When her widowed aunt, with whom she had been living for several years in Yorkshire, died, Miss Alice Darvell was sent off to live with her nearest relative and guardian at his house in Suffolk. The change from a small house in a bleak and lonely part of the West Riding to a Baronet's establishment was hailed with rapture by the handsome and healthy girl of eighteen. The only, or at any rate, the principal advantage gained by her life with her aunt was one she scarcely appreciated. Her life in the country, the bracing air, the long walks, and the rigorous punctuality of the old lady had allowed Miss Darvell to fully develop all the physical charms which so distinguished her. Add to that her fresh complexion, laughing brown eyes, the magnificent contour of her form and her limbs and you may begin to see what a rare beauty Alice possessed. But she also had a distracting air of reckless ingenuousness, picked up, no doubt, in her moorland scampers. Although unconscious of her charms, she sighed for the pomp and vanity of the world, even though they were held up to her by her aunt as perils of the deadliest description-a view regarded by Alice with skeptical curiosity. Her solitude only increased her imaginative faculty, and the fascination it attached to balls, parties, and life generally in the world, was greater than their charm actually warranted, as Alice subsequently found out. The only disquiet she had experienced arose from a vague longing which was satisfied by none of the small events in her puritanical life. She was modest even to prudishness; had long worn dresses of such a length as to make them remarkable; had never in her life had on one of the fashionable low-cut variety. She blushed at the mention of an ankle, and would have fainted at the sight of one. The matter of sex was a perpetual puzzle to her, but she was perfectly unembarrassed in her interaction with men, and quite unconscious of the desire she excited in them. All she knew of her guardian, Sir Edward Bosmere of Bosmere Hall, was that he was her trustee and that he was a widower much older than herself, a cousin some degrees removed from her, but that notwithstanding, she called him "Uncle."
Thither then she went. Sir Edward turned out to be a man of about fifty; very determined in his manner, powerfully built, and of a medium height. But what surprised Alice most was to find herself introduced to a tall, dark girl who looked about two and twenty, who was introduced as his housekeeper. She was dressed in exquisite fashion, but Alice thought most indecently. Even more shocking, she, too, called Sir Edward, "Uncle."
The first few days were taken up in making acquaintance, but Alice was surprised one morning at breakfast to see the housekeeper, Maud, grow very pale when told by Sir Edward that she was to go to the yellow room after breakfast, and that she was to go straight there. This direction apparently was directly as a consequence of some cutlets which were served at the meal slightly overcooked. When Alice again saw Maud, she was flushed and excited, and appeared to have been crying her eyes out. In some consternation, she inquired what the yellow room was. Her curiosity wasn't to be satisfied, though, as the only reply she obtained was that she would find out soon enough. On the same occasion, after Maud had left the breakfast-room, Sir Edward, who had by that time quite accepted Alice into his household, told her he thought she dressed in a very dowdy fashion, and said he had given directions to their maid to provide a more suitable wardrobe for her. Alice was quite flustered. She was covered with blushes and confusion as she listened to her Uncle speak of having her dressed like Maud. She was most disconcerted, for Maud showed a great deal of leg-as well as other charms. So Alice tried to pull herself together and replied that she really could do no such thing. Sir Edward looked at her in a very peculiar way and said he felt sure her present mode of dress hid the loveliest neck and limbs in the world. He went on to ask whether she did not admire Maud's style of dress, and if she had noticed her stockings and drawers.
"I have indeed, uncle; but I could never wear anything like them."
"And why not, pray?"
"I should be so ashamed."
"We will soon cure you of that. We punish prudish young women here by shortening their petticoats. How do you like that idea?"
"I like it not at all; and I will not have anything of the sort done to me."
"I am afraid, miss, you want a whipping."
"I should like," Alice declared defiantly, "to know who would dare such a thing."
Sir Edward again looked at her in a peculiar manner, but said nothing more on the subject. Instead, her guardian went on to tell her of his belief that young women should learn how to manage a house before they had one of their own and found themselves not knowing what to do with it. As part of her training as a proper young lady, she and Maud were to take weekly turns in the management of his household. A week from that day she would take the running of the household in hand.
"In the meantime, my dear, you had better learn as much as you can from Maud; especially not to let them burn cutlets like these." Saying which, he left the room.
At this point the narrative can best be continued from the diary of Alice Darvell herself:
Wed., July 3, 1883.
As soon as uncle had left the breakfast-table, I felt quite disturbed, but on the whole determined to go on as if nothing had happened. A message from Maud came a little later, delivered by our maid, Janet. The note said that she could not go out riding that morning as we had arranged. What a terrible woman our 'maid' is! Why on earth does uncle have a Scotchwoman with so terrible a disposition for two young girls? She makes me quake if she only looks at me. Well, I made up my mind to go alone, and rode off very soon after.
On my return I met Maud, very red-faced, and looking as though she had been crying dreadfully. I asked her what was in the room to which uncle had sent her. She would not tell me what had happened, although I was struck with an icy chill down my spine when she told me that I should soon learn the secrets of the yellow room for myself.
The rest of the day passed in the usual way. We drove out after lunch, paid some visits, received several, and dressed for dinner. While waiting for the gong to sound, Maud came to me, and to my horror took up precisely the same subject Sir Edward had so thoroughly embarrassed me about at breakfast.
"Uncle does not approve of your dresses, you little prude, and Janet has another one for you."
"If Janet," said I, "has a dress for me that shows my neck and breasts and back, as well as my feet, my ankles, my legs-I mean, if she has one for me that is like yours-I declare flatly, I won't wear it."
"Don't be a fool, dear. I am mistress this week; you will be next week, as uncle has explained to you, and if you do not get rid of your ridiculous shame, you will be soundly punished. You may be thankful if you are only obliged to show your legs up to your knees and your bosom down to your breasts."
"I do not care. I have never been punished."
"Very well," said Maud, "have your own way. You will soon know better."
When I arrived for dinner, uncle and Maud were there with three or four young men. Some very handsome women were also present; every one in low dresses. I was the only one in a high dress. Uncle said something to Maud, who in turn whispered to me that I was to go with her. As soon as we got into the hall, she told me I was to be taken to the yellow room and that I was a goose. When I asked her why, she only laughed. Once we arrived there, she said she was very sorry, but that she must obey orders. She then strapped my hands firmly behind my back. My struggles were useless in the end, but kept her so long that she said, "I shall take care that you shall have an extra half-dozen for this." I could not think what she meant but I had plenty of time to ponder the strange comment, for I was left alone in that room for a considerable time. It got darker and still no one came. The yellow room was in an out-of-the-way wing, and I could hear not any activity from the party which I knew was still in the dining room. In fact, I heard nothing until the faint sound of the tower clock striking ten reached my ears. My hands tied tight behind me and ached with a dull, throbbing pain. I began to lose my temper. I wondered how long I was to be kept there, and then I wondered who had the right to keep me, trussed up in such a manner. I had nothing to occupy my time so I made a study of my surroundings. I suppose it was called the yellow room because the bed-curtains, the curtains on the windows, and the valances were all yellow damask. I found myself staring at the ottoman and wondering what such an enormous one was doing here, in company with a heavy oak table. That wasn't the only oddity about the room. There was a bar swinging from the ceiling! I puzzled over that for quite awhile and, then, overcome with vexation and impatience, I went to sleep.
I was awakened at about half-past eleven by the sound of carriages driving off. It was pitch dark and the curtains had been drawn. I know it was about half-past eleven because about half-an-hour later midnight struck. There was a footstep in the corridor, and uncle came in.
Before I could express my anger at being treated in such a manner, my uncle addressed me in a clipped angry voice. "I am extremely surprised at your insubordination, miss, and for that I am about to punish you." What followed I cannot write.
So much for that part of the diary. Later on, by way of penance, as the sequel will show, Miss Alice Darvell was compelled to write out the minutest description of her punishments and her sensations and secret thoughts.
What happened was this: Sir Edward Bosmere at once informed Alice that he would have no more prudish nonsense. He explained that he was going to strip her and flog her soundly. "But you must first promise to take off your own drawers. That is a very important humiliation to which a proud young beauty such as yourself has to be subjected."
She protested in the most vehement manner.
"You have no right to whip me," she said in a cold, tight little voice. She was trying hard to keep control of her speech. She tried not to screech or let her voice tremble, as that would tell him that he had the power to frighten her. "I will not be whipped by any man or anyone else. Undo my hands at once," she said in what she thought was an authoritative voice. "Being kept all the evening in this room without any dinner is quite punishment enough. And what have I done that calls for punishment? Refusing to wear horrid dresses which only serve to make nakedness conspicuous? If I am to be treated in this way, I shall leave tomorrow. As for promising to take off my own drawers before my own uncle, you must be mad, Sir, to think of such a thing. I would rather die first."
She looked lovely in her fury, and an alteration in the surface of Sir Edward's trousers showed his appreciation of her beauty. He longed to see her naked and all her charms revealed.
"I will not dispute with you, you saucy miss, and as your face is too pretty to slap, I will settle accounts with your bottom-yes, your bottom, and a pretty plump white bottom I have no doubt it is. I can promise you, however, it won't be white long. Now lie across that ottoman on your face. What? You won't? Well, across my knee will do as well, and perhaps better."
