Miss Mabel

My gratitude to Creativetalent for her help and advice.

Miss Mabel - a story in six parts.

Part 6. The consequences of a letter.

After two months at my lodgings at Boscastle Street, the front sitting room had been tacitly recognised as my province, at least in the evenings and weekends. I could write letters and check accounts at the bureau-bookcase, which also held my few books and folders of press-cuttings. I could sit at my ease in the armchair with the newspaper, ever alert for the news from France, the Low Countries, Austria-Hungary, Prussia and Saxony which could affect the bank's business.

As a favoured and privileged paying guest, I did not despair of having a fire in the fireplace once winter had set in. By now Emily knew of our affairs and would not spoil sport, so Mabel, seeing that we were unlikely to be disturbed there, was growing ever bolder, although we were ever alert for a warning footstep outside.

On Saturday morning, I was in a buoyant mood and started singing to myself the popular minstrel song:

I am going to Californ-i-ay, my true love for to see

I am going to Californ-i-ay, my banjo on my knee.

Oh Susannah, don't you cry for me,

For I'm going to Californ-i-ay with my banjo on my knee.

Miss Mabel heard me singing, rather loudly I confess, with the door, as usual, ajar. She slipped into the room.

"Oh Arthur, I don't like that song", she said. "Was poor Susannah like me, do you suppose? "When you went to Loughborough to see your sweetheart I cried all weekend, although there was nothing between us then. How much worse it would be for me now."

"Come, my dearest, it's only a song". I replied feebly.

"When you marry Jessie, I shall be all alone. Perhaps you could make me your mistress, and keep me in a little apartment in Regents Park. Oh but you're not rich enough for that, are you?"

It was not like Miss Mabel to let her fears out so openly, and I did not know what to say. I tried to change the subject.

"Mabel dearest, we must let the future take care of itself. Besides, long before I could afford to support a wife, Mr Harker, or one of your other old flirts will ask you to marry".

"Willie Harker! That dry old stick! I should far rather stay single. If he wants anything from me, he wants my share of this house. At least you want my kisses and cuddles."

In her volatile way, she immediately dropped her melancholy, and we fell, to planning our next visit to the house at Embury Street.

We had made three more visits to the house of assignation since our first game of kittens. Only once had Miss Mabel brought the cane -- after she had flared up in a temper and slapped my face on finding me reading a letter from my sweetheart Jessie.

She then went into a paroxysm of remorse, and wept on my shoulder, blaming herself for being a jealous, mean-minded cat.

So it did not surprise me that she appointed her own punishment. On the two later occasions, we spent the hours naked, and brought ourselves to a pitch of pleasure that grew greater as our knowledge of each other's bodies grew.

I could feel, all the same, that Miss Mabel's curiosity about the act of love was growing, and that it could not be put off much longer.

This worried me, and for good reason. Firstly, I was concerned that her chance of making a good marriage would be compromised if she gave up her maidenhead.

Secondly, I was concerned that, with all precautions, and the regrettable but necessary employment of Captain Condom's clever prophylactics, she might fall for a child.

I had never tried a condom, but my friends told me that even with the use of cold cream or macassar oil, the sheep-gut of which they were made, chafed the tender skin of the penis, and they were difficult to put on and take off.

One reason above all made me willing to make the attempt and hang the consequences. This was that as Jessie became more distant in time, and Mabel closer and closer, my affections were shifting.

I was becoming steadily more attracted to my Miss Mabel; responding to her attractiveness, her courage and resilience, her irrepressible sense of humour, her loving nature, and, I confess, the deep vein of voluptuousness that I was helping to uncover in her.

She began to seem to me the perfect combination of wife and mistress that men dream of and so seldom find. She was becoming bolder and less fearful of the consequences, almost as if she wanted to provoke a confrontation with her mother and her aunt.

