When he pulled back from Anne, he told her to lie on the table, straddling Miranda so that her feminine folds faced him. Once in position, he removed his cock from Miranda and entered Anne. He thrust in and out of her tight sheath, one that had only recently discovered the joy of intercourse. When he felt himself nearing release, he removed his cock and thrust it inside of Miranda, and though her experienced sheath was not as tight as Anne’s youthful vessel, her experienced muscles pulled and squeezed his member sublimely. He beat wildly, until he once again needed to savor Anne’s tighter sheath, and so he reentered her, causing the younger woman to moan in pleasure.
He groaned loudly as he played, continuing to alternate between passion chambers of the lusty women until he could continue no longer. Fatigue threatened to overcome him, and his need to feel the sensation of the release was irresistible.
Both women begged to be the one, but Newland, having lost all control, acted only upon his physical needs. He entered Anne’s tight sheath, and placed his fingers inside of Miranda’s, never breaking rhythm. Anne was near climaxing, and he felt her body move ever closer to the peak when she squeezed his member harder with each of his strokes. He was close and finally reached the point of no return. He rubbed Miranda’s pearl more intensely, controlling her pleasure so that she would release at the same moment that he spilled into Anne. He waited for Anne’s body to clench, and when he felt her climax exploding, he beat harder and faster, rubbing Miranda so that when he spilled, the women crested simultaneously. The three lay there for some time, satiated and exhausted. Then finally rousing herself, Miranda said, “I shall fetch you some tea, Sir.”
“Yes, that would be lovely,” Newland said, still breathless.
When Newland had quite recovered, the chambermaids toweled him dry, and then helped him to dress. And before the maids left the room, he kissed each of their foreheads and bid them adieu. He was too tired to think about the other events of the day. He would have his tea, relax, and read a book. But as Newland closed his eyes to rest, the image of the Countess reappeared.
Chapter 8
Every year on the fifteenth of October Fifth Avenue opened its shutters, unrolled its carpets and hung up its triple layer of window-curtains.
By the first of November this household ritual was over, and society had begun to look about and take stock of itself. By the fifteenth the season was in full blast, Opera and theatres were putting forth their new attractions, dinner-engagements were accumulating, and dates for dances being fixed. And punctually at about this time Mrs. Archer always said that New York was very much changed.
Observing it from the lofty standpoint of a non-participant, she was able, with the help of Mr. Sillerton Jackson and Miss Sophy, to trace each new crack in its surface, and all the strange weeds pushing up between the ordered rows of social vegetables. It had been one of the amusements of Archer’s youth to wait for this annual pronouncement of his mother’s, and to hear her enumerate the minute signs of disintegration that his careless gaze had overlooked. For New York, to Mrs. Archer’s mind, never changed without changing for the worse; and in this view Miss Sophy Jackson heartily concurred.
Mr. Sillerton Jackson, as became a man of the world, suspended his judgment and listened with an amused impartiality to the lamentations of the ladies. But even he never denied that New York had changed; and Newland Archer, in the winter of the second year of his marriage, was himself obliged to admit that if it had not actually changed it was certainly changing.
These points had been raised, as usual, at Mrs. Archer’s Thanksgiving dinner. At the date when she was officially enjoined to give thanks for the blessings of the year it was her habit to take a mournful though not embittered stock of her world, and wonder what there was to be thankful for. At any rate, not the state of society; society, if it could be said to exist, was rather a spectacle on which to call down Biblical imprecations—and in fact, every one knew what the Reverend Dr. Ashmore meant when he chose a text from Jeremiah (chap. ii., verse 25) for his Thanksgiving sermon. Dr. Ashmore, the new Rector of St. Matthew’s, had been chosen because he was very “advanced”: his sermons were considered bold in thought and novel in language. When he fulminated against fashionable society he always spoke of its “trend”; and to Mrs. Archer it was terrifying and yet fascinating to feel herself part of a community that was trending.
“There’s no doubt that Dr. Ashmore is right: there IS a marked trend,” she said, as if it were something visible and measurable, like a crack in a house.
