This is the only point in my history with Mabel much worth noting, except that when I knew her from top to bottom, and found she got out of bed, and washed her cunt after my sperming it, I asked her, “Why did you not wash the first night?” “Because it's unlucky”, said she, and I never got any more out of her; but she had known the sensation of a prick in her cunt before mine, that I found out the first night.
She was a well-arsed, well-made, plump girl about twenty-one years old, and had a wonderfully white skin. She had been fucked before, but I believed from all I learnt from her, Laura and Fred, that for two years a prick had not entered her. A man who had paid his addresses to her had deceived her, then cleared off, I expect after tailing her.
I did not profess to keep Mabel after this, but paid for the second-floor rooms (Fred had taken the upper part of the house, three bed- and one sitting room), and my share of the living, and slept with her almost regularly for a short time, gave her money, dressed her, and did all a man does who keeps a woman; but I never cared much about her, and was not constant. She like Laura was fairly educated. A few months afterwards she went back to her native town, and al-though she wrote to me, I never saw her again, and had some idea that Lord A.... kept her, why I shall tell further on. One reason of my being indifferent to her was that she never properly washed herself. Her beautiful white flesh never seemed to need it, but I did not like a woman who just smeared her face and neck, and never below. I told her of it, and she was offended.
About three weeks after I first had Mabel, Fred and I went to shoot with some friends at ***shire; it was towards the end of November, all the leaves were well off the trees.
As said I had female cousins by several aunts, two of them about seventeen or eighteen years of age were at a finishing-school for young ladies. It was a large old-fashioned house kept by three ladies of whom one had been married a year, although then forty years old, to a curate about sixty-five years old. The sisters unmarried were between fifty and sixty years old, stern and stiff-rumped. Maris the married one, fat and forty, with jet-black hair and merry hazel eyes, had been disappointed in her youth, and when this clergyman, whom she had known all her life, proposed, she accepted I suppose for companionship, and because it gave her consideration in the neighbourhood.
The house was originally a very big old mansion, large enough for two schools, and had been roughly divided by walls and partitions into two houses. The smaller was inhabited by Maria and her husband, and the kitchen-garden was attached to it. All access to the pleasure-grounds of the other, or school-part of the house, was bricked up. In an establishment for young ladies, all of a fuckable age, and none without hair on their cunts, it would never have done to leave male access, not even to a curate sixty-five years old. The gardeners were elderly men, they came round by the house to go to the kitchen-garden, which supplied both houses. Mrs. Maria used to go round to the school daily.
The air of the neighbourhood was fine, and although not professing to lodge people, if any of the female relatives of the young ladies at the school desired it, they could go and stop for a week or two at the curate's, of course paying for so doing.
Fred and I had invitations to shooting not far off, just as my aunt went to stay a week at Mrs. Maria's and to see her girl. Our friends could accommodate Fred only, and sooner than be separated, and for other reasons, we wrote to the old curate to know if he could receive us two men, — and my aunt as well, —which he did. We took up our quarters there. I had unpacked, and went into Fred's room. “Here is a jolly cupboard”, said he opening the door of one big enough for four people to stand in. “If a woman were sleeping here, she would always be thinking some one was hidden in it; it's a jolly place for boxes and clothes.” He was hanging up something, when he stopped and listened. “Damned if there are not women laughing”, said he, “hish !” But he heard nothing more.
Two or three minutes afterwards he said, “Here Walter”, and both listening heard the voices of women, but very indistinctly. Fred lighted a candle. Said he, “Here is an old door screwed up, it leads into a room. What a lark to get it open, or a hole through it; nothing I so like as to hear what women say, when they think no one hears them.”
I suggested it was unfair, it might be his sisters' room. “It don't matter”, said he, “it's all in the family.” He went to dinner, and then back to his room. He at once got to the closet, undid his gun-case, and taking out the gun-screw, tried to loosen the screws of the door, but could not. Off he went to the village, came back with a screwdriver, and with some labor opened the door. Then we found ourselves in another empty place nearly as big, and at the end of it rough boards nailed across a frame horizontally, and as we supposed covered over on the other side. It evidently had been a passage, and when they separated the house, they had screwed up the door into the room of which we did not yet know the use, leaving the door at the end next Fred's room as it was, and had fixed up some woodwork across the end of the passage, thus making the large closet at one end, and the empty space at the other. We were dusty with our job.
After breakfast next day, aunt, Fred and I went round to see his sister and cousin. We saw their bed-rooms accompanied by them and aunt. We were in fact shown over the house. Fred had previously looked well at the outside, to see how the windows ran. “What is that room which is shut off ?” “Oh !” said his sister, “that is a bath-room; look, such a nice one.” We entered it; it was the room up to which the pass-age at the back of the closet led. Fred winked at me, and when we got back he roared. “Oh I lord, we shall see them naked, — the boards have twisted, there are cracks next the bath-room, — we'll run a knife between one, and through the canvas and paper; then we will see through, — oho ! ho ! we shall see the girls bathing, —there are two or three damned fine girls.”
Had it been servants, I should have been delighted at a peep; but to rip a hole to spy on young ladies, and one of those his sister, revolted me. “Damn it Fred, it's not the thing, one is your own sister.” “Pough! you have seen their cunts.” (It was not the two I had seen.) “Ah ! those were children.” “Well ** and are only larger, and have hair on their cunts, and you need not look.” “But if we are found out, we are disgraced; if it were at an hotel or elsewhere, I would not mind.” “It won't be found out.” “They will see the crack in the paper.” “They won't, they will think it split by the boards warping, if they do; besides there are cracks and some shelves up, I know exactly the place.
Nothing stopped him, and after boring, prodding, and getting a chair to stand on to find the right place, he at length made some cracks a few inches long with a knife, and we saw day light through the bath, towels, clothes-pegs, and a large cane settee or sofa. I would not look at first, but so weak is man's nature concerning a woman, that at length I did, and a thrill of pleasure shot through me as I thought of seeing the naked girls, and strange enough I recollect a feeling of curiosity about the figures my two cousins would cut if they were naked. I thought of the quims of his sisters some years before, and wondered what difference between these and those.
Carefully locking the closet we went out. When we returned Fred peeped at every opportunity, but saw nothing that day. The next morning Fred awakened me. “Get up, they are going to bathe, a servant is fill- ing the baths.” It was a cold dark morning. “I shan't.” “Don't”, and off he went. In a minute or two however I was by his side. We saw two young ladies enter, strip, and take their baths; the candle-light was imperfect, but we saw them rub their bodies dry, and scrub the wet off their cunts; we saw their hair above and below, and all their little secrets. They were, we afterwards knew, sisters.