Today, with the advent of the "Women's Lib" movement, few people think back to the arduous hardships and dangers which women encountered in their valiant fight to win equality or at least the right to vote with their male superiors on the issues concerning our nation. In England, the word "suffragette" was used contemptuously, and even one of the editors of the staid London Times caustically suggested that all those females imprudent and
"immoral" enough to march upon the streets with their banners demanding equal voting privileges ought to be taken to a prison or a correctional home and there soundly birched to reach their "seat of wisdom." And indeed there were many young women and girls and even mature matrons who, from time to time, were hustled off by constables in vans amid the jeers of the populace and often whipped by sadistic prison matrons who considered their conduct as sinful and obscene, indeed, as if they had been prostitutes caught plying the ancient trade.
The history of women's suffrage in the United States, however, begins on July 19, 1848, in a Methodist chapel in Seneca Falls, New York. There, a handful of nervous but determined housewives rose before a crowd of farmers and their families and read aloud this startling manifesto: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man towards woman, having in direct object the establishment of absolute tyranny over her." The manifesto continued as it itemized the social and legal disabilities women suffered under. And finally, it challenged women, for the first time in history, to rise up and fight for their rights and in a dozen vehement resolutions, it listed concrete demands.
One of these, inserted by a young housewife named Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was a demand for the right to vote. That demand seemed so presumptuous that it threw the convention into an uproar. And yet this right to vote became the heated issue in the crusade of women's rights, highlighting the better part of a century. It was not until 1920 that the women of America gained the right to vote with the Nineteenth Amendment, called the "Anthony" Amendment after the indestructible Susan B. Anthony.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Brownell Anthony were inseparable friends for more than fifty years, and they, more than any other women in our nation, were responsible for suffrage as we know it today. They did not live to see their victory, but they perhaps would still protest against the highhanded tyranny which man still takes against the weaker female, and perhaps all the more violently because he fears the "Women's Lib" movement for its threat to his continued and complacent reign over the female as his slave-chattel.
This story, then, tells of the hardships, the ridicule, and the cruelties which many valiant young women endured for the sake of equality and the right to vote. Though fictional, it does not stray far from the truth of historical record, for woman's overlord, the satyr-like and sadistic male, seized upon this courageous crusade as a pretext for punishing overt rebellion against his power.
CHAPTER ONE
The year was 1907, a year of peace and prosperity throughout the world, yet only seven years away from World War I which was destined to destroy thousands upon thousands of the young men of England, France, Germany and Russia and the United States, and yet bring no global peace in its wake. It was the year in which 1,285,349 immigrants arrived in the United States, the highest number in any year of this young nation's history. In this same year, the dreadnaught era began for the U.S. Navy with the laying of keels of 20,000-ton ships. It was the year in which the Larkin Building was erected in Buffalo, New York, striking a new note in industrial architecture and designed by the genius of Frank Lloyd Wright. In this same year, Albert Abraham Michelson became the first American ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics, for his study of light. On February 26th, General George W. Goethals was appointed chief engineer in charge of the construction of the Panama Canal.
In March of this same year, thoughts of prosperity temporarily fled when the New York Stock Market suddenly crashed in the "silent panic." But two months later, New Yorkers had something of more novel excitement to talk about, when the first taxis in the United States were shipped in from Paris. And in August, the Standard Oil Company of Indiana was found guilty of receiving rebates in violation of the Elkins Law of 1903 and fined nearly thirty million dollars by Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landiswho was destined to become commissioner of baseball and, twelve years later, to ban for life the "Black Sox" who had arranged with gamblers to lose games in the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.
But on this sunny late May afternoon, it is quite doubtful that pretty Eleanor Hartley of Albany, New York was conscious of the historic import of this or any other year. A tall, self-conscious, light-brown -haired young lady of twenty, she stood in her father's study with her face crimson and her hazel eyes huge with consternation as Matthias J. Hartley, owner of the largest greengrocer shop in the state's capital, delivered his ultimatum:
"Your mother and I, young lady, have had just enough of your scandalous carryings-on. And now this! What do you think our neighbors are going to say to us each time they see you? Here you are, about to go into your senior year in college, and a private college too which cost me a pretty penny, I can tell you. And then Mrs. Braunet writes me that she is considering suspending you for your unladylike conduct. You know, young lady, perhaps I shouldn't be quite so angry with you if this was a matter of your going out with a young man against the rules of the school, but what you have done is far more immoral and shameless!"
"But, Papa," the scarlet-faced beauty stammering protested, "that's not fair! I believe in the cause, and I think it's shameful, since you want to use that word, that men won't give women the right to vote. Women are every bit as smart as men, and-"
"And that's quite enough! Lucy, are you going to stand there and listen to this incredible daughter of ours try to change the nature of the world? Not content with getting up in class and talking like this, she and a few other misguided females-whose parents, I certainly trust, will deal out appropriate punishment as I intend you to deal out to her-take it on themselves to walk around the campus of that dignified institution with placards boldly urging the vote for women!"
"I know, dear," Lucy Hartley, a gray-haired, sweet-faced and long-suffering matron of forty-two, tried to placate her husband. "To be honest with you, Matthias, we sent Eleanor to college so that she would learn to use her mind, and-"
"Well, I can see it was an error. We should have married her off to that Dobkins boy. He's an insurance salesman now in his father's firm, and prospering very nicely, thank you. And unless I'm much mistaken, he's going to be engaged to Pearl Seeters, and she isn't half as good-looking nor does she come from as good a family as our own girl. But it's her own fault. Such damnable nonsense I've never heard. When the government, young lady, decides that women are smart enough to have the right to vote, you may be certain they will get it. Meanwhile, you are going to be severely punished for the way you've behaved in college, and I shall write Mrs. Braunet that it has been administered, so that when you go back, she will know that we at least are parents who intend to take steps to correct the misbehavior of our children!"
Eleanor Hartley turned crimson and gasped as her little fists clenched and her shoulders straightened. "Oh no, Papa, that's too much! I'm a grown young woman, not a child anymore. You haven't any right to punish me, not that way."
"The last time I gave you the strap, young lady, you were fifteen, it's true. But now you're acting like a six-year-old, and I assure you that in this household naughty children will still get the strap. However, out of decency, I shall have your mother administer the thrashing. Lucy, take that wayward girl upstairs to your bedroom and give her a good dose. As for you, Miss, I advise you to submit docilely, as otherwise I shall take serious steps to send you to a correctional institution where they will feed you on bread and water and whip you soundly at least once a week. Now get along with you!"
"No! I won't! It's infamous, it's shameful!" Eleanor Hartley cried out tearfully, horrified by the sentence which her father had just pronounced upon her. "I shall run away from home, I shall, Papa, if you have this awful thing done to me!"
"And now you're threatening me, are you, Miss?" Her father strode up to her, slapped her face furiously until she cried out in pain. "Now I will attend to you, and with your mother holding you so that you shan't escape a single spank! Help me with her, Lucy! Up the stairs with this insolent little baggage!"
Lucy Hartley, cowed by her husband as she had been throughout her married life, had no recourse but to obey. She grasped one of her daughter's wrists while he seized the other, and between the two of them they half-dragged, half-led the sobbing, indignantly protesting beauty up the stairs towards her destined thrashing....
Let it not be misunderstood, Lucy didn't want to beat her daughter, but her husband had ordered it and so it was inevitable that she would have to do as he asked. She always did as she was told, for there was nothing else that she could do. In a way she wanted to listen to her daughter's revolutionary talk, but she knew that she must strap her daughter and give her a sound spanking.
Lucy took the girl to her room and told her to sit on the bed. Then her husband fetched the strap and gave it to his wife. "Now, Lucy, you must show her that she has no right to talk to her parents that way that she has. You must make her regret the fact that she even considered such talk. Her behind will be warmed by a good thrashing and perhaps she will learn an important lesson. I certainly hope that she does."
Poor Eleanor was shamed and humiliated by the inevitable treatment that she was about to get. She knew that there was no way out, and she thought that if her father had not stood in the room to watch the punishment, she might have been able to appeal to her mother's sensitivities. Surely, she thought her own mother would understand why women ought to have the right to vote.
There was only one thing wrong with this sort of reasoning. Lucy had been for too long under the strict control of her husband. Why she had even been spanked by him. If she ever did anything that seemed to smack of independence or defiance she was sure to be slapped if not spanked.
There had been the time when she had decided to try and smoke a cigarette. She was curious as to what it would be like and so she had purchased a pack from the corner store. Obviously the clerk had reported this action to her husband, for she was punished that night for trying to do such a daring thing.
The unfortunate thing was that she never even got a chance to try a cigarette. Her husband kept them for himself and soundly beat her ass. He had made her straddle his lap while he soundly brought his hand down on her bottom.
Now these thoughts flashed through Lucy's mind and she knew that she would have to do as her husband had told her. She picked the strap up and pushed her daughter's skirts over Eleanor's back, exposing the bloomers that her daughter was wearing.
Then she brought the strap down with a resounding smack. Eleanor cried out and then bit her lip. She felt sorry for her mother and tried to understand why she was being treated so. She knew that her mother had no recourse but to do what she was commanded to do. She wanted to tell her mother that someday things would change and that men would not be in the same superior situation that they were in now.
She wanted to comfort her mother and let her know that she didn't hold the beating against her. Eleanor understood, and even though it was quite painful, certainly she wouldn't die from the strapping.
The thick leather strap came down hard and fast on her ass, and Eleanor trembled. She bit her lips and tried to endure the pain. She didn't want to be treated like this, but she would put up with it. The spanking wasn't going to change her mind about anything. She would still hold the same views, no matter what they did to her. She believed that women should have certain rights, like the right to vote and no amount of beating was going to change her mind.
Whack! Whack! the strap crashed down on her body and she tried to keep from screaming. The pain seemed to sear her nerve endings, seemed to inflame her body. Ten times the belt came down on her and ten times she shivered and sobbed.
Tears ran down her face and she didn't want to have any more beatings. Her father told her mother to spank her ten more times with the strap, but to take it slower so that the daughter would really know what pain was.
"Eleanor, you must get rid of any ideas about the superiority of women. Men have had and will always have the position of power over women. They are the rightful masters and women are second-place to them. They will never have the right to vote, because they weren't meant to vote, not meant to be in positions of power. Can you just imagine what would happen if a woman was prime minister? "
The blasts of swats continued to beat down on her ass, and the girl wriggled about. She didn't want anyone to know that she was almost to the breaking point. The pain riddled her body and she wanted to cry out.
Finally the ordeal was over and she was released from the spanking. Then she was told to go to her room and that she would not have any meal that night. In shame and humiliation Eleanor went to her room, but thoughts that eventually something would happen and that women would have the rights that they were meant to have stayed with her and comforted her.
At about the same time Eleanor Hartley was being condemned by her father to be spanked by her mother for the unheard of sin of being a suffragette, a similar scene was taking place in the two-story white stone house of Chester Farnow, squire of Cumberland, in that pleasant, wooded countryside about a hundred miles south of London where Richard II, the king accused of murdering the two little princes who might have replaced him on the throne of England, had been defeated in the final battle which decided his destiny-the one in which he was alleged to have called out, "My kingdom for a horse!"
Chester Farnow was a man of fifty, very bald, but with side whiskers and a beard, portly and ruddy-faced, a condition which his doctor ascribed to downing a full bottle of port during dinner. His father had left him this lavish estate as well as a small but prosperous metalworking factory near Manchester. When he was twenty-eight, he had married winsome Meredith Culpepper, the already buxom, brown-haired daughter of a wealthy shop owner, who had brought him a considerable dowry and a ripely voluptuous body for fucking. However, Chester Farnow had been upreared in the classical mid-Victorian tradition which led him to believe that no "decent woman" could possibly share a man's animal desires. To be sure, he had dutifully performed his conjugal rights, and the results were Gillian, his spirited nineteen-year-old daughter, and Perry, a precocious, sickly, and irritating boy of twelve. However, for the gratification of his real desires, he discreetly visited Mrs. Dulcy Wortham, a milliner who catered to the gentry and who lived in a little cottage on the other side of the Cumberland. He was not, however, tactless enough to visit that cottage because too many people in the district knew him and would recognize his carriage if it were drawn up in front of the widow's residence. So, on pretext of visiting the factory every now and then, he would leave on a Thursday afternoon for Manchester-or so he told his trusting wife-and meet Mrs. Dulcy Wortham at the White Horse Inn in that thriving industrial city, from which they would ultimately repair to a little furnished flat which she maintained under her maiden name and for which he paid the rent.
His wife, Meredith, forty-six, had not yet learned of this convenient arrangement, but she could not have cared less. As carefully brought up as he, or even more so, because she was a female, Meredith had been told by her mother that it was her duty to submit to her husband's carnal embraces for the purpose of giving him an heir. Indeed, after the birth of Gillian, she had been quite willing to forsake all the rest of her concubinage to him, for he was corpulent even as a young man, inordinately strong, and quite inconsiderate once he had his prick imbedded inside her tight sheath. However, since it was a girl, they tried again, and over the ensuing years, much to her despair, their efforts seemed doomed to failure, until at last Perry became the fruit of her loins. She had prayed that Chester would not impose on her thereafter, and her prayers were answered, thanks to the Widow Wortham.
At the moment, Chester Farnow's mind was certainly not on his mistress but on the alarming contents of a note which the postman had this morning brought and which was signed by none other than Emily Proctor, the gray-haired, dour spinster head of the academy for young ladies, which bore her austere name. It had been his wife who had insisted that Gillian be spared the plebian rigors of a public school (of course, he himself had seen to it that Perry was sent to the most expensive and elite private boys' school), and as for Gillian herself, she was quite happy to be away from home-though the school was only nine miles away. He rarely showed affection for anyone except Perry, to whom he gave outrageously expensive presents, and whom he was always lecturing on the future of a dutiful son and heir. For him, thus, Gillian hardly existed, because she was a girl and could in no way bring esteem to his name.
His thick brows arched and his forehead creased with anger as he read the note for the tenth time. It was couched in Emily Proctor's most euphemistic verbiage, but its contents left no doubt that his mature daughter had disgraced herself and hence him in turn, as the result of a composition she had turned in for an assignment in her Civics and Government class. It appeared that Gillian Farnow espoused the shockingly brazen doctrine of one Emmaline G. Pankhurst, that eccentric young woman who had the audacity to think that the female should have the vote. It was unthinkable that the Farnow name-for Gillian still unwed and unbetrothed, still bore be so besmirched by such a nonsensical and even immoral action. He had never yet laid hands upon his daughter, nor would he do so on this occasion, for it was against all the tenets of his upbringing. However, he would see to it that Meredith sent back an answer authorizing Miss Proctor to apply corporal punishment. He knew for a fact that on serious occasions the proprietress of this young ladies' academy resorted to the time-honored method of correction. Indeed, Gillian herself had, only a month ago, related to her mother in shocked and horrified tones how a certain Jane Pontifex, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a London barrister, had been obliged to bend over her headmistress' desk and tender her aristocratic bottom to the birch, for having committed the unspeakable crime of sneaking a "pony" into an examination.
Having decided his daughter's fate, Chester Farnow regaled himself with a glass of port from the cut-glass decanter on the sideboard, belched mildly, then strode to the door and pulled the bell rope. A moment later, Arthur, the dignified, gray-haired butler of the household, entered the study to learn his master's wishes, which were that Mrs. Farnow be requested to attend him without a moment's delay.
When Meredith Farnow heard her husband's decree, she voiced her first protest in twenty-three years of drably passive marital obedience. "But it's unthinkable, Chester, at her age! She has never in her life been punished, and to have it done at the school seems barbarous!"
"Madame, what she has dared to do is equally barbarous in my opinion," he irritatedly countered. "Miss Proctor's note indicates how upset she is, and that she expects us, as Gillian's parents, to inflict some appropriate punishment. I have no intention, Madame, of demeaning myself by thrashing that misguided girl, and I am certain that with your sympathies as they are, you would not lift a finger to correct her. Besides, I have no doubt it will be inflicted in the privacy of Miss Proctor's chambers, so that your daughter's modesty will at least be spared. You will therefore write a note at once, which I shall have Arthur take into town, authorizing Miss Proctor to take what measures she deems best."
"Please, Chester, I beg of you, don't do this to Gillian. You have already estranged her-"
"I estranged her, Madame?" His bewhiskered face turned redder still with annoyance. "That daughter of yours has been a hoyden since she was old enough to reason. Had she been a boy, I myself should have thrashed her a dozen times over for her impertinence and her forgetfulness of the station in life she bears. I have made my decision, and you will do me the kindness of abiding by it."
And so, reluctantly, yet obediently, Meredith Farnow wrote a note which was to condemn her russet-haired, vivacious daughter not only to her first experience of corporal punishment, but also to the kind of martyrdom which many intrepid young suffragettes had already suffered and were still to suffer until the year of 1928.
CHAPTER TWO
The same evening, across the seas, found spirited Eleanor Hartley enduring the ignominy of a sound spanking at her mother's lap, and condemned lovely Gillian Farnow to the birch at the hands of the school principal. At the same time, there was taking place in a modest little house on Grosvenor Road, on the West side of London, a serious domestic altercation between Sidney Carson, a prosperous wheelwright, and his handsome second wife, Delia, and his daughter by his first dead wife, Jennifer.
Jennifer Carson was eighteen, and she was very definitely in disgrace. She had cut one of her college classes to attend a rally on behalf of women's suffrage. There had been about two hundred girls and women at this rally, and they had marched towards Kensington Gardens to wave their banners and placards and to cry out towards the palace that women should be equal with men and given the right to decide their destiny by voting. They had been routed by constables, at least a dozen had been arrested, and Jennifer had very nearly been one of these. But Sidney Carson and his wife had learned of their daughter's misconduct when Mrs. Letty Hershaw, the neighborhood gossip, had chanced to be shopping in that area and had seen Jennifer escape pursuit by a fat, breathless constable who had tried to arrest her with the others and put her into the van that would be taken to Bow Street Station for charging with committing a public nuisance, disorderly conduct, and such other charges as, in Mrs. Hershaw's opinion, such disgraceful females deserved. Oh, to be sure, she had nothing but the highest regard for Jennifer, but certainly she was positive that dear Mr. and Mrs. Carson would want to know how their only daughter behaved.
Sidney Carson admired his daughter, though he had always regretted that Dorothea, his delicate blonde first wife, had not been able to give him a son. There were hopes that Delia, twenty-nine, buxom and dark brown-haired, might remedy that situation. Only this morning she had had the vapors, and after eight months of marriage, there was every reason to hope that this was a sign that she was in the family way. But his joy at this news had been darkened by the malicious gossip of Letty Hershaw; and Delia herself, who had no great love for Jennifer, was quick to seize upon this gossip as another proof of his daughter's untrustworthiness.
"Sidney, I've told you repeatedly, this notion of sending your girl to a private college is absolutely out of place. What that young lady needs is a good thrashing, and then being packed off to a business school where perhaps they'll teach her manners and discipline enough so she can go out and earn a few pounds to pay her keep," Delia had begun.
Jennifer Carson, slim, her black hair primly set in a bun at the back of her head, protested: "Father, you know perfectly well that I want to be a teacher. It seems to me that someone who is going to teach the young should take part in progress."
"You call that progress, you impertinent minx?" Delia Carson hissed. "Women being given the vote, indeed! It's the most ridiculous thing IVe ever heard of. If that's the sort of nonsense you're going to teach children, you'd be better off marrying some sensible young fellow who will give you a few of your own to look after, is what I think. Sidney, look at her shirtwaist, and that dirty skirt! She looks like a slattern, and it was just her good luck that the constable didn't arrest her. How would you like it if she had to appear in Bow Street Court tomorrow with all those other hussies?"
"They're not hussies, and you haven't any right to talk about them like that!" Jennifer retorted hotly. Her lovely oval face was flushed with anger, for she knew perfectly well that Delia detested her. The feeling was mutual. She could understand how her father had married this sensual, unintelligent creature, who happened to be a mere shopgirl working in a dry goods shop, and whom he had met quite by accident one afternoon when he had stepped into the doorway to be out of the sudden downpour of a thundershower. Delia Carson, for her part, having had not too much schooling of her own, resented what she called Jennifer's "fancy airs," and she had been itching ever since she first set foot in this house to give her stepdaughter a good bottom-warming.
"Now, Delia, you must realize, after all, that Jennifer has a right to her own opinions. She's eighteen, and at least she uses her mind," Sidney Carson placatingly interposed.
His sensual young wife, sixteen years his junior, gave him a contemptuous look. Whereas his first wife had stirred the protective instinct in him, Delia knew perfectly well that her hold over Sidney Carson existed solely in bed, and that she had caught this mild-mannered middle-aged man at a time when he yearned for the fleshpots which he had never known with her predecessor. She also knew exactly how to make him come around to her way, which she was fond of boasting of to her mother, now fifty and enjoying her declining years in a rest home in Bloombury. Delia's mother had suffered from almost paralyzing arthritis for the past several years, and her dead husband had left her enough money to afford the luxury of a private home. Delia, like a dutiful daughter, visited her once a week, and by now her mother was well acquainted with the characteristics and personality of her son-in-law and Jennifer. And she had advised Delia that the girl was extremely undisciplined and should have a good smack bottom every now and then.