Putting his arm round her waist, he dragged her with him to the sofa, telling her that her shrieks and struggles in that heavily curtained and thickly carpeted room would bring her no assistance; that even if they were heard no one would pay attention to them. In fact, he told her, the only result, if she persisted, would be to double her punishment. He did not, however, at that moment wish to do more than examine the charms that were so jealously concealed, the magnificence of which might be easily guessed from the little that did appear of her figure. He walked her to the sofa and sat down upon it, still holding her by the waist, and then, putting her between his legs, pulled her down across his left one. Her power of resistance was very much lessened because her hands were strapped behind her, but still she managed to slide down upon her knees in front of him instead of being laid across his lap. He then held her tightly between his knees and proceeded to unfasten the neck of her dress. Since the buttons were at the back, he was obliged to put his arms round her and draw her so close that he felt her warm pressure upon him. The passion he felt was intensified, and the girl then, for the first time, seemed in a hazy sort of wonder as to whether the treatment she was undergoing was altogether unpleasant. So shocked was she by this unconscious thought, she ceased her useless resistance. At length the buttons were all undone to the waist. The dress was pulled down in front as far as her arms-still strapped behind her back-would allow. It was sufficient, however, to disclose a neck as white as snow and the upper surfaces of two swelling, firm globes. Sir Edward immediately, placed his left arm under his victim's armpit and round her shoulders, and drew her closer to him, spreading his legs wider. Notwithstanding her pretty cries for him to desist, he inserted his right hand in her bosom. At last, succeeding in loosening her corset, he was able to caress the scarlet center of the lovely, palpitating breast while its owner lay in most bewitching disorder in his lap. Her hair had partly fallen; her bosom was exposed by the dress three parts down and the loose corset-her eyes swam, and her color was heightened.
"Oh, stop! Uncle; oh, do, do, do stop! I never felt like this before. Whatever will become of me? I cannot bear the sensation. You have no business to pull me about so."
"Do you not like the sensation, Alice?" asked he, stooping and putting his face into her bosom, "and being kissed like this, and this, and this? And is this not nice?" Taking her red teat between his lips, he gently played with it, using his tongue and his teeth until she was quite overtaken by strange feelings, the like of which she had never experienced or even imagined.
"Oh! Uncle! Whatever are you doing to me?" said the girl, flushing crimson all over, her eyes opening wide with amazement while her knees fell wider apart as she fell slightly back upon his right knee.
"Is it nice? Do you like it? Does it give you sensations anywhere else?" asked he, glancing at her waist-and then, a moment after, putting his hand down outside her dress, asked, "Here, for instance?"
She flushed a still deeper crimson shame, but there was a gleam of rapture after the momentary pressure, followed by the exclamation: "How dare you?"
"How dare I, miss? We shall see. Now you will please lie on your face across my knee. You can rest on the sofa."
"Oh, I suppose, you are now going to button up my dress," she said with some disappointment in her tone.
"Am I?"
"Then what are you going to do?"
"Make you obey me, and without any more resistance, or you shall have double punishment. Lie down at once, miss."
"Oh, uncle, don't look at my legs! Oh, do not, do not strip me. Oh, if I am to be whipped, whip my hands or shoulders; just not-not t-there."
"You are a very naughty, obstinate girl, with too much prudishness about you. But when you yourself have been forced to expose all you possess in the most unconcealed manner, and have been kept some days in short frocks with no drawers, there will, no doubt, be an improvement. And, as I said before, I shall flog your bare bottom soundly, Miss Alice, and fairly often if you do not mend your ways. Lash your arms and shoulders? Indeed! I shall lash your legs and thighs. Lie down this instant."
The poor girl, although she sensed resistance was useless, made not a move, but the arm put round her back soon cured her inaction. She lay across her uncle's left leg and under his left arm, which he had well round her waist.
"Now," said he, tightening his grasp, "we shall see what we have all along so carefully hidden; eh, miss?" He pulled up her dress behind, despite her struggles and reiterated prayers to him to desist.
"No use struggling, miss," he went on, slipping his hand up her legs and proceeding at once to that organ in front which women delight in having touched.
"Oh, uncle! Oh, leave off. How dare you? How dare you outrage me in this manner? Oh! Take your hand away! Oh! Oh! Oh!"
"So you are a little wet," he said, feeling the hairs moistened by the voluptuous sensations he had caused her by caressing her breasts, "and you hoped that no one would know, no doubt. Now just let me stroke these legs." He ran his free hand up and down her silky thighs; his left arm was still draped over her back, holding her across his lap, although it could be argued that he could have used both hands to explore her form as it was doubtful that she had the strength or inclination to escape. "What a nice fine pair they are," he exclaimed, turning the robe above her waist. "And what a pretty, what a perfectly lovely bottom!" he said, opening her drawers. "What a crime to hide it from me. However, you will make amends for that by taking your drawers off presently."
"Never! Never while I live! You monster! You wretch! If ever I get out of this room alive, I will expose you!"
"My dear, let me try a little gentle persuasion, a novel sensation. If that does not suffice, I can find some better, more striking, argument."
And again, he pressed her down upon him and slipped his hand up along her thighs. He deviated for a moment to caress her fine plump bottom-cheeks, but he wasn't long distracted from his true purpose. He moved his hand down once more and, while putting his finger in her virgin orifice in front, he positioned his thumb over her rear opening. Upon feeling his finger at the lips of her cunny, she jerked herself upwards, heaving herself off his lap as high as she could manage. Although her movement did manage to dislodge his finger somewhat from her front, she soon realized that she had just facilitated the invasion of her bottom-hole, for as she rose up, his thumb, which had been carefully positioned to take advantage of this very reaction, went in. Then, with a little scream, Alice again bounced forward and his finger slid into her cunny as far as her maidenhead would admit. She could do nothing to dislodge either invader, for her hands were all the time still tied. Besides which, she was mortified that she had so unthinkingly assisted in her own undoing.
While she was held motionless by her shock and embarrassment, her uncle kept up a severe use of both his finger and thumb for some moments, moving in and out of the two openings with surprising ease. Soon she was unable to contain herself, and was ultimately obliged to abandon herself to the sensations he provoked. Her legs were stretched out and wide apart; her bottom rose and fell regularly; her lovely neck and shoulders, which were still exposed to his sight, increased his rapture and her dismay; and at last, when the crisis had arrived-pretty nearly at the same moment did it overtake them both-she lay panting and sobbing, almost dead with shame, but for the time subdued.
"Well, dear, how do you like your new experience?"
"Oh, uncle, it is awful, simply awful! I am beside myself."
"When you have rested a moment, will you stand up and take off your drawers before me?"
No answer.
"Answer directly, miss."
"No, I won't! I won't, and I shall not allow you to take them from me."
"I have no intention of removing the pretty garment myself," he said with a wicked twinkle in his eyes. "I believe I can convince you to follow my orders."
Getting up, he went to a chest of drawers, and opening one, took out a riding-whip. Silently, and notwithstanding her violent resistance, he again got the refractory girl over his knee, with his arm round her, her dress up, and her bottom as bare as her drawers would admit. Across the linen and the bare part he gave her a vigorous cut, making the whip whistle through the air. It fell, leaving a livid mark across the delicate white flesh and causing her to yell in shocked pain. Again he raised it and brought it down-another yell and more desperate contortions.
"Oh, uncle, don't! Oh! No more! No more! Oh! I can't bear it. I will be good. I will obey."
Although he had succeeded in wresting from her the promise he sought, Sir Edward paid no attention. Instead, he raised the whip, made it whistle a third time through the air. A more piercing shriek.
"It is not enough for you to promise to obey; you must be punished and cured of your obstinacy. Here's your reward for calling me a wretch and monster"-swish-swishswish.
"Oh! Oh! Oh! Don't! Oh, don't! Oh, you are not a wretch! I say you are not anything but what-oh! Oh! Put down that whip. Oh! Please, dear uncle! You are not a wretch or monster! I was very naughty to call you so, and I liked what you did to me, only I was ashamed to say it. I will take my drawers off before you if you like! I will do anything, only don't whip me any more."
"You shall have your dozen, miss"-swish. "So you liked my tickling your clitty, did you, better than"-swish-"tickling your bottom with this whip, eh?"-swish-swish. "You will expose me if you escape alive, will you?"-swish-swish.
"Oh, stop, stop! You have given me thirteen. For heaven's sake, stop!"
"I have given you a baker's dozen, and"-swish-"there is another because you complained."
Sir Edward was carried away by the passions excited by the punishment he was inflicting upon this lovely girl, and her yells as he brought the whip down again, cutting into her delicate flesh, only stirred his own passion to greater heights. Still holding her, he asked the sobbing girl whether she would be good.
"Yes. Indeed, indeed I will."
"There is a very satisfactory magic in this wand. Now, if I unfasten your hands, will you stand up and take your drawers off so that I may birch your bottom for refusing to wear a proper evening dress?"
"Oh, uncle, you have whipped me already, and punished me severely, too, by what you did to me with your f-fingers. Why should I be put to more shame?"
"Shame! Nonsense. You should be proud of your charms and glad to show them. What I did should give you pleasure. Anyhow, will you take off your drawers?"
"Oh!" she said, flushing and in despair, "however can I? I should have to lift my dress quite up, and I should be all exposed. Besides, it is so humiliating."
"Precisely. You yourself must bare all your hidden fascinations. And the humiliation is to chastise you for your prudishness. You must do it. You had better be a good, obedient girl, as you promised you would be just now."
"Very well. I will then."
"That is a good girl. You shall have a kiss for reward," and, putting his lips on her beautiful mouth, Sir Edward gave her a long and thrilling kiss, and inserted his tongue between her lips until it came into contact with hers.
"What a delicious kiss," she said, shuddering with delight and coyly adding, "I shall not so much mind taking off my-my-my drawers now," she said in a hushed tone, her eyes averted from him.
"That is right, dear. Now let me undo your hands. There. Now stand before that mirror and let me arrange the light so that it may fall full upon you. You must do this unassisted; I shall sit here."
Miss Alice Darvell walked over to the mirror in a graceful and stately fashion, and started as she saw herself. She turned round and looked shyly at her master, but said nothing. Stooping down, she gathered up her gown and petticoats in her arms and slowly lifted them to her waist. The act revealed a slender and graceful pair of ankles and calves, but the knees were hidden by the garment she was about to remove. She fumbled with the buttons about her waist. They increased her confusion by not readily unbuttoning, at which she, in a charming little rage, stamped angrily once or twice, making the drawers tumble down.
