The Lesser Portal Ch. 11

"Sir,

PSALM 14:

PROVERBS 26:11

It seems that you intend to proclaim your blasphemy in public. If you have not renounced your folly by the fateful hour, all assembled shall perceive with their own eyes an Evolutionist's degraded nature.

For the good of your soul, I am,

ONE WHO PRAYS FOR YOU"

I found the above letter waiting for me, postmarked Cambridge, on the doormat of the lab, two days after Handscombe had ceased to be seen around the town. The writing was irregular and obviously disguised, but Doyle, I knew, had amused himself with a study of graphology. It was time I explained my predicament.

My old friend listened in gravest silence, and sighed, and asked to see the letter. After examining both it and (with equal attention) the envelope, he remarked, "Unless your concerned Christian really is one of those street-corner brazen-voiced bible-thumpers, he's concealing his outward character as well as his handwriting." He studied it again. "Literary merit was plainly not a consideration. As for the penmanship, disguise is harder than is often imagined. A chap tends to lapse into his normal hand here and there, and precisely because it is normal to himself, he doesn't notice. The form of the D on the envelope is exactly as Reverend Handscombe writes them. Blackmail is a crime, Jaspers. Take this letter to the authorities."

I told him, "The carnal act captured on the tintype is illegal even between a man and a woman."

A flush crossed Doyle's features, but he only said, "I see. By the look of it, he plans for it to be passed around at your debate. I'll volunteer as an usher, and be alert to confiscate it the moment it appears."

As a plan it seemed far from water-tight, but I accepted his co-operation gratefully.

"This is a distraction we could do without," he remarked with a wry smile. "Just as we've the wherewithal to move the lab to Cambridge." Town-gas offered manifold advantages over the spirit-burners we had used hitherto, and we had identified a suitable premises. "I regret, old friend, that if he succeeds in publicly disgracing you, you and I will have to part ways."

I replied, "You must see, Doyle, that if I were to back down he would hold this thing over me forever. I'd rather lose everything now and then spend the rest of my days a free man." And then our talk turned to the organic constituents of bassorin.

I did not try to involve Doyle in my plan of counter-threatening Handscombe. My hopes of this had risen. The Reverend seemed to have fled some species of embarrassment -- although, on the principle that the most dreary explanation is usually correct, it might only be a financial embarrassment.

It was time for some scientific rigour. The proper step must be to gather data until there was sufficient material for a theory, or at least an hypothesis.

My preliminary investigation took the form of quizzing Morwena as she passed the back of the lab around lunch-time, singing one of her improper ditties and garbed in at least two overcoats: a voluminous green one of Mrs Cargil's, with her own threadbare one showing at its collar. A home-knitted muffler made of odd ends of yarn encased her slim neck and chin before disappearing into the coats, only to reappear as two cheerful flapping pennants at the back, flying in the region of her ankles. In short, she resembled nothing so much as a green-glass bottle trotting over the frosty earth, lightly decorated and and surmounted by a pair of large, dark eyes.

Despite her sartorial encumbrances she embraced me most lustfully and offered to "suck Mr Frederick's sav'loy clean of mustard" forthwith. I resisted the pleasing temptation, and asked her the address of Handscombe's home for fallen women. She did not know the street, let alone the number, but assured me that a letter to The Magdalene Home in Poplar would "mos' prob'ly" reach it. I thanked the girl with a grateful kiss on her lips, which she rewarded with an impudent seizing of my head in both hands and a burrowing of her tongue into my mouth. As she went on her way we both were laughing.

Having got an address of sorts, I next penned a letter to Handscombe, care of the Home, with a trivial question about the debate. The object being to get a hint as to his whereabouts, and to that end, I wrote my address on the back, to help with some sort of response, if only from the lady who managed the Home day-to-day.

I had begun to suspect that Handscombe's visit to the Railway Hotel had been "a blind" while he concealed his agitation and considered what to do next. It was conveniently adjacent to the railway station, and he might have caught the first train to London. But judging by the blackmailing letter, he had returned to Cambridge very soon. I drew up an obvious hypothesis: he felt unsafe in London too, and was now skulking in his house.

At any rate, my writing to the Home bore fruit, for prompt by second post next morning came a reply from the manageress, a Mrs Cavendish, assuring me that my missive would be given to the Reverend as soon as possible. In the meantime, could I by any chance tell her the author of that remarkable anonymous work, A Christian Journey Among the Savages of the Gold Coast? Rumour had it, she said, that he lived in Cambridge. I wrote back by return of post to say that she might perhaps learn more by application to a certain address -- Handscombe's address, but of course right behaviour forbade me naming him and undoing his anonymity.

