by Frank Harris
«I was surely right in bringing you down here,» he began. «I wanted to get you a berth in the intermediate, but there's no room: if you could put up with that sofa, I'd have the steward make up a bed for you on it.» «Oh, would you?» I cried. «How kind of you; and you'll let me read your books?» «Every one of 'em,» he replied, adding, «I only wish I could make as good use of them.» The upshot of it was that in an hour he had drawn some of my story from me and we were great friends. His name was Keogh. «Of course he's Irish,»
I said to myself as I went to sleep that night, «no one else would have been so kind.» The ordinary man will think I am bragging here about my memory. He's mistaken. Swinburne's memory especially for poetry was far, far better than mine, and I have always regretted the fact that a good memory often prevents one thinking for oneself. I shall come back to this belief of mine when I later explain how want of books gave me whatever originality I possess. A good memory and books at command are two of the greatest dangers of youth and form by themselves a terrible handicap, but like all gifts, a good memory is apt to make you friends among the unthinking, especially when you are very young. As a matter of fact, Doctor Keogh went about bragging of my memory and power of reciting until some of the cabin passengers became interested in the extraordinary schoolboy. The outcome was that I was asked to recite one evening in the first cabin, and afterwards a collection was taken up for me and a first-class passage paid and about twenty dollars over and above was given to me. Besides, an old gentleman offered to adopt me and play second father to me, but I had not got rid of one father to take on another, so I kept as far away from him as I decently could. I am again, however, running ahead of my story. The second evening of the voyage, the sea got up a little and there was a great deal of sickness. Doctor Keogh was called out of his cabin and while he was away, someone knocked at the door. I opened it and found a pretty girl. «Where's the doctor?» she asked. I told her he had been called to a cabin passenger. «Please tell him,» she said, «when he returns, that Jessie Kerr, the chief engineer's daughter, would like to see him.» «I'll go after him now if you wish, Miss Jessie,» I said. «I know where he is.» «It isn't important,» she rejoined, «but I feel giddy, and he told me he could cure it.» «Coming up on the deck is the best cure,» I declared. «The fresh air will soon blow the sick feeling away. You'll sleep like a top and tomorrow morning you'll be all right. Will you come?» She consented readily and in ten minutes admitted that the slight nausea had disappeared in the sharp breeze. As we walked up and down the dimly lighted deck I had now and then to support her, for the ship was rolling a little under a sou-wester. Jessie told me something about herself, how she was going to New York to spend some months with an elder married sister and how strict her father was. In return she had my whole story and could hardly believe I was only sixteen. Why, she was over sixteen and she could never have stood up and recited piece after piece as I did in the cabin; she thought it «wonderful.»
Before she went down, I told her she was the prettiest girl on board, and she kissed me and promised to come up the next evening and have another walk. «If you've nothing better to do,» she said at parting, «you might come forward to the little promenade deck of the second cabin and I'll get one of the men to arrange a seat in one of the boats for us.» «Of course,» I promised gladly, and spent the next afternoon with Jessie in the stern sheets of the great launch where we were out of sight of everyone, and out of hearing as well. There we were, tucked in with two rugs and cradled, so to speak, between sea and sky, while the keen air whistling past increased our sense of solitude. Jessie, though rather short, was a very pretty girl with large hazel eyes and fair complexion. I soon got my arm around her and kept kissing her till she told me she had never known a man so greedy of kisses as I was. It was delicious flattery to me to speak of me as a man, and in return I raved about her eyes and mouth and form; caressing her left breast, I told her I could divine the rest and knew she had a lovely body. But when I put my hand up her clothes, she stopped me when I got just above her knee and said: «We'd have to be engaged before I could let you do that. Do you really love me?»
Of course I swore I did, but when she said she'd have to tell her father that we were engaged to be married, cold shivers went down my back. «I can't marry for a long time yet,» I said. «I'll have to make a living first and I'm not very sure where I'll begin.» But she had heard that an old man wished to adopt me and everyone said that he was very rich and even her father admitted that I'd be «well-fixed.»