"Keep up your petticoats," cried Sir Edward, "and step out of your drawers. Keep them up," said he, rising, "until I tell you you may let them down. What lovely thighs! What splendid hips! What a lovely, round bottom! Look at it, Alice, in the glass."
"Oh," she said, startled, "I am so glad you think so. I have never looked at myself before."
He laughed at this revelation and stroked the satin skin with his hand, rubbing her limbs in front and behind and all over her bottom until, at last, when he had gradually stroked her all the way up, he put his hand between the cheeks of her backside right through to her cunt. He rubbed that passage also, and kept gently stroking for some minutes until she fell limply against him, uttering inarticulate sounds of delight.
"There," he said at length, "that will do for tonight. You may let your clothes down now. It is so late that the birching shall be postponed until the morning."
"May I take my drawers with me?"
"No, my dear; it will be some time before I shall allow you to wear them again. Not as long as you are still a maiden," he added significantly.
"Oh, that will be years."
"Will it?" he inquired, innocently. "Come," he said, "I will take you to your room. You will, in the future, occupy the one I will now take you to, and not your old one."
"Why, uncle? All my things are in the old one."
"That does not matter, my dear. I must keep you under my eye until you are reduced to abject submission."
The room to which he took her was cheery and warm. Although the month was July, a fire had been lighted and had evidently been recently stirred. And on a small table near the hearth stood a biscuit box and a small bottle of Dry Monopole. Alice would have preferred a sweeter wine, but was told that this was better for her. It was quite plain that either uncle had told someone the precise hour at which he would bring her to the room, or that someone had been watching, for the wine was still frothing in the glass and therefore must have been poured out the very moment before she entered. What a terrible thought-could anyone have been watching her and have seen her nakedness? Her uncle could not have known at what hour he would take her there. She was for an instant paralyzed at the notion, but the next moment, accidentally catching sight of a bare breast and arm, it caused her a certain voluptuous thrill to think she had been seen by someone besides Sir Edward. As she slowly undressed herself, her uncle having gone off, shutting the door behind him, it struck her that she would herself, for her own satisfaction, have a peep at all she had been compelled to expose to him. Having resolved to so look at herself, she felt delightfully immoral. She stood before one of the large glasses with which her room was furnished, and after letting down her wealth of brown hair, she divested herself of all but her chemise. She stood staring at herself in the glass for a time before she allowed that last garment to slip off her shoulders and arms. She gazed at her naked charms in the glass. But only for an instant. She was then overcome by a flood of shame at her nakedness and, after fully realizing what she had been doing, she hurriedly averted her eyes and looked about for her nightdress. That she could not find, and she then recollected that the room she was in was not the same one she had previously used. She supposed they must have forgotten to bring her things. No, here was her dressing gown. She would put it on, and go to her old room for her nightdress.
She went to the door, and to her utter amazement, found that there was no handle inside! She was a prisoner. She looked about, but there was no other door anywhere to be seen.
"Very well," she said to herself; "I shall have to sleep in my chemise."
She was naked underneath, so taking off her dressing gown made her feel immodest. She didn't feel much better once she had her chemise on as it was cut very low in the neck and left her arms bare. She felt more immodest still when she remembered what she had undergone and was to undergo later in the morning.
Before she got into bed she looked about for the article ladies generally use. There was nothing of the kind in the room, and there was no bell. Then it struck her that the deprivation of her nightdress and of the utensil she now needed to make use of, must have been done deliberately by Sir Edward, and the idea that he had thought of such things so intimately connected with her person gave her a fresh delightful glow of sensuality as she plunged into the cold, silky, linen sheets. The necessary effort to retain her urine, the sense that she was being punished by being made to retain it, and the knowledge that her uncle knew all about it and so was punishing her, excited her to such an extent that she went to bed a very naughty girl indeed.
Circumstances had been such that she found it impossible, even though she closed her eyes, to fall asleep. Her mind was racing with the memories of what had happened to her just a short time ago. As she tossed and turned in her bed in this strange room, unfamiliar sensations again stabbed through her as her sore bottom scraped against the sheets with only the thin chemise to protect her. The feelings that overtook her were new and different, yet strangely similar to what she had experienced when Sir Edward had touched her so intimately. How could she sleep when so many thoughts rushed through her head? It was difficult to believe that she had gone down to dinner just a few short hours ago and, now, only a little while later, she felt as if her whole world had changed. She blushed just thinking about how Sir Edward had touched her. She had been shocked and embarrassed, yet, at the same time, the feelings he had inspired in her had been enjoyable.
In fact, now-as she thought of it-her bottom-hole squeezed, gripping a finger that was no longer there. But, strangely, she could still feel it. Never before had she passed one moment thinking of that embarrassingly personal area. But now, since her uncle's finger had delved inside, she could not help but think of it, imagining again how the tiny hole had expanded to accept his thumb, how it resisted only a little as he pushed in, and then closed again as his digit was removed; closed, but felt surprisingly open still, wanting, waiting to be filled again.
She started awakening, drifting back out of her thought-filled slumber. "I must stop these wicked thoughts," she chastised herself. "I must clear my mind and sleep."
But each time she closed her eyes she imagined her uncle's hands roaming once more over her naked limbs. Her breath caught in her throat as her thoughts drifted to the memory of his lips closing over her breasts. Her nipples swelled as she remembered how her heart leapt in her breast at the sensation. Her thoughts ran wild again and she imagined his tongue encircling her nipple, his teeth nibbling at the bud of flesh. She moaned at the thought and her nipples tautened at the memory. She was amazed that her body, so recently awakened to these sensations, could react so physically to the mere memory of what had taken place. Even as she wondered at this phenomenon, she felt a sudden gush of wetness between her thighs and an intense heat radiated upwards. She blushed at her body's betrayal, even though no one else knew of her shame. She thought of her recently deceased aunt and how she had raged at the sins associated with pleasures of the flesh. She shuddered to think what the prudish old lady would have thought of tonight's activities. Her thoughts didn't rest long, though, on that frigid woman. The reactions of her own body, the throbbing ache and the wetness between her thighs, soon brought her back to the present. Not caring about the propriety of her actions, Alice slid her hand under the sheets and tugged on her chemise until it rested above her belly. She worked her hand between her legs, mimicking the actions her uncle had performed earlier. She slipped one finger into her opening and began to work it in and out. The moisture she had felt earlier facilitated her movements and soon her finger was coated with the slick, warm stuff. Her heart was pounding in her breast and a moan escaped her before she closed her mouth to muffle the sound, wondering if anyone had heard her. Again, as had happened earlier, her legs stiffened and she felt a warmth spread quickly through her. Her back arched as her finger slid furiously over the slick folds of flesh. She tried jamming further into the still-tight opening and was rewarded with an intense shot of pleasure that was quickly followed by a sharp stab of pain. Her finger could go no further within, but exploring deeper did not seem necessary, since the feelings she had unleashed in her explorations were fast coming to an earth-shattering conclusion. She worked her hand even faster between her thighs, switching to a circular motion so that her finger came in contact with the entire circumference of her opening as it made its journey around. Her juices flowed more freely and her hand slipped during yet another joyous trip around. Suddenly, Alice was overcome and her body was wracked with tremors. Her back arched still more until, exhausted, she relaxed back into the soft bed and fell fast asleep.
INITIATION
"Don't be afraid; a little bleeding does 'em good."
-L'Assommoir
Awakening next morning about nine o'clock, she caught herself wondering what the whipping would be like, and how it would be administered, and was filled with a delightful sense of shame when she recollected the part of her body that would receive the castigation and she imagined the exposure it would inevitably entail. The thought or anticipation of this did not disturb her much. She even contemplated with pleasure how her legs and thighs would be exposed. She also realized that more would be exposed, specifically that part of her which she could not name to herself. Even though she had been made quite free with that area as she lay in bed the night before, and suffered the examination by her uncle, she could not now, in the bright morning light, bring herself to name it, considering the word immodest; but she did trust that her uncle would not flog her very severely.
As she lay thus occupied with these thoughts, there was a tap at the door. Since there was no handle on her side of the door, she sat up in the bed, covering herself as best she could with the sheet, and waited. Within moments, the door swung open and Janet entered carrying a cup of tea and some buttered bread.
"You have just an hour for dressing, miss," she announced, "for breakfast will be served at half-past ten in the blue sitting-room-the one which overlooks the park. Miss Maud will come to show you where it is."
"Thank you, Janet," said Alice, the sheet drawn close about her neck. "There are several things I shall want from my old room-linen and a dress. Will you please bring them?"
"I have the clothes you are to wear all ready, miss, and will bring them to you."
"What do you mean, Janet? I should like to choose my own dress."
Janet did not reply, grimly leaving the girl to find out for herself.
The maid returned presently with an armful of clothing, which she deposited on a sofa.
In the meantime, Alice had jumped up and donned the dressing-gown. She then found it necessary to again look about for that piece of furniture which is a feature in most bedrooms. Alas, she could not find it anywhere. She did not know, however, how to broach the subject to Janet, and while she was wondering how to accomplish it, that amiable domestic had left the room. Alice had told her to return in about half an hour to do her hair, and the reply was that her hair was not to be done up that morning-a circumstance which, recalling what was before her, made her blush deeply. Then Janet departed, shutting the door and again leaving her trapped since the door only opened from the outside. Alice, resigning herself to the idea that her bodily needs would have to wait until she was on the way to breakfast, proceeded to wash. In the wall, close to the washstand, was a black marble knob with the word 'Bath' inscribed upon it in gold letters. It was exactly what she wanted at the moment. Putting her hand upon it, she pressed slightly. To her surprise, a panel slid aside and revealed a marble-floored room surrounded by looking-glasses. There were several large slabs of cork for standing on, and a large bath of green Irish marble in the center. Proceeding to it, she found that the same knob that had opened the room, filled the bath with water. She soon found the water to be not only perfumed, but deliciously softened. The champagne she had refreshed herself with the previous night and the tea she had just finished made her wish again that she could have got rid of the water she herself contained, but she could not make out how the water ran away or was emptied from the bath-so that little idea was knocked on the head. While bathing, she caught sight of herself continually in the glasses about her, and fell in love with her round, plump limbs and frame. She briefly wondered why she had never looked at herself before. She also noticed with indignation the red marks her uncle had made across her bottom with the cruel whip. She dried herself with the deliciously woolly and warmed towels, as she remembered that she had yet another flogging to undergo. She shuddered as she came to the conclusion that her disobedience deserved punishment; and felt naughty, as she confessed to herself that she really deserved to be whipped.