“It was odd, though, to preach about it on Thanksgiving,” Miss Jackson opined; and her hostess drily rejoined: “Oh, he means us to give thanks for what’s left.”
Archer had been wont to smile at these annual vaticinations of his mother’s; but this year even he was obliged to acknowledge, as he listened to an enumeration of the changes, that the “trend” was visible.
“The extravagance in dress—” Miss Jackson began. “Sillerton took me to the first night of the Opera, and I can only tell you that Jane Merry’s dress was the only one I recognised from last year; and even that had had the front panel changed. Yet I know she got it out from Worth only two years ago, because my seamstress always goes in to make over her Paris dresses before she wears them.”
“Ah, Jane Merry is one of US,” said Mrs. Archer sighing, as if it were not such an enviable thing to be in an age when ladies were beginning to flaunt abroad their Paris dresses as soon as they were out of the Custom House, instead of letting them mellow under lock and key, in the manner of Mrs. Archer’s contemporaries.
“Yes; she’s one of the few. In my youth,” Miss Jackson rejoined, “it was considered vulgar to dress in the newest fashions; and Amy Sillerton has always told me that in Boston the rule was to put away one’s Paris dresses for two years. Old Mrs. Baxter Pennilow, who did everything handsomely, used to import twelve a year, two velvet, two satin, two silk, and the other six of poplin and the finest cashmere. It was a standing order, and as she was ill for two years before she died they found forty-eight Worth dresses that had never been taken out of tissue paper; and when the girls left off their mourning they were able to wear the first lot at the Symphony concerts without looking in advance of the fashion.”
“Ah, well, Boston is more conservative than New York; but I always think it’s a safe rule for a lady to lay aside her French dresses for one season,” Mrs. Archer conceded.
“It was Beaufort who started the new fashion by making his wife clap her new clothes on her back as soon as they arrived: I must say at times it takes all Regina’s distinction not to look like … like …” Miss Jackson glanced around the table, caught Janey’s bulging gaze, and took refuge in an unintelligible murmur.
“Like her rivals,” said Mr. Sillerton Jackson, with the air of producing an epigram.
“Oh,—” the ladies murmured; and Mrs. Archer added, partly to distract her daughter’s attention from forbidden topics: “Poor Regina! Her Thanksgiving hasn’t been a very cheerful one, I’m afraid. Have you heard the rumours about Beaufort’s speculations, Sillerton?”
Mr. Jackson nodded carelessly. Every one had heard the rumours in question, and he scorned to confirm a tale that was already common property.
A gloomy silence fell upon the party. No one really liked Beaufort, and it was not wholly unpleasant to think the worst of his private life; but the idea of his having brought financial dishonour on his wife’s family was too shocking to be enjoyed even by his enemies. Archer’s New York tolerated hypocrisy in private relations; but in business matters it exacted a limpid and impeccable honesty. It was a long time since any well-known banker had failed discreditably; but every one remembered the social extinction visited on the heads of the firm when the last event of the kind had happened. It would be the same with the Beauforts, in spite of his power and her popularity; not all the leagued strength of the Dallas connection would save poor Regina if there were any truth in the reports of her husband’s unlawful speculations.
The talk took refuge in less ominous topics; but everything they touched on seemed to confirm Mrs. Archer’s sense of an accelerated trend.
“Of course, Newland, I know you let dear May go to Mrs. Struthers’s Sunday evenings—” she began; and May interposed gaily: “Oh, you know, everybody goes to Mrs. Struthers’s now; and she was invited to Granny’s last reception.”
It was thus, Archer reflected, that New York managed its transitions: conspiring to ignore them till they were well over, and then, in all good faith, imagining that they had taken place in a preceding age. There was always a traitor in the citadel; and after he (or generally she) had surrendered the keys, what was the use of pretending that it was impregnable? Once people had tasted of Mrs. Struthers’s easy Sunday hospitality they were not likely to sit at home remembering that her champagne was transmuted Shoe-Polish.
