The Wooden Shepherdess by Richard Hughes Page A

thing about a nightmare is never to be quite sure who people are)? And she hadn’t got a sword—or had she? For now to his suggestible eye a blade indeed seemed to materialize out of nowhere into that terrible bleeding hand.
    â€œI was so petrified I still didn’t scream: for if even Mary was one of them after all there was no help in the whole world left to scream for.”
    As he struggled out the unwilling words Augustine relived his fear, waves of it prickled all over his scalp as he spoke. Scarcely intelligible though he was, something of what he was feeling got over to Janis; and Janis was deeply moved: “Why, you puir wee thing!” she exclaimed, and kissed him.
    Astonished—but strangely released—Augustine returned the kiss. Thereupon with a happy shiver she melted into his arms and they lay on the ground together, all infant terrors forgotten, the whole length of her body pressed against his, bone to his bone. After a moment or two their mouths met again, and she opened his lips with her tongue.
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    When Augustine and Janis got back they were riding a long way apart. Augustine was flushed, and Janis was white to the lips. But then, thought Janis, what Englishman ever had morals? Let all American maidens beware, for that famous English coldness is sheer hypocrisy: inside they’re just as much lechers as any Latin—and more of a menace because at least with a Latin you know where you are!
    You’d suppose she’d want to keep quiet about it; but no, she’d a duty. Like wildfire the news ran around that Augustine was not to be trusted: he didn’t know where to stop! For these were all “good” girls, be it understood: which merely meant not taking the ultimate step which made you a bad one, finding it simple—with practice, and help from the boy—to get complete satisfaction without.
    That Augustine was equally shocked and looked on Janis’s morals as worse than a whore’s entered none of their heads: for they hadn’t a notion how widely the code he conformed to differed from theirs. His English Gentleman’s one started off from the premiss that girls are “cold” and “pure,” which means that Nature has left them without any carnal urgings at all unless and until engendered by love. Perhaps his knowledge of girls was small, even granted his country and class; but Augustine had always been led to suppose that a girl, on the rare and almost incredible times that she starts, most certainly wouldn’t have started a thing that she didn’t intend to go through with; and then for the man to draw back is the grossest of insults (could even lead to her suicide, bearing in mind that she wouldn’t have possibly done it unless knocked clean off her perch by a deeply passionate love she thought was returned). So once this girl had begun and Augustine had let her begin he felt deeply committed: not that he’d had any wish to draw back, for few young men are lucky enough to start with anyone half so attractive as Janis; and Janis indeed had seemed consumed by a passionate love compared with which Cleopatra was almost an icicle.
    Janis moreover had done her best to inflame him as well: right up to the very last moment of all when, just in time, she had hit him across the face (for how could she know he wouldn’t abide by the rules of the game like a wholesome American boy?).
    It was telling Janis that story about his childhood had crumbled his last reserve—like a Chow when at last it consents to uncurl its tail; and if only he hadn’t, this mightn’t have happened. But then he might never have known what a sink she was, and have fallen really in love! For Augustine had liked her so much, till now: indeed only now he was finished with Janis and hated her guts did Augustine discover he must have been more than half in love with the girl before this horrible thing occurred: while Janis discovered her-self