Desire

by Mariella Frostrup

  It must have been my state of over-excitement that made me so ready to meddle with what did not concern me. Saumarez was moving off to the habit; but I pushed him back and said, “Stop here and explain. I’ll fetch her back!” And I ran out to get at my own horse. I had a perfectly unnecessary notion that everything must be done decently and in order, and that Saumarez’s first care was to wipe the happy look out of Maud Copleigh’s face. All the time I was linking up the curb-chain I wondered how he would do it.

  I cantered after Edith Copleigh, thinking to bring her back slowly on some pretence or another. But she galloped away as soon as she saw me, and I was forced to ride after her in earnest. She called back over her shoulder – “Go away! I’m going home. Oh, go away!” two or three times; but my business was to catch her first, and argue later. The ride fitted in with the rest of the evil dream. The ground was very rough, and now and again we rushed through the whirling, choking ‘dust-devils’ in the skirts of the flying storm. There was a burning hot wind blowing that brought up a stench of stale brick-kilns with it; and through the half light and through the dust-devils, across that desolate plain, flickered the brown holland habit on the grey horse. She headed for the Station at first. Then she wheeled round and set off for the river through beds of burnt down jungle-grass, bad even to ride a pig over. In cold blood I should never have dreamed of going over such a country at night, but it seemed quite right and natural with the lightning crackling overhead, and a reek like the smell of the Pit in my nostrils. I rode and shouted, and she bent forward and lashed her horse, and the aftermath of the dust-storm came up and caught us both, and drove us downwind like pieces of paper.

  I don’t know how far we rode; but the drumming of the horse-hoofs and the roar of the wind and the race of the faint blood-red moon through the yellow mist seemed to have gone on for years and years, and I was literally drenched with sweat from my helmet to my gaiters when the grey stumbled, recovered himself, and pulled up dead lame. My brute was used up altogether. Edith Copleigh was bare headed, plastered with dust, and crying bitterly. “Why can’t you let me alone?” she said. “I only wanted to get away and go home. Oh, please let me go!”

  “You have got to come back with me, Miss Copleigh. Saumarez has something to say to you.”

  It was a foolish way of putting it; but I hardly knew Miss Copleigh, and, though I was playing Providence at the cost of my horse, I could not tell her in as many words what Saumarez had told me. I thought he could do that better himself. All her pretence about being tired and wanting to go home broke down, and she rocked herself to and fro in the saddle as she sobbed, and the hot wind blew her black hair to leeward. I am not going to repeat what she said, because she was utterly unstrung.

  This, if you please, was the cynical Miss Copleigh. Here was I, almost an utter stranger to her, trying to tell her that Saumarez loved her, and she was to come back to hear him say so. I believe I made myself understood, for she gathered the grey together and made him hobble somehow, and we set off for the tomb, while the storm went thundering down to Umballa and a few big drops of warm rain fell. I found out that she had been standing close to Saumarez when he proposed to her sister, and had wanted to go home to cry in peace, as an English girl should. She dabbled her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief as we went along, and babbled to me out of sheer lightness of heart and hysteria. That was perfectly unnatural; and yet, it seemed all right at the time and in the place. All the world was only the two Copleigh girls, Saumarez and I, ringed in with the lightning and the dark; and the guidance of this misguided world seemed to lie in my hands.

  When we returned to the tomb in the deep, dead stillness that followed the storm, the dawn was just breaking and nobody had gone away. They were waiting for our return. Saumarez most of all. His face was white and drawn. As Miss Copleigh and I limped up, he came forward to meet us, and, when he helped her down from her saddle, he kissed her before all at the picnic. It was like a scene in a theatre, and the likeness was heightened by all the dust-white, ghostly-looking men and women under the orange-trees, clapping their hands – as if they were watching a play – at Saumarez’s choice. I never knew anything so un-English in my life.

  Lastly, Saumarez said we must all go home or the Station would come out to look for us, and would I be good enough to ride home with Maud Copleigh? Nothing would give me greater pleasure, I said.

  So we formed up, six couples in all, and went back two by two; Saumarez walking at the side of Edith Copleigh, who was riding his horse. Maud Copleigh did not talk to me at any length.

  The air was cleared; and, little by little, as the sun rose, I felt we were all dropping back again into ordinary men and women, and that the ‘Great Pop Picnic’ was a thing altogether apart and out of the world – never to happen again. It had gone with the dust-storm and the tingle in the hot air.

  I felt tired and limp, and a good deal ashamed of myself as I went in for a bath and some sleep.

  There is a woman’s version of this story, but it will never be written... unless Maud Copleigh cares to try.

  A RESPECTABLE WOMAN

  Kate Chopin

  Kate Chopin, born Katherine O’Flaherty, was a American author of short stories and novels. Her short stories were well received on publication the 1890s and were featured in some of America’s most prestigious magazines – Vogue, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Young People and the Century. Chopin’s work was mostly forgotten after her death, but, beginning in the 1950s, scholars rediscovered it and praised it for its truthful depictions of women’s lives.

