Lewis, but you'll have to let me be the judge of that."
"Yes, of course. I simply wanted to know if anything had happened."
"No. Nothing."
"And Henry, was that for the same reason?"
"I suppose so, yes. I didn't particularly like the look of him, that's all. It's very simple."
"I'm surprised you should prefer Cliff to Henry...."
I laughed at his consternation.
"I didn't say that. It's simply that Henry struck me as an independent type of fellow and I don't consider independence a virtue in a servant."
"I see...."
"We've probably different ideas about this kind of thing."
"Er ... yes," Lewis said thoughtfully. "Your late uncle might have said that. He wouldn't tolerate independence in a servant...."
"So you see, I'm running true to tradition!"
He chuckled but I sensed an undercurrent of uneasiness in his laugh.
"I appreciate your point of view, Mr. Lewis," I went on. "You are pretty orthodox liberal. My uncle wasn't and as it turns out neither am I. Tom Paine ... the Rights of Man, all that-it leaves me quite cold. I prefer Nietzsche for example to Bentham or Mill."
"I see...."
"I'm sorry, but that's the way it is, Mr. Lewis."
He hesitated at the other end of the wire and then, almost mechanically, he said: "Not at all, Saul. Every man is entitled to his opinion, eh?"
"Except a servant," I said, irony in my voice.
He grunted incoherently.
"Silly to discuss matters like this on the telephone," he said, with an attempt to be good-humored. "We'll talk about it some other time, over dinner. Much more civilized, eh?"
I laughed.
"Any time," I said pleasantly.
"Sorry to have disturbed you," he said.
"Not at all. Goodbye for now."
He said goodbye and then I heard the click as he replaced the receiver at his end.
As I laid down the telephone it occurred to me that if it were to be done it would be well done quickly....