“I know, dear, I know,” Mrs. Archer sighed. “Such things have to be, I suppose, as long as AMUSEMENT is what people go out for; but I’ve never quite forgiven your cousin Madame Olenska for being the first person to countenance Mrs. Struthers.”
A sudden blush rose to young Mrs. Archer’s face; it surprised her husband as much as the other guests about the table. “Oh, ELLEN—” she murmured, much in the same accusing and yet deprecating tone in which her parents might have said: “Oh, THE BLENKERS—.”
It was the note which the family had taken to sounding on the mention of the Countess Olenska’s name, since she had surprised and inconvenienced them by remaining obdurate to her husband’s advances; but on May’s lips it gave food for thought, and Archer looked at her with the sense of strangeness that sometimes came over him when she was most in the tone of her environment.
His mother, with less than her usual sensitiveness to atmosphere, still insisted: “I’ve always thought that people like the Countess Olenska, who have lived in aristocratic societies, ought to help us to keep up our social distinctions, instead of ignoring them.”
May’s blush remained permanently vivid: it seemed to have a significance beyond that implied by the recognition of Madame Olenska’s social bad faith.
“I’ve no doubt we all seem alike to foreigners,” said Miss Jackson tartly.
“I don’t think Ellen cares for society; but nobody knows exactly what she does care for,” May continued, as if she had been groping for something noncommittal.
“Ah, well—” Mrs. Archer sighed again.
Everybody knew that the Countess Olenska was no longer in the good graces of her family. Even her devoted champion, old Mrs. Manson Mingott, had been unable to defend her refusal to return to her husband. The Mingotts had not proclaimed their disapproval aloud: their sense of solidarity was too strong. They had simply, as Mrs. Welland said, “let poor Ellen find her own level”—and that, mortifyingly and incomprehensibly, was in the dim depths where the Blenkers prevailed, and “people who wrote” celebrated their untidy rites. It was incredible, but it was a fact, that Ellen, in spite of all her opportunities and her privileges, had become simply “Bohemian.” The fact enforced the contention that she had made a fatal mistake in not returning to Count Olenska. After all, a young woman’s place was under her husband’s roof, especially when she had left it in circumstances that … well … if one had cared to look into them …
“Madame Olenska is a great favourite with the gentlemen,” said Miss Sophy, with her air of wishing to put forth something conciliatory when she knew that she was planting a dart.
“Ah, that’s the danger that a young woman like Madame Olenska is always exposed to,” Mrs. Archer mournfully agreed; and the ladies, on this conclusion, gathered up their trains to seek the carcel globes of the drawing-room, while Archer and Mr. Sillerton Jackson withdrew to the Gothic library.
May reached the drawing room and stopped Newland before he joined Mr. Jackson in the library. “A word with you dear?” she said.
Newland departed the company of Sillerton, promising a quick return, and followed his wife down the hall and into a private room. She circled behind him and latched the door to keep out anyone who might think to venture their way.
“Newland, it’s time to show you that your wife, a woman of your stature, can satisfy your every desire.”
“Dear?” he said, bemused. “We mustn’t keep our guests waiting.
“You disappoint me, Newland.”
“Pardon me?”
For the sake of preserving subtlety, May did not explain the obvious. “For that reason alone, I fear that you deserve my attention.” She lowered her eyelids and smiled wickedly at him.
“Now? I’m afraid your timing is rather—”
“Take off your trousers, Newland.”
“Dear, I really must protest.”
“Don’t disappoint me any further dear. I will be right with you.” She walked behind a screen. Newland stood waiting without his pants to oblige his wife’s whims. His supposition was that she needed only a quick dash down the road of indulgence. But what she wore attached to a belt spoke an entirely different language.
“Oh, no,” he said, backing up a step or two.
“You know how much pleasure I derive from doing … well, doing things to you, Newland. And I have just found this lovely contraption at the pharmacy only today. It’s French.”
“I must say I am intrigued by your desires my dear, but I hardly think this is the appropriate time or place.”
