Anonymous

Eveline

BOOK ONE

Chapter 1

I am considered by those who have the honor of my acquaintance to be a pillar of propriety. I am pointed out by anxious mothers as an excellent example of careful training, combined with the advantages of a Continental finishing course at a most select pensionnat de demoiselles in the environs of Paris. I am the invited of very strict old maids, because I affect to enter into their schemes for the conversion of untold savages, am liberal of purse and reticent of tongue. The latter quality runs in my family. Our history demands an extraordinary amount of it. There are at least two families of high and ancient aristocratic pretensions, whose loud-tongued, drinking, gambling male descendants openly boast that they have never allowed a maiden of their noble line to pass, as such, out of the family and into the arms of her spouse. Ours is a third, only we are not so simple as to publish the fact.

I am not, by any means, a saint in outward seeming. In my appearance and ordinary habits I am not so straight-laced as I am represented. I do not set up for particular formality in my daily pursuits. I am only quiet, observant, always affable, amiable and sometimes a trifle volatile. The men call me dull, and say, "a pretty girl, but you know, dear boy, there is no fun in her. No use to try it on, dear old chappie, you'll only come off second best."

"Fun," in the mind of the society man of the present day, means immorality. They adopt the word because it is a light and gay style of describing the loose conditions which bind together all that they care for in the nature of modern society. At present, society is content to parade itself with a superficial and very flimsy disguise over its naked deformity. In a few years' time, at its present rate of progress, it will work barefaced in the open light of day.

I am not going to moralize; I do not even wish to be a self- appointed censor of the times in which I live. I do not personally care a pin what becomes of society, so long as I succeed in avoiding the arrows of detraction, scorn, and contempt which it launches against any luckless member who has the misfortune to be found out. I hardly think it will do so in my case; at any rate, I take all possible precautions to pursue my silent path of sensual indulgence in obscurity and peace.

My father, Sir Edward L, Baronet, started life a rich man- rich, even in these days of treble millionaires, American heiresses, and other innovations too numerous to mention. He entered the army, served with his regiment in India, and returning to that empire after a short furlough, met and married a nobody with whom he was shut up for a month or more on his voyage out. She was good-looking, tall, and coarse. He soon tired of her. After dragging her about for three months with his regiment, he sent her home to England. I do not know that I inherit any single trait of my mother's personality, and I rejoice to think so. She never cared for me or took any particular notice of me. I had two brothers older than myself. Of the elder, I may speak later, I knew little of him in my childhood. As to Percy, we were companions until I was sent to school and he to Rugby.

I suppose I was always curious and inquiring as a child. I have been told so. Personally I only remember a few prominent incidents of my early childhood. It was not a joyous or even a happy one. My brother and I were thrown much together. He was curious also. Together we secretly investigated the remarkable differences in our physiological structure. We came to the natural conclusion that such opposite developments must be designed for some purpose which at present we did not understand. The tree of knowledge being denied to us, we set about making our own investigations. The result was that we discovered a certain indefinite gratification, even when on being at each end of a large marble bath, our toes encountered certain exposed portions of each other's persons which at all other times we were told we must hide and never talk about. Secretly, also, we mutually inspected these remarkably different developments; it was a new field of investigation and insensibly we enjoyed it. We pursued our studies at such intervals as our privacy and our opportunities permitted. We slept in the same room, and we would steal furtively into each other's beds to whisper and wonder at the delight which the feeling and the caressing of these dissimilarities afforded us. In short, we masturbated each other, until my brother Percy attained a precocious development of his private parts quite sufficient to destroy all vestige of maidenhood in his sister, two years his junior.

Now, Dear Reader, lest you think this was accomplished at his bidding, thereby casting Percy's way the entire amount either of disapproval or credit you would apply toward such an event, depending of course on your own inclinations, let me put this particular question to rest: I not only desired that my initial ravaging occur at his hands, I arranged for it. Indeed, rather feverishly. We happened one warm Sunday to be out on a tedious but vigorous fox hunt, and the pounding gallop soon produced such a humid state of affairs within my breeches that I decided the time had finally come for my deflowering. Thus when deep within a grove and the hounds far ahead, I suddenly let slack my reins and, feigning difficulty with my horse, let it come completely to rest and nibble nervously at the underbrush. Percy, of course, was soon at my side.

"A problem with your steed, Eveline?" he asked, bold lips glistening in the dappled sunlight.