So: he might well be lying low in his house. Science starts with observation, but I could hardly haunt the street outside.

At this period I was making frequent trips into Cambridge in connection with our new laboratory. That very afternoon, in fact, I had to call at the new premises, a former horse-liniment makers', to discuss terms with the owner.

After I left the premises a crossing-sweeper caught my eye. Not just any crossing-sweeper, for this particular man will be recalled by any reader who ever lived in Cambridge: his whole form was twisted and disfigured as a result of some ghastly accident, poor fellow, so much so that the children were quite scared of him.

Here was the observer I needed. He consented to move to a crossing from which he could see Handscombe's house, in return for an umbrella and a daily stipend. I was carrying an umbrella and some loose change, so that was easily seen to. I charged him to watch the house and be ready to report any comings and goings. [Editor's note: As far as I can work out from old maps, the crossing might have been on Trumpington Road. With horses numerous on the roads, sweeping crossings was a public service.]

For the first three days he reported no visitors other than the postman and the usual baker's boy, et cetera.

It was the fourth day, if I remember rightly, that he took his daily shillings from me and said, "Two widows called at the house, sir."

"Did they, by George! Did you catch what was said?"

But he only knew that one had presented her card to the housekeeper, who had shaken her head and turned them away. I had glimpsed the housekeeper through a window the day before. She was an antique specimen of the species, so aridly respectable she might have been stuffed with sawdust, and meagrely stuffed at that. She had stood at the top of the entry-steps eyeing them until they walked out of sight.

"When was this?"

"Not five minutes since, sir."

All I could do was press a grateful half-crown into his hand and hasten along the way they had taken. There was a confusion of roads here. The widows would be hobbled by their skirts, of course, and I can move pretty fast when needs be, so my search was not quite hopeless. But it was not successful.

It was dusk now, and I twice passed the dimly-seen notice proclaiming, "Rooms by the Night to the Month," before it made a conscious impression on me. A few seconds later, I had rung the doorbell next to it; three minutes after that, the neat, brisk, guest-house owner, whose sharp eyes contrasted with her comfortable figure, was knocking on the door of a first-floor room and calling respectfully, "Mrs Cavendish? A Dr Jaspers to see you."

A woman's voice replied, "A few moments, if you would be so kind." It had a melodious timbre, but there was an unfamiliar accent, refined, yet a shade drawling.

When the door swung inwards, I saw before me the shorter of the two widows, arrayed in her long black hooded cape, her veil as impenetrable as ever. I doffed my hat and nodded a bow.

"Dr Jaspers, Effie will take your coat and hat," said the clear, accented voice. The light was low, and it was a moment before I discovered the speaker seated with her back to me, on a high-backed couch by the fire.

Effie slipped her arms through the slits in her cloak and I saw that she wore long black satin gloves. As she helped me off with my coat, the other woman rose and glided towards me. She was tall, impressively so, and even hooded and veiled as she was, had an air of self-possession such that I gave more than a polite bow: I took the black-gloved hand she proffered and bent over it.

"I am gratified by your respect, Dr Jaspers," she said, and I felt gratified in turn by her approval. "Please, sit with us by the fire." The word "us" had something of the royal "we" about it, but it did not strike me as out of place.

The room was sparely furnished, but clean and comfortable. Effie took her seat next to Mrs Cavendish on the sofa and I sat facing them in a wing arm-chair by the bright-blazing fire. The firelight struck upwards, yet still I could make out no faces behind the veils until --

"Have you in fact read the book I inquired of you about, Dr Jaspers?" asked Mrs Cavendish, and I saw a flash of white teeth behind the layers of black gauze.

At once the explanation for her invisibility was clear, and I was ready to laugh at myself for my want of imagination. Though in fairness to myself, I had been preoccupied with more serious matters.

"I have not read it, madam, but I am aware of its chief argument."

"You mean you are aware of its advocating enslavement of the Black race by the White."

"Indeed yes, and I detest the idea, as my friends can bear witness."

"Yet perhaps you still hold Blacks inferior."

"Madam, when great Caesar beheld my rude forebears coloured blue with woad waving their primitive weapons at his legions, he might well have preened himself on the innate superiority of the Italian race, yet now Albion rules an Empire far vaster than his."

