"The prodigal virgin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anonumous)

Chapter 1

“Life is very difficult, isn’t it, Stanley?” sighed the gray-eyed, pensive girl in the blue bathing suit.

The husky youth who sat Buddha-fashion by her side suppressed the smile which might have offended his sister-in-law in her present essay at a philosophical mood. “It’s no cinch,” he agreed gravely. “It’s nothing to rave about. The best thing is to follow the path of least resistance: to do what you want as nearly as possible and to let the codes and customs of the majority-composed entirely of asses-hamper one very little at most.”

“But surely,” she objected, turning for an instant a pink and pretty face, her forehead puckered with thought, upon him. “Surely that is cynicism-and one is not made happy by becoming cynical. Down through the generations mankind must have been making some progress in regulating itself wisely and so the rules which men have evolved should be followed as the nearest approach to wisdom in conduct which is available.”

In her earnestness-and the pleasure at finding herself in communion for the first time with a very likeable brother by marriage-who had heretofore shown her only a frivolous side-Marion Stone ceased to regard the blue waters so near at hand and turned upon an elbow to gaze at him. In the process of moving, she extended at full length a pair of unusually charming and quite naked legs. Dimples hovered distractingly just about the knees, vague suggestions of rose in skin which was otherwise of a tender, immaculate whiteness. Her thighs sloped gradually upward into soft fullness just below the tight blue trunks. The round calves sloped downward to the symmetry of her ankles which the man’s five fingers could easily have surrounded. Her slender bare feet were as white as milk, except for the ten polished pink gems of the nails.

Marion stirred uneasily as she noted what seemed the ardent attention of his gaze upon the nude limbs, which she was now for the first time showing him so fully. She laid a semi-shielding and equally well-molded arm along a thigh.

Since Stanley Cochrane noted a wee moue of apparent regret that he should seem to be paying attention to matters, other than her words, and since a slow flush arose in the face of the pretty Marion, his brown eyes became immediately profound, as if, though fixed upon her person, they were in reality just the windows of the pondering mind which she had aroused by her reflections.

“Er-I was thinking, Maro-“ he began.

“Maro,” she murmured pleased. “No one else calls me that. I think I rather like it.”

“A rich thing and mine own,” he observed modestly. “I feel that I must have my own copyrighted cognomens for those of whom I am especially fond.”

“Very dear and very flattering of you,” said the girl, jerking her pretty head in a pseudo-curtesy restricted by her posture.

“I think up dainty names for all the few I love.”

“Oh, love! On the third day of our acquaintance?” she smiled gently but with no coquetry whatever. “’Fond’ was nice, but ‘love’!”

“Do you discard the proffered and genuine affection of your brother?” he inquired sternly. “Are there no longer hearts in the young girls of America? In that case, woe be upon this frigid and unhappy land!”

“Of course we have hearts. I have a nice warm one-but it’s not on my sleeve, even when I wear a sleeve. I’m quite prepared to-yes, even love-my brother. I’ve always wanted a brother and I think you’ll do nicely. But, well, I guess it was the way you said ‘love’ that jarred me just the least bit.”

“Be that as it may,” he said hastily, with a swift look into the clear and candid gray eyes, “I suppose a fellow’s voice may slip as well as his foot. But, if I had known you were so sensitive to intonations, I’d have telegraphed what I wanted to say. The fact is, nevertheless, that-what was it I was going to say? Oh, yes-I had a sweet name for your sister, Mildred. I called her Mildew. But do you suppose she appreciated the poesy of it?”

“How mean! A darling, lovely girl like Mildred!” cried the younger sister. “And they told me when I got back from California-after you had swept her off her feet and married her-that you called her Glory, short for Glory of all the world! Men are nice things to have about!”

“Thank you. I was certain I could quickly convert you to that theory,” he smiled.

“I shall marry at the age of eighty-two,” Marion told the blue water of Lake Michigan.

“I advise seventy-five-when you will still be sweet and full of distilled ardor,” he suggested. “That will give you fifty-five years more in which to sow wild oats from here to Suez.”

His sister-in-law flushed sensitively and he knew it was because of his use of the word “ardor.”

“You have a very bad effect on a person,” she decided. “I was talking seriously trying to bring worthwhile ideas into our conversation and suddenly I find we are talking nonsense.”

