wretched petticoat-slave.
Mademoiselle looked on haughtily. Her form dilated and expanded with the sense, so agreeable to a woman, of power over something male. She looked like a magnificent bird of prey, a regal and feminine eagle, about to swoop upon her victim. She stood erect, her head thrown back, consciously displaying her well-developed bust and elegant figure; her air of determination and pretty wilfulness much enhancing her charms. There was something arch about her manner as she quizzed me upon my first introduction into a lady's bedroom. She asked me, as she significantly handled a light, long, and elastic birch, how I liked the prospect of my first assignation. She remarked that I had been introduced in all due form by her maid to whom she proceeded to give a guinea out of my pocket money (which Mademoiselle had charge of) in recognition of her services. Mademoiselle produced a sovereign and a shilling and gave them to Elise before my eyes, to my intense and ill-concealed annoyance, which increased her merriment, and Elise thanked me with mock politeness and gratitude.
Mademoiselle promised me by way of consolation, that the maid should be sent out and that consequently I should have the advantage of an entirely private tete-a-tete with her, and enquired whether I was not rejoiced at my good fortune? I do not know what it was, but something or other in these words, or what they suggested, quite changed my mood, and I let my eyes rest on her affectionately and admiringly, and said that I indeed appreciated the favour; a remark which brought me a sound slap in the face. Again disconcerted, I determined that nothing should allow me to be made a further fool of, and resolved not to utter another word.
The room was a large one and very handsomely furnished. The extremely pretty bed stood under a heavy silk canopy across the angle of the room farthest from the fireplace, the canopy suspended from the ceiling and the carved oak bedstead standing clear of the walls. There were several quaint, cosy-looking chairs about, and bowls of spring flowers. Mademoiselle stood between me and the light, tall and graceful in her severely simple black mousseline de laine dress, displaying her womanly figure to the fullest advantage. As I contemplated her in my wretched condition I felt yet more abjectly humiliated. A novel sensation of awkwardness again replaced my habitual self-possession, an inveterate stupidity my ordinary sprightliness and vivacity. There I stood, a great boy, trussed like a fowl, with nothing to conceal my bare legs but a shirt, which did not reach to my knees.
Mademoiselle ordered Elise to place a long carved bench of black oak, about a foot wide, in the middle of the room, and to put upon it a feather bolster which Elise, by means of tapes, tied to the bench. I was then compelled to stand across one end while Elise strapped my ankles close together underneath and then left the room. Mademoiselle went to the door, shut and locked it, and then turned full upon me. I could not but note as I trembled how her whole form glowed with smiling and triumphant satisfaction. She walked deliberately up to me, lifted my shirt up behind, and, to my intense shame, intently contemplated my back for some seconds; then, still holding up this undergarment and standing a little way off, she took up the birch and gave me some stinging lashes with it. I had never felt anything like it before. I had no idea that it would hurt one-tenth as much as it did, and was compelled to cry out.
Mademoiselle then, to my horror, unbuttoned my waistcoat and lifted my shirt with both hands high up in front. I could not move. I was speechless, as she stood facing me and examining my most secret possessions over which and along the front of my things she several times passed her dimpled hand. Then she let the shirt fall, untied my elbows, and taking up a lady's jewelled riding whip, she remarked that I should be flogged naked. Standing at my left side she ordered me to take off my jacket and waistcoat. I hesitated and fumbled. Looking round she gave me a touch of the whip on my bare legs. If the birch smarted, that vicious little thing bit like fury. I yelled and clapped my hands to my legs, but only to get them lashed also. She went on until, in desperation, I tore off my jacket and waistcoat.
'Now your shirt! Quick!'
Up went the whip, her eyes sparkling savagely. This time, without an instant's hesitation, and without thinking about it, I whipped off my shirt more quickly than ever I had done before. And there I was, perfectly naked before her, red and overwhelmed with shame and smarting with pain. She leisurely regarded me, evidently intending not to spare me a single pang. She moved her hand along my back and shoulders, remarking that she thought the whip would mark my skin easily, and, by way of experiment, she gave me several more smart cuts with it on various parts of my body, each stroke causing me intense anguish. I cried out, and implored her to desist; but she merely gloated the more over my torture.