Like a man in heat, May used her hand to stroke the strap-on faux member attached to the belt she wore around her abdomen. Then she held up the feather attached to a crop and flicked it as though tapping the rear of a pony. “I will make haste. We shan’t be long.”
“Perhaps later this evening we could—”
“No! You need to know that I can satisfy your every desire.” She was careful not to make reference to the Countess, although the absence of speaking her name was louder than if she had shouted it.
Newland studied his wife, dressed in her dark violet French brassiere with the tips of her breasts exposed, taunting him, and the garter belts with the dangling faux member hanging from the strap. The lace garment she wore to cover her feminine curls was little more than a wisp of cloth that left little to the imagination.
Newland sucked in a strong, powerful breath. Only at times like this did May make him forget the Countess.
Newland suddenly felt himself becoming aroused by the ludicrous, yet intriguing sight of his young wife. She was playing at dominating him, and he knew exactly what she needed. However, he would soon put an end to her fanciful ideas by making swift, vigorous love to her. If she so needed, he would gladly enter her backdoor to service her. He quickly removed his shirt.
“Let me satisfy your needs,” he said as he approached her. But as he reached for the feather crop she held in her hand, she pulled her arm away from him.
“Let us make haste, Newland.” She smiled devilishly at him. “Turn around and I shall tease you with my arse feather.”
She giggled, he guffawed, and soon they were both laughing hysterically.
When Newland finally nodded his assent to her whims, she suddenly took control and whirled him around. She bumped him with a gentle nudge, and he toppled forward so that his upper torso was now leaning over the back of a cushioned chair. Still laughing and under her spell, Newland allowed the play to continue. Then she reached a hand around his body, grasped his throbbing member, and began stroking the length of it. Aroused by the sensual touch of her hand, his laughter quickly turned to lustful groans.
Who had May become?
Then quite unexpectedly, she pressed the faux member attached to her strap against one of his bottom cheeks, while leaning her bare breasts into his back, rubbing only the tips of her nipples across his smooth skin.
“I see that you like this,” she said in an imperious, raspy voice. She lightly clinched the lobe of his ear between her teeth, as if daring him to disagree. She moaned in her own pleasure, though her pearl and orchid were untouched.
Lost in the pleasure, he groaned. Then she tightened her grasp around his earlobe and said, “I’m going to take you now, husband.”
He agreed in a voice hoarse with lust and trepidation.
She released his ear from her teeth and began sucking the delicate skin. Then she licked around the rim of the ear before releasing it altogether. Then she took up the crop with the arse feather and slid it through the fold in his buttocks.
Newland released a manly sigh as she continued tickling his arse. He was so delighted that he raised his hips so that she might freely access his intimate anatomy, not expecting anything more than this pleasant sensation. She did not disappoint and continued to sail the feather the length of his fold and then dipped lower to feather his jewels. He was so much aroused by the pleasure she was delivering that he vacillated between groans and light laughter. Then she moved directly behind him and probed his forbidden door with the lubricated French member that was strapped to her loins.
“Oh, no, it won’t go in,” he said, starting to protest.
“Your shaft slides very easily into my nether hole, my dear. And I must say that I am much more delicate than you. So love, just relax and enjoy it as I do.” She paused, leaned forward, and breathed her hot fire onto his neck. “It’s blissful to feel that chamber filled.” Then she pressed her body into his, and said in a sultry voice, “You needn’t worry, dear, I used my special gel. You do remember the pearls?” Then she rose up and probed the tip of the toy more forcibly, penetrating the entrance to his forbidden door.
“Ah, no,” he said under protest again.
“Enjoy it Newland. You’re mine.” And without delay, she began moving her hips so that the toy eased more deeply inside him.
“Oh, May, I can’t—” Yet he began moving his hips in rhythm with hers, allowing her to push the toy deeper inside him. The sensation was erotic, wild, and filled him with a new kind of pleasure. He had enjoyed the delicate finger of a lover before, but the size of this toy dwarfed a puny digit.
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