“I love only serious thoughts myself,” he observed. “It is only when trying to humor some minx that I ever converse lightly, and I was about to advise you, when you became flippant, not to count upon any advance in mankind down through the ages save in material progress. He is much less worthy of, say, Plato and Aristotle. And the best thing to do is to thumb your nose at his rules and regulations, which are calculated to make life even more drab than it need be.”

“Heavens! That would lead us to chaos-to paganism-to anarchy!”

“And the best thought of the ages,” he went on eloquently, “boils down to the question of whether anyone ever informed you that your legs are without superiors and equals among the snowy and superb limbs which have launched ships and many more important things?”

“I knew it was a mistake,” mourned Marion distressedly, “to put on this indecent suit and come out here with you. Mildred laughed at the prim one I brought from Grandmother’s in California. This is one of hers-and I’m afraid I bulge here and there, more than she does. But I outweigh her by only eight pounds and she swore it was just right for me. When I protested she told me not to be silly but it’s you who are being silly!”

She was rosy now sitting upright with the admired and admirable legs clasped in her arms and with knees bent seeking what concealment was possible.

“See,” he remarked placidly. “You ruin the dimples when you bend your knees like that. You iron them out very wasteful. I fear they are gone for good. No, by George! There is one back again when I straighten out a leg once more. I believe that, if properly coaxed, I might go so far as to apply a kiss of welcome to that wandering dimple, which I thought gone forever. I am liberal that way.”

“Stanley Cochrane, don’t you dare, kiss my knee!” gasped the girl. “Of all things!”

He smiled up at her flushed face. His breath was warm upon her skin, mere inches away from the dimple which so enticed him. His fingers delighted in the velvet smoothness of the thigh and calf which he had grasped in straightening out, with gentle force, the naked leg nearest him. “What a fussy sister! One can’t even demonstrate one’s warm affection for her,” he said. “Don’t blame me, little dimple. I was about to welcome your return with affection but the iron-souled boss says no. I suggest, Maro, he went on, sitting up and removing his dismaying hands from the lovely limb, “I suggest that your dimples-and all other forbidden spots be courtplastered as a warning to tempted lips. That would include each cheek, both knees, probably your shoulders and loins, maybe your white little stomach, and perhaps even other places.”

“You are being nothing short of horrible!” said the blushing damsel. “I think we had better go back to the house.”

There was genuine amusement in his smile and some touch of incredulity, as well. “You’re almost too good to be true, Maro,” he said. “The funny part of it is, you’re real-all these cute little pruderies, I mean. You launch into philosophy to try to hide a certain confusion over finding yourself in a scant and marvelously becoming bathing suit with a member of your own household. Oh, yes, I know what started you off! And it jars you so obviously even to hear the word ‘leg’ from a man’s lips that I am tempted to follow you about for a couple of days, calling out ‘Leg, leg’ at intervals and watching you blush.”

“I-well, I suppose I do appear prudish,” confessed his newly acquired relative. “I’m beginning to realize that from the way Mildred laughs at me and her friends smile. I guess I’ve drifted behind the times at Grandmother’s house, practically alone with her for the past seven years, ever since our parents died. Mildred was with Uncle Frank and Aunt Josephine, you know, and she had no prim governess bringing her up as I had. I don’t like to feel that I’m different from the rest of you in this lovely little colony on the lake. I’d rather be laughed at gently though, the way Mildred and the other girls do, than to feel that I’m a sort of a wet blanket, to see people constrained when I’m around, not feeling I’m one of them,” the maiden went on, warming to a subject which had evidently preoccupied her.

“I want to be liked, you see, and I don’t want to appear critical. But some of the things said and done all about me do fluster me and I can’t help showing it, I suppose. In our nice eyrie on the cliff over the beach I knew vaguely that times and ways were changing, especially among young people. But I had no idea-why, for instance, Grandmother would certainly have fainted if she’d seen Mildred calmly letting Gerard Crandall stroll into her boudoir while the pedicure man was busy on her feet. But nobody except me seemed to think a thing of it, and you only grinned and winked at me when you saw me get uncomfortable. Yet her legs were bare-and crossed, too-and that Gerry perched on an ottoman right in front of her. And the man had such informal ways of twisting her legs-you see, I can say the awful word now-while he worked on her feet. And I knew, Stanley Cochrane-and you knew-that she had practically nothing on! She’s as nice as a girl can be, my sister, but I can’t accustom myself to such changes in what is thought proper! Grandmother would fully have expected you to take both those men by the neck, knock their heads together and push them out, especially as one couldn’t help seeing how impertinent their eyes were and how they kept trying to see more. And as for Mildred, she would have put her on bread and water, even if she is twenty-two and married!”