'Now,' she at length said, 'your bottom must be put in a proper position for me to punish.'
'Oh, Mademoiselle, forgive me! Oh, I am sorry for my disobedience and folly! Do forgive me!..'
'I never forgive! Lie down on your face.'
I saw there was nothing for it but compliance; so, with a sigh like a gasp of despair, I obeyed her. She placed her hand on the back of my head and pressed it into the bolster. The wide bench separated my thighs, pressing my most sensitive parts cruelly. She fixed a strap round my neck and passed it under the bench, placed another round the seat and my waist, and lastly fastened my hands together underneath the bench. My posture and the soft bolster (which soon became pleasantly warm) gave me a certain voluptuous feeling soon, however, to be dispelled by my sufferings.
'Now we shall see whether a girl can properly punish a boy's bottom!!' How she dwelt on the shameful word! 'Whether a youth is or is not to be subject to feminine discipline and rule and to his governess.' And, putting her hand from behind between my legs, she caught hold of what I was ashamed she should know I possessed, and pulled it about until I confessed to myself that I was her slave body and soul. Then, for the first time, was revealed to me the secret source whence woman's power springs. A keen sense of the difference of sex was communicated to me through her taper fingers. Her skirts caused me an electric shock each time they touched me. The feminine characteristics of her form, as she stood over me, became indelibly stamped upon my being, and acquired for her and for the rest of her sex an absolute dominion from that moment over me. A look or the rustle of petticoat is enough for me now. At either I tremble.
This sway was established and emphasized by the cruel punishment of the most secret portions of my body which I then underwent at her hands. Regularly and deliberately was the birching given; the methodical administration of which I could not interrupt. I protested and swore; but I had to learn how cruelly women can punish-how relentlessly they slake their vengeance-what a lust they have to satisfy, when they have a male at their mercy, to deal unmitigated torture out to him. How they exercise that dominion over him which is so real, although often unacknowledged. Men are not subject to these motives and never punish so cruelly as women.
Only once was my torture stayed. Mademoiselle had flogged me from my right side and from my left. My sobs had given place to screams and yells; but Mademoiselle said she should insist on my taking punishment quietly, at which threat I gave a delirious laugh. She calmly opened a drawer, and took out a plum-shaped piece of wood with a leather loop at its thickest end, through which loop she slipped one of her scented handkerchiefs. Then she forced the plug into my mouth, and tied the ends of the handkerchief tightly behind my neck. I was nearly choked, and effectually gagged. Perfectly indifferent to my sufferings, she resumed the punishment, merely remarking that I should have ten minutes more of it for making the gagging necessary.
When the ten minutes had expired there came an interval when the strokes, which had fallen with the even regularity and swing of a pendulum, the swing of which I had ascertained to the fraction of a second, ceased. I hoped it was over. I could not express the hope in words, so I groaned. Mademoiselle had been whipping me across both ways. She now came to the top of the bench at my right, daintily lifted her skirts, and put her right leg across me. Then, almost sitting upon my neck and smothering me with her petticoats, the back of which fell to the floor over my head, she proceeded to flog me lengthwise. She was looking down my back, and I knew that behind me the wardrobe mirror reflected my open thighs. Although the strap had been loosened I could scarcely move my head; when I tried to do so, however, she pressed me more closely. I can give no idea of what I felt at my novel posture underneath a young woman. She now struck lengthwise, more slowly but more viciously; the strokes cut like hot iron, and, as the pliant ends of the birch hit what lay between my thighs, I felt I was being murdered. The anguish was maddening, and if I recollected what she could see by lifting her eyes to the glass, it was with utter recklessness to the exposure.
'There, Master Julian, that's enough for the first time. I think I have whipped you pretty severely. You will not care to set me at defiance again,' she complacently remarked, throwing herself into a great saddle-back easy chair, apparently somewhat exhausted.
I lay utterly prostrate, powerless to speak even had I not been gagged; all my strength was gone, and I smarted as though I had been scared with red hot wires. Presently she unstrapped and ungagged me, I could scarcely move. I was in a cataleptic or comatose state and only semi-conscious.