She had just made this determination when she found her obedience again put to the test. Proceeding to dress, she found that the clothes she had been provided were far worse than the dress she had refused to wear the evening before. They were unfit even for a girl of ten. The chemise was cut abominably low both behind and before, and the petticoats were quite short. So was the dress. And the petticoats were starched in such a way as to stand almost straight out. In other words, instead of hiding her limbs, they would display them. And there were no drawers. What was she to do? Sir Edward was rigid in his expectation of punctuality at meals. If she waited until Maud came, she would be too late, and probably receive a worse flogging; besides, in all probability, Maud would only laugh at her again. So, a little indignantly, she dressed herself in the white silk stockings, which reached just halfway up her thighs, fastened them with the rose-colored garters above her knee, put on the patent leather low-cut shoes, the black and yellow corset, and the white frock with a rose-colored sash. She tied her hair with a ribbon of the same color, and then looked at herself. She looked like a great, overgrown schoolgirl, but, she could not help owning to herself, a very lovely one. Her arms were bare and the frock was so low that she noticed with horror that it would only just conceal her red teats from someone looking at her from straight in front. But if someone were to look straight down from her shoulder, they would be quite visible. And the dress stopped at her knees; no amount of tugging or pulling could make it longer. And the petticoats made it stick out so. The only comfort was her hair, which did help to hide her naked back. Dressed at last, but feeling worse than naked, she sat down to wait for Maud. To her horror, she noticed, by looking in a glass opposite her, that the dress stuck out to such an extent that not only could her leg be seen to the top of the stocking, but that the rosy flesh beyond was quite visible. After a trial or two she discovered that if she was not very careful how she sat, not only would the whole of both legs be displayed, but the juncture between her thighs would be clearly visible as well. She wondered how she could go about, and whether she would have to; and at last the costume so excited her passions that she was compelled to walk up and down, and became so naughty that she did not know how to contain herself or the water she had been unable to get rid of. While fidgeting about the room in this state of agitation, Maud entered, and immediately applauded.
"How perfectly lovely you are, Alice, with that blush-rose flush!" she exclaimed in the most disingenuous manner. "What a splendid bust! Good gracious! Do let me look at them. What lovely straight beautifully-shaped legs," she giggled, catching hold of the skirt of the frock. "Oh, do let me see!"
"Oh! Don't, Maud! Don't!"
"Very well, dear. But you have not done up your hair. That won't do."
"Janet told me I was not to."
"Yes, I know. But that was a mistake. It hides too much."
"That is just why I like it down."
"And just why I do not, dear. You must let me roll it up for you so that your back and neck and shoulders may be fully shown. There; now you look a perfect darling. I thought I should find you quite cured of your anxiety to hide your charms. Do you not now wish you had taken my advice?"
"Yes."
"But," she went on, "it is not of much consequence; for if you had not rebelled, some other excuse would have been made for punishing you."
"Indeed?"
"Yes, and you deserved it, Alice."
As Alice had herself come to this conclusion, she only blushed.
Feeling her bare legs, she said, "Oh, Maud, do you know I have no drawers on, and that when I sit down my legs a-and-and everything else will show? Shall I have to go about in this dress? How long shall I have to wear it?"
"That depends upon how you take your punishment. Until you are given other garments to wear, you will certainly have to go about the house and grounds with it. I suppose you wish you had drawers on?"
"Indeed you may suppose so. Oh, Maud, however can I..."
"We must be going, Alice," Maud interrupted, "or we shall be late."
"Oh, Maud, do tell me, does uncle whip very hard?"
"I should have thought," and Maud's eyes flashed, "you could have answered that question yourself."
"Yes. He hurt me dreadfully with the riding-whip. Have you been birched?"
"Yes. I have."
"Was it very bad?"
"In a few hours you will be able to judge for yourself."
"Where did he birch you?"
"Here," said Maud, slyly putting her hand under Alice's petticoats upon her bare bottom.
"Oh, don't, Maud."
"Silly child, you should be obliged to me for the sensation. Do come along to breakfast."
"Oh, Maud, there is something I want to ask you, but how to do it I do not know. Perhaps," she said with a deep blush, "the best way is to say they have forgotten to put something in my room."
"I know very well what you mean, Alice. You mean you have no pot and you want to pee. All I can say is that I hope you do not want to very badly, because it is not at all likely that you will be allowed to do so until after your flogging. But, of course, you can ask uncle."
"However could I ask him?" replied Alice, aghast and pale at the notion and the prospect of what she would have to endure. "Does he know that this room is so lacking in the necessary furniture?" remembering her thought of the night.
"Yes. Of course he knows, and he does it to punish you and to help to make you feel naughty. Do you feel naughty, dear?" asked Maud, again putting her hand under Alice's petticoats. This time she did not allow Alice to brush her hand away; indeed, she began tickling the shocked girl's clitoris.
"Oh, don't! Maud. Oh, pray don't! Oh, you will make me wet myself if you do. Oh, can't you let me go to your room?"
"My dear girl, if I were to let you pee without permission I would probably be forbidden to do so myself more often than twice a day for a week or a fortnight. And I advise you to say nothing about it to uncle, for if he finds out that you want to very badly, he will probably make you wait another hour. It is a very favorite punishment of his."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know, except that it is a severe one. And it is awfully humiliating to a girl to have to ask, but it certainly makes one feel naughty."
"Yes, it does. Do you know I was nearly doing it in the bath?"
"Lucky for you that you did not. It would certainly have been found out, and you would have caught it. But, Alice, why do you say 'doing it' instead of 'peeing' when you refer to it. When you do ask, you will have to use plain language."
"Oh, Maud!"
"Yes, and most likely you will have to do it in front of uncle. One more note of warning: If he finds out you squirm about saying things and calling them by their names, he will make you say the most outrageous things, and write them also. Now hurry, there's the clock chiming half-past ten. Come along."
When they got to the blue room-on the way to which they passed, to Alice's intense consternation, several servants who gazed intently at her-they found Sir Edward there in a velvet coat and kilt. He greeted them cheerily. The view across the park, in the glades of which the fallow deer could be seen grazing, was lovely; the sunshine was flooding the room, and the soft, warm summer air carried the perfume of the flowers in through the wide-open windows from the beds below. Alice was so struck by the view that for a moment she forgot to notice how her uncle was gazing at her. She forgot how she was dressed until she felt the air on her legs, and it provoked a consciousness at which she blushed.
"How do you like your frock, my dear? It becomes you admirably."
"Does it, uncle?" She looked coyly at him. "I am glad you like it."
"I am glad to see you are a sensible girl after all. We shall make something of you."
"How long am I to wear it, uncle?"
"For a week."
"For a fortnight," corrected Maud, maliciously. "She is to be mistress next week."
Maud knew very well how difficult it would be to give orders to the staff dressed like that. She reveled in the notion of getting Alice soundly punished.
Sir Edward noticed with a gleam of amusement how fidgety Alice became towards the end of the meal, and Maud smiled gently to herself. Alice thought that after breakfast she would have a chance to relieve herself. She was disappointed. Sir Edward then said, in a severe tone, "I think, Miss Alice, we have a little business to settle together. Your disobedience cannot be overlooked. You must come with me. Your short skirts will punish your prudishness, but the birch is the best corrector of a disobedient girl's bottom." She grew quite pale and trembled all over, both with fright and at being spoken to so before Maud, who, reposing calmly in her chair, was steadily gazing at her.
She got up. When her uncle had finished speaking, he came up to her and took hold of her left ear with his right hand, and saying, "Come along, miss, to be flogged," he marched her off to the yellow room.
There, to her consternation, she saw straps and pillows on the oak table. In a perfect fright, she said: "Oh, pray do not strap me up, uncle; pray do not. I will submit."
"Undress yourself," he said, having closed the door; "leave on your stockings only."
"Oh, uncle!"
"You had better obey, miss, or you shall have a double dose. Take off your frock this instant."
"Now your petticoat bodice."
"Now your petticoats. Now your corset and chemise. Now, my proud young beauty, how do you feel?"
He had not seen her to such advantage the evening before. She had kept her long dress on the whole time, and while punishing her he had only uncovered a small portion of her legs. It is true she afterwards had been made to take off her drawers; but the skirt and petticoats gathered about her hips had still concealed much. Now she was naked from the crown of her head to her rose-colored garters. Burning with shame, she put her hands up to her face, and remained standing and silent, while Sir Edward feasted his eyes upon the contemplation of every beautiful curve of the lovely little head poised so beautifully upon a perfect throat; of the dimpled back and beautifully rounded shoulders; of the arms; of the breasts and hips and thighs. She was the most lovely girl he had seen, he said to himself, and then, seating himself, he added aloud, "Come here, miss. Kneel down: there, between my knees; clasp your hands, and say after me: Uncle, I have been..."
"Uncle, I have been..."
"A naughty, disobedient girl."
"A n-naughty, disobedient girl."
"And deserve to be soundly birched."
"And deserve to be s-sound-soundly birched."
"Please, therefore..."
"Please, therefore..."
"Strap me down..."
"Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, please don't strap me down!"
"Say what I tell you at once, miss, or it will be worse for you."
"Strap me down..."
"To the table..."
"Oh! Oh! Oh! To the table..."