Meanwhile my right hand was busy. I had got my fingers to her warm flesh between the stockings and the drawers and was wild with desire: soon, mouth on mouth, I touched her sex. What a gorgeous afternoon we had! I had learned enough now to go slow and obey what seemed to be her moods. Gently, gently, I caressed her sex with my finger till it opened and she leaned against me and kissed me of her own will, while her eyes turned up and her whole being was lost in thrills of ecstasy. When she asked me to stop and take my hand away, I did her bidding at once and was rewarded by being told that I was a «dear boy» and «a sweet,» and soon the embracing and caressing began again. She moved now in response to my lascivious touchings, and when the ecstasy came on her, she clasped me close and kissed me passionately with hot lips and afterward in my arms wept a little, and then pouted that she was cross with me for being so naughty. But her eyes gave themselves to me even while she tried to scold. The dinner bell rang and she said she'd have to go, and we made a meeting for afterwards on the top deck; but as she was getting up she yielded again to my hand with a little sigh and I found her sex all wet, wet!
She got down out of the boat by the main rigging and I waited a few moments before following her. At first our caution seemed likely to be rewarded, chiefly, I have thought since, because everyone believed me to be too young and too small to be taken seriously. But everything is quickly known on seaboard, at least by the sailors.
I went down to Dr. Keogh s cabin, once more joyful and grateful, as I had been with E… My fingers were like eyes gratifying my curiosity, and the curiosity was insatiable. Jessie's thighs were smooth and firm and round: I took delight in recalling the touch of them, and her bottom was firm like warm marble. I wanted to see her naked and study her beauties one after the other. Her sex, too, was wonderful, fuller even than Lucille's, and her eyes were finer. Oh, life was a thousand times better than school. I thrilled with joy and passionate wild hopes-perhaps Jessie would let me, perhaps-I was breathless. Our walk on deck that evening was not so satisfactory: the wind had gone down and there were many other couples and the men all seemed to know Jessie, and it was Miss Kerr here, and Miss Kerr there, till I was cross and disappointed. I couldn't get her to myself save at moments, but then I had to admit she was as sweet as ever and her Aberdeen accent even was quaint and charming to me.
I got some long kisses at odd moments and just before we went down I drew her behind a boat in the davits and was able to caress her little breasts; and when she turned her back to me to go, I threw my arms round her hips and drew them against me, and she leant her head back over her shoulder and gave me her mouth with dying eyes. The darling! Jessie was apt at all love's lessons. The next day was cloudy and rain threatened, but we were safely ensconced in the boat by two o'clock, as soon as lunch was over, and we hoped no one had seen us. An hour passed in caressings and fondlings, in love's words and love's promises; I had won Jessie to touch my sex and her eyes seemed to deepen as she caressed it. «I love you, Jessie. Won't you let it touch yours?» She shook her head. «Not here, not in the open,» she whispered and then, «Wait a little till we get to New York, dear,» and our mouths sealed the compact. Then I asked her about New York and her sister's house, and we were discussing where we should meet, when a big head and beard showed above the gunwale of the boat and a deep Scotch voice said: «I want ye, Jessie, I've been luiking everywhere for ye.» «Awright, father,» she said. «I'll be down in a minute.» «Come quick,» said the voice as the head disappeared.