Her recent trick was to come into the front parlour when I was working, open my trousers, and, gamahuche me, licking and sucking my cock, although seldom to a conclusion. When I remonstrated with her about the risks she was taking, she would put on her most innocent look and say,

"But Arthur dearest, don't you like it? I know I do," and I would not have the strength of will to resist her.

In October we planned our next assignation, and Miss Mabel carried it through with aplomb, arranging a visit to a new dressmaker he had discovered off the Aldwych. Miss Emily was in on the plot, seeming to gain a pleasure of her own in deceiving her mother and aunt, and she said that she had arranged for an old schoolfellow to come to the house that afternoon, but that she would visit the dressmaker next time if she proved suitable.

Of course I had business in the neighbourhood and offered to escort her.

On that Saturday morning a letter arrived for me from Loughborough. It was from Jessie and Miss Mabel collected it from Ellen as it arrived. She gave it to me, tragedy writ large on her countenance. Don't worry Arthur," she said. "I am not going to make a fuss", and she left the room saying no more.

I looked at the letter with slight surprise. Jessie's letters had been getting fewer and shorter of late, and rather more like chatty accounts of the doings of her neighbours and friends than the passionate outpourings of love I had received in the first month or so; the ones that Mabel and Emily had read.

This one laid out the matter clearly:

Loughborough, October 1858.

My Dear Arthur,

You may already have an inkling of what I am going to say. No doubt your friends will have told you that I have been seeing something of Henry Spencer. The long and short of it is that he has asked me to be his wife, and I have consented. We hope to marry in the spring.

I am very sorry if this comes as a shock to you. I have the greatest affection and respect for you, and I cherish the memory of all we have been to each other and all you have taught me. However, your circumstances are such that we could not marry for several years, and I am not prepared to wait and wish my life away.

Finally, I must beg you to destroy the letters I have sent you, as I have destroyed those you have sent me. Whatever anger and hurt you are feeling, I cannot believe that you would be so malicious as to use them against me.

Forgive me, and believe that I remain

Your affectionate friend,

Jessica Stacey.

Strangely, I felt no anger, disappointment or humiliation at this rejection. My one thought was that now Mabel could be mine, and I could be hers. Jessie, I found I could brush out of my thoughts as if she had never existed.

My strongest feeling was that I could not tell Mabel about this letter until we were completely private that afternoon. Meanwhile, she would have to suffer and there was nothing I could do to comfort her without the risk of giving our assignation away.

That afternoon at about three, Miss Mabel presented herself to me in her walking-out dress, forcing a smile to her face. We walked down the steps and into the street in silence, and it was not until we were well away from the house that she spoke.

"Arthur dearest, please forgive me for being such an old misery. I try so hard to be good, but I get so jealous. Perhaps you had better give me a good spanking."

I could not resist teasing her, knowing it would only make the news more joyful when I broke it to her.

"Perhaps we should not go to the house, if it is going to distress you so."

"Oh no Arthur, please don't say that. You know I live for these afternoons. I could not bear to have them snatched away from me."

We said little until we got to the house at Embury Street and got to our room, as we felt it to be. At last I could explain.

"Mabel my love, there is no need at all to be jealous. See here, Jessie has released me from our understanding. I am now free to love you and you are free to love me".

Her face lit up with joy. She took the letter and read. A frown crossed her face.

"What a horrid letter. She's nothing but a cold, unfeeling jilt. She cannot have really cared a fig for you, to write so."

"Never mind about her, dearest, let's talk about us."

"Never mind talking about us, let's do something about us." She began to disrobe as fast as she could, fumbling at her buttons and catches. I was as excited as she was, and soon we were naked in each other's arms.

She lay spreadeagled on the bed, and as I sat by her side, she turned her head towards me and her mouth immediately found my rising prick. I trailed my hand down her flat belly, through the thicket of gingery frizzy hair and my fingers began to tickle her already damp quim.

She spread her thighs wider and lifted her pelvis up, plainly waiting for me to take up the soissant-neuf position that gave us so much pleasure. At the moment, anyway, that was not my intention.