"With my legs well apart..."
"Oh, dear! I can't. With-with-I can't. With my-oh, uncle!"
"An extra half-dozen for this."
"Oh, uncle!"
"Say at once: With my legs well apart."
"With my-my oh!-legs..." she struggled with the words shuddering deliciously and blushed bewilderingly, "well apart,"
"And give me..."
"And give me..."
"Please..."
"Please..."
"A dozen and a half."
"Oh, uncle! Please, not so much!" she cried, recollecting the baker's dozen with the riding-whip.
"You will have more if you do not say it at once."
"A dozen and a half..."
"On my bare bottom."
"Oh! that!-my-I can never say"
"You must."
"My bare?"
"You had better say it. Stop; I will improve it. You must say: On my girl's bare bottom."
"Oh, uncle!" she said, looking at him and seeing his eyes doting upon her and devouring her beauty, and the lust and fire in them, she immediately turned hers away.
"Now, Alice, 'On my girl's bare bottom.'"
"On my girl's b-bare b-bottom."
He moved as he said this, and Alice noticed that he adjusted something under his kilt.
"Well laid on."
"Well laid on."
"Yes, I will, my dear. I will warm your bottom for you as well as any girl ever had her bottom warmed. I will set it on fire for you. You will curse the moment you were disobedient. I will cure you of disobedience and all your silly nonsense. Come along to the table. There, stand at that end"-Alice began to sob-"put the cushion before you, so. Now lie over it, right down on the table. No resistance."
As he fixed the strap round her shoulders, she made a slight attempt at remonstrance. The strap went round her and the table, and once it was buckled she could not, of course, get up. He then buckled on two wristlets, and with two other straps fastened her wrists to the right and left legs of the table; then another broad strap was put round the table and the small of her back. This was pretty tight, as were also those that fastened her at the knees and ankles. Her legs were wide apart, fixed to the legs of the table. She was spread-eagled, and her bottom, the tender skin between its cheeks, her cunt, and her legs were most completely exposed.
"Now, my dear, you will remain in that position half an hour and contemplate your offenses, and then you shall have as sound a flogging as I have ever given a girl."
"Oh, uncle, before you flog me, do let me do something. Maud told me I should have to tell you, but I do not know how to. I will come back directly and be strapped down again if you will only let me. And, oh! Please do not leave me in this dreadful position for half an hour."
"You must say what it is that you want."
"Oh, uncle," feeling it was all or nothing, she whispered, "do let me go and pee before I am flogged. I want to, oh, so dreadfully. I have not been able to all the morning, nor all night."
"So you want to very dreadfully, do you, miss?" and going up to her, he put his hand between her legs from behind and severely tickled the opening through which the stream was burning to rush. It was all that Alice could do to retain it.
"Oh, don't! Oh! If you do I shall wet myself. I shall not be able to help it. Oh, uncle, pray, pray don't! Oh, pray let me go!"
"No, miss, I certainly shall not. It is a part of your punishment. There was an unnatural coldness about these parts of yours which this will help to warm up. Have you not felt more naughty since you have had all that hot water inside you?"
"And you are beginning to see how ridiculous prudishness is. Now, just you think about your conduct and your disobedience until I return to whip you, and remember you owe your present position to those shameful attributes."
Saying this, Sir Edward left the room. Poor Alice, left to herself, all naked save for her stockings; her arms stretched out above her head and tightly strapped; her legs divided and fastened wide apart; the most secret portions of her frame made the most conspicuous in order that they might be punished by a man, did feel her position acutely. She considered it and felt it to be most shameful. Her cheeks burned with a hot, red glow. But all concealment was absolutely impossible; the haughty beauty felt herself prostrate before and at the mercy of her master, and experienced again an exquisite sensual thrill at the thought that she really deserved to have her bottom whipped by her uncle.
Presently Maud came into the room in a low-necked dress, with a large bouquet.
"Well, Alice," she said, "I hope you enjoy your position and the prospect before you."
"Oh, Maud; go away. I can't bear you to see me in this position. I won't be punished before you."
"Silly goose! Young ladies strapped down naked and stretched out spread-eagle for punishment, are not entitled to say shall or shan't. What a lovely skin and back, Alice. Alas! Before long that pretty, plump, white bottom will present a very altered appearance. How many are you to have?"
"I was made to ask for a dozen and a half, well laid on."
"And you may depend upon it, you will have them, my dear, most mercilessly laid on," Maud cooed, stroking her legs and thighs, which caused Alice to catch her breath and shrink away from the pleasure Maud's hand gave her. Maud asked her whether she had tried to induce her uncle to let her go somewhere.
"Yes," replied Alice. "I did. But he would not."
"And I suppose you want to very badly," went on Maud, maliciously placing her fingers on the very spot.
"Yes, I do. Oh, don't, Maud, or you'll make me..."
"Now mind, Alice, whatever you do, hold out till your birching is over. If you do not, I warn you that you will catch it."
"I think it is a very, very cruel, horrid punishment," said Alice, whimpering.
"It is severe, I know, and it is far better not to be prudish than to incur it. But here comes uncle."
"Now, you bold, disobedient girl, I hope you feel ashamed of yourself," said Sir Edward, entering the room and shutting the door. "Maud will witness your punishment as a warning to her of what she will receive if she is disobedient."
Going up to the wardrobe, he selected three well-pickled birches, which had evidently never been used, for there were numbers of buds on them. They were elastic and well spread, and made a most ominous switching sound as, one by one, Sir Edward switched them through the air. Alice shuddered and Maud's eyes gleamed.
"Oh, pray, pray, uncle, do not be very severe. Remember it is almost my first whipping. It is awful!"
"Maud had changed the dress she had worn at breakfast and, as already mentioned, now had on one cut very low in the body; her arms were bare and her skirts short. Between her breasts was placed a bouquet of roses.
"Hold these," said Sir Edward, giving her the rods.
He then put his left arm round Alice, and said: "Now, you saucy, disobedient miss, your bottom will expiate your offenses, and by way of preface..."-smack, smack with his right hand, smack, smack, smack. "Ah, it is already becoming a little rosy."
"Oh, uncle! Oh, how you hurt! Oh, how your hand stings! Oh! Oh! Oh!"
"Yes. A bold girl's bottom must be well stung. It teaches her obedience and submission"-smack! "What a lovely, soft bottom!"-smack, smack, smack.
Maud's eyes gleamed and her face flushed as Alice, wriggling about as much as the straps allowed, cried softly to herself. When her uncle had warmed her sufficiently, he removed his arm and moved about two feet away from the girl, whose confusion at the invasion of her charms by the rough hand of a man increased her loveliness tenfold. Maud held one birch in her right hand. She, too, looked divine. Her dark eyes flashing, her lovely bosom heaving, she handed it, retaining the other two in her left hand, to her uncle. Alice could not see that as she gave him the birch. As soon as her hand was free she slipped it under her uncle's kilt from the back, and the instant increase of his passion and excitement left no doubt as to the use she was making of it. Sir Edward stood at the left side of his refractory ward. He drew the birch, lecturing her as he did so, three or four times upwards and downwards from back to front and from front to back between the cheeks of the girl's bottom, producing a voluptuous movement of the lovely thighs and little exclamations that he found delightful.
"Oh! Oh! Oh! Don't do that! Oh! Oh! How dreadful! Oh, please, uncle!" she shrieked, trying to turn round, which, of course, the straps prevented. He next proceeded to birch her gently all over, the strokes increasing in vigor, but being always confined to the bottom.
"Oh, uncle, you hurt! Oh! How the horrid thing stings! Oh! It is worse than your hand! Oh! Stop! Have I not had enough?"
"We will begin now, miss," said he, having given her a cut severe enough to provoke a slight cry of real pain; "and Maud will count."
Lifting up the rod at right angles to the table on which she was bound down, he brought it down with a tremendous swish through the air across the upper parts of her hips.
"One," said the mellow voice of Maud-her right hand and a portion of her arm hidden under her uncle's kilt, the movements of its muscles under the delicate skin and the wriggles of the Baronet showing that Maud had hold of and was kneading a sensitive portion of his frame. The bottom grew crimson where the stroke had fallen, and the culprit emitted a yell and gasped for breath. With the regularity of a steam hammer, he again raised the rod well above his shoulder, and again making it whistle through the air, he gave her another very severe stroke.
"Two," said Maud quietly.
A shriek. "Oh! Stop! Oh! Stop! Oh! Stop!"
Swish. "Three," calmly observed Maud.
"Oh! You will kill me. Oh! I can't-I can't"
Swish. "Four, uncle."
"Oh, ah! Oh, I can't bear it! Oh, I will be good! Oh, Maud, ask him to stop."
Swish. "Five."
Maud had given her uncle an extra pull when Alice had appealed to her, and this stroke was harder in consequence. Spots of blood began to appear where the ends of the birch and its buds fell, especially on the outside of the thigh. The yell which followed number five was more piercing, and choking sobs ensued; but Sir Edward, merely observing that she would run a very good chance of extra punishment if she made so much noise, without heeding her tears or contortions or choking, mercilessly and relentlessly gave her six, seven, eight, and nine, each being counted by Maud's clear gentle voice.
"Now, miss, you've had half of your punishment..."
"Half! Oh! Oh! Oh! I can't bear more! Oh, I can't bear more! Oh, let me off! You will kill me! Oh, let me off! I will-I will-I will indeed be good."
"I suppose you begin to regret your disobedience."
"Oh, don't punish me any more," cried the girl, wriggling and struggling to get free-of course ineffectually, but looking perfectly lovely in her pain.
"Yes! You must receive the whole number. It is not enough to promise to obey now; you should have thought of this before. You are now having your bottom punished, not only to make you better in the future, but for your past offenses."
And Sir Edward walked round to the right side of his niece, and there, in the same place, but from right to left, gave her three sharp cuts. Alice yelled and screamed and roared and rolled about as much as she possibly could, perfectly reckless as to what she showed.