"Don't you realize, Sidney," Delia exasperatedly argued, "that it was only luck that kept your fine daughter from being seen by everyone in the neighborhood being put into a police van and taken to the station? And she'd have been booked to appear in court with all those other ridiculous creatures! Do you mean to tell me you're going to let her get off scot-free? She's my daughter now, too, you know, Sidney, and I say she needs a thrashing."
"Now, Delia, there's no need for that," Sidney mildly protested, while Jennifer's face turned a fiery red and she stared at Delia Carson with indignant hostility. "I'm sure Jennifer won't get mixed up in anything like this again, will you, dear?"
"Father, I happen to believe in the equality of women. That's why I'm going to college instead of clerking in some wretched store for a starvation wage. You know yourself that women aren't paid properly when they work," Jennifer defiantly riposted.
"There! You see, Sidney? Now she's attacking the entire system with her childish ideas," Delia Carson complained. "You're wasting the tuition fees of that college of hers. They're always teaching her these outlandish notions. She'll disgrace you before much longer, and you know it. I say, let me thrash her, if you won't!"
"Oh no!" Jennifer gasped, putting a hand to her mouth and recoiling, as Delia Carson gave her a venomous look.
"I say no, Delia, and that's an end of it," mild-mannered Sidney Carson declared. "Now, my dear-" turning to Jennifer, "why don't you go freshen up and change your clothes, and we'll have supper directly."
But the storm that had been brewing in this modest little cottage was to burst forth again. About ten o'clock, after Jennifer had gone to her room and spent the evening perusing her schoolbooks, Delia entered her husband's bedroom. She had taken special pains to make herself attractive to her middle-aged husband. She had quickly bathed, applied a good deal of perfume to her nape, her armpits, and the insides of her thighs, and she had put on a short silk chemise whose hems just reached the middle of her thighs, and a robe. Knocking softly at his door, she had slipped in, turned the key in the lock and then let the robe fall to the floor as she stared coquettishly at him with one of those sensual smiles by which she knew so well how to incite his newly burning desires.
Sidney Carson was in his nightshirt, and was reading a novel by Dickens. He had believed that the argument had so angered his handsome young wife that there was no point in hoping she would share his bed tonight. His eyes widened when he saw her in the chemise, which molded out her big, widely spaced titties, her lush haunches, while her milky white thighs and calves were left bare. At once he felt his prick harden, and he put the book aside and swung his legs out of bed with a hoarse "Delia, darling!"
"Oh no, Sidney, not so fast," she teased, moving out of the way as he reached for her. "I want to cuddle, but I'm not going to do it until you've come to your senses about that girl of yours. In fact, I've decided. I shan't go to bed with you any more until you at last give me some authority over her. Do you know, she hates me. Don't say anything. You know it's true. Just because I'm much younger than she expected a second wife to be, she's treated me snippily ever since I came into this house. Well, I shan't take it any more, do you understand? And she's never once called me 'Mother' either."
"But, my dear, you're making a mountain out of a molehill," he protested, his voice trembling with desire as his eyes fixed on the swelling mounds of her boobies.
"No. It's you who are, Sidney dear. That girl has never once had a thrashing, and she's earned one today, several times over. One of these days, Mrs. Hershaw will be calling you to tell you that your fine college student has been arrested for trying to be a suffragette. Don't you think your customers will read about it in the paper? Don't you have any concern for me, either? I have to live in this neighborhood and talk to all these gossipy women, and what a juicy morsel it will be for them when your daughter appears in court!"
"Oh, come on, Delia, that's a good girl, let's not talk about it any more," he groaned, and again he reached for her.
"No. I shan't go to bed with you again until you tell me I'm free to punish her just as if I were her real mother. You owe me that mark of respect, Sidney. I don't feel secure in this house one bit, I don't mind telling you. Oh yes, you say you love me, and you think you can get round me in bed, don't you, just like a man? Well, you won't have a chance again until you give me authority over that headstrong young vixen." With this, she turned around, put her hand on the knob of the door, a little smile curving her lips because she was gambling that the lush desirability of her body would overcome his scruples, and she was right again.
"Wait-Delia-don't leave now-I-I want you so-"
"You know my terms, Sidney."
"All right, then. Now come to bed, that's a darling!" he impatiently exclaimed.
"And you give me permission to thrash her?"
"Yes, but I don't want to know about it, I don't want to be here when it happens. It'll be between you and her."
"Well, you really are a coward, aren't you, Sidney. It'll be the making of that girl, I assure you. All right, you've kept your part of the bargain, I'll keep mine!" With this, Delia slowly and enticingly drew off the chemise, and she could see the effect it had on her husband at once. His prick thrust stiffly against the nightshirt at once, and she came forward slowly, her big heavy boobies jiggling, to put her hands at the back of his neck and to arch her body forward till her furry cunt rubbed against his turgid ramrod.
"Delia, you sweet, teasing wench, I want you," he panted.
"Are you going to let me have my say-so, then, Sidney? Otherwise, you shan't," she taunted him, her thumb pads rubbing the back of his neck as she stared mockingly into his flushed face and kept rubbing her cunt against his swollen prick.
"All right-just don't let me know about it-and you'll have it."
"That's my lover," she cooed, swiftly complacent, and with treatment-Delia, dammit, come to bed," he groaned.
"That's my lover," she cooed, swiftly complaisant, and with her own hands she began to tug off his nightshirt, laughing softly with triumph as his hands grabbed for her big boobies and his mouth crushed against the valley between them, drinking in the sweaty perfume of her skin in his middle-aged intoxication.
She let herself be pulled down onto the bed, and then he mounted over her. Swiftly, Delia reached for him, her bare legs clasping over his wiry ass, and he felt himself thrust to the depths inside her already lubricated cunt hole. He began to hump her vigorously, while she groaned in semblance of passion. But her passion was distilled, and at the back of her mind it waited until she should have her reckoning with that snippy young bitch! Nonetheless, Sidney Carson did not know how insincere this seeming ardor was. Oh, it was ardor, but not really for him. Insensate to all else except the feel of her warm cunt against his digging prick, of his hands squeezing her heaving boobies, of his mouth crushing hers with avid kisses, he fucked his wife, rejoicing in his newly found virility. It would be at the cost of lovely Jennifer, but he was now the slave of passion and all else mattered little. It was midnight and Sidney Carson was snoring, a beatific smile on his face, which was lax with satiety. She had let him fuck her twice, and he had been jubilant and proud as a boy with his first conquest, for she had praised his manhood, told him she had never known such a satyr, such a lover. And now, clad in her flannel bathrobe only, she moved quietly down the hall to where Jennifer slept, opened the door softly, then locked it behind her.
She had provided for this encounter. In the pocket of her flannel robe were several cords and a handkerchief with which she meant to tie and gag her stepdaughter. Jennifer lay on her side, and perhaps some presentiment, even in her subconscious mind, warned her, for she whimpered a little in a kind of bad dream. Delia Carson stood looking down at her, her lips curling in a mocking, cruel smile. It was perfect. The little bitch had cuddled up with her hands in front of her face. Swiftly she drew out one of the cords, and before Jennifer could waken, and realize what was happening, had tied it tightly around those slim wrists.
"What-what-Delia, what are you doing?" Jennifer awoke with a startled cry.
But instantly her stepmother thrust the handkerchief into her mourn, and then she rolled the girl onto her back and ripped away the nightshift, exposing the olive-sheened skin of a beautifully supple back, deeply hollowed, with upstanding full, oval-shaped ass cheeks, and a wide, deepening crevice between them which led to both Jennifer's virgin orifices. Then, clambering onto the bed and kneeling on the girl's shoulders, mashing Jennifer's pear-shaped titties down into the bed and almost suffocating the young victim, she took another cord and knotted it to apply it vigorously and relentlessly to Jennifer's wriggling bottom.
"There-there-and there, you little bitch! Snub me, will you? I'll teach you how to behave in public, until you learn to call me Mother, that I will! Wait, I've something better than this cord for you. I'll use a slipper. Just like a child, you're going to get it, your big naked bottom smacked!"
For a moment she got off the bed, while Jennifer twisted onto her back and sobbed and tried to twist her bound hands free, but in vain. Rummaging in the closet, Delia Carson found one of her stepdaughter's bedroom slippers and, brandishing it by the heel, returned to the charge. Forcing the girl to roll over again onto her belly, she proceeded to thrash her jouncy naked bottom cheeks until they turned a furious scarlet, and Jennifer's cried could be heard through the improvised gag. Kicking her legs wildly, trying to roll this way and that, she was helpless as now, again, her stepmother enthusiastically sat upon her back and continued to smack the sole of the leather shoe down upon those swollen ass cheeks.
When at last Jennifer was nearly fainting with pain and only inarticulate groans could be heard, Delia relented. "There!" she panted, casting aside the shoe. "Maybe that'll teach you a lesson. Maybe from now on, you won't be so high and mighty and think you can wind your father around your little finger! I've got permission from him to whip you whenever you need it, and you can just remember that. And the next time, the very next time, you look sideways at me, I'll strip you bare-arse in front of him and give you the rod on your naked arse to the very blood, my girl!" And then, triumphantly, she opened the door and closed it upon the sobbing, half-fainting young beauty who had just endured her first expiation as a suffragette.
One of the dozen young women arrested in the fracas which had seen Jennifer Carson nearly arrested by the constable was Edith Norridge, an intrepid, auburn-haired young woman of twenty-four, who was an ardent suffragette. Edith had been told by a constable to move away from the Kensington Gardens, and she had told him to mind his own business, adding, "Just because you're a man, you can't bully women much longer. Our day is coming!" When he had again remonstrated with her, she had turned and struck him with her parasol. Swearing under his breath, he had wrested the parasol away and seized her by the elbow, dragging her out of the crowd of sympathizers toward the paddy-wagon which had just drawn up, its two big white Percherons snorting because the driver had laid on the whip to quicken their speed through the crowded, narrow London streets.
"Let go of me, you fat bully!" Edith Norridge had cried, and again tried to strike him, this time with her fist.
"I'll see that you smart for that," he had growled, as he shoved her up the steps into the waiting arms of a sergeant of police. "Put the irons on her, Dugan. She's a wild one," he had called.
Indeed, Edith Norridge was a wild one. Embattled and defiant, she had resisted her uncle's attempts to marry her off by turning down suitor after suitor. Her parents had died when she was twenty, a year short of her majority, and Harold Chentley, a fat, bald, fifty-two-year-old solicitor had become her next of kin and hence her guardian. Older than her father and a distinct reprobate, Harold Chentley had, if the truth be known, incestuous designs on his lovely niece's person. He had never married, but had had numerous liaisons, usually with cheap women like waitresses and chorines. His current inamorata was a young woman of twenty-seven, Nellie Fortescue (which last was probably an assumed stage name), who was an assistant in a vaudeville act in a cheap theater in Soho, in which she wore tights and black silk stockings.
Harold Chentley had always had a kind of inferiority complex with women, so when he became well-to-do as a result of his chicanery-for he managed to ingratiate himself with the underworld of London and was retained by some of their most powerful men to represent their henchmen in the courts-he proceeded to satisfy his sexual longings by visiting prostitutes and by keeping lower-class girls for a few months as his mistress. He was niggardly, and his sexual proclivities often frightened some of his temporary paramours, for he was addicted to whipping. Indeed, Nellie Fortescue was about ready to serve notice, especially in view of the way he had treated her a week ago at their last rendezvous. He had tied her hand and foot, posed her kneeling against the back of a Chesterfield, lowered her tights and proceeded to give her a dozen cuts with a malacca cane, and then had buggered her, after he had made her beg for it by threatening to give her another dozen over the ridged, welted, shuddering globes of her spacious pale white-skinned behind.
Edith Norridge had, like many girls of her class, been sent to private schools, including a girls' finishing school which was the equivalent of college, and from which she was graduated with honors at her twenty-first birthday. Her uncle had persuaded her to come live with him, and he had waited impatiently for several years now for the chance to enjoy her favors, for she had turned into a stunningly beautiful, vibrant young woman. Her auburn hair was done in an upsweep with curls and ringlets at the sides of her head and over the middle of her forehead. She was about five feet seven inches in height, with a cameo-like face, high-set, closely spaced round boobies as firm and nearly as large as ripe cantaloupes, long, sleek legs, and a voluptuous behind, which excited his lustful admiration-though of course he could only conjecture its contours.
After her graduation from college, Edith Norridge had gone to work as a typist and secretary for an elderly widow who was involved in the suffragette movement, a Mrs. Maude Torrington. One of her best friends at the private college, Betty Parkins, had spoken in such glowing terms of this wonderful woman and her gallant fight to reduce the disparity between the sexes that Edith, with her keen mind and rational sense, had been intrigued. She had been offered the job and had accepted it, and she had now been at it for two years.
So enthusiastic was she over the fight for the vote for women and with it a kind of symbolic equality between the sexes, that she impatiently turned down many a young man who had matrimonial ideas (as well as others!) in mind. In one sense, Harold Chentley did not mind her aversion to men in the least; the terms of her father's will read that she was not to come into the bulk of her father's estate until her wedding day. And since his own speculations in East Indian Trading Company stock had suffered several reverses over the last year or two, he had been dipping into her legacy and contriving a set of books which, he being a solicitor himself, would stand up in court if it should ever come to that. No, let the dashedly headstrong minx do just as she pleased, it would give him all the more time to help himself to a few more hundred quid or so, which would pay for his fancy women.
But his lust for Edith Norridge's body was beginning to take precedence over his avaricious greed for her inheritance. He lived in a sprawling mansion just off Wickersham Place, in a fancy residential section of West London, and he had an elderly German cook and a valet named Lenny Spurling, a little weasel-faced man in his early forties with a thick Cockney accent, whom he had actually saved from Dartmoor Prison a decade ago and who was his willing tool.
Lenny, indeed, with his connections with the underworld, had aided his lecherous employer many a time in finding some girl who was looking for a "kind gentleman protector." Lenny, as a matter-of-fact, had found Nellie for him, and he had been on the verge of telling the valet to find a replacement for her, since he suspected the girl would not take too kindly at their next reunion to what he had done to her the week before.
He had come back from his office on Great Barrington Road in high good humor, and he found Lenny waiting for him with an eager look on that wizened, sneaky face of his.
"What's up, Lenny, old chap?" he had affably chuckled, as he lit a cheroot.
"It's Miss Edith, sir. My, wait till you hear this, Guv!" the valet sniggered.
"Well, out with it, man. What's she got into this time?"
"She'll be into you, Guv. She's at Bow Street Station. Taken in charge, no less, Guv. And she'll stand trial tomorrow."
"My niece arrested? For what?" Harold Chentley let the cheroot drop from his fat fingers and stared incredulously at his valet.
"Oh yes, Guv! You've not seen the late afternoon sheets, I'll be bound. Here, read for yourself, Guv." The little man produced a folded newspaper and handed it to his employer, who opened it, cleared his throat, and then let out an angry oath.
"What did I tell you, Guv? Bold as you please! She and some other doxies, begging your pardon, Guv, making a fuss down at Kensington Gardens, that they did! Seems like they want to vote with us and they think they're our equals, if that isn't a laugh, eh, Guv? Not only that, she hit a bobby, she did, for fair!"
Harold Chentley let out another even viler oath, and his face was suddenly wreathed in a gloating smile even as he stood, deep in thought. Then he slapped his fat thigh and chuckled, "Damn if she didn't do me a good turn, Lenny! I'm going to give Miss Edith some real looking-after when I get her off tomorrow.
I know Judge Hardwicke. He's an old Eton chum of mine, y'see. Hell remand her in my custody, and I'll have complete surveillance over her. We're going to engage a governess for Miss Edith. Lenny, do you know any women who've been given the sack out of private schools for being just a little too harsh on their pupils?"
The weasel-faced little man scratched his head, lost in perplexity, then he brightened. "Well, it's like a bloomin' stroke duck, you might say, Guv! I do at that, would you believe it? I was talking to old Joe Maxim who runs that pub on Terwilliger Road, I often go there for a pint of bitters when I've a day off, Guv."
"Yes, yes, man. Get to the point!" his employer testily grumbled.
"Well now, Joe was telling me just the other day that there was a fair ruckus over at Dunbury, and they nearly closed down the school. Seems as how this woman who ran it -liked a little smack bottom along with teaching her girls the three R's, y'see, Guv. Fact is, there was quite a fuss made by the parents of those girls who had their arses warmed by her and her teachers. And Joe said that one of those teachers came into his pub just a day or so before. She was looking for a situation, anything, maid or nurse or what have you, Guv."
"Well now, that's dashing! Look here, Lenny, get yourself over to Joe's right now and see if you can find out if he knows where we can find this woman. If he gives you any information, go look her up and tell her I want to see her. Even tonight, no matter how late it is. I've got a capital idea, yes indeed, Lenny. I think Miss Edith is going to have her comeuppance at last"
In his mind he had what he thought was a capital idea. He would have Miss Edith spanked and swatted until she knew what she was about. He wasn't a man to put up with any kind of defiance, no matter what. She would do what she was told to do or not at all.
He pictured the whole thing in his mind, and he couldn't help but smile at the idea. He saw the young girl thrown over the lap of a tough matronly-looking woman. She would be spanked and spanked and spanked, until she was blinded by tears.
He had often hoped that he would be able to have sex with her, but never had he been outright about his desires. In this case, he fantasized about her and what she would do just so that the spanking would stop.
He imagined that she would tell him that she was willing to do anything and he had a good idea in mind what he would like her to do.
He wanted to take her to bed and fill her cunny with his stout pecker. He would screw her until she couldn't move any longer and then he would beat her with his hands until she cried out and asked for more fucking.
That was what he hoped for anyway, although he realized that she wouldn't ask for such things, or at least he doubted that she would. He would have been very pleased to be involved in such sport, for just like any other man he -liked the pleasures of the flesh.
He thought about the spanking and thought about the flesh of her divine ass being wailed by a stromp. He could not help but to be pleased by his mental image of the young girl wailing and kicking her heels as she was spanked.
Dammit, that would teach her a lesson he thought. She would mind herself after that and do as he told her, especially if she knew that the governess would be around for a while. He hoped that Lenny would be able to find the woman and he wondered what she would be like.
He imagined that she would be old, probably in her middle years and portly, with a sour expression on her face. He wondered if she had ever fucked and wondered what she would be like in bed. Of course he had no idea what she would look like, but he hoped that instead of being the dour-looking woman that he imagined that she was young and domineering, but willing to have sex with men.
He pondered his pleasant thoughts for a while more, and he couldn't help but to grin. To hell with these upstarts, who did they think they were anyway. Women were meant for sucking, cooking, fucking, sewing, a purely domestic life.
For a while he hoped that things could be magically taken back to the good old days of caveman times. He saw himself swaggering about in a lion loincloth and beating good-looking women with a club.
Those were the days, he told himself, the days when men and women knew what it was all about. Those were the times when women knew their places.
Now there was all this talk about suffrage and about the right to vote. He scoffed at the idea. How could they begin to think that they would be able to handle such a responsibility. Most of them were educated. The very idea was outrageous, and to his way of thinking it was as if the village idiots thought that they had a right to vote, purely because they were alive.
Only men were meant to vote and there would never be any changing that, at least he hoped not. He didn't want to be around the day that they passed out the vote to women. He wondered about the political changes that would come about if females were allowed the privilege of voting and he could imagine what would happen. Women would be voting for the best-looking man, the best dresser, or worse yet they would vote by blind chance. They would pick a name at random because it sounded cute or some such rot.
The more he thought about it the more he became unnerved. He wanted to have a stiff drink. The very idea was intolerable. No, he would have to put a stop to this, in some manner, and if it was through his rebellious young charge so be it. He would make damn sure of one goal in her life, her pleasure.
She would not want to do anything but please him every chance she got. She would do as she was told or she would get a sound thrashing. To his way of thinking that was the only way with dealing with her. No longer would he try the sensible adult approach, but he would try something which he should have done a long time ago. He would have her punished and treated like a child.
Yes, that was the only way to reach such a creature, and he hoped that Lenny would not fail him and bring him a good governess soon.
CHAPTER THREE
That evening Eleanor was spanked again by her mother. Eleanor Hartley had told herself that she wasn't going to cry or ask for mercy as her father and mother hustled her up the stairs to her mother's bedroom. Lucy Hartley, thoroughly subdued through her twenty-three years of marriage, tried to intimate to her daughter that it wasn't she who had countenanced a whipping. "My poor child," she whispered, "you shouldn't go against your father, it's not right. This wouldn't have happened if you hadn't defied him, and you know I didn't want to punish you this way!" But those words were scant consolation for the light-brown-haired twenty-year-old beauty as Matthias J. Hartley took her inside the bedroom and directed his wife to close the door and make sure the curtains were drawn so that no prying neighbors might witness what was about to follow.
"Lucy, sit down on the bed and hold this naughty girl's hands," angrily directed. "You, Miss, bend yourself over the foot of the bed and hold your hands out to your mother. I'm going to teach you once and for all not to disgrace the name of Hartley in this city!"
"I-I won't fight, Papa," Eleanor stammered, her eyes blurring with tears, "but if you do this awful thing to me, I shall run away, I promise you I will!"
"Well see about that! If need be, I'll have your mother lock you up in your room and keep you on bread and water till you come to your senses," her father angrily declared. "Now bend yourself over and be quick about it!"