"Well Miss Mabel, I said in a jocular tone, "Is this a good time for us to try something new?"

"Do you mean putting it right inside me, Arthur dearest?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Now that we are free to be each other's love, perhaps we could risk it."

"Well Arthur, your darling fingers and tongue make me very happy, but I am dying to try your prick in my little quimmie. I still can't quite believe that it will go in there at all."

"Darling, if a baby can come out of there, the biggest cock in the world could go in. But, I should warn you that it may hurt a little the first time."

Mabel laughed a lovely peal of delighted laughter. "Arthur dearest, did I mind when you beat my poor bottom black and blue? As if a little pain could frighten me now".

We lay side by side, facing each other. Our mutual caresses had made us ready. I turned Mabel on her back and prepared to mount her. She, as anxious to participate as I, spread her thighs wide and tilted up her hips to accommodate me. I aimed my prick at the entrance to her cave, and pressed it forward.

She lay quite steady and helped me as much as she could. I pushed harder and she pushed too, but I could not gain an entry.

I had enjoyed quite a dozen girls in this way in Hinckley and Loughborough, and spent two memorable nights with Camille in Leicester, but, up until this point, I had never tried to penetrate a virgin. It was more difficult than I had dreamt.

What is more, the discomfort was drying up all her natural juices, making penetration even harder.

"What's the matter Arthur?" Mabel asked worriedly, "Why won't it go in? Is there something wrong with me?"

"Don't worry darling", I replied. "We shall just have to try again, but first I shall give your lovely quimmie a good lick to make it wet again."

"Oh, yes Arthur dear, and shall I suck your darling prick again and make it all stiff?" was her good-natured response.

Three more times we tried, and three times failed, and by then Mabel was getting very sore, and so was I. It was discouraging beyond anything.

"Isn't there something else we can try?" she asked. "We can't give up just yet. We don't know how long it will be before we can come back here again."

We could try a different position", I replied. If I lie on my back, perhaps you could sit on top."

"Yes, let's do that." she replied. As he knelt above me, lifting up her hips for me to place my prick in position, she asked curiously, "is this a usual way to make love Arthur?"

"Yes, dear, it is quite usual. It even has a name; it goes by the name of "Riding Saint George."

Mabel thought for a moment and her little frown of concentration broke, as did her composure. She threw back her head and began to roar with laughter, her lovely breasts wobbling like blanc-mangers as she whooped and hiccupped, tears running down her cheeks.

As she laughed and writhed with mirth, the miracle happened and with a sudden spasm of her lovely face, she sat down firmly on my prick and engulfed it. She flopped down onto my chest and lay there, my cock all the way in and our tufts of hair mingling.

"We've done it". She crowed triumphantly. But, oh Arthur what a silly name."

"Why silly, dearest? I think it a very good name."

Arthur, you're the one that's silly. Can't you see that it's the dragon (that's you Arthur) who has the lance, and poor St George (that's me) who has got impaled?"

The absurdity of it hit me for the first time, and I began to laugh as heartily as she. We lay there, giggling and guffawing by turns, tears streaming from our eyes, until we recollected ourselves.

I turned her over on her side, and turned with her, still inside her. We began to move together, and were soon overcome by the sweetness of the sensations we were feeling. We began to rock, slowly in rhythm, my prick deep in her womb.

We smiled into each other's eyes, deeply satisfied and moved by what must be humanity's most common achievement. I moved my face towards Mabel's parted lips and kissed her deeply, but could not hold the kiss long as, unconsciously we had begun to move quicker and we were starting to pant.

Mabel, characteristically, was giggling and, catching my eye, she grinned broadly.

"Well Arthur dear, we have done it. You are as deep inside me as you could get, and doesn't it feels lovely?"

Our mutual rhythm quickened, and we were thrusting strongly as our excitement grew and grew. Suddenly Mabel's face, which had grown pinker and pinker as we proceeded, showed a spasm and an expression almost of pain as her climax hit her.