"One might go further and say -- Ozymandias." I could see that she was smiling. Next moment she lifted her veil, to reveal a mature yet unlined face, the firelight which reflected on her black skin giving it a look of sculpted bronze.

She was not beautiful according to our Classical ideal: her Negroid nose and her thick lips were against that. But these features gave a sensuous quality which made our ideal look chill; much more than that, there was a thoroughbred air, a commanding glitter in her eye. She seemed to regard me with amusement.

During this conversation Effie had also unveiled herself, and thrown back her hood, revealing a face as black as her mistress's, but rounder, less mature and less striking. Her hair, I noted with interest, was plaited exotically in rows close to her scalp. She inspected me with a cool attention, and now spoke to Mrs Cavendish in a language quite unlike any I had ever heard.

Mrs Cavendish smiled, and said a few incomprehensible words in return. Then she said to me, "You are not the first man to have followed me, for there is that in my form and bearing which captivates many of the male sex, even when I disguise myself as a widow to avoid the stares I attract in so White a town as this. But what you say about the races pleases me. Before we go further, I am going to set you a simple task, which you may complete here and now."

"Madam, I am entirely at your service."

"Effie is a young lady whose curiosity has not been blunted by her misfortunes. I merely ask that you satisfy her curiosity while I attend to some papers in the other room. Then she and I must catch the London train."

With these words she rose, leaving me with unanswered questions. Effie and I faced one another across the hearth-rug, mute and, for my part, uncertain.

Effie slipped her arms through the slits in her cape and drew off her gloves. She then motioned me to stand, and beckoned me a pace nearer -- she beckoned in a distinctive manner, with her palm downwards. Next she mimed removing a jacket from herself while she nodded encouragingly at me. I undid my jacket and tossed it on the chair behind me. She made as if to mime removing a waistcoat, but I was already unbuttoning mine, to her nodded approval.

It was plain that she wished me to disrobe completely. I felt myself blush slightly as I obeyed -- her scrutiny being intense -- and I think I staggered absurdly as I removed my boots, but soon I stood naked in the warm firelight. My guess was, that she had never seen a naked White body before.

She stood inspecting me up and down, and breathed a soft "ahh-huh", in a tone which is understood world-wide as, "So, I see." After a moment or two her attention turned to my genitals, and she leaned forward a fraction. My male part very plainly found the attention flattering, for it began to enlarge. She smiled at this, and then her eyebrows lifted at the size it attained as it lifted to the horizontal, and her smile became a grin of white teeth between thick black lips.

She next stood upright and, as simple fairness demanded, slid off her cape, revealing a body as naked as my own. And by so doing, she completed the hardening of my organ, which now began to jut like a veritable fence-post.

It was my turn to make an inspection. Picture a form over-all much like that of many an English girl, but with her fascinating duskiness conjuring a breath of sultry African air. Her young breasts were tempting as Muscovado sugar as they hung, each a goodly handful, nipples a true molasses brown-black, areolae broad and teats so well projecting that they seemed asking to be licked. Her stomach in the orange firelight was meanwhile like dark, oiled teak, and had a gentle curve, while her hips were by no means lacking flesh; indeed, she showed a tendency towards the pear-shape, and a very luscious shape that is, forsooth. With a teasing smile she turned her back to me, looking slyly over her shoulder the while, and displayed a good-sized round backside -- I had almost written blackside -- which I would defy any man not to wish to explore with the appropriate organ, especially when she gave it a most provoking wiggle. For the most part her body was very smooth, so that every part caught the firelight wonderfully as she moved, but the triangle of jet hair below her belly had the tightest curls imaginable.

When I had nodded and smiled my appreciation (though in truth my wood-hard member showed it well enough) she stepped towards me and placed one black hand on my white chest, and let out a delighted "aah" as her eyes ran over the contrast. I mirrored her action with the same pleasure, and we found ourselves smiling into one another's faces, and the next moment she gripped my wrists to pull me down toward her mouth, stood on tip-toe -- and I was enjoying the most sensuous of kisses as her lavish black lips engaged with my own.

Next she took to plucking soft kisses from my mouth between laughing turns of her head at my every eager attempt to possess her lips with mine. She took my hands and held them to her long teats, and crushed my fingers to them. That she liked her nipples handled roughly was clear from the way she closed her eyes and hummed a little 'mm', but still, she did not care to relinquish control.