With a groan of direct shame, Eleanor obeyed. She was five feet seven inches in height, graceful and slender, her hair combed back from her high-arching forehead and neatly piled into an oval bun at the back. She wore a shirtwaist and dark skirt and two petticoats, and in those days of decorum in women's dress, it was impossible to conjecture her physical contours. But as she slowly bent over the bed and extended her wrists towards her mother, who grasped them with a sigh of compassion, her father proceeded to lift skirt and petticoats and roll them neatly and snuggly above her waist, exposing her voluptuous bottom encased in a pair of white batiste drawers whose legs reached to about two inches above her knee hollows. She wore black silk stockings secured with elastic garters high on her long lissome thighs, and she uttered a low groan of deepest humiliation when she felt herself thus exposed to her father's eyes.
Matthias Hartley considered his daughter's bottom, and suddenly felt himself seized with the unpardonable and incestuous urge to see it bared. He felt a kind of aching in his crotch, and he flushed self-consciously, well aware of his lascivious intent. But pompously he rationalized that his daughter had so disgraced him that only the most drastic means would serve to eradicate her folly. As for Eleanor, she pillowed her right cheek on the bedcover, closed her eyes and waited, her body shaken with fitful tremors in the ' ignominy and apprehension of this imminent chastisement.
Her suspense was agonizingly prolonged as he now remembered that he had left the strap in the closet of his bedroom and, swearing under his breath, left the room to return a few moments later with the implement of fustigation. As he had remarked, the last time it had been used had been five years ago, and at that time Eleanor had endured her martyrdom stoically, grinding her teeth and digging her nails into her palms to hold back her cries and pleas for mercy. Then, as now, her long-suffering mother had been obliged to hold her, but that time couched like a child across her lap and with her skirt and petticoats turned back just as they were now, while her father had applied the strap twenty times to her squirming but veiled posterior.
When Lucy Hartley saw her husband return with the strap dangling from his hand, she uttered a stifled gasp of dismay and tried a last time to placate him: "Matthias, I beg of you, isn't there another way to punish Eleanor? This is so barbaric, so cruel, so humiliating, and remember, she's twenty years old-"
"If she were forty and behaved this way, I would still whip her, Lucy!" he angrily retorted. "Just see to it that you hold her tightly so that she doesn't escape her due! Now then, young lady, we'll see if we can't appeal to the seat of your reason so that you don't ever again behave so shamelessly!"
He tossed the strap onto the bed beside the shuddering young woman, and then reached towards her and began to unfasten the waistband of the batiste drawers.
"Oh no, Papa!" Eleanor cried, her voice shriveled with consternation and shame, as she twisted her scarlet face back towards him, "Don't take them down, I implore you, I beseech you, Papa! I-I'll take my wh-whipping bravely, but don't do this, it's indecent, it's shameful!"
"I told you that you behaved like a thoughtless, irrational child, Miss," he said between his teeth as he ignored her entreaty and began to tug down the white garment. "And a child is too young to have false modesty. Perhaps it shocks you, it may bring you back to your senses. Hold her tightly, Lucy!" And with this, he dragged the drawers down to Eleanor's knees.
A cry of doleful, wretched humiliation broke from the beautiful light-brown-haired culprit. Instinctively she tightened the muscles of her bottom in a frantic attempt to diminish and to conceal the most secret parts of her body from her father's profaning eyes. Her flesh had a warm carnation tint to it, and her behind comprised two jouncy, rather broad oval shaped cheeks set tightly together and with a breath-taking jut to their summits, so it seemed as if she were lewdly arching out the fullness of her virgin behind to the kisses of the brown leather strap. He picked it up now, brandished it and swung it two or three times in the air to test its heft and feel. It was a discarded part of a carriage harness, and it was almost three feet long, two inches wide, and about an eighth of an inch thick. Though it was well worn and no longer polished, it was a formidable weapon to be used against that pink-and-white-skinned bottom, and Lucy Hartley quailed and uttered a gasp as she saw him take his stance at Eleanor's left and prepare for the thrashing.
"Be brave, dear," she bent down to whisper, and she squeezed the girl's wrists by way of implying her own deep-rooted compassion which she could show in no more overt way than this.
Tears were running down Eleanor's cheeks, and she kept her eyes tightly shut. The feel of the air on her naked skin reminded her intensely of her humiliating posture and nakedness before her own father. She kept her thighs tightly clenched, and the muscles of her behind quivered as she strove to conceal herself. There was a long pause, enervating and torturing for the unfortunate young woman, and then the strap whistled down to fall with a resounding Crack diagonally over her naked behind. The top of the strap smacked wickedly over the outer edge of her right hip and traced a bright red pattern of pain down over that globe and onto the left cheek towards the base. Eleanor could not suppress a muffled groan of pain nor control the convulsive jerking of her bare hips at the burning bite of the leather thong.
Moving to the right, her father now applied a second lash, also diagonally, describing thus a bright X over the huddling satiny hemispheres of his daughter's bare behind. Again Eleanor uttered a muffled groan, and this time raised her head, her eyes very wide and misty with tears, as her fingernails dug into her palms. And once again her bare hips swerved spasmodically as the burning pangs of the leather strap attacked her tender virgin flesh.
Slowly, his lips set, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on the magnificent posterior before him, Matthias J. Hartley proceeded with the thrashing. He laid ten lashes horizontally over his daughter's bare seat, beginning at the tops of her hips and working down towards the base. As the leather clung to the tender, jutting flesh of her bare behind, the young woman sobbed aloud, jerked and twisted, even dragging at her mother's hold on her wrists, her head often rising and her eyes staring at the wall beyond. But though she tried to remain stoic, the atrociously cumulative heat of the strapping made her kick up first one foot and then the other, and in these moments the soft pink conch-shell of her pussy was exquisitely and lasciviously exposed, peeping just below the jutting, striped globes of her virgin behind, framed by the thick ringlets of dark-brown pussyhair.
Yet his daughter's courage and fortitude enraged him. Conscious of his lecherous intent in baring her bottom for the strap, this sense of wrongdoing only irritated him and made him determined to break down her resistance and force her to appeal for mercy. In that way, her admission of guilt would justify the baser motives which perhaps had subconsciously compelled him to expose her ripe young virgin flesh. For now he began to feel the maddening ache of lust in his loins, and it enraged him against her, irrational though that attitude was.
"You obstinate vixen, I'll teach you to keep your place and not to draw public attention upon yourself and your parents," he growled. The strap rose and swept down, this time vertically, striping the right buttock from top to base with an angry Crack. Eleanor uttered a stifled cry, twisting her contorted and tear-stained face back towards him, while at the same time her body jerked fitfully and lunged forward over the bedrail.
"Oh please, Matthias, that's enough now, please," Lucy Hartley sobbingly entreated. "You've whipped her cruelly already, let it be enough now! I'm sure she's sorry for what she's done! Oh Eleanor, my poor darling, tell him that you repent and that you won't ever do a thing like this again!"
"No I won't, M-Mother," the light-brown-haired young woman gasped, her breath quick and harsh now as her endurance began to wane under the ferocious heat that attacked her naked seat and had already vividly discolored it. "If I were a man, he'd never dare to do this-I'm going to leave home, I swear I shall!"
"Oh will you now, you young hussy!" her father interrupted, gritting his teeth with rage. "Very well, since you're so disloyal, I'll send you away myself. And do you know where, Miss? To my Cousin Ethel who lives in London. She has two daughters of her own, Miss, and she often writes me how she disciplines them when they misbehave. You shall go there and finish whatever schooling you need, and Cousin Ethel will watch over you and see that you behave!" And with this, he applied two more furious strokes straight across the broadest, most jutting part of her already inflamed naked behind.
Eleanor uttered a strident cry of pain, kicked back frantically with her right foot, twisting this way and that as if to disperse the savage heat that was blazing in her reddened, vividly striped bottom.
"Oh no, Matthias, don't send her to England, don't, I pray you," his wife supplicated, tears running down her cheeks as she continued to grasp her daughter's jerking wrists. "She's a cold, friendless woman and that's no place for our little girl!"
"Its going to be her place until she comes to her senses, Mother," Matthias J. Hartley vehemently declared. Once again he lifted the strap and brought it down with a backhanded sweep diagonally from the left hip across to the lower summit of his daughter's shuddering bare posterior. This time he wrested a shriek of suffering from the unfortunate woman, whose belly rubbed and squirmed frantically over the bedrail and whose hips jerked and twisted and weaved uncontrollably.
"There," he panted as he applied a final stroke which swept across the base of both writhing nether globes and drew another cry of intolerable suffering from the light-brown-haired victim. "I shall write Cousin Ethel this very day and tomorrow I'll get the tickets to the steamer. You're going to be packed off and sent to live there until she writes me that you've learned to behave like a proper young lady. And she will have my full permission to discipline you as she does her own two girls whenever you're in need of it, Eleanor!" With this, he tossed the strap to the floor and strode hurriedly out of the bedroom, while Lucy Hartley released her daughter's wrists and then, sobbing poignantly, helped the trembling, half-fainting young woman rise and embraced her passionately, kissing the girl's tear-stained face.
"Oh my poor girl, it was too cruel! Lie on the bed, darling, I'll rub some cream on your poor bottom! He really didn't mean to be so harsh, Eleanor, but you fair riled him, defying him that way. Oh, what am I going to do without you? All the way off to London with that awful woman-what am I going to do?"
"I don't mind going, M-Mother," Eleanor sobbed as she returned her mother's embrace, clinging to her like a lost soul. "At least I'll be away from him, nd I shan't ever forgive him for what he just did to me! Oh I'm so ashamed, to be undressed like this in front of my own father-oh Mother, don't cry so!"
And thus it was that mother and daughter consoled each other and Eleanor Hartley was to embark upon a new life which, ironically, far from "eradicating the girl's nonsensical notions," as her father had said, was to embroil her even more in the fight for women's suffrage....
It is highly doubtful that he would have sent her off, had he known that she would harden in her opinions of women's rights. She was to find out several things and all of these would irritate her, and then anger her until she could no longer control herself.
Her mother tried to comfort her on her bed, and both mother and daughter wanted to be rid of that dreadful man, although Lucy would have never voiced such an opinion. She kept her thoughts to herself and said nothing about wishing that her husband would leave her.
"Mother, don't you understand why I want to have the right to vote?"
"Yes, but you know the very thoughts anger men. You really mustn't say such things. I certainly understand, but dear, please keep such thoughts to yourself."
"But mother, if I keep them to myself, nothing will ever come of it. Please try to understand me, maybe if you tried to do something like I have done, then maybe father would change his ideas."
Lucy was shocked by the very thought and she couldn't help but to tremble at the possible consequences. "Oh dear," she said. "Do you know what he would do to me if I did such a thing. He would treat me the same way that he has forced me to do to you. He would beat me and hurt me terribly. No, I must never do such a foolish thing. I would never like to tell of it."
"But...."
"No, it's no use. He would do the same thing. Have you forgotten about the cigarettes. I didn't think that he would ever stop hitting me, and that was nothing as great as wishing to vote. Lord, he would beat me until I was half dead if I tried to do the same thing that you did. You are a brave girl, but I'm an old woman and I have to live with him."
"I understand, Mother." Although she really didn't want to, but she did see that her mother would be maltreated if she directed herself in the same matter as her daughter had done.
They talked about England and even though Eleanor had a feeling that things would be rough, she told herself that she would enjoy the trip over and that she would be away from her wretched father.
That was the main thing that seemed to cheer her up. The very thought that she would be away from him, made her quite happy. She certainly didn't want her father to beat her about any more and she knew that if she was away from him that she would be relatively safe.
Or at least she thought. Just as her father had no idea about the changes that would be brought about in Eleanor, she had no idea about what she was going to. She didn't know where she was going and what the people would be like. Apparently, they were very strict, but surely not as tyrannical as her father. There couldn't be anyone that bad, that mean.
Eleanor was still naive and innocent about many things and she would not have believed the stories about the place had she heard them. She would have scoffed and said that they were merely stories to scare small children, but had she known the truth it is very doubtful that she would have willingly left her parents, for in many ways even the tyranny of her father was far better than that to which she was going.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ethel Burbage was forty-seven, gray-haired, tall, with stern features, and she was the only daughter of Matthias J. Hartley's now deceased Uncle Benjamin. The greengrocer's uncle had spent about ten years in New York, and then gone back to his native London as a sales representative of a large tannery located in the suburbs of that great city. Ethel Hollis, a prim schoolteacher, had married Philip Burbage when she was twenty-eight and had just about given up the idea of matrimony. She had borne him two girls, and when he had died ten years later, she had engaged a Nanny for the children and resumed her teaching.
In the private London school where she taught, corporal punishment was still very much in vogue. It was customary for parents or near relatives of all the pupils to send a letter of authorization to the principal of this school at the outset of each new term, granting permission for their offspring to be chastised if in the opinion of the faculty, such correction was deemed necessary to their well being. Ethel Burbage herself was regarded as a Tartar by all of her pupils, for she was unsparing though impartial in dealing out canings, birchings and humiliating smack bottoms for the slightest infraction of her strict rules.
Nor were her own daughters exempt. If anything, they were more frequently the victims of her unrelenting pursuit for perfection in the demeanor of the young. Priscilla, seventeen, auburn-haired and rather buxom and freckled, still received the cane and the strap and sometimes the leather sole on the average of two or three times a month, while Lorraine, fifteen, with taffy-colored hair, slim and tomboyish, drew her mother's wrath upon herself even more frequently.
Her cousin's letter reached her just a little less than a month after it had been written, and she read it with grim satisfaction. Matthias Hartley and she had kept up a constant correspondence across the Atlantic Ocean, and for some little time she had disparagingly commented on the unheard-of freedom which American girls seemed to be given, which she believed was a source of all delinquency. She had urged him to be more strict with Eleanor, and the news that now he had finally come to his senses and was sending this mature young woman to her for disciplinary purposes was a source of great satisfaction. It would be a good lesson for Priscilla and Lorraine, she knew. To see that a twenty-year-old American girl, their second cousin, could be forced to submit to corporal punishment ought to be a strong argument to Priscilla, who was beginning to complain that she was far too old to have her bottom bared for the leather-sole spanker or the cane, as well as to impress headstrong Lorraine with the fact that, at fifteen, she could reasonably expect proper punishment for so long as she continued her naughty ways and was still living under her mother's roof.
The day before this letter had arrived, indeed, both young ladies had had a painful and humiliating session in her bedroom. Priscilla's reports from school, the very school where her mother taught, were not at all impressive. Miss Daisy Burden, the rather gawky form mistress who was in charge of Priscilla, had diffidently commented on her pupil's unsatisfactory scholastic efforts to Ethel Burbage with the remark that, after all, she was certain that Priscilla would toe the mark by the time final exams rolled around. But Ethel Burbage had irritatedly countered, "You ought to have told me sooner, Miss Burden. My daughter is not to be shown the slightest favoritism merely because I am headmistress. I shall attend to her this very evening, you may be sure, and I want you to keep me informed on her progress thereafter. I always say, spare the rod and spoil the child."
As for Lorraine, she had fallen into disgrace because, while drying the dishes in the kitchen, she had broken one of Ethel Burbage's favorite serving platters, an irreplaceable heirloom. And so both young ladies, their eyes suspiciously red and sniffling already in anticipation of what awaited them, were ordered to report to their mother's bedroom at nine o'clock that night. Lorraine was first, since her mother wished the older girl to profit by watching her sister's chastisement and to endure the torturing suspense of knowing that she would be next. The slim, taffy-haired adolescent had been obliged to doff her dress and petticoat, then let down her drawers and drape herself across her mother's lap, while Ethel Burbage seated herself in a straight backed chair near the window. A well-worn leather sole was utilized, and Lorraine's surprisingly spacious bottom, which contrasted with her slender, tomboyish build, received the brunt of fifty energetic smacks which left her pale milky skinned posterior scarlet as a ripe tomato and drew shrieks and hysterical tears and fervent promises to be good long before the last blow fell upon her quivering, huddling, burning bottom cheeks.
But for Priscilla, who was two years older, a more dire chastisement was in store. As soon as her sister had tearfully escaped Ethel Burbage's lap and tugged up her drawers and gone to stand in the corner with her face to the wall, Priscilla was obliged to remove her dress and petticoats entirely, lower her drawers to her calves, and then kneel upon that very same straight backed chair and reach over the back and grasp the lower supports to sustain herself. Ethel Burbage then went to the closet and took out a supple, swishy white rattan cane, the sting of which poor Priscilla was only too well acquainted with from past experiences.
First, however, tucking the cane under her arm, Ethel Burbage had pressed her left palm against the small of her older daughter's back, and then proceeded to inflict a humiliating, noisy and quite stinging smack bottom with her bony right hand which had left the buxom auburn-haired beauty in tears. After a moment's respite, her mother coldly informed her that she was to count eight cuts and express her thanks for each. "And I shall expect to hear from Miss Burden next week, my girl," she told the sniffling Priscilla who squirmed uneasily and glanced back apprehensively at the wicked cane in her mother's hand, "and you had best make certain that her report shows an improvement or you will be back here again for a severer dose. Now then, are you ready?"
"Y-yes, Mother," Priscilla groaned.
She stiffened herself, closed her eyes and her knuckles whitened as her fingers clung to the back of the chair. The cane darted out like an angry serpent, with a dry spat!, applying a vivid bright red line across the upper summits of both furiously reddened asscheeks. Priscilla uttered a wail, kicked up first one leg and then the other, and called out, "Oww, oh, oh, oh please Mother, not so hard, it hurts just dreadfully!"
"Stay in position and bend more over," was her mother's only remark as she patted the auburn-haired girl's flaming bottom with the flexible implement by way of indicating where the next cut would fall.
The seven remaining cuts were applied slowly, with at least forty seconds in between. Ethel Burbage was a firm believer in the theory that efficacious punishment meant prolongation and utilization of every nuance of suspense and humiliation conceivable. Well before the eighth and final cut danced across Priscilla's shuddering, discolored bottom-globes, she had missed three counts because of a crisis of tears, straightened up once and clapped her hands over her bottom to rub it frantically while she tearfully entreated mercy-which cost her two more official cuts-and made the most abject promises to be good in the future that her mother had ever heard.
This too was part of her theory that a well-chastised young lady, no matter how old she might be, would revert to childhood in expressing the plaintive suffering which punishment invariably procured, and this indeed made it proof incontrovertible that the girl was sincere in her supplications.
When at last poor Priscilla shakily got down from the chair and frantically rubbed her blazing hindquarters, she had had all of thirteen cuts which, in addition to the cane spanking, comprised a quite severe punishment.
And so this very evening of the day in which that letter from Matthias Hartley had come from Albany, New York, Ethel Burbage read it aloud to Priscilla and Lorraine and remarked, "You haven't seen your cousin, and it's true that she's much older. However, I propose to treat her exactly like I do you two girls, so you just remember that. She's not to have any special favors, and she's here for discipline. I shall most -likely enroll her in the summer session of my school for special training, as she is already in an American college."
Priscilla and Lorraine glanced nervously at each other. They had a presentiment-and they were right-that their cousin's presence in this house could only mean more agonizing martyrdoms for their tender virgin bottoms.
Priscilla and Lorraine wondered what she was like. Would she be pretty, or would she be homely? They were told to go to their rooms, and they did. There in the room they discussed Eleanor. Their ideas were very different about what she would be like, how she would treat them, what she would look like.
They spent several pleasant minutes discussing the arrival of their cousin. They wondered what kind of clothes she would wear, and how rich her parents were. Then they talked about other things, now and then referring to Eleanor and her visit.
"Mother said she would spank her? But how could she treat someone older than us like that? I don't think she has the right to do that kind of thing. Mother can be awfully mean."
"You'd better whisper, if Mother hears us talking like this, you know what she will do." Yes, she knew. She was reminded of what her mother would do every time that she sat.
Her ass was still sore from the swatting that she had gotten so recently. Priscilla thought about the various things her mother had done to her. She was either caned or strapped usually, and sometimes her mother would spank her with her hand. She had had that happen to her several times, and there were no ways that she didn't object to the punishment.
Priscilla thought that the caning was the most brutal and the most painful. Her ass and legs would often smart for a long time after she had been reprimanded in such a way. She had been spanked hard and fast by her mother and each time that she thought about what had happened to her, her ass would sting.
There was no denying the fact that Ethel Burbage was a mean woman, perhaps mean is a little strong, but at any rate she was a very strict woman, a woman who firmly believed in the power of corporal punishment. To her way of thinking, if a child was bad he needed to be struck.
She had been treated that way by her parents and she saw no reason why she shouldn't treat her own children the same way. there was a bit of a sadistic streak in her. She -liked punishing her children, because it paid her parents back.
Every time that she struck Priscilla or Lorraine, Ethel was getting back at her mother and her father. She was using her children to avenge the beatings she had been given as a child.
Each time that she brought down the strap on Lorraine's ass, each time that she lashed Priscilla's rump with the cane, Ethel was increasing the chances for her daughters to be duplicates of herself.
She didn't know that she was affecting their psyches each time that she beat them and there was a pretty good chance that she didn't even know what psyches were. She merely did as she thought best. If she thought the girls needed to be caned, then she would cane them.
Ethel was thinking about her niece and what she would be like. She expected a hellion from what Matthias said, and she wondered what the girl's morals were like. There was that thing about the American college. Ethel didn't think that one would remain moral and still attend a college in America.