I thrust even deeper, feeling my own climax growing, and, as I pulled back for an even deeper thrust, my prick was pushed completely out by a violent spasm that contracted her womb.

We both fell back onto our backs and watched bemused as my prick jetted rope after rope of white, jelly-like spend onto her belly and hip. My prick was smeared with a little pinkish blood, and, seeing it Mabel cried out in alarm,

"Oh Arthur dearest, did I hurt you?"

I hastened to reassure her. "No darling, it isn't my blood, it is yours."

"Oh, that's all right then," she said gaily. She reached out for my prick, and began caressing it gently. I wondered aloud if we should, do something about the stained and wet sheets, but Mabel, with a woman's practicality, said not to worry, the landlady must be accustomed to stained bed linen, and the most we should do was to leave thruppence for the maid.

I took my handkerchief and wiped her damp thighs and quim, and she took it and did the same for me. If I expected tears and lamentations for her lost maidenhead, I sadly misjudged my Mabel. I slipped a finger into her newly opened quim, and caressed the inside as I had not been able to do previously, Mabel lay back and spread her thighs to accommodate me.

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

"Yes, " she replied, "it is a little sore. Perhaps you could use your tongue for a little while instead of your finger."

Delighted at her readiness for more play, I did not need a second invitation, and moments later we were stretched out soissante-neuf , the head of my prick tucked in her mouth and her tongue caressing it, as my tongue found her most sensitive spot.

I glanced at the clock on the bedside table and saw that we still had another hour. One of the most momentous events of our lives had passed by in a scant half-hour.

***

Fearful of wearying the imagined reader, I shall leave my younger self, full of love and happy lust, with the girl, and woman of my heart. It remains to say is that we carried on our clandestine affair for another year, no longer concealing our affection for each other, but, little by little attaining the unofficial status of an engaged couple.

How long this situation might have gone on, I don't know, since my income was small, and it was deeply imprudent for us to marry for some years, but, after a year or so, circumstances came to our rescue.

My benefactor Alderman Biggs, who had sponsored me to Grammar School and gave me the education that enabled me to rise to the status of bank clerk, gave me one last gift -- a generous legacy of one hundred guineas on his much-lamented death.

This enabled me to make a loan of £100 to the brilliant but impoverished young chemist William Perkin, whom I met by the most happy chance.

Encountering him in the bank at Holborn, I ascertained that he had just returned from Leicester, where he had tried, in vain, to interest the knitting masters in the new artificial dyestuff he had made in his laboratory in the east end of London. He was severely short of working capital and had applied, in vain, to the bank for a loan.

With a boldness that, even now leaves me breathless, I forthwith offered him a loan of one hundred pounds, reserving just five pounds for myself for emergencies.

We kept in touch periodically, and I was heartened by his growing success. He assured me that he regarded my loan as in the nature of an investment, and promised me a substantial return in the course of time.

At this critical moment in my affairs, I was unexpectedly visited at work by my old friend, who told me, somewhat diffidently, that he and his brothers wished to buy out the three or four small investments in his dyestuffs business of which mine was one.

Suddenly, years before I ever dreamed possible, I had the money to take a long lease on a small house off the Holloway Road, and Mabel and I could marry.

Six years later, after the sad death of their beloved mother, her younger sister Emily came to join us in our household, a beloved maiden aunt to our growing family.

With marriage, the cane did not vanish from our lives, although Mabel and I agree that loving and loved children do not need to be ruled by the fear of punishment.

But, from time to time, even today when three of the children have left home, my lovely wife, now grown matronly and a little grey, appears in my study with a "Miss Mabel" look on her face, and something held behind her back.

This signals an early night, and soon we are back in the Embury street of our imagination, with punishment for Mabel's trivial (I sometimes think imaginary) sins followed a night of all our old sensual pleasures. We learned to be lovers before we became man and wife, and we are lovers still.

THE END