The next three were given lengthwise between her legs. Her bottom being well up, and the legs well apart, the strokes fell upon the tender skin between them, and the long, lithe ends of the rod curled round her cunt, causing her a great deal of pain.
"There is nothing like a good birching for a girl." Swish.
"One," said Maud, moving voluptuously. "Oh! Oh! Yah! Oh! My bottom! Oh! My legs! Oh! How it hurts! Oh! Oh! Oh!"
"They are all the better for the pain!" Swish.
"Two," said Maud.
"Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh, don't strike me there!" as the birch curled round her cunt.
"And the exposure. I do not think you will disobey." Swish.
"Three," said Maud, apparently beside herself, her eyes swimming.
"Oh! Oh! Oh! Yah! Oh! I shall die! I shall faint! Oh! Dear uncle! I will-please forgive me-I will never disobey. I will do anything-anything-ANYTHING!"
"I daresay you will, miss; but I shall not let you off "-swish" there's another for your cunt."
"Four," said Maud.
"Oh! Oh! Not there! Oh! I am beside myself! I shall go mad! I shall die or go mad!"
"You will not do anything of the sort, and you must bear your punishment." Swish.
"Five," counted Maud.
The cries gradually lessened, and the culprit seemed to become entranced, whereupon the uncle, at whom Maud looked significantly, directed the single remaining stroke to the insides of her thighs, leaving the palpitating red rose between them free from further blows, for the present.
Alice's moans were then succeeded by piercing shrieks, but her uncle, perfectly deaf to them, continued the flogging. When the eighteenth stroke, given lengthwise, had been completed, Sir Edward put down the birch he had used and took a second from Maud.
Seeing this, Alice earnestly implored him to let her go, since the promised dozen and a half strokes had already been administered.
For reply, he again took up his station at her left side, saying: "No, miss; I shall certainly not unstrap you; you have been far too naughty. I will punish you, and your lovely legs and bottom, to the fullest extent. I'll teach you to be good, you bold hussy! I'll give you a lesson you won't forget in a hurry." He gave her nine more blows; but this time, instead of being administered on the upper part of her bottom, perpendicularly, they were given almost horizontally on its lower part, where it joins the thigh. Alice's renewed shrieks were to no avail. In her agony, she lifted up her head, her shoulders being fastened down with the strap, and prayed her uncle, in the name of heaven, to spare her. But the relentless rod still continued to cut into her tender flesh, as she was told she would receive no mercy.
The girl's head dropped again. "No mercy," she whispered, "no, nor justice either, nor even fair play. Indeed, why pretend at all?"
Maud's even voice continued to number the strokes, and Maud herself seemed aflame, and the sight of the agony her uncle was inflicting seemed to excite her sensuality in an extraordinary degree. Her lips were moist; her eyes swam; the eyelids drooped; and all the indications of a very lovesick girl appeared in her. The bleeding bottom, the tightly strapped limbs, the piercing cries, and the relentlessly inflicted punishment excited her strongest passions. She could have torn Alice limb from limb; and she encouraged her uncle, by rolling his balls and pulling and squeezing his prick, to continue the punishment in the severest manner.
She gloated over the numbers as she called them out.
Sir Edward, too, seemed beside himself. His eyes were as two flames as he watched every motion of Alice's body; gloated upon all she displayed. He could have made his teeth meet in her delicate flesh, which he lacerated with the rod yet more severely as his organ, already excited to an enormous size, was still further enlarged by Maud's hand.
At length he judged that, Alice's lower bottom having been striped from right to left as well as from left to right, there remained but nine last lengthwise strokes to be given.
For these, Sir Edward took the third birch from Maud, who by this time was standing with her legs wide apart, uttering little sounds and breathing little sighs of almost uncontrollable desire.
The unhappy culprit's yells had somewhat lessened, for shock had relieved pain; it had been so severe that her sensitiveness to it had much diminished. But now, feeling the rod curling round her cunt, which, being pulled open, was more exposed than ever, she yelled in a perfectly delirious manner.
After some few of these strokes had been given, her uncle asked her whether he was a wretch and a monster, as she had called him last night, she replied with vehement denials:
"No! Oh, no! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh, no! Not a monster! Not a wretch! My own dear uncle, whom I love! Oh! Oh! Oh! My bottom burns! Oh! Oh! It is on fire!"
"Will you be a good, obedient girl miss?"
"Yes! Yes! Yes! Oh! Indeed"
"And thank me for whipping you?"
"Yes, indeed I do."
"Whip well in, uncle," said Maud quietly in her rich voice.
And he did so. Alice, thus betrayed, shrieked; flooded the floor with urine, and fainted!
Maud, beside herself, threw herself backwards on the long and broad divan, her breasts jiggling, her legs-unhampered by drawers-thrown wide open. Sir Edward, throwing down the birch, fell upon her with a fury. He inserted his enormous appurtenance into her burning cunt, sighing as the lengthy tool was eagerly accepted and drawn deep within the panting girl. Once he had made his entrance, he began fucking her so violently that she almost fainted from delight. As Sir Edward worked himself against her body, Maud looked kindly upon the still unconscious Alice, knowing that the punishment she had undergone was responsible for the pleasure Maud herself was now receiving. Maud sighed delightedly and wrapped her long legs around Sir Edward's back, allowing him to penetrate still deeper within her heaving body. After the long pleasurable minutes spent whipping his beautiful niece, Sir Edward could not long contain himself. His body was wracked with shudders as he grabbed Maud's hips and slammed into her even more furiously. They both exploded and collapsed in a heap on the couch.
When Alice came round, Sir Edward rose from Maud's breast, and then Maud said, in slightly breathless tones:
"Uncle, I told Alice yesterday evening, when she kept me so long before I could succeed in tying her hands, that I would take care it secured her an extra half-dozen."
"Oh, uncle! I beg Maud's pardon. Oh! After all I have gone through, let me off that half-dozen. Oh, dear Maud! Do ask uncle to let me off. Oh, do! If I am birched any more I shall go mad! I shall-I shall indeed!"
Maud, still lying backwards on the couch, supported by a big, square pillow, said nothing. Her hands were clasped behind her head. But Sir Edward said, "No miss; you can never be let off! You must have the half-dozen. It will be a lesson to you." And taking up the birch, he gave her six severe strokes, distributed evenly all over her bottom.
As they were being administered, Maud's left hand stole down to her waist and found its way between her legs.
While Alice was smothering her sobs and cries after her last half-dozen, Sir Edward again threw himself upon Maud and enjoyed her.
About ten minutes or a quarter of an hour later, he proceeded to unstrap Alice.
She could not stand without Maud's help. The cushion and carpet were soaked with her urine.
"You will tomorrow have a dozen on the trapeze, miss, for disgracing yourself in this beastly manner; you will write out fifty times, 'I peed like a mare before my uncle.' And for the next fortnight you will only pee twice every twenty-four hours. And now come and kiss the rod and say: 'Thank you, my dear uncle, for the flogging you have given me.'"
Quite docilely she knelt down before him, kissed the rod he held to her lips, and repeated the words.
"Will you be a good, obedient girl in future?"
"Yes, dear uncle; indeed I will!"
"That's a good thing. There is, you see, nothing like a good, sound flogging for a girl. Were the rod more in use, how very much better women we should have. Now go with Maud and get some refreshment. I have various engagements, and shall not be in 'till dinner. After lunch you had better have a sleep." And so saying, he packed the two girls off to Alice's room, shut the door to the yellow room, and ringing for a footman, gave orders that the estate steward and horses should be in attendance at the front door in half an hour.
Maud and Alice went to the latter's new room. By Maud's advice, Alice, who was so sore that she could scarcely move, got into bed and had some strong broth and Burgundy, and presently fell asleep. Maud spent her afternoon at an open window reclining in a lounge chair, pretending to read a novel, but in reality reveling in the reminiscences of the morning and meditating upon its delights-and wondering when she would get whipped next herself. The afternoon passed in this manner until she was disturbed by some afternoon visitors.
MYSTERY
"My passions, however, are very strong; but my soul and body are hostile sisters, and the unhappy pair, like every imaginable couple, lawful or unlawful, live in a perpetual state of war."
-Mademoiselle de Maupin
Alice's slumbers were profound. For four or five hours she continued in the deepest sleep; but as consciousness gradually returned to her she dreamt: and dreamt as she had never done before, of love. Her innocence was gone; and she would awake an experienced girl. Her dreams were of the softest pleasures; they were prompted by that new and wonderful sensation, under the influence of which she still was, which had been roused once and for all while she lay ignominiously exposed under her uncle's eye, receiving the cruel lashes of the birch upon the most secret and divine organ of her exquisite body. They, it is true, profaned the Temple; but they summoned to life the Divinity there enshrined. Her sexual instincts were aroused; she became conscious of her femininity. She felt the influence of Man; and a longing and insatiable desire to possess him. She now knew why she was beautiful, and in her dreams she pictured herself with soft delight-her velvety skin; her soft, plump, round arms; her throbbing bosom, and the ravishing sinuosities of her back as being embraced by her uncle; she felt his weight on the front of her thighs; she imagined his tongue again between her lips. Her body glowed; her charms ripened; her mind, casting away the prudish veils with which it had so long been encumbered, already contemplated life in another and rosier light, and prepared her to bloom into that lovely and beautiful woman she was so soon to become.
Innocence and virginity! What good are they? Flowers, not of virtue, but of a dunghill; the conceptions and impure fruit of Shame, begotten upon Superstition. Such beliefs are fostered by those who fatten upon the fears of the ignorant and weak-minded. Poor human creature, trembling upon the threshold of nature's holiest of holies; terror-stricken at the revelation of her most tremendous mystery about to be made you; you are swooped upon by the priest and called upon to deny your own nature! Your young and budding desires are described to you as sin, such as will condemn you hereafter to endless flame!