To Ethel's way of thinking everything about America was vulgar and immoral. She had been in New York City and she had seen all those flashing lights, all those cheap theatres-and she knew what kind of people hung out at theatres-those department stores that actually had underwear on display. Yes, the entire country was shocking as far as Ethel was concerned. This girl that she was about to have visit her must be something, thought Ethel, and she looked forward to the girl's arrival.
CHAPTER FIVE
By the time Eleanor Hartley had been put aboard the steamship Beretrania en route to Southampton, Gillian Farnow had become the third lovely young suffragette to endure the ignominy and the pain of corporal punishment as penance for her intrepid championing of women's right to vote.
Gillian had no way of knowing that her mother had been compelled to write a note to Miss Emily Proctor, the proprietress of the fashionable ladies' finishing school which she attended, declaring that she deeply regretted Gillian's folly in taking so ardent a stand for women's suffrage and that she gave her permission for the worthy head of the school to apply what discipline was considered appropriate. She therefore couched this note in as innocuous terms as Emily Proctor's note itself had been, because Meredith Farnow did not wish to write those dreadful words directly which would condemn lovely russet-haired Gillian to the rod.
The note had been delivered by the Farnow butler on Saturday, so that when Gillian returned to the school the following Monday, the domineering spinster had already perused it and made her decision accordingly. Hence, when Gillian returned to school that next Monday, her fate had already been decided. At the noontime recess, while she was preparing to leave the French class of Miss Enid Larrabee, a portly sallow-skinned woman in her mid-forties who had spent several years in Paris as an English governess and hence had acquired an excellent command of the language, she was accosted by a smirking seventeen-year-old monitor who said in a loud voice, "I'm to bring you to Miss Proctor directly, do please come with me at once!"
Puzzled but suspecting nothing, Gillian followed this younger girl, whose name was Dorothy Callison and who was thoroughly detested throughout the school because of her habit of toadying to her teachers and spying on her classmates. There were, indeed, dark plots already afoot to give Dorothy Callison a taste of some of the medicine to which her tattletale reports had condemned many of the other girls.
Gillian entered the outer office of the principal of this academy and seated herself to wait for Miss Proctor's return. A few moments later, the door opened and the gray-haired spinster, in a black sateen dress with high collar and long puffed sleeves and skirt, entered. She clucked her tongue like a scolding hen, gave Gillian a glaring look, and then coldly remarked, "Come inside, Gillian."
More and more puzzled, the lovely nineteen-year-old girl followed the angular, tall spinster into a connecting, wider salon whose furniture was quite Mid-Victorian and boasted a huge, stuffed Chesterfield, a mahogany secretary, and several imposing straight tbacked chairs with tapestry cloth backs and seat covers. Emily Proctor seated herself at the secretary, picked up the note which Gillian's mother had written, stared at it for a moment, and then regarded the more and more mystified young beauty who stood before her.
"Gillian, I fear I must tell you that I have had a note from your mother, and that it confirms my own personal judgment. I hesitated, because I wish to be certain that your parents felt as I did about your shocking lack of propriety-"
"Pardon me, Miss Proctor, but I still don't think I did anything wrong," Gillian defiantly interrupted, her head held high, though color was hot in her lovely cheeks. "I do believe that women should be equal with men, and-"
"Will you stop that! This is no place to conduct a debate on a subject that I simply will not tolerate being referred to in my school," Emily Proctor indignantly exclaimed. "Your conduct this past semester has been most deplorable, Gillian. Monitors as well as your teachers have reported that you are often seen in company with several girls-whose names need not concern us here-who themselves are in disrepute and who may well be asked to leave at the conclusion of this term. Not content with that, you flout your teachers openly and you expose them to ridicule with directing questions on this ridiculous subject which you know is not a part of our curriculum. When the House of Commons and the House of Lords see fit to grant females the right to vote, then and only then will that subject be discussed at my school, is that clear?"
"But this is 1907, Miss Proctor!" Gillian vehemently exclaimed. "And I came to this place of learning just so that I could become a proper citizen and meet my responsibilities."
"I may tell you," Emily Proctor continued, taking out a handkerchief steeped in cologne and dabbing her pinched nostrils with it, as if being in the same room with this rebellious upstart was enough to weaken her, that your mother has given me full authorization to chastise you as I believe you should be, Gillian. I advise you, therefore, not to irritate me anymore with these nonsensical and even dangerous remarks about a subject we shall consider closed henceforth-for if you bring it up again, you do so at your peril!"
Gillian had no way of knowing what her mother had ordained, and still less that Meredith Farnow had implored her husband at least to let her tell Gillian what awaited her so that the girl might prepare herself. He had stiffly forbidden his wife to say a word. "Yes, of course it will be a shock for our fine, obstinate daughter," he had told her, "and so much the better! Leave well enough alone, unless you wish me myself to thrash her in front of you!"
And so, confronted now by this domineering and snobbish spinster who ruled the school with such an iron hand, Gillian could not help quailing just a little. Into her mind there leaped the picture of Jane Pontifex, bent over a desk in front of the entire class of thirty-two girls, all ages, sixteen and seventeen, her skirts hoisted high to the middle of her back and neatly rolled so they would not fall back down, her drawers rucked down to her knees, two housemaids on the other side of the desk holding Jane's wrists so that she could not escape, and then that terrible bundle of thin, flexible switches whistling down on her pale white, broadly spread bottom! If she had merely heard the recital of this highly titillating episode, that in itself would have been bad enough; but as luck had had it, Gillian had been sent to Miss Elmire's class to deliver a letter from Miss Proctor, and she had entered unsuspectingly upon that appalling scene, and thus it was emblazoned upon her vivid memory even now.
Emily Proctor put down her mother's letter, folded her hands and stared balefully at the intrepid russet-haired beauty. "Your conduct here, Gillian," she said in a grave voice, "has in the main been satisfactory, and there have been no black marks upon your record thus far which would have led you to the discipline which you know perfectly well is customary here for improper conduct. However, I cannot let this deliberate flouting of your own headmistress and of the reputation of my own school go unpunished. I shall spare you the shame of a public thrashing, Gillian, but all the same you shall receive the birch."
"Oh no!" The words burst out as Gillian put a hand to her mouth and recoiled, paling in incredulous horror. She was really exceptionally lovely. Five feet six and a half inches in height, her russet hair wound and braided in a kind of soft, imposing pile along the top of her head with a kind of Psyche knot at the very back. She had exquisite features which revealed her fervent temperament as well as her utter femininity.
Her face was a distinct oval, the cheekbones highset, the nose somewhat aquiline and with very thin, widely flaring wings. Her mouth was full and generous, with a rather fuller lower lip which suggested an ardent though certainly healthy sensuality. Her eyes were hazel, closely spaced and very large, surmounted with thick brows which expressed character and which were extremely mobile when in animated conversation she spoke her mind. Her skin was tawny-smooth, delicately freckled here and there at the cheekbones and along the bridge of her dainty nose. Her body was exemplary in development, and at nineteen it was already that of a most voluptuous young woman, though without the least excess.
"You will therefore come to my chambers as you are now, Gillian, at the conclusion of your last class this afternoon," Emily Proctor continued after a long, harrowing pause. "Your headmistress, Miss Fenton, will apply the rod in my presence. This is customary, as you know, since you have first of all offended her by your audacious composition. I shall be the witness since I represent this school which bears my name. That is all, Gillian."
"But it's impossible-I'm too old for that-no, you shan't! My mother couldn't have agreed to such a terrible thing!" Gillian Farnow burst out.
Emily Proctor lifted the fateful note and stared coldly at the trembling, scarlet-faced culprit. "I trust you do not imply that I am lying to you, Gillian?" she said in a tone of deliberate sarcasm and annoyance. "I should hate to think so, for then I should have no alternative but to have your punishment administered before the entire class as an example."
"My mother-my mother wrote that I should be-should be treated like this?" Gillian could hardly force the words past her trembling lips.
"You are at liberty to read this note, my girl. I understand that it is your first such punishment, and this is why, more than anything else, I have decided to show you the mercy of having it done here in the privacy of my own chambers. I know that you will show your gratitude for this by submitting without revolt or argument when you return here at four o'clock, Gillian. That is all I have to say to you at present."
A thousand words crowded into Gillian's lovely head, but none of them could emerge. She stood there, her mouth gaping, her face scarlet, trembling fitfully. The horrid image of Jane Pontifex's disgraceful chastisement loomed before her, and she saw herself so stretched over a desk, so bared, so held, lying under the Damoclean torment of that diabolical rod which would bite her tender, most intimate flesh. She wanted to sink through the floor, to vanish, to die. But her trembling legs at last carried her falteringly out of the principal's chambers, where she gave vent to her emotions by bursting into tears and covering her face with her hands, leaning against the wall just outside the door until the crisis had passed.
She would run away-she wouldn't go to Miss Proctor's room this afternoon-she would kill herself-she would run away-all the tumultuous anguish and the apprehensive phantasmagoria of what a birching must mean for her filled her soul and heart and mind. But worst of all, the agony of soul which she had experienced at her mother's perfidy was the most crushing blow of all.
Her best friend, Editha Blurten, a plump, jovial black-haired girl of twenty who was an outstanding member of the school field hockey and cricket teams, patted her on the shoulder and leaned towards her: "In a blue funk, Farnow? What can you possibly be moping about, with your marks? Come along, let's have a spot of tea and crumpets before next class. I'm famished, aren't you?"
Gillian Farnow forced herself to blink her eyes, to let a wan smile curve her trembling lips, and to mumble something which sufficed to allay her friend's concern for her. Then off they went towards the refectory where Gillian was to pick listlessly at her lunch and to stare unseeingly into space, seeing only the clock on the wall and knowing that when it reached four, the most atrocious and mortifying experience of her entire nineteen years would begin....
Much more than an ordinary birching was to befall Gillian Farnow, however. For Samuel Proctor, the principal's rascally forty-eight-year-old brother, was paying a visit to the ladies' academy this week. Perhaps the one redeeming quality in Emily Proctor's supercilious and suspicious nature was her almost unnatural affection for him, for both of them had come from a broken home and remembered well their wretched childhood. She had gone on by dint of perseverance and not a little conniving to become the proprietress of this fashionable finishing school, whereas her brother had lost one situation after another and only now had become settled in a reasonably honorable profession so that he was no longer financially dependent upon her. He was a stocky man, nearly bald, with thick sideburns and a goatee which made him look still more lecherous. He had, indeed, lost several posts because of his undue attentions to the fair sex, and he had never married. He was now a sales representative to a small woolen mill near Nottingham, and he lived with a blowsy tavern wench half his age who was his mistress.
While Gillian Farnow awaited the dragging of time until the destined, terrible hour, he was sipping a glass of port and enjoying some Stilton cheese and biscuits with his sister in her drawing room. Emily Proctor, though herself a circumspect virgin, was not that at all by choice. Perhaps her brother's often scandalous amours had whetted her unhealthy interests in erotica, for she herself had not once known the pleasures of the bed. She had always been angular and unprepossessing even as a young girl, and the one man who might have shown an interest in her and with whom she had as she believed an "understanding" jilted her in favor of a buxom young gymnasium teacher in the first school where she had become a faculty member. As a consequence, Emily Proctor nurtured a bitter resentment for those girls and young women to whom nature had given beauty and desirability, and for this very reason she detested Gillian Farnow. In her opinion, the girl was much too insolent and gave herself too many airs. She could hardly wait until four o'clock herself, with the delicious knowledge of what was going to be done to that young lady.
So she could not help discussing the oncoming birching with Samuel Proctor, who plied her with questions concerning Gillian's looks and behavior, till he at last slyly whispered to her, "Emily old girl, you want to take this filly down a few pegs, I know you do, I can tell it by the way you look when you talk about her. If a man were to see her get her lovely arse thrashed, I think she'd be properly shamed, no doubt about it! Let me have a look-wait now, don't say no, I'll hide in a closet and she won't see me. And when it's over, you can tell her if you've a mind to that you weren't the only one who saw her thrashed."
It was contrary to every rule, to be sure, but Emily Proctor, mellow from the port and the reunion with her brother who had supplied her with many a salacious tidbit of his past adventures since their last meeting eight months ago, was tempted. And so she agreed, wagging a bony forefinger at him and chiding him to remember that under no circumstances must he show himself during the thrashing....
Biting her lips and taking a deep breath as she strove to keep her shoulders straight and her head high, Gillian Farnow extended her trembling hand towards the door of Emily Proctor's chambers and knocked. The principal's crisp voice bade her enter, and she opened the door and compelled herself to cross that fateful threshold. A hot wave of color burned her cheeks as she saw Miss Julia Fenton, her headmistress, standing stiffly beside the principal, equally clad in a full-length black gown, but this of bombazine. Although she grudgingly admitted Gillian's keen intelligence, she had little love for the intrepid russet-haired young woman, whom she found much too forward and self-opinionated. And like Miss Proctor, she herself had known the humiliation of being jilted by a fiancee back in her mid-twenties, when a certain young ensign had found the offer of a post with the Merchant Marine in India far more alluring than her even then supercilious and diffident favors. She was now forty-four, gray-haired, stockily built, there was a suspicion of a moustache on her upper lip and her voice was harsh.
"I trust, Gillian," Miss Proctor declared, "that you will bear Miss Fenton no malice for what she is obliged to do at my order and that you will remember that I am sparing you the disgrace of a public punishment."
"Y-yes, M-Miss P-Proctor," Gillian Farnow quavered, blinking her eyes rapidly to clear them of the tears and trying her best to show stoic calm, an almost impossible achievement under such humiliating circumstances.
"In that case, Miss Fenton, I think we may as well get it over with, don't you agree?" the directress drawled. "Come along, Gillian. You shall have the privacy of my own bedchamber for your thrashing, so that if you do cry out, no one else in the school will hear you except your headmistress and myself."
This of course was a lie; Samuel Proctor was hiding in a closet near the huge double bed with its four posters and canopy, and through a crack he would be able to perceive the shameful martyrdom of beautiful russet-haired Gillian Farnow.
It was Miss Fenton who closed the bedroom door, and now Gillian found herself hemmed in and confronted by these two Gorgons. She was trembling so violently that it seemed to her she must faint away before much longer. Only an indomitable determination to endure what she needs must so as to escape the unthinkable public whipping enabled her to maintain her self-control.
But even this was shaken when Miss Fenton, proceeding now as a kind of mistress of ceremonies under the benevolent eyes of her superior, coldly snapped, "You may prepare yourself, Gillian! The shirtwaist, the skirt, and the petticoats, and do be quick, if you please!"
"Must I-must I undress-oh please, can't it be done-" Gillian stammered almost inaudibly.
"Look here, my girl," Emily Proctor broke in, "we are both being indulgent to you and respecting the reputation of your parents in granting you this privacy for your chastisement. But if I hear another word, a single word of argument or discussion, Gillian Farnow, you will find yourself before the entire school enduring a very long and severe thrashing-do I make myself plain to you?"
Tears ran down Gillian's crimsoning cheeks as she began to unbutton her shirtwaist. When it was off and the directress gestured that she should place it on the edge of the bed along with the rest of her clothes, the russet-haired young beauty slowly doffed her skirt and then the two petticoats she wore. This left her in black silk stockings secured with elastic garters high on her shapely thighs, white batiste drawers whose legs ended about three inches above Gillian's dimpled knees; and a pink silk camisole, a kind of sleeveless tunic which modestly covered the proud glories of her maiden titties, which had begun to heave with impassioned emotion. From his vantage point in the closet, Samuel Proctor could scarcely conceal his excitement as this beautiful, mature young woman proceeded to divest herself of her raiment and the soft tawny sheen of her naked skin of arms and shoulders, of neck and chest, came into his view. He had a hand at his prick now, squeezing and fondling it through his trousers, as he stared breathlessly at the ensuing denouement.
"Now you will remove your drawers entirely, Gillian," was Miss Fenton's next, most terrible order.
"Oh in the name of heaven, have mercy on me, Miss Fenton!" Gillian flung herself on her knees before her stern headmistress, her arms embracing the woman's thighs, her upturned, tearstained face imploring pardon: "Let me keep the drawers on, for mercy's sake, for my own decency-or I shall die of shame-"
"I know that you are nineteen and that you consider yourself a mature woman already, Gillian," was the mocking, cold reply. "But this is precisely why you find yourself in this situation, because of your own conceited pride and vanity. If you had been as modest as the rest of the ladies at Miss Proctor's academy, you would not now be here to receive correction. And you know what the directress has told you, and you have already said more than one word of discussion and argument. A last time, are you going to obey and except your chastisement, or do you prefer to have the entire school witness your disgrace?"
There was no reply to this. In tears, shuddering, her face scarlet with humiliation, the lovely russet-haired victim began to unfasten her drawers and to tug them down. The thick fleece of her cunt showed at once, and with a sobbing cry, she clapped a hand over it as the drawers came to rest at her slim ankles.
"Put them on the bed with the rest of your clothes, Gillian," Miss Fenton directed and was obeyed.
Now, in only her shoes and stockings and the camisole, Gillian Farnow was exposed to her two executioners-and, unbeknownst to her, to those also of Emily Proctor's dissolute brother.
Miss Fenton now turned towards her superior. "With your permission, Miss Proctor," she said with an obsequious deference in her voice, "I propose to begin with a simple smack bottom across my lap, because it is fitting that this headstrong, unruly girl should be humbled like a naughty child. Thereafter, I should recommend fifteen cuts with the birch on the naked bottom. Do you believe that to be sufficient?"
"Yes, but for her arguing and rebellion, add another half dozen, these to be applied on the thighs," Emily Proctor said, and there passed between her and the headmistress a conspiratorial look of lascivious understanding.
Gillian's sobs redoubled as she heard this unjust and cruel sentence. Meanwhile, her mistress had moved over to the couch now and seated herself, awaiting the submission of the penitent. "I am ready, Gillian," she said with a cold, gloating smile.
Her fists clenched, trying to check her sobs, her head bowed, the russet-haired young woman walked wretchedly towards the couch and posed herself at Miss Fenton's right. At once the headmistress drew the girl down across her lap, making her stretch out along the couch, which, from the viewpoint of all the other girls who had endured chastisement in the school, was comparatively less of an ordeal since it afforded them support and thus gave them a sense of security even while being thrashed. The over-the-lap posture, when administered from a straight backed chair, required the victim to drape herself at an angle with her hands generally clutching the rungs of the chair or touching the floor, her toes thrust down on the other side, where the feeling of imbalance was constantly an anguishing addition to the ordeal. Miss Fenton's eyes blazed as they swept that magnificent nakedness, and concentrated on the trembling globes of Gillian's naked seat now at her disposal. At last she tucked her left arm around the girl's waist, and began to pass her right palm over the shrinking bare skin from the tops of Gillian's thighs to the edges of her rounded, lush young hips. Gillian hid her face in her hands and gave vent to moans and sobs and gasps as this humiliating preface took place.
After Miss Fenton had concluded her appraisal of the tempting virgin bottom before her, she looked up at Emily Proctor who stood off at one side herself admiring the voluptuous contours of Gillian's bare seat. When she saw the directress nod, she demanded, "Are you ready, Miss?"
A faint, tremulous, groaning reply was heard: "Ohh-y-yes-oh have pity-"
Tightening her hold and firming her lips into a rictus of immense and sadistic satisfaction, the stern headmistress raised her right hand, hovered it in the air a moment, then brought it down resoundingly on the base of Gillian's right bottomcheek. The sting and the noise and the shame, all combined, drew from the defiant young woman a strangled cry of anguish and despair, and she lifted her tear-ravaged face, her eyes huge and sparkling with new tears.
Again the headmistress struck her and again pain shot through Gillian's body. Gillian tried not to think about the ordeal that she was being put through, but each time that hand exploded on her ass cheek, she could not help but think about the beating that she was getting.
It didn't make much sense to her. She would have thought that the desire to vote would have appealed to the women in the school, but she had been so obviously wrong. She wondered why it hadn't worked.
Gillian wondered why the vote didn't appeal to these women, or why they wouldn't want the same rights as the men. Gillian was positive that she was a man's equal and she couldn't understand why other women wouldn't see it the same way. Perhaps she didn't have a penis, but she did have brains, and she did have a heart and there was no reason why she couldn't make decisions-at least Gillian didn't see why.
Gillian shuddered as her ass was severely beaten. She felt the stings igniting her body. It seemed as if she was on fire with the pain. Her ass burned like hell and other eyes itched with tears.
Gillian longed for this ordeal to be over, but it seemed as if it wouldn't ever end. There was the hand on her ass again, making her explode and burn with the heat of the sting. She cried some more and she wiped the tears away from her cheeks. Her cheeks were red and puffy from the crying that she had done, because of the striking.
Her cheeks were stained and she wanted more than anything else for the blasted beating to stop. She turned her mind to other things. She thought about flowers and how they were so many pretty colors in the spring. She thought that as long as she could think about other things her pain would be lessened.
The striking continued and she wondered if it would ever stop. Thoughts of other things, other places, other times, filled her mind and she tried to forget what she was undergoing. She thought about as many pretty things as she could. She thought about the sky and the way that it looked when it was a clear day.
Her heart pounded and she remembered holding hands with a boy and running across the field. The sky had been blue and the sun had shone down on their bodies. They had flown a kite and laughed in the wind. That had been a marvelous day for Gillian and she didn't think that she would forget that day.