  Mrs Baroda was a little provoked to learn that her husband expected his friend, Gouvernail, up to spend a week or two on the plantation.

  They had entertained a good deal during the winter; much of the time had also been passed in New Orleans in various forms of mild dissipation. She was looking forward to a period of unbroken rest, now, and undisturbed tête-à-tête with her husband, when he informed her that Gouvernail was coming up to stay a week or two.

  This was a man she had heard much of but never seen. He had been her husband’s college friend; was now a journalist, and in no sense a society man or “a man about town,” which were, perhaps, some of the reasons she had never met him. But she had unconsciously formed an image of him in her mind. She pictured him tall, slim, cynical; with eye-glasses, and his hands in his pockets; and she did not like him. Gouvernail was slim enough, but he wasn’t very tall nor very cynical; neither did he wear eyeglasses or carry his hands in his pockets. And she rather liked him when he first presented himself.

  But why she liked him she could not explain satisfactorily to herself when she partly attempted to do so. She could discover in him none of those brilliant and promising traits which Gaston, her husband, had often assured her that he possessed. On the contrary, he sat rather mute and receptive before her chatty eagerness to make him feel at home, and in face of Gaston’s frank and wordy hospitality. His manner was as courteous toward her as the most exacting woman could require; but he made no direct appeal to her approval or even esteem.

  Once settled at the plantation he seemed to like to sit upon the wide portico in the shade of one of the big Corinthian pillars, smoking his cigar lazily and listening attentively to Gaston’s experience as a sugar planter.

  “This is what I call living,” he would utter with deep satisfaction, as the air that swept across the sugar field caressed him with its warm and scented velvety touch. It pleased him also to get on familiar terms with the big dogs that came about him, rubbing themselves sociably against his legs. He did not care to fish, and displayed no eagerness to go out and kill gros becs when Gaston proposed doing so.

  Gouvernail’s personality puzzled Mrs Baroda, but she liked him. Indeed, he was a lovable, inoffensive fellow. After a few days, when she could understand him no better than at first, she gave over being puzzled and remained piqued. In this mood she left her husband and her guest, for the most part, alone together. Then finding that Gouvernail took
no manner of exception to her action, she imposed her society upon him, accompanying him in his idle strolls to the mill and walks along the batture. She persistently sought to penetrate the reserve in which he had unconsciously enveloped himself.

  “When is he going – your friend?” she one day asked her husband. “For my part, he tires me frightfully.”

  “Not for a week yet, dear. I can’t understand; he gives you no trouble.”

  “No. I should like him better if he did; if he were more like others, and I had to plan somewhat for his comfort and enjoyment.”

  Gaston took his wife’s pretty face between his hands and looked tenderly and laughingly into her troubled eyes.

  They were making a bit of toilet sociably together in Mrs Baroda’s dressing-room.

  “You are full of surprises, ma belle,” he said to her. “Even I can never count upon how you are going to act under given conditions.” He kissed her and turned to fasten his cravat before the mirror.

  “Here you are,” he went on, “taking poor Gouvernail seriously and making a commotion over him, the last thing he would desire or expect.”

  “Commotion!” she hotly resented. “Nonsense! How can you say such a thing? Commotion, indeed! But, you know, you said he was clever.”

  “So he is. But the poor fellow is run down by overwork now. That’s why I asked him here to take a rest.”

  “You used to say he was a man of ideas,” she retorted, unconciliated. “I expected him to be interesting, at least. I’m going to the city in the morning to have my spring gowns fitted. Let me know when Mr Gouvernail is gone; I shall be at my Aunt Octavie’s.”

  That night she went and sat alone upon a bench that stood beneath a live oak tree at the edge of the gravel walk.

  She had never known her thoughts or her intentions to be so confused. She could gather nothing from them but the feeling of a distinct necessity to quit her home in the morning.

  Mrs Baroda heard footsteps crunching the gravel; but could discern in the darkness only the approaching red point of a lighted cigar. She knew it was Gouvernail, for her husband did not smoke. She hoped to remain unnoticed, but her white gown revealed her to him. He threw away his cigar and seated himself upon the bench beside her; without a suspicion that she might object to his presence.

  “Your husband told me to bring this to you, Mrs Baroda,” he said, handing her a filmy, white scarf with which she sometimes enveloped her head and shoulders. She accepted the scarf from him with a murmur of thanks, and let it lie in her lap.

  He made some commonplace observation upon the baneful effect of the night air at the season. Then as his gaze reached out into the darkness, he murmured, half to himself:

  “‘Night of south winds – night of the large few stars! Still nodding night—’”

  She made no reply to this apostrophe to the night, which, indeed, was not addressed to her.

