Originally published in "The Discerning Gentleman's Weekly"
Volume IX, number 18
Issue dated March 25th 1896
It has been some days since last I took up my pen to add to this sad and sorry narrative of shame. I could not bring myself to resume the thread, but after days of drink and despair I knew that I must return to my notebook, locked in the drawer of my study, and unveil the rest of my downfall. I have started the tale; only a coward would refuse to complete it.
You can imagine, I suppose, the guilt I felt as I returned home to my wife on the evening I had crawled to kiss the boot of a girl who was young enough to be my daughter. A beautiful, enchanting girl... A Lady. How I had become her pet, her boy. And then returned home, to see and speak to the woman I had loved for so many years. I could barely bring myself to speak to her at all that evening; the shame was a feeling akin to having been kicked in the midriff. Annabel knew that I was out of sorts, of course, but could do nothing to lighten my mood. Even to look upon her was a reminder of how I had betrayed her.
And the very worst of it was that I knew, even then, that I would betray her again the following day. All the next morning and all through the day of working at the bank, the feeling gnawed at me like a hunger.
I could not at all concentrate on my work that day. I saw the ledgers and the account books pass across my desk, and I daresay that I signed any number of bills and contracts, but had you asked me that day what I had looked at even five minutes beforehand, I would not have been able to tell you. My mind was full of Her -- of the white flesh of her thighs, of the glimpse, the merest glimpse, I thought I had had up her skirt... Oh, the shame, the shame! I thought of the boot, how I had kissed it, the look in her eyes...
Eventually, mid-way through the afternoon, when I had tortured myself for hours with my problem, I snapped. I banged my hand hard on my solid oak desk, and called through to the vestibule for my secretary, Simmons.
"Simmons!" I shouted, at the top of my lungs. "Simmons, get in here now, man!"
Simmons was a young and nervous fellow, an ink-spattered weedling of a man whom I had been rather forced to employ as he was distantly related to one of the members of the bank's board. The thin, sandy-haired youth immediately scampered through from his side office, wiping his inky hands on the tail of his coat.
"Sir?" he asked, once he had scuttled to the front of my desk.
"Simmons, I want you to go out to the Telegraph Office on the corner of the road and have a message sent home to my wife. You know the address, I believe."
"Yes sir, of course!"
He fished into his pocket for a notebook, and pulled a small, stubby pencil from its resting place behind his ear.
"What message, sir?" he asked, licking his lips eagerly, looking like some novice newspaperman waiting outside the courtroom of a particularly salacious murder trial.
"Simply tell her that I am liable to be late home tonight. Very late. I am detained by work, and she is not to wait up for me. That is all, Simmons."
He was confused. Even one as obtuse as he was perhaps not quite so easily fooled.
"Busy, sir?"
I glared at the insolent youth.
"Yes Simmons, busy!"
That perfect, feminine leg danced across my mind again, as my reserve cracked like a broken windowpane.
"The... erm... The Hartley account... It... It needs more work," I added, rather pathetically. What use was it? It was an excuse, plain and simple. Well, even if Simmons knew that, Annabel was never likely to discover the truth.
"The Hartley account sir? But isn't Mr Ericsson...?"
"Do as I say man!"
I slammed my palm down on the table once more, and a look of panic crossed the boy's face as he practically ran from the room.
"Yes sir! Sorry sir! At once sir!"
He was so contemptible, that fellow. But a thought struck me as he scurried away -- had I really been any different last night, in the eyes of that Lady? When I had crawled to her and worshipped at her feet? Had I been any more respectable than Simmons with his weak-willed, simpering ways?
I would end it tonight. I decided, then and there. I would go to the house and I would tell her that I had been foolish, that I was sorry for inconveniencing her, and that I would not be partaking in any activities with her again. I would put my foot down. I would take charge of the situation.
Yes. Yes, that was what I would do.
There was considerably less fog that night, although the weather was still decidedly inclement, as rain had replaced the cloudy wisps that the night before had clogged the streets like fatty tissues in the chambers of an old man's heart. I was almost soaked even walking the short way down from the bank to the end of the street where the taxis were to be found, but I made no effort to shield myself from it.
I deserved it.