There had been other times, some more special than the first one she had recalled and some which seemed more important. She had never had sex with anyone, she realized as she thought about boyfriends and she knew that she would remain pure until she married. It was the thing that young girls were expected to do, and she was one girl that would keep her virginity intact.
She gritted her teeth and slowly the pain faded. It had taken long enough, but now the spanking was over.
CHAPTER SIX
Harold Chentley pursed his lips and sipped his glass of port as he studied the rather handsome and yet forbidding woman who was seated on the couch across from him. This was the woman whom his valet Lenny Spurling had heard about and recommended as a possible governess for his unruly, beautiful niece Edith Norridge. At first glance, she looked to be exactly the type he wanted for the job he had in mind. Because an iron hand and a strong will would settle Miss Edith's hash better than anything else in the world, he had already decided. Once this obstinate and rebellious minx was given a taste of the strap or the birch on her naked ass, she would be a lot more humble. Not only that, he would have greater control over her than ever, which meant also control of her estate for his own nefarious purposes.
"That sounds quite good so far, Miss Talmadge. And you say you were at that school in Danbury for two years before they closed it down? And all over a simple smacked bottom, you were telling me."
"That's the truth, Mr. Chentley. I had an eighteen-year-old girl who defied me in open class, and who even insulted me. I slapped her face and told her to go to the principal's office, and when she refused, I told her that she was going to be thrashed as she deserved. I got permission from the principal, and two matrons and myself took her into the principal's private rooms. There they made her kneel on the chair and pulled her skirts up and her drawers down, and I gave her a very sound spanking with my hand. There was no brutality there at all. But I can assure you that the humiliation of this lesson was most efficacious."
"And I believe you, Miss Talmadge. And Before Dunbury, you were at a small school in Northampshire, you said?"
"For three years, sir. Unfortunately, the woman who owned the school fell quite ill, and the parents didn't believe it wise to continue paying tuition when they weren't sure what the policy was going to be."
"Quite understandable." He put down his glass of port, took up the letter of reference which she had presented to him from the headmistress and owner of the school in Dunbury. There had already been a small story at the back of the newspaper that this school had been closed down by the authorities pending an investigation, and that this investigation would follow up complaints by a number of parents who declared that their daughters had been brutally whipped and for no reason at all.
This did not concern him in the least. The more he considered Tabitha Talmadge, the more he was certain that Edith Norridge would no longer be permitted her silly arrogance and her independence. For Tabitha Talmadge was about forty-one, her black hair showing only a few traces of gray, tall and severe, with a hooked nose and a very thin, cruel mouth. She had a certain direct complacence to her, as if she were certain that no one could possibly repudiate her achievements. Her hands were long and strong, and those fingers could readily wield a birch or a tawse.
"You could, I take it," he said with a shrewd glance at her, "accept the situation soon, if we can come to terms, Miss Talmadge?"
"Oh yes, Mr. Chentley. Whenever you like. They say in the theater, I'm at liberty now."
"Well, that's very good. Would four pounds a week and keep suit you? I realize that the school must have paid you more, but for a start-"
She leaned forward and smiled at him. "That is quite acceptable, Mr. Chentley. There are opportunities which I see here, and after all, an instructress does not always have financial gain before her eyes at all times."
"Very well put. I think, then, that we are agreed. There remains only a kind of, shall we say, understanding of the young woman whom I am about to place in your charge. Have you dealt with mature pupils, Miss Talmadge?"
"Oh yes, sir. Quite frequently. I have a maxim which is invariably true. It is that the older the culprit, the more childish she becomes once she has learned the meaning of discipline."
"Excellent!" he rubbed his hands gleefully. He could already see in his mind's eye his beautiful niece kneeling on a chair with her drawers lowered, her skirts pinned up, writhing and sobbing for mercy under the swishing kisses of a sturdy birch rod wielded by this formidable and dominating woman. "You see, she is all of twenty-four years old. It is an age when a young woman should be married and with children of her own. Instead, she insists on working, and I have discovered that she is associated with a stupid old woman who believes in this ridiculous idea about giving women the vote."
"Shocking, indeed, Mr. Chentley. It is plain to see that her associations are harmful to her. You mentioned, I believe, that she was unfortunately involved in a disgraceful public spectacle?"
"That's true, and mores the pity," he scowled. "Fortunately, I have a friend who sits on the bench and hears such cases. Before you came-and it was good of you to come so late this evening, Miss Talmadge-I had talked to him and he had promised me that if I could guarantee my niece's future conduct, he would let her off with a small fine and a scolding. That is where you come in. In my opinion, she requires a good deal more than a scolding."
"I share your opinions and I value your confidence in me, Mr. Chentley."
"It, er, you do not think it will be too difficult to administer corporal punishment to so mature a young woman, then, Miss Talmadge?"
"I think not. As I told you, my methods involve humiliation and a kind of attitude which makes the culprit feel herself to be nothing more than a naughty little child, Mr. Chentley. Moreover, I am quite strong, and quite capable of mastering revolt." Harold Chentley chuckled, because he -liked this formidable woman's candor and self-assurance.
"You may therefore consider yourself engaged, Miss Talmadge. Will it be convenient for you to live in? In that way, you would have my niece entirely under your surveillance at all times."
"It would be convenient, sir. I should, however, have to send for my things."
"I'll have my valet arrange that for you. Well now," he rose with another chuckle, "I'm most gratified that you've done me the courtesy of coming here so late, and I think it is a most fortuitous meeting. I trust it will be equally successful so far as the improved welfare of my misguided niece is concerned."
"I shall work to that end, Mr. Chentley, you may be sure of it."
"One last thing, Miss Talmadge. Do you believe it would be wise to insist that she quit this position of hers with the woman who is such an ardent champion of women's rights?"
"Decidedly, sir. It is plain that such an association has led her to her present disgrace."
"I quite share your belief. Well then, I shall tell Lenny to make the necessary arrangements. There will be a trial tomorrow, and my niece will undoubtedly be sent back into my custody by afternoon or evening. You will be moved in here by then, and I shall ask you to undertake immediate steps to eradicate this stubbornness from her nature."
Tabitha Talmadge permitted herself a bleak smile which would have made Edith Norridge shudder if she could have been there to see it. "I shall ask you only one question, Mr.
Chentley. You do not mind if severity is at times employed? You see, she is twenty-four, as you yourself have told me, and since she has gone all this while without discipline, it may be necessary to impose more stringent punishments from the very start so that she will understand the necessity for obedience."
"You have my authorization to do whatever you think best. I am sure that a good whipping will not injure or maim her, of course."
"Of course it will not. Well, then, I shall see you by about noontime, I think. Thank you for entrusting me with such an important responsibility, Mr. Chentley. I give you my word I shall not give you cause to regret your decision."
Outside the door of his sitting room, his valet waited to summon a hansom cab for the imperious woman who would on the very next day become the governess of auburn-haired Edith Norridge.
Once outside in the street, the weasel-faced little man winked at Tabitha Talmadge. "You made a great hit with the Guv, I don't mind telling you," he confided with a vicious leer. "It was a stroke of luck for us both that I was over at Joe's pub and heard about you. Now you'll not be forgetting who put you to the wind of this situation."
"Of course I shan't, Lenny. I shall be properly grateful."
"I'll tell you summat else, Miss Talmadge. Mind you, not a word to the Guv that you know a thing about it. But I have a notion that he's fair smitten with that deucedly bold baggage of a niece of his. I shouldn't wonder if he'd like to do more than just have her arse-begging your pardon-properly thrashed." The bleak smile which Tabitha Talmadge had displayed earlier before her new employer now returned, and lingered. She was relishing this tidbit of information. Indeed, she had suspected as much, once having taken the measure of Harold Centley and having put him down as an inveterate lecher and scoundrel.
But she herself was amoral enough to care nothing for his motives. The pay was excellent, and the situation was delicious. She had long dreamed of humbling one of these mature patrician women who believed themselves to be above the chastisement one inflicts in the schoolroom. She could almost anticipate her first meeting with Edith Norridge, the young woman's utter, shocked incredulity when she discovered that she would have to bow to the imperious and inflexible will of her new "governess." She was almost impatient to meet her charge so that she could appraise the enticing charms of Edith Norridge's bottom and thighs and all the rest of her. For what Harold Chentley did not know was that Tabitha Talmadge was not only a sadist but also a vicious Lesbian who had lost several situations even prior to the closing down of the school in Northampshire because several of her pupils had complained to their mothers that after flogging them, she had forced them to come to bed with her and there submit to the most odious caresses and embraces.
Julia Fenton had paused now after administering a particularly lengthy and severe handspanking to the beautiful naked behind of mature, russet-haired Gillian Farnow. That young woman, who was thus experiencing her very first taste of corporal punishment, had closed her eyes, compressed her jaws, clenched her fists and tried her level best to endure this humiliating chastisement with Spartan silence and courage. But the sadistic headmistress, under the eyes of Emily Proctor, had understood that she was being granted full permission to bring Gillian Farnow to tears and then capitulation and finally the utmost penitence. Therefore, she prolonged this ignominious and mortifying smack bottom.
Her left arm tightly circling Gillian's supple waist, her right hand rose and fell with methodical regularity, visiting first one hemisphere and then the other, beginning at the top of one lovely curvaceous hip and descending to the base of the globe, so that by the time she had reached a count of forty, both of Gillian Farnow's bare bottomcheeks were flaming.
The noisy sounds of the smacks had crushed the young beauty's pride and self-esteem. She had sobbed, not out of pain at the outset, but in her own annihilated ego to realize that she was being treated like a child and under the eyes of the directress of the school itself. Yet as the smacking went on, seemingly unending, the persistent and growing heat in her naked flesh began at last to agonize her. As a particularly stinging slap flattened the base of her left buttock, she kicked up one leg, uttering a sobbing go an, "Oh no, oh have mercy!" and then wished her tongue bitten off for having so betrayed her feelings to these two cruel women who were martyrizing her.
Julia Fenton had paused now, her right palm still pressed against Gillian Farnow's flaming seat where it had last fallen, as she eyed her superior. There was an imperceptible nod from Emily Proctor, giving her carte blanche to proceed as she desired. Consequently, tightening her left arm around the culprit's waist, she resumed with a pair of extremely noisy and stinging slaps on the very centers of the huddling, inflamed asscheeks, and this time Gillian kicked up both feet to and fro in the air as she twisted and squirmed, her fingers clawing at the upholstery of the couch.
"Oh dear God, isn't it over yet? Oh have done with it, in the name of mercy, oh this is shameful, this is shameful!" she cried.
"Precisely, Miss," the directress sarcastically countered. "It is shameful that a big girl of nineteen should have to be treated in this way. And I wish to make certain that this lesson will not be forgotten, Gillian, because the next time, I promise you, you shall be thrashed before the entire school. Go ahead, Miss Fenton."
Julia Fenton proceeded to apply another dozen slaps all over the squirming, shuddering and discolored bottomcheeks which drew stifled groans and cries and sobs from the victim. Satisfied with this "preparation," she at last nodded to the directress and then said in a cold, insolent voice, "I shall give you two minutes to cry it out and get yourself ready for the second part of your punishment, Gillian. If you wish, you may continue to lie across my lap. I trust you are feeling sorry for your naughtiness?"
"Oohh, not-over yet? Oh, I shall die of shame, oh how dreadful this is!" Gillian Farnow groaned aloud in her despair. Her hands covered her tearstained face, and her shoulders shook with uncontrollable sobs.
Her headmistress leaned back, releasing the girl's waist, and contemplated her wristwatch. Meanwhile both these women stared greedily at the shrinking, twitching, palpitating and furiously reddened contours of those voluptuous asscheeks, each of them anticipating the second part of this unjust chastisement which, both knew, would tax poor Gillian Farnow beyond the limits of her own courageous endurance.
For when the two minutes had passed, Julia Fenton curtly ordered, "Now you may get off my lap, Miss, and kneel on this couch. Bend yourself well over the back. It is time for your birching."
"Oh please-I beg of you both, oh I beg of you humbly, please, no more! I want to die of shame-Oh, isn't this enough, haven't I been punished enough for whatever I've done?" the young beauty distractedly sobbed.
"If you wish your count to be augmented, Gillian, by all means keep up this useless argument," Emily Proctor broke in, her voice hoarse with both exasperation and greedy desire to see this beautiful victim further agonized. "Now, a last time, obey your headmistress, or you shall suffer the consequences!"
Thus threatened and cowed, poor Gillian awkwardly and painfully rose from her tormentress' lap. In so doing, of course, since only her stockings and the camisole concealed her person, she revealed the thick fleece of her virgin cunthole not only to these two women but to Samuel Proctor hiding in the closet and by now mad with rut for this intoxicatingly beautiful young woman. Slowly, trying to suppress her sobs, Gillian Farnow knelt down on the couch and leaned slowly over the back, her magnificent bosom rising and falling with violent turbulence, understandable considering the state of her emotions.
"I think, Miss Proctor," Julia Fenton respectfully suggested, "that since this is Gillian's very first chastisement, she will certainly not be able to maintain that position of her own accord. Would you do me the great kindness of holding her hands so that she cannot protect herself during the birching?"
"But of course, Miss Fenton," the directress smilingly replied. She hurried round the couch and at once grasped Gillian's wrists, her eyes glistening with lubricious and cruel desire. Meanwhile Julia Fenton went to procure the birch. Emily Proctor had not told her that there would be any other witness to this correction. Hence when she opened the closet where the birch rods were stored, she uttered a gasp. Samuel Proctor, his face red and sweating, stared up at her with agonized eyes, and had the presence of mind to put a finger to his lips. She recognized him, and swiftly understood that for the sake of propriety she must not let the victim know of his secret presence in that closet. Ignoring him, therefore, she reached beyond him to the corner where three or four fabricated birch rods were already standing in readiness, for Emily Proctor was a firm believer in the efficacy of the rod for the obstinate and unruly and disobedient pupils in her school and there was always an abundant supply in readiness. She chose one that was slim and flexible, closed the closet door and returned to the couch. This rod comprised about eight switches, on which there were still twigs and buds, with a black cloth wound at the very ends of these switches to serve as handle for the wielder. As she approached the couch, she swished the instrument in the air several times, and Gillian Famow, hearing that dreadful music, looked over her shoulder.
"No! I promise I'll be good!"
"I am sorry, Gillian. If you had made this resolution much earlier, you would not be about to endure your deserved punishment," was the hypocritical reply. "Therefore I advise you to submit humbly, knowing that it is for your own good. Are you ready, Miss Fenton?"
"Quite, thank you," the stern headmistress nodded. "It will be fifteen cuts, Gillian, over your bottom. Then, since Miss Proctor herself has seen fit to give you an extra because of your continued rebelliousness, you shall have another half-dozen across your thighs. Prepare yourself, Gillian!"
Hardly had she uttered the last word when, raising her arm, she descended the birch in a horizontal, sweeping motion which made the switches cling to the already reddened, jutting naked asscheeks of the beautiful russet-haired victim.
Gillian Farnow uttered a strangled cry of agony. She had never dreamed that the rod could bite so viciously, and it hurt the more because of the shameful, childish preparation of that smacked bottom. She jerked at her wrists, which Ethel Proctor held as in a vise, and then her hips swerved from side to side as she shifted on her knees and tearfully entreated mercy: "Ahrrr-oh in the name of pity, please, I can't bear it, I won't be able to stand so many!"
"Try," was Julia Fenton's sarcastic counter as she applied the second stroke, straight across the roundest curves of that magnificent bare ass. A new shriek of intolerable suffering tore from the victim, and it was all Emily Proctor could do to hold the victim's wrists as Gillian Farnow lunged and twisted, kicking up first one foot and then the other. Though the camisole came down only to the girl's chinbone, Julia Fenton now paused, tucked the rod under her arm, and proceeded to roll up the single remaining garment to the girl's armpits, thus baring the beautifully sculptured, deeply hollowed back. Samuel Proctor's hand had once again begun to caress his turgid prick, and he was shuddering with lust as he watched this exciting scene.
Mercilessly, slowly, the rod fell. By the time the fifteen strokes were completed against that blazing, livid bottom, Gillian Farnow was hysterically pleading for mercy, her words incoherent, interspersed with sobs and groans and cries. The skin was cut here and there where some of the twigs had scratched the already inflamed and sensitized skin.
With hardly any pause, Julia Fenton concluded the thrashing with six whistling cuts across the tops of Gillian's thighs. This however, she did not inflict until she had first rolled the girl's stockings down to her knees in another nuance of sadistic emprise.
And as the last cut fell, Gillian uttered a tortured cry and sagged forward against the back of the couch, for she had fainted.
Emily Proctor released the unconscious girl's wrists. "Thank you, Miss Fenton. I-I shall attend to Gillian myself. I shall talk to you later, of course."
Julia Fenton bent her head in acknowledgement of this dismissal. A mocking little smile crossed her lips-which she was careful not to show her superior until she had turned her back and begun to walk towards the door of the directress' chambers. She understood perfectly what might well happen. If she regretted anything, it was only that she would not be there to see it.
Emily Proctor turned towards the closet and in a low shaky voice murmured, "Very well, Samuel. But I'm sure she's a virgin, so take your enjoyment in some other way. You understand me, Brother?"
And then she went out, locking the door behind her.
Samuel Proctor emerged from the closet, his prick already liberated and jerking with violent turgidity. He knelt upon the couch, licking his trembling lips, his pudgy hands moving over the unconscious girl's naked, striped thighs and swollen bottom-cheeks. Then cautiously, he arched himself to her, his prick head rubbing against the furtive crease between those woefully discolored nether globes, grinding his teeth together to hold back the furious torrent of spunk which the sight of her nakedness and her punishment had roused within him.
Then, with a grunt of rut, he dug his fingers into her bottom and yawned apart the cheeks to disclose the dainty pink fissure of her virgin asshole. His lips working convulsively as his ignoble passion overwhelmed him, Samuel Proctor thrust his prick head against that dainty crevice, forcing himself brutally past the ring of sphincter muscles. Gillian stirred and groaned faintly, but she did not leave the passive, crouching pose which left her so vulnerable to this bestial assault.
He felt himself dig to the very balls in that tight and now unvirgined asshole, and then, releasing her bottom cheeks and crouching forward as his hands sought and found her swelling titties, he squeezed those wonderful love fruits as he began to bottom-fuck her.
So roused was he that, fortunately for poor Gillian, this bestial act did not last long. He uttered a cry of hoarse exultance as he felt himself burst within her bowels, and then drew out, took a handkerchief and tidied himself and made his clothes presentable. A moment later, opening the door furtively, he glanced round to make certain that no one was in the corridor. And then he left that room in which Gillian Farnow's martyrdom had taken place.
Gillian had been unconscious during her defilement, but had she known about it she would have been most upset. She was lucky for one thing, at least she had been butt-fucked and not taken it up the cunt. She would never have been pregnant this way, that she could be sure of.
When she awoke, her whole body seemed to be on fire. Her head ached, although it had not been beaten, but there was the ache from the pain and the misery that she had known. This was enough to give her a headache.
She felt her face and realized that it was hot and flush. Then she felt a queer sensation from her asshole. She had no idea what it was, but it felt as if there was something running from her anus. That was impossible, she toid herself, but she ran her hand down her sore ass and then stopped. My God, she told herself, when she felt the sticky goo, I'm bleeding.
The fact is that she wasn't bleeding at all. What was dripping down her crack was the come from Sam Proctor's cock.
She brought the white gism around to her face. Her eyes were wide with awe. She didn't know what it was, but there was a suspicion that she didn't like. She certainly hoped that she was wrong, but she did feel as if something had intruded into her body.
Her asshole felt as if it had been stretched. That was the only way that the sensation could be explained. She felt as if she had been fucked in the ass, although those were not the words that she used. She had a different way of expressing it. She felt queer all over and she wondered what she should do. Her body ached. Gillian felt as if she were wracked with agony.
Her breasts heaved up and down and her back side was nothing more than an inflamed piece of meat. Her ass was bruised and welted and gave the effect of having run through a meat grinder. That was what Gillian thought about as she stroked her body.
That queer white stuff bothered her a lot, and she hoped that she was wrong about where it had come from. She tried to tell herself that it was a discharge from her own body. But she really couldn't believe that.
As naive as she was she had a pretty good idea that the person who had processed this stuff and the person who had left it in her asshole was a man. She wondered if that was the right place for a man to put his penis.
Now, of course, she had never seen a penis and she didn't know what they looked like, but she had ideas. Her mind raced and then she swooned and fell unconscious again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
After the unjust and humiliating thrashing which her young stepmother had given her, Jennifer Carson had gone off in the morning to her college class as usual. Smoldering with fury at Delia's cruel and vengeful act-for the intrepid young woman had seen in this nocturnal visitation by her stepmother another proof of the latter's irrational jealousy and hatred-the attractive young brunette pondered whether she should tell her father what Delia had done. It would only cause a rift between the two, she was certain, and it would make her own position even more untenable. If her father should go so far as to rebuke Delia Carson for having taken matters into her own hands, her stepmother would find ways of showing vindictive rancor. And so it would be just impossible to live there any longer.