«I'll tell him we love each other and he won't be angry for long,» whispered Jessie; but I was doubtful. As she got up to go my naughty hand went up her dress behind and felt her warm, smooth buttocks. Ah, the poignancy of the ineffable sensations; her eyes smiled over her shoulder at me and she was gone-and the sunlight with her. I still remember the sick disappointment as I sat in the boat alone. Life then, like school, had its chagrins, and as the pleasures were keener, the balks and blights were bitterer. For the first time in my life vague misgivings came over me, a heartshaking suspicion that everything delightful and joyous in life had to be paid for-I wouldn't harbor the fear. If I had to pay, I'd pay; after all, the memory of the ecstasy could never be taken away, while the sorrow was fleeting. And that faith I still hold. Next day the chief steward allotted me a berth in a cabin with an English midshipman of seventeen going out to join his ship in the West Indies. William Ponsonby was not a bad sort, but he talked of nothing but girls from morning till night and insisted that Negresses were better than white girls: they were far more passionate, he said. He showed me his sex; excited himself before me, while assuring me he meant to have a Miss Le Breton, a governess, who was going out to take up a position in Pittsburgh. «But suppose you put her in the family way?» I asked. «That's not my funeral,» was his answer, and seeing that the cynicism shocked me, he went on to say there was no danger if you withdraw in time. Ponsonby never opened a book and was astoundingly ignorant: he didn't seem to care to learn anything that hadn't to do with sex. He introduced me to Miss Le Breton the same evening. She was rather tall, with fair hair and blue eyes, and she praised my reciting. To my wonder she was a woman and pretty, and I could see by the way she looked at Ponsonby that she was more than a little in love with him. He was above middle height, strong and good tempered, and that was all I could see in him. Miss Jessie kept away the whole evening, and when I saw her father on the «upper deck,» he glowered at me and went past without a word. That night I told Ponsonby my story, or part of it, and he declared he would find a sailor to carry a note to Jessie next morning if I'd write it. Besides, he proposed we should occupy the cabin alternate afternoons; for example, he'd take it next day and I must not come near it, and if at any time one of us found the door locked, he was to respect his chum's privacy. I agreed to it all with enthusiasm and went to sleep in a fever of hope. Would Jessie risk her father's anger and come to me? Perhaps she would: at any rate I'd write and ask her and I did. In one hour the same sailor came back with her reply. It ran like this: «Dear love, father is mad, we shall have to take great care for two or three days; as soon as it's safe, I'll come-your loving Jess,» with a dozen crosses for kisses. That afternoon, without thinking of my compact with Ponsonby, I went to our cabin and found the door locked: at once our compact came into my head and I went quickly away. Had he succeeded so quickly? And was she with him in bed? The half-certainty made my heart beat. That evening Ponsonby could not conceal his success, but as he used it partly to praise his mistress, I forgave him. «She has the prettiest figure you ever saw,» he declared, «and is really a dear. We had just finished when you came to the door. I said it was some mistake and she believed me. She wants me to marry her, but I can't marry. If I were rich, I'd marry quick enough. It's better than risking some foul «disease,» and he went on to tell about one of his colleagues, John Lawrence, who got black pox, as he called syphilis, caught from a Negress. «He didn't notice it for three months,»
Ponsonby went on, «and it got into his system; his nose got bad and he was invalided home, poor devil. Those black girls are foul,» he continued; «they give everyone the clap and that's bad enough, I can tell you; they're dirty devils.» His ruttish sorrows didn't interest me much, for I had made up my mind never at any time to go with any prostitute. I came to several such uncommon resolutions on board that ship, and I may set down the chief of them here very briefly.
First of all, I resolved that I would do every piece of work given to me as well as I could so that no one coming after me could do it better. I had found out at school in the last term that if you gave your whole mind and heart to anything, you learned it very quickly and thoroughly. I was sure even before the trial that my first job would lead me straight to fortune. I had seen men at work and knew it would be easy to beat any of them. I was only eager for the trial. I remember one evening I had waited for Jessie and she never came, and just before going to bed, I went up into the bow of the ship where one was alone with the sea and sky, and swore to myself this great oath, as I called it in my romantic fancy: whatever I undertook to do, I would do it to the uttermost in me. If I have had any successes in life or done any good work, it is due in great part to that resolution. I could not keep my thoughts from Jessie; if I tried to put her out of my head, I'd get a little note from her, or Ponsonby would come, begging me to leave him the cabin the whole day: at length in despair I begged her for her address in New York, for I feared to lose her forever in that maelstrom. I added that I would always be in my cabin alone from one to half past, if she could ever come.