“Well, well, well!” ejaculated the smiling Stanley. “We’ve got the young nun to unburden her mind, haven’t we? But what are a few legs, Maro, dear, between friends? It is exactly that preoccupation with concealment, with artificial, silly conventions that made the generations of your grandmother and our parents about as nasty-minded a crew as the world ever saw. The chance view of the lace on a pair of drawers and maybe a bit of girlish skin beneath it would send a fellow into convulsions in those days. And if a male statue wore only a fig leaf the mind of the female observer was instantly at work with dire imaginings of what lay beneath!”

“Stanley, how can you be so gross!” exclaimed the flushed Marion. “Oh, I know you don’t mean to be insulting, that it’s just this new broadmindedness, I suppose you all call it. But that reminds me…”

A new grievance to be discussed with her novel father confessor took her mind from his own offence.

“They’re forever cracking horrid jokes,” she said, “all these young people, married or unmarried. Everybody laughs and then I watch them watching me to see how soon I will catch the wretched point and to see me blush when I do. And I would never see it at all most of the time if it weren’t for their reactions, which force me to see an indecent allusion after a bit. But it makes me feel as if they look on me as backward and stupid, and I’m not stupid, I’m not!” “No, you most certainly are not. You are about the cleverest of the bunch as far as mind goes,” he agreed. “Just wriggle your little toes again, Maro. I like to see them squirm that way in the sand-they’re too cute for words.”

“You’re a horrid great silly yourself!” proclaimed his pretty sister-in-law turning full upon her back and thrusting the dainty toes deeply into the soft sand for concealment. “And why should I be taking you for a confidant in these matters, I can’t think. And another thing-that Gerry Crandall snatched up one of Mildred’s bare feet when he got up to go and he kissed her toes. And she kicked at him with the other foot and, well, she certainly needed bloomers or something at that instant. Of course all this would never have happened if you hadn’t been right there, grinning and taking it as a joke, for she’s devoted to you. You know that very well.”

“You sweet babe!” whispered her companion so low as to make it apparent that he hardly knew he was audible in his exclamation.

The gray and admirable eyes turned swiftly upon him in surprise while the dusky gold of her head lay still. It was clear that Marion had intended an admonition against an exclamation worded too affectionately. But she started when she saw his reddened face glow amid its tan, the brown eyes glow even more noticeably, and the fine lips and the strong fingers none too steady.

“What-what-!” she stammered, stricken into immobility by his visible and inexplicable agitation.

Stanley drew a long breath and passed the back of a sun-bronzed hand over his eyes. “It’s your position, little Miss Innocence,” he remarked. “Your position and the fact that Mildred hardly realized, no doubt, how your lovely body would strain the light mesh of that bathing garment.”

The girl did not comprehend even yet, though she was trembling and flushing under his eyes.

She had raised her round knees and parted them in order to bury her small white feet in the sand when he had too openly admired the toes. Her lithe, well-fleshed, and adorably formed body was encased as in a second skin by the taut garment, whose scantiness was emphasized by the position she had thoughtlessly assumed.

Stricken mute, bewildered by his sudden excitement, she would have lowered her knees and rolled upon her face. But he stayed her with a gentle hand and voice, taking himself under control.

“Lie just as you are, Maro,” he said, “while I itemize for you your offences against the tranquility of a hitherto pure mind, while I show you that you are just a darling white serpent in this Eden, preaching Victorianism but a living, breathing, lovely temptation yourself.”

“Do, please, Stanley, not be that way!” quavered the uncomprehending Marion-beginning, nevertheless, to understand and to blush furiously. “I should never have worn this thing, I realize now. I did tell Mildred so but she said I was a nincompoop and that I mustn’t be so ridiculously modest, especially when I was going to bathe with my brother-in-law.”

“Mildred shall have a case of champagne and five pounds of chocolates,” observed the lady’s husband. “And if she were here this minute she should have something which she would prize much more than those gifts. No, don’t you stir until I have enumerated your faults and my grievances.

“Item: I can see the lower curves of two white and very tempting girlish buttocks emerging from the tense silk of that suit as you lie that way. No-don’t you dare move until I am through I swear to God!