Better to purposely set out to make all young girls taste the fruits of desire by one and twenty years of age.
Frigid old maids like her aunt should be forced to take a lover and show proof to society of the destruction of their maidenhood. If they refuse, they should be thrown from polite society as being unnatural deformities. For what sane creature could not enjoy the so-called forbidden pleasures she had experienced with her uncle? Who would not be aroused by imagining what was still to come?
But listen! Alice is rubbing her eyes and puzzling herself with reasons why she should be so possessed by the idea of, and longing for, her uncle, who had used her so cruelly. His being somehow or other overshadowed her, and she seemed to long to be absorbed in it. The strictest analysis of her craving only reduced it as far as a wish that he should take her in his arms and do with her what he wished-what that would be she knew not, but instinctively felt it would be something tremendous, which would entirely alter her whole subjective existence. He had seen her naked; he had reduced her, naked, to absolute submission to his will; he had inflicted upon her the cruelest pain; and the direct medium of the infliction of this pain had been the most secret portion of her body. Yet she delighted in the notion that he had seen her (with the exception solely of her stockings) completely nude; she enjoyed the idea that his hand had inflicted the stripes of which she still felt the effects; her breath came more quickly and she trembled with joy when she called to mind that it was to him she had been compelled to display, with the greatest possible humiliation to her, the most intimate recesses of her person and her most jealously concealed charms without any reserve whatsoever.
She was much puzzled, and her perplexity was accentuated as she moved and felt how tender and how sore her bottom still was.
"Shall I ever be able to sit down again?" she wondered.
Then she recollected the catastrophe that had taken place the moment before she had swooned in that inexplicable ecstasy, and her cheeks flushed and grew hot with shame. And they flushed again and grew still hotter the second time when she recollected that she was to be made to write out fifty times, "I peed like a mare before my uncle."
What a little beast she was, and how well she deserved flogging! How just and proper it was that for the next fortnight she should be allowed to relieve herself but twice each day. The inconvenience would be a very proper lesson for so naughty a girl as she was.
In the midst of these reflections, in came Maud with some egg-flip.
"I would not let them disturb you for luncheon, dear, as I am sure uncle would wish you to be fresh in the evening; and, besides, you must have needed the rest dreadfully. How did you like your whipping?"
"Oh, Maud, it was dreadful! How cruelly severe uncle is."
"I suppose it has made you hate him?"
"No; that is the strangest thing about it. Last night I thought my hatred of him could not be sufficiently intense; but I now feel that I am completely mastered by him, and find that I am glad that it is so!"
"Dear Alice, that was my own experience."
"Has he whipped you, Maud?"
"Yes, dear; and sometimes I purposely do something in order to get myself flogged."
"How curious! When did he whip you first?"
"Oh, long ago. I must give you a full account of it another time. Did you faint with pain?"
"No. I seemed in heaven."
"You do not seem very much exhausted; but you had better eat this cake and egg-flip; it is better for you than tea-and let me look at that poor bottom and see what can be done for it."
So Maud sat down upon the bed, and Alice, to her own astonishment, now nothing loth, laid on her face while Maud removed all the bedclothes from her waist downwards, and, as they chatted, gently anointed her bottom with Vinolia cream, and gave her many a pleasant sensation by the adroit use she made of her hands and fingers.
Alice explained that she now felt a much more experienced girl, and much surprised at her former coyness, which she thought must have appeared extremely ridiculous.
She wondered that anyone could be prudish.
"Yes," said Maud. "It is want of education"-smiling-"and as for modesty, I verily believe innocent girls are only just one little bit less nasty than the very British old maid herself," ended Maud, with a delicious laugh.
"And you, Alice," she went on, "how absurd you were when first you came, blushing at every second word, buttoning your dress up to your throat, wearing it on the ground, and almost screaming at the mere mention of an ankle."
"Oh, Maud, you do not know what I went through in the yellow room. When uncle turned up my petticoats and whipped me, and made me take off my own drawers before him... Oh! Oh! Oh! The mere thought of it is fearful, and then when he put me across his knee and put his finger and thumb..."
"Where?" asked Maud.
"Oh, one in front and the other behind," she whispered, hiding her face with her hands.
"Like that?" said Maud demonstrating by using her own fingers in the parts to which Alice had referred.
"Yes. Just like that. Oh, Maud! Oh, how nice! Well, dear, the wonder is that I am alive."
"The sweetest has to come yet, Alice dear. You said you were glad that uncle had mastered you. Do you not long for him?"
"Oh, Maud, I cannot tell you how I do. In such a strange way I feel I could devour him."
"Well, dear, all in good time. At any rate, you will not wish to conceal your charms now."
"Oh, no. I take quite a healthy delight in displaying them. I think a long dress quite immodest, because it must be a sign of a mind itching with nasty thoughts. "Unless, indeed," she continued, after a moment's thoughtfulness, "it is because the natural growth has been checked."
"Oh, Alice, I am so glad that you are such a sensible girl. What splendid times we shall have together. I was never before so fully convinced how right uncle is in his opinion that there is nothing like a sound flogging for a girl. But although we have such a good opinion of ourselves, there are heaps of people who would condemn us with faint praise, and say we were only engagingly immoral. Uncle told me once, it was because we were free and emancipated and capable of freely enjoying pleasure, which the silly geese, although it is such a real pleasure, think they are bound to deny themselves. There, Alice dear," ceasing her rubbing, which she had so caressingly done, "is the poor bottom better?"
"Yes, thank you, Maud dear, ever so much. I feel so surprised at being able to lie so unconcernedly before you."
"You see, Alice, you are emancipated-almost. Now you had better have a warm bath, and mind that you use the soap scented with attar of roses. Make a good lather and bathe yourself all over with it. And then, my dear, you are to put on a low chemise of black silk trimmed with yellow, a yellow corset, black silk petticoats, yellow stockings and shoes, and a net dress with great big yellow spots all over it. It won't come below your knees, dear," said Maud, significantly, at which Alice gave a joyous laugh. "In your bosom you are to place some yellow roses which the gardener has been ordered to bring in on purpose for you.
"And," went on Maud, interrupting Alice, "you are to have your hair twisted up in one great coil and fastened with this arrow, which, you see, is studded with cairngorms; and round your throat," opening a casket on the dressing table, "you are to put this necklace-a magnificent one of cairngorms set in brilliants."
"By-the-bye, you are to tie your stockings with black, not yellow garters, and mind that the first petticoat you put on is that which is lined with yellow silk. Now mind, Alice, and do not make a mistake."
"Oh! How lovely!" cried Alice. "How good you are to me, you dear Maud, to take such an interest in me. I shall be dressed all in black and yellow. Why, I wonder."
"Because," mockingly answered Maud, "black and yellow are the devil's colors, and you have his beauty."
"Now, Maud, you are laughing at me. I wonder what you will wear?"
"Oh, something not so striking, dear. You see, it is your turn tonight. You are to be the heroine of the evening. And before I go to dress, I must say goodbye to you, Alice, for I shall not have another opportunity of doing so during the evening, and tomorrow I shall not see you as a girl again."
"What on earth do you mean, Maud?" asked Alice, experiencing an unaccountable sensation of which she did not understand the significance. "You are not going away, surely?" Alice cried out in alarm.
"Oh, no, you dear goose," replied Maud. "I only meant that I should not see you a girl tomorrow because in all probability you will then be a woman," and the room rang with the musical and merry peal of laughter Maud gave.
"You speak in riddles, dear. I wish you could explain, and not tease me so."
"Not I," said Maud. "Write to Miss Ada Banin of the Ladies Pictorial, duly enclosing a coupon, and she will tell you the difference between a girl and a woman; or, by-the-bye, as it is not the sort of matter the editor-who ought to be circumcised-would allow to be explained publicly, you had better send her a fee for a private reply; or, better still," she went on maliciously, "ask her for the address of a medical man competent to set forth the mystery personally to you, and," said Maud, in shrieks of laughter at her own wit, "Miss Ada Banin will certainly send it, if you enclose a stamped, addressed envelope so that it may be sent to you privately, as it would be a violation of professional etiquette to publish it; and misses are said to hate violation of every sort. Come! Come! Alice," seeing that Alice began to pout, thinking that Maud was laughing at her, "do not be offended at my nonsense. You will know all about it by tomorrow yourself. Dear me, there's the dressing bell. Only an hour to dinner. Whoever would have thought it was so late?"
"Why not stop and dress here?"
"No; not tonight, dear. One word more, Alice. I heard that you are, for the next fortnight, only to go somewhere twice every day. Now, dear, take my advice and do it late as you can after dinner, and in the morning after you have left the yellow room, if you have to go there. And I know you have to tomorrow."
"Yes; I have; but I do not dread it so much. But I am not going to be birched, am I?"
"No, dear. You are going to have a dozen on the trapeze, which is in some respects worse. I can't stop to explain, though, because, if I do, I shall be late, and then I should be birched."
"Oh, Maud! Very well, dear, I will take your advice, with thanks."
"I am sure you will find it good. Here's Janet. I must run off."
"What? Miss Maud in here after the bell has rung. Get off to your room, miss, or ye'll have the tawse, and nae doot aboot it."
Then the old Scotch maid, without ado, stripped Alice stark naked and conducted her to her bath. She treated her like an infant and gave her a pinch and a smack or two on the buttocks if she considered Alice was slow in obeying her directions, yet she washed and dressed her with tenderness and care, mingled with a certain amount of reverence for the girl's absolute loveliness.
"She's a bonnie bit lassie anyhow; but, gudeness guide us, what a lashing she has had about her puir body."