That day she didn't come and the old gentleman who said he would adopt me got hold of me, told me he was a banker and would send me to Harvard, the university near Boston; from what the doctor had said of me, he hoped I would do great things. He was really kind and tried to be sympathetic, but he had no idea that what I wanted chiefly was to prove myself, to justify my own high opinion of my powers in the open fight of life. I didn't want help and I absolutely resented his protective airs. Next day in the cabin came a touch on the door and Jessie, all flustered, was in my arms. «I can only stay a minute,» she cried. «Father is dreadful, says you are only a child and won't have me engage myself and he watches me from morning to night. I could only get away now because he had to go down to the machine-room.»
Before she had finished, I locked the cabin door. «Oh, I must go,» she cried. «I must really; I only came to give you my address in New York; here it is,» and she handed me the paper that I put at once in my pocket. And then I put both my arms under her clothes and my hands were on her warm hips, and I was speechless with delight; in a moment my right hand came round in front and as I touched her sex our lips clung together and her sex opened at once, and my finger began to caress her and we kissed and kissed again.
Suddenly her lips got hot and while I was still wondering why, her sex got wet and her eyes began to flutter and turn up. A moment or two later she tried to get out of my embrace. «Really, dear, I'm frightened: he might come and make a noise and I'd die; please let me go now; we'll have lots of time in New York»-but I could not bear to let her go. «He'd never come here where there are two men,» I said,
«never. He might find the wrong one,» and I drew her to me, but seeing she was only half-reassured, I said, while lifting her dress, «Let mine just touch yours, and I'll let you go»; and the next moment my sex was against hers and almost in spite of herself she yielded to the throbbing warmth of it; but, when I pushed in, she drew away and down on it a little and I saw anxiety in her eyes that had grown very dear to me. At once I stopped and put away my sex and let her clothes drop. «You're such a sweet, Jess,» I said, «who could deny you anything; in New York then, but now one long kiss.» She gave me her mouth at once and her lips were hot. I learned that morning that, when a girl's lips grow hot, her sex is hot first and she is ready to give herself and ripe for the embrace.
Chapter V. The Great New World
A stolen kiss and fleeting caress as we met on the deck at night were all I had of Jessie for the rest of the voyage. One evening land lights flickering in the distance drew crowds to the deck; the ship began to slow down. The cabin passengers went below as usual, but hundreds of immigrants sat up as I did and watched the stars slide down the sky till at length dawn came with silver lights and startling revelations. I can still recall the thrills that overcame me when I realized the great waterways of that land-locked harbor and saw Long Island Sound stretching away on one hand like a sea and the magnificent Hudson River with
its palisades on the other, while before me was the East River, nearly a mile in width.
What an entrance to a new world! A magnificent and safe ocean port which is also the meeting place of great water paths into the continent. No finer site could be imagined for a world capital. I was entranced with the spacious grandeur, the manifest destiny of this Queen City of the Waters. The Old Battery was pointed out to me and Governor's Island and the prison and where the bridge was being built to Brooklyn: suddenly Jessie passed on her father's arm and shot me one radiant, lingering glance of love and promise. I remember nothing more till we landed and the old banker came up to tell me he had had my little box taken from the «H's» where it belonged and put with his luggage among the «S's.» «We are going,» he added, «to the Fifth Avenue Hotel a way uptown in Madison Square: we'll be comfortable there,» and he smiled self-complacently. I smiled too, and thanked him; but I had no intention of going in his company. I went back to the ship and thanked Doctor Keogh with all my heart for his great goodness to me; he gave me his address in New York, and incidentally I learned from him that if I kept the key of my trunk, no one could open it or take it away; it would be left in charge of the customs till I called for it. In a minute I was back in the long shed on the dock and had wandered nearly to the end when I perceived the stairs. «Is that the way into the town?» I asked and a man replied, «Sure.» One quick glance around to see that I was not noticed and in a moment I was down the stairs and out in the street. I raced straight ahead of me for two or three blocks and then asked and was told that Fifth Avenue was right in front. As I turned up Fifth Avenue, I began to breathe freely; «No more fathers for me.» The old greybeard who had bothered me was consigned to oblivion without regret. Of course, I know now that he deserved better treatment.