When her hands strayed to my straining member she took a step back, and contemplated its size and, one must suppose, its whiteness with joy on her face, her palms and fingers brushing all over my genitals with a tingling, tantalising caress all the while. Then with a smile she pointed to the hearthrug, and with a hand on my shoulder pressed me so that I understood I was to lie down.

Once I was on my back she knelt beside me, and seemed to feast her eyes again on every inch of my White-man's body. All at once she turned and swung her leg over my face, and I found myself happily contemplating the secret folds that impended above me. How excitingly pink were the inner lips that nestled between the ebony outer ones! -- a bright, almost a coral-pink by contrast. Next moment she lowered them to press my mouth, and I set about my lascivious work with a will, whilst her hands were busy groping most agreeably at my privates.

The bountiful brown globes of her buttocks, which now hung tantalisingly close, were separated by a crack which in the low light was a place of mystery. I reached up my hands and drew them apart, and discovered that her lesser portal was almost as dark as her nipples. While I licked her front parts -- and delicious they tasted -- I fell to gently teasing her dusky rear hole with a finger, which small extra stimulus drew tiny squeaks of pleasure out of her in time with the firm, steady strokes of my tongue at front. Her hands tightened on my c--k and my balls, and she commenced rocking her pelvis, pulling on my genitals as an anchor, one might say.

As her passion rose she dragged my foreskin up and down over my glans penis more vigorously, toying with my balls with more energy than delicacy, until her arousal overtook her senses and she forgot what she was at, and her tight grip fell still. I concentrated my attentions on the juicy pink pearl in the black oyster. At last her ecstasy broke forth in a series of hissing exhalations and murmured cries in her own tongue while her legs stiffened and quivered either side of me. There was one exultant cry at the very peak and then she fell face-forward along my body, still gripping my manhood.

She had reached satisfaction, but she was not sated. Almost as soon as she had her breath back she lavished a grateful, sumptuous kiss on the shaft of my manhood and then dismounted me, only to straddle me afresh across my chest, now looking toward my face. I lifted my hands to fondle the twin brown globes that hung so temptingly above me, but she pushed my hands away, shaking her head. Then, to ensure my compliance, she picked up one of her long black gloves, and tied my wrists to a leg of the sofa. It seemed she felt safer thus, and I found my new inky-brown mistress too charming for demurral.

Next she straddled her thighs to bridge my pelvis with her pudenda, took my manhood in both hands and held it upright, and lowered her wet love-passage onto it. I felt the wetness at the threshold, but she slowed as the very tip entered, then she stopped. There was tightness rather beyond what I expected -- or she expected, it seemed. She rubbed the head in her slit awhile, not neglecting to pass it back and forth over the little treasure at the top, and tried again. She frowned, and cautiously tested my bigness against her tightness. Now there was a little progress, but still the head would not enter fully in. She left my organ to lie along my belly while she titillated her nipples, gazing down at my size the while, and then essayed a third experiment, now steadily rubbing with with her free hand at that magical crack which is woman's great blessing.

Now there was real progress, and once the head was in, by dint of cautiously raising herself a little and lowering herself somewhat more, by degrees she impaled herself. I, meanwhile, contemplated her dusky form with great pleasure. When at last she was as impaled on my considerable length as much as pleased her, she started briskly riding the sturdy invader, and her breasts showed a fluid bounce which was most enchanting. She had not the perfection of form of my Jenny, nor the bountiful size of Mrs Threlfall, but the motion of her bosom could not have been more stimulating had she been Venus herself. And the friction of her tight, wet channel as it drew up on my member and then drove down on it, was the very essence of bodily bliss.

Her rubbing, and likely the stretching that my girth subjected her to, had a remarkably speedy result, and before I was quite on the brink of letting fly my own volley she was groaning and quivering again in a second climax, the walls of her love-passage gripping my member in a series of spasms, her eyes rolling upward and her mouth hanging open and quivering as if with pain. When this was passed she looked down at me with a cheerful grin, her teeth flashing white in her black face, muttered a few heartfelt words of satisfaction in her own language, and dismounted. I remember well how her wet inner walls slid off my hardness with, to me, a disappointing finality.

