And at last, when my elbows nearly touched each other, Elise fastened the cords and stood up, looking very pretty with the flush upon her smiling comely face caused by her exertions.
'Now, Elise, make him kneel quite close to my knees. Put that belt round his waist, and fasten his ankles to it at the back, so that he cannot get up. Now, Master Julian,' she went on when this had been done, 'you are in a fit state for punishment and you shall have it. You were rude to me about those letters.' Smack, smack, in my face, one on each cheek: one with the left, the other with the right hand. How those soft, lovely, dimpled hands stung! How my cheeks tingled! How I struggled in absolute helplessness to get free! 'You object to a governess, to feminine domination, to petticoat-rule'-giving me two smacks at each enumeration. 'I think I shall convert you. You see'- smack, smack-'you must endure it.'
I would not have believed two dainty little hands could have caused such pain. Kneeling at Mademoiselle's pretty feet, in close proximity to her, and seeing her graceful figure each time she raised her arms to inflict me punishment, was I own, at first, some assuagement of my pain. But at last the smacking she gave my cheeks made my head swim and I became so silly and bewildered that I was almost unconscious by the time she put the backs of her hands alternately to my lips and made me kiss them and thank her.
'Oh, please undo my arms and let me get up.' I longed to move about and to put my hands up to my face; but she refused.
Instead, she enquired of Elise whether I had not been rude to her.
'Yes, Mademoiselle, very rude. Master Julian spoke to me most rudely when I went to his bedroom to show him the way to the breakfast room.'
'Very well, Elise. Out of school hours Master Julian is to be under you tomorrow and the two following days, and by that time I trust you will have made him respect you. And now, Julian, you shall be deprived of your trousers. Take a long leave of them. When you will see them again, I do not know; they teach you all sorts of resistance and naughtiness and make you assume airs of ridiculous superiority which you do not possess. We must make a girl of you. Elise, make him stand up and take them off.'
'Oh, Mademoiselle! Oh, please do not before you and the girls. Oh, don't-'
Elise, however, speedily unfastened the straps which kept me kneeling, but kept my elbows still confined, and busied herself in unfastening my buttons. Maid like, she tore open all the front first, to my intense shame, and then fumbled round my waist with both hands at once, kneeling before me. I cannot describe what I felt at being close to a girl in this condition with her hands busy about me, the front of my principal garment opened and violated, and my person almost coming into actual contact with her swelling bosom as she proceeded with uncompromising promptitude and rapidity to unfasten my trousers, my governess and the three girls looking on with amusement. I myself felt like a fowl about to be roasted and was nearly stupefied with shame.
Presently the braces were unfastened and Elise at once pushed my trousers and drawers down to my heels, not hesitating to move her hands freely about my person, even putting her arm between my legs to effect her purpose. In the midst of my abasement, I noticed an incipient sensation of what I felt when I had lifted the nursery maid's garments. Truly the tables were turned on me, for now, before women and girls, my own legs, from the end of my shirt to my ankles, were bared and displayed, naked. Elise next, with little ceremony and much disconcerting violence, pulled off my shoes and socks; then tore off the drawers and trousers, rolled them up, and deposited them on a chair.
My cheeks burned and I felt horridly defenceless.
'Now, Julian, how do you feel? To enforce your subjection to the petticoat, the emblem of the female sex, and to show your domination by it, you shall stand in the corner with one over your head until half-past twelve, when lessons are over. Elise, fetch one of my red flannel petticoats out of the soiled linen basket in my room.' Elise soon returned with the garment required. 'Tie it together at the top-so! Now throw it over his head. There, now he is under the petticoat! Put him in the corner; and at half-past twelve, Julian, she will come and take you to my bedroom, where I shall birch your bottom for you as smartly as ever a boy's bottom was birched.'
I winced at her threat and at her talking so freely of my bottom. There was not much to hide it from sight and they must have caught glimpses of it as Elise hustled me sharply into the corner. What could I do, my arms fixed immovably, my head wrapped up in a red petticoat of Mademoiselle's, and myself overcome by the pungent odour I was then quite unacquainted with, but with which I subsequently became only too familiar? I was also terrified to think of the birching in store for me.
Lessons went on just as if I had not been there. Beatrice made some blunders with her Dante and (would that I could have seen!) had to lie across an ottoman, have her petticoats turned up, and receive a dozen cuts with Mademoiselle's little whip, and then be deprived of her drawers for the day. I heard her muffled sobs and imagined the scene, the smallest peep of which my pinioned arms and the petticoat covering my head prevented my obtaining. I trembled at the sound of the punishment and already began to repent and make resolutions of obedience. Obedience, alas! I did not know then that the infliction of punishment, whether deserved or not, was an integral part of my handsome governess' discipline and system, and that I should be whipped merely for being a boy! A great deal of courage had left me with my trousers, and, smothered as I was, I longed for some covering for my bare legs. I wondered what on earth would happen to me during the three days I was to be under Elise.
At last, half-past twelve arrived. The girls went off and so also did Mademoiselle. In a few minutes Elise came for me. She whipped off the petticoat, and taking hold of my ears from behind, roughly and angrily hustled me off in front of her, giving me every now and then a dreadful thump behind, first with one knee, then with the other.
'Get along, Master Julian, you bold young rascal. What! You complain of my being rough to you-I will be as rough to you as your tongue was to me. Wait till tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, when I shall have you in my power! You will have some reason to complain of my hurting you then!'
In this ignominious manner, out of breath, my ears feeling as if they were being torn out, my arms aching as though they would break, and my head in a whirl with the slapping I had had, I was bundled into Mademoiselle's bedroom to have my bottom birched by her.
CHAPTER 4
A sort of mesmeric influence seemed to have crept into me from that intensely feminine garment which had been in such close contact with Mademoiselle's own person and then so long over my head and face as I stood disgraced in the corner. It seemed to have sapped my strength and all my powers of resistance, to have undermined my self-respect, to have rendered me contemptible in my own eyes; in short, to have completely emasculated me. I had felt my virility ebbing away during the hours I had stood with the red thing enveloping my shoulders, touching my eyes and nose and mouth, conscious all the while that it was a woman's petticoat which had been worn, and that a thing so essentially feminine had, willy-nilly, been forced upon me. I had gradually, step by step, to give in to the flood of feminine associations which rushed upon me, and yield by degrees to the power of woman. I was keenly aware that nothing could save me, that all opposition was useless and hopeless, and I was slowly drifting towards the knowledge that I must sooner or later abandon myself absolutely to it. I stood before Mademoiselle, cowed and humiliated, not so much at the prospect of the beating as at the sense of my own helplessness in her hands, because she was feminine and could therefore do with me what she liked. Whatever it was, I knew I had no power left to resist, and trembled at the inevitable acknowledgment of this fact to myself. She seemed the embodiment of triumphant womanhood as I was hustled into her presence, shaken and pulled about by another woman, to be whipped by her.
As I stood before Mademoiselle, my hands still tied, my ears red and tingling from Elise's rough usage, panting and out of breath, my back sore from the rude thumps of Elise's knees, my courage gave way and my eyes filled with tears, which the poignant sense of my abasement caused to overflow. I could only hold my head and yield in silent resignation and despair.
Let not the reader, however, imagine that I was subdued at once. No, there was many a reaction. A constant revolt of all my manhood which required many severe lessons to quell and conquer finally. But I must confess that as time went on, my disgust lessened, these revolts were divided by longer intervals, and at last I became a
