My Secret Life

Preliminary. • Maid Mary's seduction. • Flight. • Desertion. • Going to the post-office. • A halfpenny signal. • Against an arm-chair. • The privy watched. • Nearly caught. • Mary suspected. • Dismissed.-In lodgings. • Service again. • My cousin sir. • Letters lost • Mary disappears. • Seven years afterwards. • Sequel.

The daughter of a small inn-keeper at the town of B. .t . n, she was at a public hall. A young gentleman danced with her, afterwards paid attentions to her, and induced her to run off with him. “Oh! I was just as bad as him, poor fellow! When he got me into the room I felt sure what he was after, knew it was wrong, knew he would want me, and that I should let him. I wanted to let him do it, to be all to him, I did not want it done to me for myself, not that I recollect, I dare say I might, but don't recollect that; but I wanted him to do with me what he liked, anything he liked, anything he wanted to do me. I would have let him do anything that would make him happy, and seem as if I belonged to him entirely, and he to me for ever.”

“And he did it?” “Yes. I stopped out all night and next day, and then went home frightened. I was father's favorite, he had been hunting for me like mad all over the town, and letting people know I was not at home. He hit me,-there was such a row !—my sister spat at me, and called me a whore. I never slept all night, and hadn't slept the night before, what with his a pulling me about and doing it, and my fear of being found out. I was ill, and father kept me locked up in my room a week, because I would not tell him where I had been and with who. I said I had been to an aunt's, he went to her, and found I had fibbed. At length he let me out, because he wanted me to attend to his business, and the first man I saw in the bar was my dear boy,-I nearly fainted.” — These were as nearly as posible her own words describing her seduction, they are so unlike the confessions I have had from other women, that the very words sank deep into my mind.

After that he used to go and drink at the bar, her father talked with him, not knowing he was the man who had broached his daughter. She was watched till life was unbearable, her sister worried her (she had no mother), neighbours who had thought well of her began to sneer, a country swain who liked her was saucy to her, one or two swells in the neighbourhood who had been accustomed to see her about, and ad-mired her beautty, were now free in their behaviour. One took liberties with her, and in the public-house began asking her smutty questions. Weary with all this, liking the man whose sperm had wetted her virgin cunt, perhaps longing to have more (although she always declared to me that she had no recollection of that desire affecting her), one night she ran away to Lon-don with him.

They lived in London nine months. Then came grief. He was the son of a West-India planter who had sent him to London to pass as barrister. His father's agents found out the connection with Mary, and wrote to the father that he was spending his money, but not ad- vancing his career. His father objected, then threatened, and then his allowance was stopped. They lived on what they had, until penniless. He wrote that he was going to marry Mary, and his father replied that if he did he need never return and might starve. He was a gentleman, and could not get his living, he tried but failed. Then the father wrote, requesting him to return, and saying he would provide for Mary. Misery stared them in the face, and he consented to go home.

His father remitted money. The first thing he did was to take all Mary's jewelry and clothes out of pawn, and then to arrange for her to live. He promised to come back, and marry her, and some sort of such promise was made by his father's agents. He begged her to go home, but she would not. Then he put her to lodge with a small middle-class woman whom he bribed to give Mary a character as a servant, for he declared he would remain, and ruin himself for ever, if she neither would go home, nor go to service. Mary remained there a couple of months, dressing plainly, and only going to see him in his lodgings at night, or to meet him at places where it would not be known. Then he went to India. Repeated threats of his father, and his want of money would let him stay no longer.