I did work considerably later than anybody else that day. I remained in the office until half past seven, into the darkness and well past the time that even the most junior and overworked of the clerks had gone home to their wives. I found myself thinking of such things increasingly through the afternoon and into the evening. Remembering how once I had found nothing more thrilling or exciting than Annabel's sweet nature and witty conversation. How I had hurried home to her, as a young married man, when I had been one of those junior clerks.
I could not taste that excitement any longer. I could not bring it to my mind. When I thought of excitements of the human mind, all that I could see was the Young Lady. And her eyes, and her leg, and her boot. The thoughts made me, as I had been frequently that day, as hard as iron inside my breeches.
I know. I know how base a thing to write about that is, but I must share my shame. I must bare all.
I was perhaps a minute or two early for the scheduled appointment in Maple Street. I had made sure that there was nobody I knew in the street as I hurried from the taxi to the front door of number twenty-two -- I had no desire for the Colonel to catch me in the street where he lived. After all, I had still not explained to him why I had not appeared for cards the night before -- what would he think of me visiting some other house a few doors down from his?
It occurred to me then, as I waited, damp from the rain, on Her doorstep that the Colonel might perhaps know something about this young and utterly beguiling female. It was certainly something to consider. But if he did know about her, might he read something into why I was enquiring?
It was all so confusing.
I had stood there for a while before I checked my watch. It was a minute past eight already. I had been so involved in my sorry thoughts that I had not heard the church bells and the clocktowers striking the hour. Fool. She would be displeased at me for being late now.
No, no -- it did not matter whether she was pleased or displeased. I attempted to convince myself of this, but as you can imagine, reader, without any success. I knew, in my heart, that all her mattered to me was her pleasure. That was why she was so dangerous. Why she had such a curious hold over my entire being.
I put my hand to the door to sound the knocker and announce my presence, but as soon as I touched the heavy brass implement, the door swung back slightly. It was already open and unlocked. Clearly, she was expecting me.
I was so predictable. I had come crawling back to her, just as she had imagined. Well, if I was to do this, better to get it over and done with now. I took a deep, steeling breath, and pushed the door fully open, stepping inside.
The hallway within was in almost complete darkness -- the gas lamps mounted on the walls were lit, but at their lowest possible flow, so they guttered like dying candles. It leant the passageway an air of foreboding, a warning that I suppose I might have done well to heed.
But I could not turn tail and flee then. Because standing there, in the shadows at the very end of the hallway, past the stairs, was the Young Lady.
"I knew you would come," she said. Her tone was neutral, giving nothing at all away. "Good boy."
Good boy... Oh why did I swell with such pride at the compliment?
"My Lady..."
What was I going to say? Perhaps I was going to protest, to explain that I could not stay, but as she stepped forward into the dim light of the hallway the words died in my throat. She looked... magnificent. She wore tight white breeches, so perfectly moulded to the skin of her shapely legs that it was as if she were a statue of herself carved in the purest alabaster. She wore boots again, of a dark, rich, oak-like heavy brown leather this time, with high heels at the back, boots which had a most peculiar effect upon me... She wore a black jacket, with a white blouse of some sort beneath, and a man's cravat of the deepest red at her throat. As she took her arms from behind her back and folded her hands in front of her, I saw that she wore tightly-fitted grey gloves, of what appeared to be the softest kidskin. Her hair flowed free as it had the night before, and those eyes fixed me in their glare like a hare in the sights of a poacher's rifle.
"You look beautiful," I said. For it was the truth. The only truth.
She bestowed upon me a smile then, a full and genuine one that showed the happiness of a girl pleased to have been paid a compliment.
"Thank you boy," she said. Then the smile was gone, and look of command that came so oddly naturally to this Young Lady's face returned.
"Now on your knees for me, pet," she ordered gently.
I stepped forward, one hand raised in protest. It was here that I was going to take my stand. I had come this far, but would go no further. I would be a Man. I would stand up for myself, I would be faithful to my wife, I would be a good and decent and morally upstanding person and I would end the corruption of my being and my mortal soul here, at this juncture.
"Now look here..." I said.
A glance of such steel and domination gripped me from her eyes then that once again my sentence was stopped before it had ever really gotten started.