But when she saw how I was still fully erect, she gave a little 'oh' of compassion, and seemed considering what to do. She freed my hands, and sat down beside me, pulled up on my shoulder, and motioned me to straddle her, then nodded when I did so. Once I was there she dragged on my rigid member, to encourage me into the precise position required of me. All this puzzled me somewhat, but the sight of her round, brown breasts with their black nipples just beneath me, and still more her merry face, was no cause for complaint. I would have played with her breasts, but she pushed my hands away. She then held up one dark hand with its pale palm, and curved her fingers and thumb to make a ring, and moved her hand a certain way to indicate that I was to pleasure myself, which of course I began to do.

She placed a hand either side of her breasts and pushed them tight together for the delectation of my eyes. They looked a veritable love-gift thus, and when she saw how I smiled my appreciation she laughed in a friendly way. I was very soon nigh making my seed-offering, and as I trembled on the brink I found myself gazing into her cheerful eyes. Only when the manly fluid began to erupt did I turn my attention to her bosom again, and watched how the white juice splashed across the dark mahogany curves and their twin black discs, with a very pretty effect indeed. As I surveyed the effect just afterwards, the happy thought came to me that the beauty of this, seemed an argument against those who would bar carnal intercourse between Whites and Blacks.

At that moment there came an amused chuckle from somewhere behind me. I twisted round, to see Mrs Cavendish surveying the scene with a would-be disapproving frown which, however, was belied by a twist of her lips. She spoke a few words to Effie, who merely laughed. I dismounted and stood with my still-enlarged organ swinging left and right before me and my face, no doubt, a little red.

Mrs Cavendish seemed quite at ease in this unusual social situation. "Dr Jaspers, Effie was supposed merely to satisfy her curiosity as to the general colour of your skin, However, I don't suppose any harm has been done." She spoke again to Effie, who had got up, and now, my seed still on her chest, went into the other room smiling. "She truly is a widow, for over a year now, and no doubt her needs have been building since then. I hope the encounter was satisfactory for both of you. Please, at least put on your drawers before you drip on the landlady's excellent hearthrug."

When I was dressed I sat facing Mrs Cavendish again. "We have a few minutes while Effie is readying things for our departure. Tell me, why did you send me only the address of the author of that book and not his name?"

"Madam, I hope you will understand that a gentleman is iron-bound to respect another's wish for anonymity. Had he chosen to disclose his name when you inquired at that address, I would have broken none of the rules of propriety."

"Very correct, Dr Jaspers." There was a touch of icy sarcasm in her voice. "I know the reality of slavery, Dr Jaspers. If you saw the skin of my back," -- the thought of any part of her body naked, shot through me like a thunderbolt, just-spent though I was -- "you would see the evidence. You may not know that this book is now promoted by some in our Southern states to portray their recent war against the North as a holy cause. I might mention also that during that war I spied for the North, but fell under suspicion; I narrowly evaded arrest, and then made my way to New York, where some kind persons rewarded my courage (as they called it; I would term it hatred) by helping with my education. After that I sailed to the Bight of Benin, to investigate the possibility of the return to Africa of my people, and on the coast there I met the Reverend Handscombe. But it was not there I met Effie. I came to England, and in Limehouse recently I found her -- her name being Effuah, more properly -- cast adrift in the streets and knowing not one word of English."

She looked steadily at me. "Now, Dr Jaspers, will you tell me the name of the author?"

"The author, Madam, is the Reverend Leontine Handscombe, your employer."

She nodded calmly. "He has become elusive. A report reached me from a former street-walker, a good friend of mine now, who chanced to encounter him coming off a train at Liverpool Street Station. It seems he at once made for the ticket-office. Is there any way I can meet him?"

"I can only say that he and I are supposed to conduct a public debate on the twenty-ninth of this month at Dunwoody Hall, in this city. But attendance will be by invitation only, and only a very few ladies, principally the heads of Girton and Newnham, have as a special courtesy been invited. You could hardly slip in unnoticed. Nor -- given his current evasiveness -- can I guarantee that he will turn up himself."

At this moment Effie, or Effuah, entered the room, burdened with valises. Mrs Cavendish rose and said, "We must catch the next London train, Dr Jaspers, and a cab should now be waiting outside for us. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and the women of the Home deserve a good Christmas. I should have just enough time to set some Christmas arrangements going this evening and complete them tomorrow."

With that, I relieved Effie of the valises and accompanied the pair to their waiting cab. It had not escaped me that Effie had been naked when I arrived, and very possibly Mrs Cavendish too, which made me wonder as to the exact nature of the reform offered by the Magdalene Home; but I knew no way to politely inquire, so I bade them adieu.