One of Jennifer's friends in college was Hazel Murdock, a tomboyish, quite athletic santly-haired young woman of twenty, who was able to type quite neatly and to take shorthand by dint of application after hours, though she was carrying a particularly heavy scholastic load. At lunchtime, she sought Hazel out and hesitantly asked, "Hazel, didn't you tell me some weeks ago that you were doing some work for a Mrs. Torrington?"
"Yes, so I am, Jennifer dear. Why do you ask?"
"And didn't you say," the attractive black-haired beauty continued, "that she believed very strongly in the right of women to vote and to be equal with men?"
"Shh, not so loud," her friend admonished, glancing nervously around. "Some of these stupid little tattletales here in school would just eat that news up and run right to old Mrs. Biddlewell's office and say that they are Reds and ought to be expelled."
"I wonder if she might have any work for me?" Jennifer Carson faltered. Her mind was racing now over the consequences of what could happen to her in that household where there would no longer be any peace and harmony, as there had been before her father had married this coarse, sensual creature.
"It's possible," Hazel Murdock conceded. "You could call on her, if you like you could mention my name and I'll be sure to tell her that you're my dearest friend."
"You're a love, Hazel! What I wouldn't give to do that work and to fight that point! I want to see women the equal of men and while I'm still young," Jennifer Carson valiantly averred.
"My gracious, you really are in a mood today, Jennifer. Whatever happened to you?"
Jennifer's lovely face turned scarlet and she lowered her eyes. "We don't have to discuss that, Hazel. It's just that-well, I had a row with my stepmother. I just can't stand living there anymore. And I believe in what Mrs. Torrington does, and if I could find some part-time work, maybe enough to take my own little room and live away from home, I think it would be better for me. School is going to be over in a few weeks, but I can't wait to get away."
"Is it truly that bad, dear? Tell me about it. Go on, I won't blab, you can trust me," Hazel Murdock said kindly.
And so Jennifer Carson, wanting desperately to find a trustworthy friend who would console her for the ignominious and painful thrashing she had suffered last night, burst into tears and confessed all....
Late that afternoon, Jennifer Carson rang the bell at Eighteen Porphery Lane, in a quiet little residential neighborhood in the south of London. After a moment, an elderly maid in lace cap and long skirt warily opened the door and inquired, "Yes, Miss?"
"I should like to see Mrs. Torrington, if I might. My name is Jennifer Carson."
"I see. Does she know you, Miss Carson?"
"I'm afraid not. But Hazel Murdock does some work for her, and Hazel is a good friend of mine. She told me to come see her."
"Just a moment, and I'll inquire. Step into the sitting-room, if you please, Miss."
A few minutes later Jennifer found herself ushered into the beautifully furnished salon of an elegant house which abounded of mid-Victorian decor and antiques. A frail white-haired woman, with a kindly smile on her face, sat in a stuffed armchair, and the maid had already brought a tray of scones, a pot of tea and two cups.
"My dear child, I do wish you'd take some tea and scones with me. I'm a lonely woman, and I like young sweet faces. You say that you are a good friend of Hazel Murdock. Yes, she does work for me. And she mentioned me to you?"
"Yes, Mrs. Torrington. She says that you are involved in the suffrage movement. I'd like to be, too, if you could find some work for me to do."
"Do you really feel that strongly, my child?"
Jennifer stiffened. "I'm not a child, Mrs. Torrington-oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to speak so boldly. But the thing of it is, I go to Wilderman College, and I've only part of the year left, and my father has remarried and my stepmother thinks I'm a child who ought to be thrashed because I believe that women should apply themselves and learn all they can and take responsibility in this world."
"You, thrashed? But my dear, you're much too old for that!"
Jennifer Carson blushed and looked down at the floor. "My stepmother didn't think so. I-I'm eighteen. And only yesterday I was in that rally that went to Kensington Gardens."
"Oh dear yes!" the white-haired woman smiled and there was a twinkle in her still very clear, very sharp blue eyes. "I should know about that, because I was there-though of course I was in a carriage and my footman was driving me. Otherwise I should certainly have been arrested. Alas, I'm afraid that quite a few fine young women were, and I'm thinking of the disgrace and the scandal, and perhaps, too, the wrath which their families will bring down upon them, just as you found in your own home."
"Yes, Mrs. Torrington." Jennifer Carson took a deep breath. "I'm going on nineteen, and I want to earn my own living and take a little room somewhere and be free. And if you could only find some work for me to do, no matter what it is, and I'm not greedy and I don't want very much money, I should be ever so grateful."
"I think it could be arranged, my dear child. I have quite a few fine young women working for me. You see, my husband left me a considerable fortune. I have no children, no living relatives, but I believe in living for the future. And when I see all you lovely young people who until now have been the chattels of men, downtrodden and exploited, denied opportunities at work and even a voice in the home to air your own thoughts and opinions, I felt that dear Joe's money should be used to make all this come true. That's how it is." For a moment this elderly widow glanced up at an oil painting of a man with side-whiskers, portly and dignified, obviously that of her deceased husband. Then, with a sigh, she turned back to the lovely brunette seated opposite her. "Yes, I think I could put you to work. And as far as finding a room is concerned, this is a large old house and there are plenty of rooms here. You are welcome to stay with me for a time if you like, Miss Carson."
"Oh, God bless you, Mrs. Torrington," Jennifer Carson burst into tears, bowed her head and covered her face with her hands.
"There, there, my child, it must have been a dreadful experience for you last night. We shan't say another word about it. i think you'd best send a note to your father, and I'll have my footman deliver it. You needn't tell your father where you're living, except that you're perfectly safe."
"Oh I know that, Mrs. Torrington. I can't ever thank you enough, and I'll work so hard, you'll see!" Jennifer Carson avowed.
Maude Torrington's face was saddened. She uttered another sigh. "I'm afraid, though, that quite a few of our followers were arrested yesterday. I'm thinking especially of one, dear Edith Norridge. I know that her uncle is a very influential person and, in my personal opinion, something of a tyrant and a scoundrel. I do sincerely hope Edith won't get into any serious trouble."
But Edith Norridge was already in quite serious trouble. Her uncle, Harold Chently, had arranged with Judge Nelson Hardwicke, a fellow Etonian to release Edith back into his custody. He had assured the pompous gray-haired judge that he himself would see to it that henceforth his niece never would again commit any outrage that would draw notice upon her. Indeed, with a grim chuckle, he had told his old school companion that Edith would regret her folly and that he intended to punish her as he would a wayward child.
She had therefore been remanded into the custody of the bailiff, after all the other cases had been heard and various fines and terms of brief imprisonment had been meted out in the Bow Street Court. Then a constable had take her home in a hansom cab and delivered her to the very door of her uncle's abode. When he had rung the bell, it had been opened by a forbidding-looking, tall black-haired woman with a hooked nose and a thin, imperious mouth, dressed in a long black dress with high collar and puffed sleeves. Her black hair was drawn severely back from her high forehead, emphasizing the angularity and severity of her features, and plaqued at her nape in a huge, exaggerated bun.
"Come in, Edith," she said to the astonished auburn-haired young woman in a cold and arrogant tone." Your uncle has asked me to receive you and to introduce myself to you. I am Tabitha Talmadge."
"G-good afternoon, M-Miss Talmadge," Edith Norridge stammered. "May I see my uncle, please?"
"Not at the moment, Edith. You will come with me to your room. I've something to say to you."
"But I don't understand-who are you? Are you a friend of my uncle's?"
"Hardly. I am your new governess," was the incredible answer.
Edith Norridge recoiled, a hand to her mouth, her eyes staring at the stern black-gowned woman as if she could not believe the testimony of her own ears. "My governess?" she echoed. "But I'm twenty-four years old, I'm not a child."
"We shall not discuss it out here with the door open and people gawking at us from the street, Edith. I should think that after your dreadfully scandalous behavior yesterday morning at Kensington Gardens, you would have learned something. But it appears you haven't. Come along, if you please. I may tell you that I'm not in the habit of giving an order twice."
"But this is ridiculous! Why should Uncle Harold hire a governess for me?"
"Exactly because, Edith, you may think yourself a woman, but you are as immature as a child when it comes to decent behavior. You have involved your uncle in a shocking scandal, and it is only thanks to his influence that your name has been kept out of the newspapers as one of those trollops who dared flout the law and make fools of themselves in the public streets by demanding the right to vote."
"But they aren't trollops and women do have a right-ouch-my wrist, M-Miss Talmadge!"
"That is only the beginning of the way I intend to hurt you, you foolish misguided girl. Come along with me at once, I tell you! And before you say another word, let me tell you that I have your uncle's authorization to treat you with the severity which your naughtiness and unthinking, inconsiderate conduct merit."
With this, her fingers digging into Edith Norridge's slim wrist Tabitha Talmadge moved ahead towards the stairway which led to the second floor and Edith's room in this house which was now to become a kind of prison, a veritable Bridewell where Edith Norridge would pay dearly for her courage and imaginativeness and also for the sin of being beautiful and spirited enough to attract her own uncle's lecherous and ignoble lusts.
Edith wondered what was going to happen to her. She had a bad feeling that whatever it was, was going to be most unpleasant. The hand tightened on her wrist and she was led on by Tabitha Talmadge.
Tabitha was thinking cruel thoughts. She was going to teach this. girl a lesson. There would be the pain which would come from the thrashing but there would also be the humiliation which would be lavished upon the girl.
Edith shook with fear and her mind flashed upon several associations. She had a feeling that her ass was going to be severely thrashed and that she would be submitted to a great deal of physical pain, before the ordeal was over. She had no idea what would be done to her exactly, but there were ideas.
She wondered if she would be beaten with a rod. She closed her eyes and imagined what that would feel like. She knew one thing for sure, it would be a most unpleasant experience. There would be no way that the experience would not be painful. She thought about the rod crashing down on her tender butt and she involuntarily shuddered.
But there were other things that she might have to put up with. There was always the possibility that she would be thrashed with a cane.
Perhaps this was some kind of sadistic joke, something that her uncle was playing on her to make her think before she demonstrated for woman's rights again. She wondered if there would be any beating or if this was the end of the joke.
She certainly hoped that it was no more than some sort of hoax, surely she would not be punished. She was, after all, twenty-four, a little old for corporal punishment.
Had she known the truth, she would have realized that this was no mere joke and that age was no consideration for Tabitha Talmadge, who got pleasure out of thrashing anyone of any age.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"What are you going to do, Miss Talmadge? Please, you're hurting my wrist-let go of me! This is unheard of!" auburn-haired Edith Norridge protested as the stern, blackgowned woman led her inexorably up the stairway and down towards her room.
"I shall explain everything to you directly when we are inside your room, Edith," the woman coldly replied. "Your uncle is out at his solicitor's remedying the shocking stigma which your intolerable conduct of yesterday morning placed against his good name."
"But I have done nothing wrong," Edith Norridge valiantly protested. "There were many decent young women in that parade yesterday morning, and it wasn't my fault some bully of a constable took me in charge. I was merely going along holding a placard-"
"We know all about what you did, Edith," Tabitha Talmadge interrupted as she forced the fuming, stupefied young woman across the threshold of the latter's room, then closed and locked the door and put the key into the pocket of her gown. "The fact that you seem still proud of it demonstrates to your uncle and to me how very misguided you still are and at your advanced age. Where other young women are already married and have a family and are a joy to their community and to their spouses, you, Edith, seem intent upon defying the very elementary rules of decency. But the time has come, though I fear it is very late, for you to repent your thoughtless actions. That is why your uncle has employed me as a governess, I repeat. A governess who, let me tell you, will have over you the right of punishment and discipline. To that end, Miss, I now propose to chastise you as you so richly deserve."
"Chastise me?" Edith Norridge gasped, stepping back and staring incredulously at the formidable spinster, "but you certainly cannot think of doing such a ridiculous thing! I am twenty-four years of age, I earn my own living-"
"You work for a certain Mrs. Torrington," again the spinster interrupted with an inflexible accent, "who is senile and who has had the misfortune of having been left a very great deal of money by her doddering husband, money which she spends not on worthwhile and deserving charities such as poor orphans and wayward girls, but rather to foment rebellion and to make supposedly decent girls and women renounce every code of propriety for the sake of making fools of themselves in public. Well, my girl, quite a few of your companions are still languishing in prison, a disgrace to their families as well as to themselves. I hope that the judge who hears their cases invokes the old-fashioned punishment for such rowdyism, a sound thrashing on their bare behinds! But whether he does or not, Edith, your own is going to be quite soundly chastised, I assure you."
"You are joking! But this is the twentieth century, and I am twenty-four years of age, and I have never been beaten in all my life! I refuse, I tell you, I will not allow you to speak to me in so humiliating a way!" the lovely auburn-haired beauty stormed.
A cool smile curved the thin lips of Tabitha Talmadge. "Then you defy me? Then you defy also your uncle's authority, my girl. We both anticipated this. I will show you this note which he gave to me only yesterday. Read it for yourself." With this, she dipped her hand into the pocket of her gown and took out an envelope. Opening it, she unfolded the single sheet of paper and handed it to the astonished auburn-haired beauty. Edith Norridge read these fateful words: "Since I am certain that my obstinate and thoughtless niece Miss Edith Norridge will not believe your verbal statement that I have given you full authority to chastise her-and by that I mean corporally-when she requires it, this is to certify by my own hand and seal that you have this power and may exercise it without need of consulting the undersigned, Harold Chently, Esq."
"Are you more inclined to believe me now, Edith?" Tabitha Talmadge maliciously inquired, taking the sheet of paper from the hand of the stunned young woman, replacing it in the envelope which in turn she deposited in the pocket of her gown.
"But he couldn't be so cruel! To humiliate me this way-not to listen to what I have to say-I am of age, I work and I am paid for it, and I have a right to my opinions, because I am no longer a minor," Edith Norridge gasped, tears blinding her eyes.
"Your uncle is still your guardian and has charge of your estate, Miss," the spinster snapped. "He is responsible for you, therefore, just as you are to him. You have disgraced him, and it is only through his valuable friendship with the judge who heard your case this morning that kept you from a long term in prison and from scandalous notices in the newspapers for all the neighbors to read and to laugh about. Now then, we have had enough discussion. I am going to whip you, Edith. You will begin to undress. Start by taking off your shirtwaist, and then your skirt. Fold them neatly over that chair against the wall beside the door. And be quick about it, for I warn you in advance that I shall not be lenient at any time."
Time seemed to freeze for a moment.
The overbearing insolence of this unknown woman who had suddenly introduced herself into her uncle's house and now confronted her as both a judge and executioner dazed lovely Edith Norridge. Again a hot wave of color suffused her exquisite face, for the thought of undressing before this implacable, stern woman was absolutely unthinkable.
"I will not do such a thing, not ever! I shall wait until my uncle returns for dinner this evening, and I shall go to him and tell him that I think his actions here are cruel and humiliating. I repeat, I am not a child, and I will not be treated like one, by you or by anyone else!" she at last said defiantly.
The sadistic smile playing around those thin lips deepened even more. This was precisely what Tabitha Talmadge had hoped for. "Then you refuse? You will not obey me?"
"Never! And indeed, if my uncle thinks so little of me that he must engage a person like you, a complete stranger, to regulate my life, then I shall leave this house. I can earn my own living quite satisfactorily, and I do not need these luxuries here. Not if they are mixed with humiliation and-and cruelty, yes, cruelty!" the auburn-haired young woman gasped out, her head held high.
She was really magnificent in her defiance. Her beautiful breasts rising and falling quickly, her milky-pale skin with its myriad rosy flecks flaming now in her shame at thinking that anyone would dare to treat her thus, her fists clenched, her eyes sparkling, she was really exquisite. Her hazel eyes, large and dilated, were humid with her tears as she stared back at the smirking dominatress.
Then from the left-hand pocket of her gown, Tabitha Talmadge now produced a strong white cord, and before Edith Norridge could even anticipate her intention, the spinster had seized the young woman's wrists, forced them behind her back and adroitly, getting behind her, tied them together cruelly tight.
"What are you doing-let me go-you are hurting me-stop it, you hateful creature-I shall complain to my uncle-you have no right to treat me this way-I protest-stop it, do you hear me?" Edith cried hysterically as she wrenched herself this way and that, trying to get free.
"Oh no, my little vixen," the spinster hissed, her eyes sparkling with sadistic anticipation, "I shan't vanish just because you pronounce a magic word, don't think that at all! You are going to be locked in your room, Edith, till you have come to your senses. I am going to give you a good thrashing first, and after you are humbled and acknowledge yourself to be wrong, you may beg my pardon and ask for my forgiveness. If your attitude shows contrition and sincerity enough, I shall report these facts to your uncle, and he may relent as to the regime under which your life henceforth will be regulated so long as you reside under his roof. Do I make myself perfectly clear to you?"
"You devil, you cruel, vicious woman, I shall go to a solicitor-yes I shall, I shall see my uncle's solicitor Mr. Benning and tell him what you and my uncle are trying to do to me-untie me, I command you!"
"You command?" Tabitha Talmadge repeated with deliberate slowness, her eyes shining with joy because now she had exactly the pretext she desired. "My poor child, this remark at once shows me how far behind in discipline you have lagged since your childhood. I cannot hope that a single whipping will implant the humility and the obedience that your uncle and I require, but it at least will be a start."
With this, to Edith's horror, the spinster set about unbuttoning Edith's shirtwaist, wrenching it down over her shoulders and leaving the pink camisole beneath which covered her magnificent bubbies. This also had the effect of further pinning the young woman's arms, thus hampering her resistance. This done, Tabitha Talmadge quickly stooped, caught up the hem of the young woman's skirt and petticoat beneath it, and furled them up. Rolling them up to Edith's waist, she proceeded to fix them snugly with two safety pins, also taken from the pocket of her gown. Now the beautiful long high-set calves and gracefully slender thighs were exposed in black silk stockings, held in place high on those beautiful thighs by elastic garters, and a pair of white knickers whose legs went to the lower part of the victim's thighs.
Edith Norridge uttered cry upon cry of consternation and rage to find herself thus dealt with, but the spinster, who demonstrated ample practice in handling rebellious charges, took no notice of her outcries and threats and angry, tearful plaints. She produced still another length of cord and, stooping again, wound it round Edith's slim ankles and tied them tightly. Now her victim was completely in her power.
Gripping the captive's wrists with one hand and putting her right to the back of the auburn-haired young woman's neck, she forced Edith Norridge over to the bed and brutally shoved her forward. Then, agilely moving to the foot, she reached out, grasped the slender arms and dragged the unfortunate woman forward so that her body rested entirely upon the bed. This done, she proceeded to kneel upon Edith's upper back, and at once Edith's wild cry of horrified, despairing shame burst out: the governess had begun to unfasten and unbutton the flouncy, lace-trimmed knickers which concealed those milky-pale nether globes which were hot and excited.
She felt the whip's tangy sting approaching.
Time seemed to stop.
"No-I forbid you to, do you hear me, Miss Talmadge? Stop it, oh my God, this is unjust, this is shameful, indecent! Stop, you are hurting me, you are crushing me down, oh my god, how can my uncle be such a monster? No, leave them up, oh don't, don't do this to me! I shall never forgive you, Miss Talmadge, I shall tell the solicitor-ohhhhh!!"
This last, long-drawn gasp of utter consternation came when Edith Norridge felt her knickers rucked down to the middle of the thighs, laying bare that superb behind whose contours set Tabitha Talmadge into a veritable ecstasy of contemplation.
The cheeks were upstandingly rounded, closely set together, though the crease separating them began to broaden at the lower summits and grew wider as it neared the base. The firm resilience, the satiny smoothness, and above all else the exquisite sensitivity which was demonstrated by the rippling tremors which fleeted over the pale milky, rosy-flecked naked skin, constituted for the sadistic governess a true regalia of sadistic joy and anticipation.
"Now then, Edith," Tabitha Talmadge's voice was calm, "I am going to start with a very simple smack bottom. It is true that this is the punishment given a little child, but since your uncle informed me that you have never even experienced so harmless a chastisement as that, I told him that I believed it to be entirely proper to commence your training in this way.
Shuddering, groaning, crushed down by the dominatress's weight, Edith Norridge believed herself to be living a nightmare. The sententious and flowery speeches of this detestable creature, the incredible manhandling and the bondage, treatment the like of which she had never before been subjected to, left her dazed and shamed. Most shameful of all, to be sure, was the knowledge that her bottom was naked and upturned before the eyes of this vicious and hateful woman. Frantically, she tried to unseat her executioner, but she gained nothing. And once again that cold, merciless voice mockingly continued: "But do not think, Edith, that your punishment will end with that. Oh no, my girl! After I have smacked your big naked bottom and made you cry like a child and admit your wrongdoing, I am going to give you the slipper. After that, you shall have a taste of the birch rod itself. And you will find that I have a complete arsenal of instruments which I have used many times over, let me assure you, and with great effect and success, upon many naughty young ladies, some of them older, most of them younger, but all of them, including yourself, who will testify to their effectiveness in bringing about obedience and humility. Attention now, I am going to begin to smack your big fat bottom! Aren't you ashamed, Edith, at twenty-four, to be tied and with your clothes removed so that your naked behind may be smacked like a child's?"
Her right hand wandered over the flinching hindquarters, and Edith uttered a low, shuddering groan, which fully expressed the absolute despair and mortification of her situation.
It was an eternity of shame for the unfortunate woman, as Tabitha Talmadge prolonged this lascivious palpitation, feeling her victim's bottom from the tops of Edith's hips to the base, along the inner curves of those succulent rotundities and even surreptitiously into the shadowy groove itself which separated the magnificent globes of Edith Norridge's naked virgin ass.