“Item: breasts that would make even an anchorite mad with desire, almost worse than naked under my eyes. They seem so hard and firm that not even the straining blue silk can flatten them. And it fails utterly, when you lie thus, to do more than film over the whiteness of the lovely heaps and the roses of the little nipples.”

“I-oh-I had no idea I was so very nearly bare!” Marion managed to gasp. “Please let me move, Stanley-let me get at that beach robe-!” “Lie quite still,” he directed sternly. “Item: I can see the very snow of your belly rising and falling with your breathing. I can even see the tiny pit at the center and I can see that I was not mistaken when I spoke of concealed dimples.”

“I-oh, heavens-I’ll never wear this suit or one like it again!” half-wailed the appalled girl. “I didn’t realize-yet all the girls seem to wear such bathing apparel here. I’ve seen them from a distance. And I got into this position without knowing how it displayed me. I simply won’t lie here any longer like this. Take your great hands off my shoulders… and knees…!”

“You’re in no state to argue with a shocked and offended man,” he assured her. “A man intent on reformation, a man who knows how easy it would be for him to turn you over and pull that silk completely off from a dimpled bottom which is already half-bare, a man who would have no compunctions in turning that white backside rosy. Just the least move and I swear you shall catch it, Maro, my dear-!”

“Item: although I’ve seen fair ladies and maidens of our summer colony in contraptions like this-and not without concern on my part-I’ve never before seen one of them in this very suggestive position while thus scantily clad. It’s a position, my dear little sister-in-law, commonly reserved for the nuptial chamber and the nuptial couch. Ah, you would, would you!”

In a frenzy of shame as she caught the purport of his words, poor Marion had suddenly writhed from his detaining hands and was trying to scramble to her feet. With a stretch of his powerful and sinewy frame, her bother-in-law caught her by an ankle. She tumbled upon the soft sand, unharmed but squealing.

Not even the determined smile of the man-beneath which smoldered something alien to mirth-could reassure the struggling Marion in the least as she was drawn across his bare and extended legs, face downward.

“Don’t you dare!” she panted as she felt his fingers thrust the thinly veiled silk upwards and completely off from one hemisphere of her rear mounds. “I-oh, heavens, Stanley, are you mad? I’ll tell Mildred-I’ll tell everybody!”

“After dinner at the cafe would be a good time,” he murmured shakily. Shakily, because the snowy satin of that perfect buttock beneath his eyes and his fingers was moving him mightily. “Must I spank, Maro, dear? Or will you get back as you were until I’ve finished lecturing you?”

Already his fingers were busy with the task of laying the other promontory naked.

“Yes, yes, yes-yes, I will!” wailed the shame-ridden maiden. “Oh, I would never have supposed you such a perfect monster!”

And the position-flat on her back, knees raised and well parted-which she had so innocently and unthinkingly assumed earlier, became, by his hands guiding her to resume it and by her present realization of what it had suggested to him, a posture which shook her with vast embarrassment.

“Now, then. Item: a very, very, suggestive prominence in a very delicate region,” he said brazenly. “If you close your legs again, Maro, over you go on your soft stomach. Wider, wider yet-that’s it. Now let me tell you that, although I’ve seen attractive little bulges at the crotch of many a bathing suit on this beach, I’ve never seen such a plump, pudgy, cute, hair-shrouded hill obtrude its presence on my entranced but reproving eyes here or anywhere. Baby girl, sweet sister, I can almost see the exact hue of the little grove against the whiteness of the skin. Whiteness, did I say? Yet it seems to me that there is something dimly visible which is not altogether white, a something so delicate, so altogether enticing and maddening that-!”

But not even the fear of his fraternal violence upon her still unclad rear cushions could hold the frantic and shamed Marion any longer in that obvious position.

He allowed her to scramble to her feet. Trembling, she turned her back upon him that he might not see her suffused and lovely features, forgetting entirely the nudity of the hillocks which he had bared.

Suddenly a soft kiss, perhaps apologetic in part, since the distress of the girl was so evident and so burning, was laid upon the back of her neck. Unrebuked fingers performed the Samaritan task of drawing the blue silk downward over the twin mounds below.

“Oh-d-don’t-don’t k-kiss me!” he heard in a tremulous voice. “How incredibly horrible you have been to me, Stanley Cochrane!”