  Gouvernail was in no sense a diffident man, for he was not a self-conscious one. His periods of reserve were not constitutional, but the result of moods. Sitting there beside Mrs. Baroda, his silence melted for the time.

  He talked freely and intimately in a low, hesitating drawl that was not unpleasant to hear. He talked of the old college days when he and Gaston had been a good deal to each other; of the days of keen and blind ambitions and large intentions. Now there was left with him, at least, a philosophic acquiescence to the existing order – only a desire to be permitted to exist, with now and then a little whiff of genuine life, such as he was breathing now.

  Her mind only vaguely grasped what he was saying. Her physical being was for the moment predominant. She was not thinking of his words, only drinking in the tones of his voice. She wanted to reach out her hand in the darkness and touch him with the sensitive tips of her fingers upon the face or the lips. She wanted to draw close to him and whisper against his cheek – she did not care what – as she might have done if she had not been a respectable woman.

  The stronger the impulse grew to bring herself near him, the further, in fact, did she draw away from him. As soon as she could do so without an appearance of too great rudeness, she rose and left him there alone.

  Before she reached the house, Gouvernail had lighted a fresh cigar and ended his apostrophe to the night.

  Mrs Baroda was greatly tempted that night to tell her husband – who was also her friend – of this folly that had seized her. But she did not yield to the temptation. Beside being a respectable woman she was a very sensible one; and she knew there are some battles in life which a human being must fight alone.

  When Gaston arose in the morning, his wife had already departed. She had taken an early morning train to the city. She did not return till Gouvernail was gone from under her roof.

  There was some talk of having him back during the summer that followed. That is, Gaston greatly desired it; but this desire yielded to his wife’s strenuous opposition.

  However, before the year ended, she proposed, wholly from herself, to have Gouvernail visit them again. Her husband was surprised and delighted with the suggestion coming from her.

  “I am glad, chère amie, to know that you have finally overcome your dislike for him; truly he did not deserve it.”

  “Oh,” she told him, laughingly, after pressing a long, tender kiss upon his lips, “I have overcome everything! You will see. This time I shall be very nice to him.”

  From A NIGHT IN A MOORISH HAREM

  Anonymous

  A Night in a Moorish Harem first appeared in Paris in the late 1890s. Redolent with orientalist mystery and exoticism, its ante-cedent can be traced to a much earlier novel, The Lustful Turk (1828), a tale of youthful English maidenhood being ravished by the ‘stiff insertions’ and ‘horrid practices’ of the randy Ottoman. To redress the balance, the Moorish Harem’s hero, Lord George Herbert, with the confident swagger of an aristocratic young naval officer, shows these Mediterranean girls just how passionate, virile and enduring a Briton can be.

  Lord George Herbert is universally acknowledged to be the handsomest man in English nobility. His form is tall and muscular, but of a perfect symmetry. His features are handsome, but manly, and of a ruddy bronze colour, acquired at sea.

  His short and curly brown hair shades a broad and white forehead, beneath which sparkle large blue eyes. He wears a heavy beard and moustache, but they are not able to conceal his handsome mouth.

  His courage and talent, together with the influence of his family, had procured for him at the early age of twenty-three the command of one of the finest ships in the English navy. The following strange but true narrative is from his pen, and it may be imagined that he did not intend to have it copied.

  But he left it in the possession of a fair and frail lady who thought it too good to keep secret, and so the reader has the benefit of it.

  Abdallah Pasha’s Seraglio

  Her British Majesty’s ship Antler, of which I was in command, lay becalmed one afternoon off the coast of Morocco. I did not allow the steam to be raised, for I knew the evening breeze would soon make toward the land. Retiring to my cabin, I threw myself upon the sofa. I could not sleep, for my thoughts kept wandering back to the beautiful women of London, and the favours which some of them had granted me when last on shore. Months had gone since then and months more would elapse before I could again hope to quench, in the laps of beauty, the hot desire which now coursed through my veins and distended my genitals. To divert my mind from thoughts at present so unprofitable, I resolved to take a bath.

  Beneath the stern windows which lighted my cabin lay a small boat, into which I got by sliding down a rope which held it to the ship. Then I undressed and plunged into the cool waves. After bathing I dressed and, reclining in the boat, fell asleep.

  When I awoke it was dark and I was floating alone near the shore with the ship miles away. The rope which held the boat must have slipped when the breeze sprung up, and the people on the ship, being busy getting under way, had not noticed me.

  I
had no oars and dared not use the sail for fear the Moorish vessels in sight would discover me.

  I drifted toward a large building which was the only one to be seen; it rose from the water’s edge. The approach to the place on which it stood seemed to be from the land side, and all the windows which I could see were high above the ground. The keel of my boat soon grated on the sand and I hastened to pull it among the rocks for concealment, or it was quite possible I might be seized and sold into slavery if discovered; my plan was to wait for the land breeze just before dawn and escape to sea.