Then, content with the humiliating effect she had wrought upon the psyche of her mature and beautiful victim, she palmed the small of Edith's back with her left hand, and raised her right and delivered a sonorous slap on the right summit of that voluptuous bare seat extended before her.
Edith closed her eyes, clenched her fists, but she could not control a spasmodic jerking of her body as the first infamous contact of the governess's hand attained her naked flesh.
A vivid rosy splotch, outlining that harsh palm, was outlined at once upon the sensitive pale-milky, rose-flecked skin of her posterior.
A second slap followed on the other cheek, in exactly the same place. Tabitha Talmadge's eyes were narrowed, glowing with sadistic joy. She saw the muscles of Edith's legs flex and ripple and tremor, and she understood precisely what degree of mortification her victim was experiencing. Then she began to spank, with dry, emphatic impacts of her palm upon the shuddering, jouncy bare flesh, making the globes quake like mounds of jelly, though at times the unfortunate young woman tried her best to contract her muscles in a useless defense. But this reaction, Tabitha Talmadge well knew from long experience, only served to intensify the pain of the spanks as they fell upon taut hindquarters.
Gritting her teeth, closing her eyes tightly, holding her breath and trying desperately not to cry out, Edith Norridge endured a really lengthy smack bottom. Tabitha Talmadge, in rare form, breathing quickly, her face flushed and her eyes glistening, seemed tireless as she spanked first right cheek, then left with a regular and methodical rhythm. The noisy, humiliating "Smack-crack-thwack-rack!" of her palm falling upon the shuddering, rapidly discoloring naked hemispheres was in itself a martyrdom for the unfortunate auburn-haired young woman. Finally, after her executioner had passed forty and was continuing with no sign of abatement, she began to gasp and squirm, to try to kick her bound legs, while convulsive spasms made her hips weave and squirm restlessly.
"You are beginning to feel it, I think," Tabitha Talmadge purred, pausing a moment with her hand resting upon the base of the left buttocks which she had just slapped. "You have a great deal more to endure, so I advise you to summon all your courage, Edith. I am going to make you cry, yes, like a baby. I am going to make that big bottom of yours as red as a tomato, and you will kneel at my feet and kiss the hand that whipped you, and you will shed tears of repentance before I have finished with you, mark my words."
With this, she resumed the spanking. Now it really began to sting and burn, and poor Edith Norridge began to groan and to try to dislodge the weight of her executioner from her back, since she was being crushed. As her hands tried to reach down to her bottom and protect it, Tabitha Talmadge had only to grip the bound wrists with her left hand and shove them out of harm's way, and then resume with even greater force than before.
The count reached sixty, then seventy. Now Edith Norridge was groaning aloud, sobbing and gasping, and inarticulate words began to intersperse with her gasps and sobs: "Aahh-oh my God, oh stop-will you never end it-you are hurting-ooh-aahrr-oh, you are hurting me so-you are crushing me-aiii-oohhhouuu! Ahrawwwouuu!! PI-please-enough-end it, end it, I want to die of shame-ooh-oohhhh!!"
At last, after seventy-five stinging slaps which left Edith Norridge's bare ass flaming and palpitating uncontrollably, the dominatress stopped. Then indeed she dismounted from her groaning and sobbing victim's back, and stood there, hands on hips, contemplating her handiwork.
"I shall give you a few minutes, Edith, before proceeding to the slipper. Are you beginning to feel sorry for your naughtiness?" she demanded.
But Edith Norridge, spiritually crushed by the outrageous and ignominious attack against her spirit as well as her person, could not answer, for her throat was choked with sobs and a bleak despair inundated her heart. When she found herself free of the weight of the dominatress, she tried to roll off the bed, but Tabitha Talmadge had anticipated this. "If you move out of position, Edith," she drily remarked, "besides the slipper and the rod, you shall receive a strapping as well. You are warned, Miss!"
So saying, she went to Edith's closet, where, this very morning, she had laid out in advance the implements of the intended chastisement. Stooping, she picked up a well-worn leather slipper, whose sole was polished and gleaming and which she herself had used for many a year on recalcitrant pupils. Edith Norridge, though quite mature, was actually not the oldest charge Tabitha Talmadge had had in her disciplinary career; three years ago, an authoritative sixty-year-old widow had commissioned her to undertake the training of her thirty-two-year-old niece, who had disgraced the family by being divorced from her husband on a charge of adultery and who had been preparing to elope to Paris with a penniless adventurer. And Tabitha Talmadge for two weeks had pursued this challenge with particular delight, savoring the power of being able to humble and shame and hurt this handsome and mature woman. The slipper had come into play with particularly advantageous effect, as it would now, she knew.
Edith's tear-filled eyes turned towards the stern black-gowned governess as she approached, holding the slipper in her right hand. Then a cry of indignation broke from the young woman: "Oh no! It is too much-wait, at least wait until my uncle returns, I must talk with him, this cannot be permitted-oh it is unjust and cruel!':
"You are really much stupider than I thought, Miss," Tabitha Talmadge sneered as she approached the bed and put her left palm solidly down on the middle of Edith Norridge's back. "Do you not accept the evidence of your own eyes from the letter which I just showed you? Decidedly, you are stubborn and obstinate in your naughtiness, and I see that I shall have to chastise you frequently until you learn to submit. It is your uncle's order, Miss, and I shall use every means at my disposal, I promise you sincerely, to amend and improve your rebellious and insolent nature!"
With this, lifting up the slipper, she brought it down full force across both huddling, inflamed asscheeks, pinching the inner edges of those face, her eyes widening with anguish, and a shrill cry of suffering was at last torn from her. Tabitha Talmadge's face expressed her joy at this evidence of her prowess, for her nostrils flared and shrank, her eyes glistened, and her thin lips were moist and twitching with a sensual fervor.
The slipper fell again, this time flattening the summit of the right bottom cheek, and then a third time on the other cheek in exactly the same area. Each blow was delivered with a sonority of sound and a ferocity of impact which wrested shrill cries of pain from the unfortunate victim. Edith could not kick because her ankles were bound, and all she could do was twist and wriggle like a worm under the pinioning palm of the governess. Where the slipper had struck, the color imparted was a far darker and more vivid red then had been imposed by the methodical hand spanking.
Pausing, Tabitha Talmadge studied that squirming, inflamed behind with a voluptuous delight. Her bosom rose and fell agitatedly, and the tears and groans of her victim provided her with a kind of carnal titillation which made her almost radiant. The slipper fell again, this time vertically and straight down the crease dividing the victim's swollen asscheeks, and poor Edith uttered a plaintive shriek as she tried to roll and twist herself out from under her executioner's hand: "Aiii-ohahhh, oh stop, please let me go, I'm dying, I can't stand it any more! I must talk to him."
They stared at each other for a second.
"You seem to do your best to provoke me into thrashing you soundly, don't you, Miss Edith?" the ironic tone of the governess was meant to annihilate the victim's spirit. "Now I will tell you something else, Miss. This morning, before he left to arrange your release into his custody and mine in turn, he gave me strict orders regarding you," she said.
"He will not see you at all until you are ready to come to him in contrition, on your knees, yes, Edith, ready to apologize for your misbehavior and your rebelliousness, eager to seek his pardon and to promise him that you will henceforth be docile and obedient. So let me hear no more of your wishes to have an audience with him, you stubborn creature, for it will not save you from this punishment but only add to it when you irritate me!" Having delivered this ultimatum, Tabitha Talmadge again raised the slipper on high, hovered it a moment, and then brought it down in exactly the same place, pinching the inner edges of the victim's bottomcheeks and covering the slit of her ass while it blistered more terrifying pain into her writhing body. She hated to suffer like this, and at the hands of such a one as was ministering her punishment to her. But there was little she could do against the forceful beating that was being driven into her cheeks by the slipper. Her lust was almost aroused at it despite the pain and the agony that rippled like burning shoots of fire through her nerves and her bones.
She thought she was going to die.
Again and again the force of the footwear pushed agony into her flesh. She shrieked as well as she could under the circumstances, and the giggling glee of the one who tormented her made her rage with anger, but her helplessness was so great she had no chance of getting anything but her pain.
The agony was excruciating!
Edith wished she could have kicked her tormenter in the cunt with all the force in her legs. That would have been great to see her squirm and kick in pain from the effects of such a blow to her groin.
But she knew her dreams were no more than that, that she was going to have to bear this agony as long as her torturer wanted to make her bear it. Unbelievable shoots of pain were all in her, and she told herself she one day would have revenge on this horrible woman who whipped her ass so viciously.
Many times the fierce blow of the slipper swept across her as Edith Norridge twisted spasmodically, jerking at her bound wrists, attempting to free herself at any cost. But the dominatress was far too skillful not to have foreseen the young woman's attempts to liberate herself, and she had tied Edith's ankles and wrists with a cruel expertise that defied all the unfortunate young beauty's attempts to loosen the cords.
Once again her eyes devoured the flaming, palpitating, uncontrollably twitching and contracting hemispheres of her victim's ass. With relish, she observed the tears which poured down Edith Norridge's cheeks, and she gloated to hear the sobs and gasps and groans she had drawn from her new charge. Seeing Edith's beauty thus in bondage and under the pitiless goad of her chastisement, she could comprehend by the black silk stockings, the deeply hollowed back, the lovely, spirited eyes flashing at her, betokening a spirit that couldn't be broken, the features which now in her own eyes were even lovelier under the aegis of suffering-truly, she promised herself, here was a superb victim who was certain to provide her with many occasions of the most feverish excitement and enjoyment.
But now her lips tightened, her eyes narrowed, and, keeping her left palm pressed down hard against the small of the victim's back, she lifted the slipper and applied two sharp, stinging blows at a kind of angle, each to the top of one of Edith Norridge's naked hips. Plaintive cries greeted each of these biting kisses of the leather sole, and Edith's bare hips jerked and weaved about in the most lascivious manner.
Amply satisfied with the effect she had created, Tabitha Talmadge resumed the spanking. Pitilessly, she administered about thirty noisy, stinging whacks of the fustigatory instrument all over Edith Norridge's bouncing bottomglobes, attacking even the tops of the amply supple and gracefully shaped upper thighs. And at last she had the gloating joy of hearing her mature victim hysterically and plaintively entreat mercy. The intense pain, the ferocious heat, the angry inflammation destroyed Edith Norridge's courageous resistance. Desperately she swerved her hips this way and that, tried to twist and turn and to roll, but the pitiless palm of the imperatrix pinned her like a harpooned fish to the bed while the gleaming sole in Tabitha Talmadge's right hand rose and fell with seemingly unending vigor.
"Ahrrr-owwouuu! Oh stop-you are hurting me so-ahhh-oh I cannot bear it any longer-have mercy, I don't deserve this-eeeyeowww!!! Oh stop, what do you want of me? Oh my God, I cannot stand such pain, oh please-please, M-M-Miss T-Talmadge, stop, oh what do you want-only stop and tell me, I can't endure this any longer, I can't-owwouuu!!!!"
Her face bathed in tears and congested beyond recognition, Edith Norridge stared through tear-blinded eyes at the inflexible dominatress. "At last," the latter mockingly remarked, "you are beginning to repent your folly. It is a painful lesson, Edith, and you have a long way to go before you learn it fully. But I promise you I shall work with you steadfastly to achieve that worthwhile goal. Now, as a proof of your humility, you will kiss this slipper and thank me for having thrashed you. Do not forget, however, that you still have to endure the birch. However, if you show proper submission, I shall be merciful and give you only ten good cuts. Here now, let me see and hear you kiss this slipper which has smacked your big bare ass thoroughly!" From long experience, she knew how to choose precisely the words, the inflection, the tone, which would crush while at the same time agonize the psyche of her female victims. Now moving along the side of the bed, she presented the gleaming leather sole to the trembling lips of the auburn-haired young woman.
A violent shudder of repugnance and despair ran through Edith Norridge's out-stretcheed body. She began to sob distractedly, closing her eyes and wishing herself dead. How could she ever face her uncle again, or any of her friends, for that matter, after this abominable and atrociously shameful punishment? But the ferocious pain which relentlessly gnawed at her virgin ass had lowered her resistance beyond even her own knowledge. And yet she could not bring herself to accept such debasement. As the sole brushed her mouth, she twisted away and uttered a sobbing cry, "Oh no, I can't, oh it's wretched, cruel to treat me so!"
Tabitha Talmadge's lips were wreathed in an unholy smile of sadistic delight. "So those are crocodile tears, aren't they, Miss?" she countered. "Never fear, I'll make you humble yourself more than that. You shall have eighteen cuts of the birch, not ten. And you shall have a little supplement with the slipper here and now!"
With this, she once again resumed her seat on Edith's upper back, and then began to spank the woefully inflamed asscheeks heaving and twisting and jerking before her with a pitiless fury. At least twenty times more the loud, resonant smacks of leather on naked womanflesh resounded and Edith's cries became deafening as she frenziedly tried to kick her bound legs, to twist and turn herself.
"There!" the dominatress panted, tossing the slipper to the head of the bed and getting off her weeping victim. "Now I think you will feel the birch even better."
Once again she went to the closet, and returned with a flexible rod of about eight switches, all peeled and tied at one end with a thick black cloth as handle. Swishing this in the air a few times to test the suppleness of the rod, she was satisfied. Then, measuring the distance, she lifted it high and brought the switches down with a swish, spreading them out fantail across the entire bottom with a shake of her wrist.
Edith Norridge uttered a wild shriek and, with a supreme effort, rolled over onto her back, sobbing hysterically. In so doing, she exposed the thick dark-red curls of her virgin cunt, the soft pale creamy contours of the fronts and insides of her shuddering thighs. It was a target which Tabitha Talmadge could not ignore, nor did she; the rod rose swiftly, and fell with a whisk so that the tips of the switches bit into that mossy mound which was Edith Norridge's virgin cunthole.
"Ahrrroowwwouuuu!!! Oh have pity, not there, oh have pity on me, mercy!" Edith Norridge shrieked, and desperately wrenched her body onto her side. But before she could manage to roll over onto her stomach and protect the tenderest part of her entire anatomy, the rod had again bitten home against the groin and pussy and the lower abdomen, wreaking indescribable agony and drawing a hoarse, unintelligible cry of unbearable agony.
"I advise you to lie still and take your birching humbly, Miss," the dry voice of the dominatress rose again. "In view of your continued rebelliousness, those first two strokes will not count. You have fifteen cuts left. Prepare yourself!"
And now a martyrdom in very hell for the unfortunate young woman. Under the burning, scolding swipes of the switches, she shrieked, her teeth clenched the damask cover of the bed, she pressed her mouth against it to stifle her wild cries. And babbling words, humble and submissive, came to those lips which till now had never known such cowardice: "Aii-eeyow!! Oh have mercy-I'll do anything-oh stop-only stop and I will do-ahrroww! pity, oh in God's name, don't wh-wh-whip me anymore, I beseech you-ohhahh-oh God, please, I am suffering so, I am going to die-ahroww! Eeeeeowwwwouuu!! Oh have mercy, I'll do anything, yes, yes, anything, only stop!"
It was over at last. Half-fainting, her body torn by uncontrollable, convulsive shudders, Edith Norridge lay moaning on the bed. Nowhere was the skin of her bottom broken, but there were purplish strata superimposed on the dark-red splotches which everywhere covered her magnificent round bottomglobes.
Tabitha Talmadge extended the tips of the rod towards that panting mouth. "Then kiss it and thank me for punishing you, Miss," she decreed.
And Edith Norridge, crushed and broken, tearfully obeyed and so drained the cup of shame to the very dregs.
Edith had gone to the very depths of hell. Her poor body was wracked with pain. She could not believe the way that she felt and there was nothing in her body but hatred for that vile woman who had beaten her to a point of submission.
In truth Edith would have done anything to keep from enduring any more pain. She had been sincere when she promised that she would do anything. The pain had been too much for her body. She felt like hell, and really worse than that. She had no idea how bad she felt, there was no way that she could have described the pain.
Her bottom ached and seemed to be enshrouded in a fiery flame. Her whole body was racked with unbearable pain. On and on the beating had seemed to go and now that it was over, now that she had kissed the creator of her pain, she sobbed.
She had sunk to the lowest depths of submission. Anything that would have been ordered of her she would have done. She was free of that terrible pain and that was enough to make her do anything for her emancipator.
Her body was still sore and probably would be for days to come. She nursed an overpowering hatred for her tormentor and she would never forgive the woman that had hurt her so.
She would try to get back at her somehow. She had no idea how she would do it, but it was something that she wanted to do. If she had been given a chance to torture her tormentor she would have done so gleefully. She would have beaten the matron with the whip until the bitch would have dropped dead. Her hatred for the woman was so intense that it nearly scorched her soul to retain it.
She would have her chance to get back and when she did the woman had better watch out. She would know what pain truly was if she was ever tortured by Edith.
Edith was also thinking vile thoughts about her uncle. Now, she thoroughly despised him. She hated him with every fiber in her body. She wanted to make sure that he got what was coming to him.
In terms of the matron, the governess, and her uncle, Edith felt a great deal of distaste. She wanted to have them drawn and quartered. Just as the pain had surged through her body as she was being punished she was now feeling a great deal of hatred surging through her body.
She thought about the evil that had been wrought upon her body. She thought about the extent that she had been driven. Not only had there been pain, but the humiliation of kissing the whip handle.
Her body had undergone pain, but her ego had suffered the humiliation of submission. She had had to beg for the woman to stop, she had to plead as if she were a slave and the more she thought about these matters, the more indignant that she became.
In her estimation they had no right to do what they had done to her. They had mistreated her and she would get back somehow.
Twenty-year-old Eleanor Hartley had arrived at London and, for a full week now, had been under the authority of her father's severe, widowed cousin, Ethel Burbage. The lovely light-brown-haired young woman had been desperately homesick, but she had made friends with Ethel Burbage's daughters Priscilla and Lorraine to have as staunch allies in this new and strange terrain. What chagrined her most of all was the very first evening after her arrival, when the gray-haired widow had called her into her sitting room and given her a long, sententious lecture on what was to be expected of her. She would be enrolled in a school in September, she would live here and be accountable to Ethel Burbage herself; and further, after having received a note from her father, Ethel Burbage proposed to treat her exactly as she did her own daughters whenever they incurred her wrath.
So that there would be no mistake, she made the attractive young woman blush furiously with shame as she drily remarked, "You have only to ask Priscilla and Lorraine, and they will at once acquaint you with my methods. I do not hesitate to whip them, Miss, when they are in need of it. And though you are twenty and though I am fully aware of your mature age and your excellent scholastic record, you shall be granted absolutely no favors in this house. Those are the terms by which your father sent you to me and I expect you to abide by them. So you are warned."
It would be a dreary summer for Eleanor Hartley, to be sure. Ethel Burbage was stem and unrelenting. Even at meals, she insisted that grace first be said, then she had a little sermon for the day which she delivered while the three girls at the table were expected to sit with bowed heads, silent and motionless until she deigned to let the meal begin.
There were constant admonitions about keeping the room tidy, about the propriety of dress for outdoors, about the tone of speech with which young ladies should address their elders, and so on. In the short week, Eleanor Hartley discovered that she was being more tyrannized than she had ever been at home in Albany.
On the Thursday week after her arrival, her severe guardian dispatched her to the greengrocer shop on Smollett Road, with a neatly handwritten list of staples and a number of detailed comments on the way she wished the vegetables to be selected and the sugar to be parceled out. Eleanor listened dutifully, blushing with those severe blue eyes rested on her with a cold disdain, and never before had she felt so much a child despite her twenty years of age. Apart, to be sure, from that never-to-be-forgotten moment when her own father had whipped her and her mother had helped him do it.
But as she was carrying her parcels outside of the shop on her way back home, she stumbled and would have fallen if it had not been for the friendly help of an amiable young man who caught her just as she was about to fall.
"I say there, Miss, that was a close one!" he exclaimed. He righted her and helped her adjust her parcels. Then, in a spirit of gallantry, he offered, "Please allow me to carry some of those, at least. It was my fault you almost fell."
"Oh no, it was mine, I didn't see that sudden step there," Eleanor Hartley blushingly responded.
"Oh come on, I do insist. Here, let me take these, and that heavy one-there, that's more like it. Now just you guide me to where you live, and I'll have you delivered safe and sound like a bright new penny!" he chuckled.
Eleanor's blushes were not now so much from affronted modesty as from secret delight at his pleasant manner. Besides, he was extremely good-looking. "I say," he inquired after a moment as they set forth on the return journey, "can you be a Yank?"
"Oh yes, I'm afraid I am. I come from Albany, New York," Eleanor volunteered.
"What a lark! And what do you think of jolly old London?"
"I guess-I've only been here a week and I guess I'm still homesick," she suddenly confided.
"That's a shame. There's so much that one can enjoy here. The museums and the theater, and just walks. Soho is very exciting and very colorful. I say now, Miss, my name is Frank Posenby. I'm going to be an architect. Oh, not like Sir Christopher Wren, but at least I'll have a sporting go at it. Anyway, I'm lucky, because my pater has an office and is very well known in London. I'm working for him as an apprentice, you see."
