Alexandra Guy - A Maiden's diary

The following morning was a glorious one in Cornwall.

There was a bracing sea breeze. I opened the mullioned windows of the conservatory and cooled, I hoped, my burning brow-I wanted to take Oliver Harwell completely by surprise. The sky was the serenest blue except, far out on the horizon at sea, for a hint of black cloud.

It was, possibly, a thundercloud, but I amateurly predicted that a storm would not ensue until well along in the evening. And I made a wager with myself that Mr. Harwell would be building a fire by that time. “Good morning, My Lady,” Oliver Harwell said, closing the conservatory door behind him. “Miss Quist-Hagen will do,” I said tartly. “I trust,” he said, “I am not overly tardy, Miss Quist-Hagen?” I glanced at the massive clock affixed to the wall.

“Not by a jot,” I said. He rubbed his massive hands together-I could imagine their chafing my breasts-and I nearly fainted there and then. “Excellent, excellent,” Harwell said jovially. “I think we ought to begin-” he was avoiding my eye and the fact that I had dressed as scantily as possible-“with a discussion of the economic aspects of the Revolutionary War. Have you read Malcolm Coyle on the matter?” “Yes, Mr. Harwell. There is little else to do in Cornwall in the summer. How does a virile fellow like you tolerate summers in Cornwall without a mistress or the like?” “I believe somewhere along the course of the years I've been teaching your brother and yourself I've mentioned I've been working on a tome of a book. It is an esthetic which I hope will be able to account, not only for our literature but for the world at large, for the Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky translations presently appearing.” “So your manuscript,” I said, “is the substitute for venery.” For the first time that morning, Harwell met my eye squarely. “If I may say so, Miss Quist-Hagen, I rather think you're being unnecessarily harsh…” I noticed my tutor beginning to sweat, if only because patches of sweat began to appear on my light costume. He was clenching and unclenching his great hands-I'd never seen Harwell do that at all.

Nor had I ever seen the man sweat before. And he rather nervously, I thought, kept running his fingers through his beard. I wondered what the beard would feel like next to my skin, and how I would direct Oliver Harwell once I had him at my mercy. Not in the least curiously, he was now sniffing the air like a bird dog. “It does seem a bit stuffy in here, doesn't it?” he said. “Extremely. That's why I opened the window. But the breeze doesn't seem to dispel certain strange odors. Tell me, Mr. Harwell, how frequently do you bathe?”

“I consider, Miss Quist-Hagen, that that question ventures on matters of privacy I refuse to discuss.” “Ah, what a shame that my morality differs from yours. I haven't taken a bath for some three days.” I crossed to where he was standing, my black hair falling over one eye and my hips outthrust. I grinned broadly and, in the most vulgar manner possible, I raised one of my arms. Harwell managed a sickly grin. “Smell,” I said. “My Lady, I wouldn't dream of-”

“Rubbish,” I said. “If nothing else, you might dream of my armpit's output.” “I assure you,” he said, his face now pale, “that my conscious mind would reject such an odious consequence.”

“You don't care for my armpit, Mr. Harwell?” The big man squirmed. Big men usually don't, but I did have Harwell at a disadvantage and, furthermore, I did stink. However it was a stink that should have been sexually provocative and, evidently, it had had no impact of that kind at all upon the tutor. There was an acute strain in his voice when he answered. “Miss Quist-Hagen, I was hired by your father, the Marquis, to instruct you in certain disciplines, and that is all I can manage, for various reasons you need not be privy to. And, if you persist in this kind of behavior, it would be folly of me not to advise your father.” “Oh, la!” said I.

“There's a Revolutionary War going on.” “Miss Quist-Hagen, restrain yourself, please. That war was fought in the eighteenth century. We are now, at this instant, dealing with the Americans, the economic motivations behind the Constitution and-” “Mr. Harwell,”

I said in suddenly hollow tones. “What is it, Miss Quist-Hagen?”

He was suddenly at my side. I was swaying. I knew what was the matter. I'd been hoist by my own petard-my own body odors had proved to be too much for me to take without accompanying sexual play. I fainted. When I awoke, there was brandy at my lips. “Please swallow some,” my tutor said firmly. I swallowed some. The flames in my vitals rose higher. I lifted my head-I saw I was at one end of the long sofa. Mr. Harwell had suddenly moved to its middle. Good, I thought. Very good. “I hope,” I said, “you haven't called a physician.” “There was nothing,” he said, “that I couldn't handle. I went all through medical school, you know, and then gave it all up at the last moment for teaching and writing.” He sat on the sofa with one leg crossed over the other at the ankle. His basket, insofar as a target locus was concerned, had not discernibly faded or amplified. I was within touching distance, if I used my foot. As it was, both my feet were upon the sofa. His open squarish face with its utterly gentle brown eyes, now full of compassion, stimulated me as few others have. I would soon be nestling, I thought, against a vast, hairy torso. So, little by little, I extended one of my shoeless feet as if my idea were leisurely to rest that foot on Harwell's thigh.

Well, I did rest it there, momentarily. “Are you feeling better, My Lady?” “I will, Oliver, if you call me Clarissa.” And it was at that instant that I lightly jabbed with my foot to touch that mass of ruddy anatomy between Harwell's thighs -and at that moment upthrust against his tight pants was the clear outline of what appeared to be indeed a mighty cylinder. Harwell flung himself against the sofa's back, and a wide stain appeared on his trousers. He gasped, shook his head, arose and then knelt on the floor before me in an attitude of pure supplication. I was intensely excited-I kept gazing at Harwell's monumental column beating against the man's tight trousers, throbbing, the stain became wider and wider as Harwell had no choice but to ejaculate, if only because I myself had swung down my feet and continued to jab at his cannon, prodding it to more extensive liquid diffusions. All during this time Harwell was asking my forgiveness, fervently, on his knees, averring that he had entertained a passion for me for many years and had not sullied himself with other women at all-indeed, had not even indulged in self-pollution as he called it, to the extent that he had suffered a long time from nocturnal emissions. What had held him back from expressing this immortal love had been my brother James, of course. But even if James had not been present, Harwell went on, he would have been deterred by the Victorian attitude toward sex, fraught with prohibition and quite capable of criminal proceedings against a man avowing his love to a girl of ten. Even to a girl of fifteen it was- “Oh, shut up, Oliver!” I interrupted sharply. “And for God's sake I've had enough of your kneeling posture-please get up.” Bewilderedly, Oliver Harwell arose. I felt far from calm, but I was Clarissa Quist-Hagen, the daughter of a Marquis, who has all things under control-even men! “We will take a turn,” I said to the man whose height and girth was at least two-and-a-half times mine, “in the maze, and from there we can slip away unobserved. Besides, hardly anybody is about at this time of the morning. The guests are all asleep. Only our cook, Mrs. Lingelhoffe, must be awake, and a grumbling Wittling. The rest of the staff is just rising. We shan't encounter a soul if we go down the front stairs. In any case, we go to the maze and, when we leave there, we shall be in the clear. Do you make me out, Oliver?”