Eleanor warmed to this candid, friendly young man. He had curly brown hair, a trim little moustache, but there was nothing about him to suggest the effete or the effeminate. He was six feet tall, sturdy, and he had a pleasant smile and warm, twinkling blue eyes-oh, how different from Ethel Burbage's! He was twenty-five, and it was true about his father: Alexander Posenby was already quite famous as an architect, and had just finished supervising the construction of an attractive college building in the Northwest section of London, a highly modern building of great artistic merit.
"My name is Eleanor Hartley," she found herself telling him. "My parents sent me here to be with my father's cousin. She's a widow and a schoolteacher. Of course she's free now during the summer vacation, but I do feel like one of her pupils."
"It must be simply dreadful for you, Miss Eleanor," he tipped his hat deferentially. She was instantly charmed by his manners, and when she caught him looking at her admiringly, she really did blush violently and lowered her eyes.
"Do you suppose-no, I shouldn't be so bold, really-but I was going to say, it's true. I've known you only a few minutes, but you're at liberty to find out about me and see if I'm telling you the truth about who I really am. What I'm getting at, oh dash it all anyway, is that I'd like very much to see you again. I feel that as a Londoner I ought to make up to you for your homesickness and take you around to see the sights. Do you think it is possible?"
"I-I should like that very much. But I had better speak to my guardian-that is what she is, you see."
"A grown young woman like you needing a guardian? Oh my gracious, I am certain that you are quite capable of shifting for yourself, Miss Eleanor," he chuckled merrily.
"But it's true," she said in a forlorn voice. "You see, I'm here in sort of disgrace."
"I don't understand."
"Well, it's just that in school, I wrote an essay on the right to vote for women, and then there was a parade on the campus and I marched with the other girls carrying a banner. Then I also got up in class and told the teacher what I thought."
"Good for you! As it so happens, I share your views. I think we men are a befuddled lot of timid sheep, afraid to give the vote to women. We want to keep them in the darkness as if we were still back in the Middle Ages."
"Do you really feel that way?" Eleanor gasped delightedly. "Oh, it's so good to find a man at last who can talk sensibly about this without flying into a rage. Even my own father-well, I wouldn't rather talk about that. But, but he didn't like it at all. He said that he would rather have me going out with a young man than doing an immoral thing like upholding women's suffrage."
"With all due respect to your father, Miss Eleanor, I think he is very much mistaken and behind the times. Well now, I absolutely insist on taking you out some evening, perhaps to dinner and then perhaps to the theater, and we can air our views further," Frank Posenby enthusiastically proposed.
"That would be lovely! Can you-would you call here? I think it would be better if Mrs. Burbage met you and approved of my going out with you," Eleanor said, a little flustered by all the attention and the personalized interest which this very handsome young man was giving her.
"Of course I shall. Perhaps this Saturday, if it is convenient?"
"That would be very nice. Here is the house now, and thank you ever so much for helping me, Mr. Posenby."
"I will help you with your packages and knock at the door for you," he declared.
"Oh, please, I don't think-I don't think you'd better," she gasped, turning a vivid red again. "I don't know what she'll think about my talking to you in the street. She might think it very improper."
"Oh dash it all, Eleanor, this is 1907, and we are not living back in the days of good old Queen Victoria. At any rate, it was very pleasant meeting you, and I shall certainly call Saturday afternoon to acquaint myself with your guardian, as you call her." He tipped his hat again and strode away. Eleanor stared happily after him, and then moved towards the door. But it was flung open by her father's cousin, and Ethel Burbage was glowering with anger.
"Come in here at once, Miss! The very idea, standing there with everyone gawking at you, talking to some strange man in the street! I do declare, I can understand how my poor cousin became exasperated with you!"
"But, Mrs. Burbage, he-"
"Not another word! I shall have something to say with you after supper, you may be certain. As it happens, Priscilla and Lorraine are to be punished this evening, and you shall join them," was the startling and horrifying decree.
Dinner was a dismal affair. Eleanor Hartley could hardly bring herself to eat a bite of food, and she observed that Priscilla and Lorraine were equally morose and said very little throughout the meal. Ethel Burbage, however, ate with grim satisfaction, though remaining equally silent. She had treated herself to the luxury of a combination cook-housekeeper, an elderly woman named Mrs. Dorset, who served the food and took away the plates and was as self-effacing as she herself could have wished. When the meal was finally concluded, she rose and, glancing at her two daughters and her new charge, curtly commanded, "All three of you young ladies will follow me to my bedroom. We have an accounting to settle."
"But please, Cousin Ethel," Eleanor vainly tried to placate the stern grey-haired woman.
She got no further. With a cold stare at her, Ethel Burbage interposed, "That will be quite enough, Eleanor. I shall deal with you upstairs. Now come along, all of you."
Her face flamed violently as she followed her cousins up the stairs. Priscilla and Lorraine glanced at each other uneasily, their eyes already suspiciously moist. Eleanor felt a sickening sensation take her in the pit of her stomach, at the terrible thought that she might again be subjected to the humiliating and painful ordeal of corporal punishment.
Once inside the ornately furnished bedroom, Ethel Burbage closed and locked the door, put the key into a drawer of her dresser, and then turned to confront the culprits. "Priscilla and Lorraine, you both know why you are here, don't you?"
"Yes, Mother," they dolefully chorused.
"As for you, Eleanor, I have not been entirely pleased with your stay here. You seem to show a certain resentment of me, which is certainly no fault of mine. I have been kind enough to accept you as a kind of protegee at your father's wish, since there is kinship between us and I do feel that I owe him a favor. I know also how improperly you behaved back in your home city, and it was your father's wish that you be subjected to discipline at my behest. I had thought this evening to have you watch Priscilla and Lorraine receive their punishments, but when I saw you this afternoon standing there on the street talking to that strange man, I knew that the time had come to deal with you just as strictly as I do with my own children. You shall be whipped, and you shall be whipped last so that the example which Lorraine and Priscilla will afford you may, I sincerely hope, provide a salutary lesson."
"Oh no-you aren't going to whip me. No, I won't stand for it! I'm twenty, you have no right-" Eleanor gasped.
"I have every right, Miss," Ethel Burbage coldly countered. "I have your father's letter, and I have the evidence of my own eyes. I can assure you that if Priscilla or Lorraine had so misbehaved as to speak to a strange young man on the street without my permission, they would be in for a great deal more than they are already going to receive. And if need be, they will help me hold you while I punish you. I think, considering your age, you had best submit quietly and take your deserved correction. Now then, Lorraine, tell me why you are here for punishment."
The taffy-haired younger girl looked down at the floor, shifted nervously from foot to foot, and then quavered, "For raising my voice when I was talking to my sister, for not keeping my room tidy, and for annoying Mrs. Dorset."
"That is quite correct. And you, Priscilla?"
The auburn-haired, buxom, freckled seventeen-year-old girl gulped nervously, and in a hardly audible voice, replied, "Because I was yelling at my sister and because I put rice powder on my cheeks when you said I shouldn't, Mother."
"Again correct. Very well, Lorraine, you may prepare. Priscilla, you shall be next, and you, Eleanor, as I have already said." With this, the domineering grey-haired widow folded her arms and walked over towards the straight backed chair. Meanwhile, fifteen-year-old Lorraine Burbage, tears edging down her cheeks, had already began to loft her skirt and petticoats. Her mother seated herself in the chair, seized the girl by an earlobe and drew her across her lap. Then she completed her preparations. Rolling up skirt and petticoats well up on the girl's back, she exposed a compact pair of saucy bottom ovals snugged in a pair of pink batiste drawers. Ordering Lorraine to hold up her own clothes, her mother now attacked this final veil of modesty and soon had the drawers tugged down to Lorraine's knees, exposing a tawny-sheened skin which was extremely sensitive and mobile, judging from the frantic contractions which Lorraine's bottom muscles began to make. Now, tucking her daughter's waist in with her left arm, Ethel Burbage proceeded to apply a very vigorous and stinging smack bottom, and it was not long before Lorraine began to cry and kick her long slim legs and to beg for mercy.
After the handspanking, Lorraine was sent to the dresser to bring back an old-fashioned black wooden hairbrush, to kneel, to present it to her mother and tearfully to ask that the rest of her punishment be inflicted with this instrument. Then she had to tug up her fallen skirt and petticoats, and reassume the shameful posture across her mother's lap.
Twenty spanks with the hairbrush left her squealing, kicking and wriggling frantically. When it was over, she had to kneel down again and kiss the hairbrush and thank her mother for having taken such trouble with her. This done, she retreated to one of the corners of the room where she stood facing it, holding up skirt and petticoats to expose her inflamed young bottom.
Priscilla was now called for her reckoning, and had already begun to sniffle and to blush violently. She had to remove her skirt entirely and the two petticoats, and stood, a very buxom and attractive beauty for all her seventeen years, in black silk stockings with elastic garters, and a pair of gray batiste knickers with lacy flounces around the hems. Then, to Eleanor's startled horror, Priscilla had to lower these knickers down to her knee-hollows, and assume the shameful posture over her mother's lap.
Ethel Burbage gave her older daughter a far more vigorous handspanking. Eleanor found herself counting, fascinated despite being horrified. At least sixty slaps rained down on the pale-milky skinned plump round globes, and Priscilla was soon sobbing and pleading for mercy.
She too had to go fetch the hairbrush, kneel down and ask that it be used upon her, then reassume the posture and hold up her own clothes to bare her flaming behind. Twenty-five good stinging spanks, each slowly administered, drew howls and frantic, feverish promises to be good from the lovely penitent.
Then she too was bidden to stand in an opposite corner and keep her clothes up so that everyone could see her well-spanked bottom.
And now it was Eleanor Hartley's turn. Eleanor froze as if her legs had turned to jelly, and she couldn't move when Ethel Burbage commanded her sternly to prepare just as her own two daughters had done.
And then Eleanor broke down and tearfully begged for mercy, avowing that she was too old, that she had not meant to be guilty of any impropriety, that the young man was the son of an architect and had helped her on her way back from the grocer shop.
It availed her nothing. She was threatened with a birching, and with the further shame of having Lorraine and Priscilla hold her wrists while it was being applied.
And so, dying of shame and her face streaked with tears, the light-brown -haired young woman miserably unfastened her skirt and took off her petticoats-at Ethel Burbage's express command-and laid herself over her father's cousin's lap to have her drawers tugged down and her beautiful bottom upturned in all its vulnerable nudity.
The handspanking was prolonged and painful, and despite Eleanor's resolve to take it bravely, she could not help kicking and squirming and waning in pain as that bony hand came down again and again without respite till all of her bottom was a flaming mass of stinging, burning flesh. And then it was her turn to go to the dresser and bring back the hairbrush, to kneel down and say those mortifying words.
Now Ethel Burbage clamped her right leg over Eleanor's calves, pinned the girl's wrists with her left hand, and commenced to spank. She counted aloud herself, and Eleanor cried out and pleaded for mercy brokenly, the tears streaming down her face, as the count went from ten to fifteen, thence to twenty, and finally to fifty.
And then, reaching the nadir of despair, she was obliged to kneel down, to kiss the hairbrush and to thank Ethel Burbage in a quavering, faint voice for having spanked her so well.
What was more, when Ethel Burbage finally allowed the three culprits to lower their clothes and go back to their rooms, she added sarcastically, "If you have any romantic notions about seeing that fellow again, Miss, I advise you to think twice. He will not be permitted in this house and you will not be allowed to have any sort of communication with him, is that understood? Otherwise you shall have the birch, and my daughters will hold your wrists and bend you over the couch with your bottom nicely bare to receive it."
It would have been nice to see him again, Eleanor thought. She even had a secret desire for something that would have shocked the old bitch to death. Eleanor wanted to have sex with him.
She had thought about sex several times, and now and then she had masturbated while entertaining delicious thoughts for fucking. She had done so at her home in America. There had been many nights, when she had climbed into her bed she thought about some handsome man taking her cherry.
She had felt her firm tits with her own hands imagining that some tall man was doing that to her. She had clasped her fingers around her nipples and pulled on them. She had felt the pleasure there and thoroughly enjoyed it.
There had been lots of pleasure there in her body. She had known such pleasure many times, the pleasure of putting her finger into her cunt and making herself come. She -liked doing such things.
Her spirit was crushed now as she thought about her burning bottom and she wondered if she would ever be able to get away with frigging herself in this hell. She doubted it. She had the awful feeling that the old bitch had eyes in the back of her head.
It wouldn't be unlike her. She was a witch, had to be in Eleanor's thoughts. She probably ate young babies, after all she was terrible, cruel, nasty. Oh, Eleanor despised her and her thoughts about the woman were very naughty.
She thought back on the times she had frigged herself into pleasure. She thought about the dampness of her pussy and how it had oozed against her fingers as she ran them up and down on the mouth of her cunt.
Her twat had pounded madly each time that she had frigged herself. And every time that she had masturbated there had always been a mental picture of some man with his prick long and stiff ready to attack her.
She, like all girls her age wanted to be fucked. She was ripe for the experience and her body would have given any man pleasure. She wanted to wrap her legs around some man and fuck him until they could fuck no more.
She wanted to have her cunt screwed, with the pleasurable feeling of flesh moving on flesh. Each movement would have been a delight to her and she thought about the ways that she would have pleased her lover.
She worked her finger into her cunt with these thoughts, and while she fingered herself she felt her body throb and pulse with delight.
She saw a prick growing and trembling. She imagined that it had entered her cunt and was pumping inside of her body.
She would run one hand up and down on her body, touching her tits, fingering her mouth, as the other hand rubbed her cunt, and fingered her clit. Her clit would seem to be enshrouded in fiery waves as she pounded the digit into herself some more and then finally she would come. She turned her mind to these thoughts and then realized that as long as she stayed there in this house she would never get to fuck.
CHAPTER TEN
As the consequence of her punishment by Ethel Burbage, the lovely light brown-haired American Eleanor Hartley was sternly forbidden to talk to any more strange young men. After the thrashing in front of Lorraine and Priscilla, she had gone directly to her bedroom, locked herself in, and then burst into a crisis of hysterical tears. Never had she felt so forlorn, so isolated and lost. The only thing she could recall was the gracious and pleasant manner of the nice young man who had helped her with the groceries. She was fair enough not to blame him for the way Ethel Burbage had humiliated and punished her. But she resolved that somehow she was going to see him again.
She would have been greatly surprised had she known that Frank Posenby had gone that very evening of her disgrace and atonement to the Widow Torrington, who was distantly related to his father's sister. The still sprightly white -haired woman received him eagerly, for he was also a great favorite with her. She had tea and crumpets served and a glass of tawny port, and than sat back and chuckled, "Well, my boy, have you come to tell me that at last you've found yourself a fine young girl who will marry you and keep you out of mischief? You won't be a good architect until you have a woman to stand by you, you know, Frank."
"I know that only too well, Auntie Maudie." She almost giggled at this pet name which he invented for her. "As a matter-of-fact, I think I may have met one this very afternoon. She's an American, though, I warn you."
"They have spirit and enterprise and I like that. And they are working hard to win the vote for women over there just as we are here. In fact, they may well beat us to it," Mrs. Torrington said prophetically. "But tell me more about her, Frank."
"That's very easy to do. She's a beautiful young woman, I should say about nineteen or twenty. She had light-brown hair, beautiful eyes and a soft sweet voice. And I have a feeling that she is here as a kind of prisoner."
"What do you mean by that, Frank?"
"Well, it seems that I helped her from a fall after she came out of the greengrocer's shop, you see. We got to chatting as I carried her parcels home for her, and she told me that her father and mother had sent her from America to be with his cousin who is a schoolteacher and who has two girls of her own. I take it this schoolteacher is quite severe. But the interesting thing, Auntie Maudie, is that she said she was sent here in disgrace because back in her college she spoke out for Women's Suffrage, even carried a banner on the campus, and defied her teacher in open class."
"Bully for her, to use an American expression!" the white -haired widow gleefully clapped her hands. "And I suppose you are going to set your cap for her. Well, you could do worse. A girl of spirit, and about that age, would make a fine wife for you. Your father would be very happy. He is not a social snob, I assure you, great architect though he be."
"I know. Peter is the salt of the earth. But I'm not sure that I'll be able to see this girl again, if this woman in whose charge she is keeps her under such tight lock and key."
"Perhaps I can be of help to you. I should like to recruit more young women for my work. I should pay them well, and they could live here in this great old house which needs the sound of laughter and happy voices. It is high time that women broke their shackles of servitude to the male animal, Frank, no offense to you, my boy, you know-and declared themselves as human beings who are quite capable of thinking and making their own decisions and shaping their own lives."
"Bully for you now, Auntie Maudie," he chuckled, bending over to give her a kiss.
"Go along with you, and save those kisses for that Yankee girl of yours. Now then, to work. We must put our minds together and see if we can't rescue this girl. Do you know where she lives?"
"Oh yes, I walked her home."
"That was enterprising. My husband, peace to his memory, didn't waste any time on the conventions when he saw me at Bournemouth over forty-two years ago-he walked straight up to me and told me that I was the prettiest thing he had ever seen and would I do him the favor of going cycling with him. And, do you know, I did! Ah yes, that's the way of true love, Frank. Go forward without fear and take what you want. But the woman must do that too, and it's high time you men realized that. But that's enough of my old chatter. You know her name?"
"Yes, it's Eleanor Hartley."
"And she lives with a schoolteacher, you said?"
"I got that name, too, Auntie. It's Ethel Burbage."
"Yes, I know that name. Oh my, if it's the woman I think it is, the poor lass is in for a very gloomy summer. Her girls are treated like naughty pupils and she doesn't spare the rod, I believe. But then, I have a presentiment about one of my other good workers. I heard that she was arrested, and I expected her to call me, but she hasn't done a thing nor has a note come around. I suspect that her uncle, who is filthy rich and also a great deal of a boor, may be keeping her under lock and key, too. We shall have to do something about this, Frank."
"You want me to champion a cause, I take it, Auntie Maudie?"
"I do indeed, I'll help you with your young lady if you'll help me with mine. Fair exchange is no robbery, Frank," the white -haired woman teased.
And so she sat down at her secretary and with Frank's aid, proceeded to pen a letter addressed to Eleanor Hartley which Frank himself would deliver. It was a letter inviting Eleanor to leave the Burbage household and come to work for her at an excellent salary and with quarters provided in her own house.
Next, Mrs. Torrington considered the matter of Edith Norridge. When she mentioned where Harold Chentley lived, Frank Posenby exclaimed, "Why, my good friend Dick Raddimacher lives just about a stone's throw from that fellow Chentley! It would be an easy matter if I got Dick to spy around and see what he could learn about your Miss Norridge."
"I should be eternally grateful to you, Frank, if you will do that for me. She is a fine young woman, all of twenty-four, and yet I fear she is being treated like a child by that uncouth uncle of hers. I should also not be surprised to learn that he has his fingers in the money which her father left her. I happen to have known her parents, you see, and it was stipulated that she should not come into her full estate until she married. Well, she hasn't, because after her college she came to work for me and she became so enthusiastic in this wonderful cause that she took no interest in young men."
"Ah, then, I can sense you are trying to make a match, Auntie Maudie," he affectionately teased her. "You know perfectly well that Dick is a bachelor and quite forlorn. The girl he was engaged to up and broke it last year and went off to India with a dashing young Captain."
"Oh certainly, I remember Dick. Well, he couldn't do any better than Edith Norridge. And if he's half the man you are, perhaps fate will take a hand and Dan Cupid too, and bring those two fine young people together." Once again she spoke prophetically.
Frank Posenby rose, took her hand and kissed it like a courtly gallant. "I'll keep you posted, Auntie. In fact, I shall take a hansom cab directly to Dick's digs and acquaint him with the mission.
He continued speaking. Well, I'm off now. I've got a note to deliver of my own tomorrow morning to my new flame, so you let me hear from you about Edith Norridge."
"I'll do just that, you can be sure." The two young men shook hands, and Frank Posenby left the flat....
Edith Norridge was sobbing as if her heart would break. After the cruel whipping she had received from Tabitha Talmadge, she had wanted to die, but then as she reasoned to herself, she simply had to find some way of escaping from this terrible house. The idea that her own uncle, her only living relative, had engaged this odious woman to have complete charge over her and to punish her and humiliate her like an utter child had shocked her to her very marrow. Now she knew that somehow she must find a way to leave him forever, and to get back to Maude Torrington.
She hadn't been able to communicate with her employer, of course. And from what that terrible woman had told her, she would never once be allowed to go back.
But now it was the afternoon after that atrocious beating, and now she was in her bedroom again and Tabitha Talmadge, her face severe, in her black, forbidding gown, had just communicated to her Uncle's latest wish. To prove her submission, she was to ask Tabitha Talmadge to give her a good smack bottom on the naked seat.
"Those are my instructions, Edith," the dour governess concluded. "He will be at dinner this evening, and you will be able to see him if you behave yourself. But I am instructed to convey to you this wish of his. If you show good spirit and humility, I shall report to him that there is some hope for your progress. You will then be permitted to sit at the same table with him and to comport yourself, I sincerely trust, as a proper young lady should. Well, what is your answer?"
"Oh, it is horrible, it is too vile, to force me to do a terrible thing like that! He has no interest in me, he doesn't care for me, to treat me like this! Haven't I been cruelly treated enough?" she sobbed as she lay on the bed, her face covered with her hands.
It seemed like an end, but it was only a beginning.