She would not, however, allow any nonsense on Alice's part. The yellow corset was laced as she thought proper. Alice's protests were unheeded, and her breasts were placed in what she still considered unnecessary prominence. The roses were placed between them. The magnificent hair, done up in one great coil, was rolled up on the top of her shapely little head and fixed with the arrow, which sparkled with the brilliants in the setting of the great cairngorms. At last her toilette was complete, and, bewilderingly and bewitchingly beautiful, exciting not only her rugged Scotch attendant's admiration (who exclaimed: "It was not work thrown away to deck so bonnie a bairn as herself"), but her own. She descended to the drawing-room with that gently undulating motion which adds so greatly to the fascinations even of those who may otherwise possess charms of the highest degree.
In the drawing-room she found Maud and Sir Edward; to her surprise, there was no one else. But Sir Edward was dressed "fin de siecle," and was gay with a yellow rose in his buttonhole. And Alice blushed with gratification when she noticed, as she did the instant she saw it, it was precisely the same kind of rose as those in her bosom and the single one in her hair. Maud looked demurely lovely, and, though dressed in the height of fashion, had somehow good-naturedly managed to efface herself so that she might not interfere with Alice's triumph.
Then they went to dinner. Alice, again to her surprise, on her uncle's arm and at the head of the table.
"Maud has abdicated in your favor tonight, my dear, although, it is true, it is not your week. But she has only surrendered the glories to you, so do not be disturbed about the responsibilities," her uncle added kindly, noticing a slightly anxious expression appear.
The table groaned with summer fruits in chased gold dishes, and was decorated entirely with white roses. Never did soup taste more delicious or were its odors and flavors more appreciated; never did the chicken of the ocean, the twisted whiting, or the lordly salmon or the saintly sole meet, or were better qualified to meet, with heartier approval; never was the wine in better order-although Alice thought the Chablis (La Moutonne) a little too heavy. The champagne, iced to a nicety by the portly butler, was not, on this occasion, Dry Monopole, but a sweeter wine, which pleased Alice more. It soon added cordiality to a gay and merry scene. Sir Edward sent his compliments to the delighted chef upon the production by him of a work of art which had occupied that artist ever since he had received the necessary hint from Maud. It reminded her, said Alice, "of nothing so much as of a wedding cake," at which Maud covertly smiled. It was a representation in confectionery of Venus, her Cupids, her doves, and her triumphs. The figure reminded Alice for a moment of her own. It was not until afterwards she discovered that in a panel of her bedroom was fixed a secret camera, and that while the night before she had stood naked before her glass, Sir Edward had taken a photograph of her, and that it was this photograph which, shown to the enraptured chef by Maud, had proved his inspiration. Sir Edward was enraptured, too, as he gazed, and the message for his cook was delivered with such warmth to his own valet that that functionary, immovable although he appeared, was quite startled in reality. And his description of his master's earnestness pleased the genius of the kitchen quite as much as the jewel which Sir Edward had taken off his own finger and sent with the message. Monsieur Philippe felt that the ambition of a lifetime was to some extent attained, and thanked his gods that he possessed a master who could appreciate the efforts of genius.
After dinner was served that rare growth of Burgundy, "Romance Conti." No Clos Vougcot or Chambertin or any other growth of the C"te d'or is more delicious. Although Ch�teau-Laffite, Ch�teau-La-Rose, and Ch�teau-Margaux suggest, they do not equal it, and they are clarets. It is a wine which fills the veins with an elixir of life, and so Alice thought it. Why she was made so much of; why she was so petted, she could not understand. Was that courteous and gallant cavalier opposite her at the other end of the table, more like a lover in his addresses than her guardian, the same cruel and relentless uncle who had flogged her with such merciless severity in the morning, and who was, she recollected with wonder, again to punish her on the morrow? And then she called to mind herself. Was the laughing girl, full of joke and mirth; the beauty decked out in black and yellow, displaying with such artless coquetry her many charms, and giving herself in her high spirits so many winning airs, and feeling so much at ease, although she had no drawers on, as Maud and her uncle knew, and although her dress only barely came down to her knees, at all of which she was now rather more pleased than otherwise the same Alice she had formerly known, dressed in a high-fitting, tight, dowdy brown garment, and expiring with shame at the sight of half an inch of leg? She laughed with joy to feel that she was becoming free from such ridiculous notions, and rejoiced at the growing sense of liberty to enjoy the possession of her charms, and to employ the power they gave her to the uttermost.
After dinner they went to a room upstairs, paneled with rose-colored silk and hung with water-colors.
MYSTERY UNVEILED
"Away!" she cried, "grave face and solemn sighs;
Kiss and be merry! Preach the sermon after.
Give me the careless dance and sparkling eyes;
Let me be wooed with kisses, songs, and laughter!"
-The Monks of Thelema
Then up he got and donned his clothes,
And duped the chamber door;
Let in the maid that out a maid
Never departed more.
-Ophelia's song, Hamlet
It was a beautiful summer's night. The air was heavily laden with the sweet perfume of the flowers in the garden below the windows, which were thrown wide open. There were, besides, several china vases, or rather bowls, standing about the room, full of roses of shades varying from the deepest crimson to the softest blush scarcely more than suggested upon the delicate petal. The only sounds were the gentle rustle of the summer zephyr amongst the trees and the weird hoot of the owls. The deeply-shaded lamps gave animation to the rosy tints of the boudoir. They were emphasized by the yellow flame of the fire which, notwithstanding the season, crackled merrily in the grate.
(A fire upon a summer's night is an agreeable thing.) Between it and Alice there at once appeared to be something in common. She and the fire were the only two black and gold things in the rosy apartment. The fierce flame struck Alice as being a very adequate expression of the love she felt seething in her veins. She felt intoxicated with passion and desire, and capable of the most immoral deeds, the more shocking the better.
This naughty lust was soon to have at least some gratification. Maud had seated herself at the piano, an exquisite instrument in a Louis Seize case-and had played softly some snatches of Schubert's airs, and Alice had been reclining some minutes on a rose-colored couch-a beautiful spot of black and yellow, kept in countenance by the fire-showing two long yellow legs, when Sir Edward noticed that every time she altered her position she endeavored, with a slightly tinged cheek, to pull her frock down. Of course he had been gazing at the shapely limbs and trying to avail himself of every motion, which could not fail to disclose more-the frock being very short-to see above her knee. He thought once that he had succeeded in catching a glimpse of the pink flesh above the yellow stocking.
Alice, sensible of her uncle's steadfast observation, was more and more overwhelmed with the most bewitching confusion; her coy and timid glances, her fruitless efforts to hide herself, only serving to make her more attractive.
Maud looked on with amusement from the music stool where she sat pouring liquid melody from her pretty fingers, and mutely wondering whatever had come over Alice, and whatever had become of the healthy delight in displaying her charms of which she had boasted before dinner. Maud felt very curious to know how it would end.
"Alice," her uncle said at last with a movement of impatience, "have you begun to write out that sentence I told you to write out fifty times?"
"Oh, no, uncle! I have not."
"Well, my dear, you had better set to work. It will suggest wholesome reflections."
So Alice got up and got some ruled paper, an ink stand, and a quill pen; then, seating herself at a Chippendale table, began to fiddle with the pen and ink.
Her uncle continued to watch her intently. Maud had ceased to play and had thrown herself carelessly on the couch which Alice had just left. Maud's dress, too, was quite low and very short; but in the most artless way she flung herself backwards upon the sofa and clasped her hands behind her head, thus showing her arms, neck, bust, and breast to the fullest advantage; and pulling her left foot up to her thigh, made a rest with the left knee for the right leg, which she placed across it, thus fully displaying her legs in their open-work stockings and her thighs encased in loose flesh-colored silk drawers with crimson ribbons. Her attitude and abandon were not lost upon Sir Edward.
Alice's sensations were dreadful. How could she, there, under her uncle's eye, write that she had peed? And not only peed, but with shame and anger she recollected the sentence ran, "like a mare!"-like an animal; like a beast as she had seen them in the street. And all "before her uncle." Whatever would become of her if she had to write this terrible sentence; to put so awful a confession into her own handwriting; to confide such a secret fifty times over with her own hand to paper? If it was ever found out, she would be ruined-her reputation would be gone-no one would have anything to say to her-she would have to fly to the mountains and the caves. She had not realized, until it came to actually writing it out, how difficult, how terrible, how impossible it was for her to do it. If her uncle knew, surely he would not insist. He could not wish her to humiliate herself to such an extent, to ruin and destroy herself with her own handwriting; neither could he have realized what it would be for her to write such a thing. While these thoughts were passing through her mind, she kept unconsciously pulling and dragging at her frock. If only she could cover herself up. So much of her legs showed, and the long yellow stockings made them so conspicuous under her black frock. Although they were above her knee, unless she kept her legs close together she could not help showing her black garters. And her arms and her neck and her breasts were all bare. She began to feel almost sulky.
"Well, Alice," at length said her uncle, "when are you going to begin?"
"Oh, uncle! It is dreadful to have to say such a thing in my own handwriting-I am sure you have never thought how dreadful."
"You must chronicle in your own handwriting what you did, miss. Writing what you did is not so bad as doing it. And you will not only write it, but you shall sign it with your name, so that everyone may know what a naughty girl you were."
"Oh, uncle! Oh, uncle! I can't. You will burn it when it is done; won't you?"
"No. Certainly not. It shall be kept as a proof of how naughty you can be."
And as she kept tugging at her frock and not writing, her uncle said, "Maud, will you fetch the dress-suspender? It will keep her dress out of her way."
Maud discharged her errand with alacrity. In less than three minutes she returned with a band of black silk from which hung four long, black silk ribbons. Making Alice stand up, Maud slipped her arms under her petticoats and put the band round Alice's waist next to her skin, buckling it behind, and edged it up as high as the corset, which Janet had not left loose, would allow. The four ribbons hung down far below the frock, two at the right and two at the left hip-one ribbon in front, the other at the back.
Maud then walked Alice over into the full blaze of the fire. Putting her arms round her and bending down, she took the ribbons at Alice's left side, one in each hand, and then pulled them up and joined them on Alice's right shoulder in a bow. The effect, of course, was to bundle half Alice's petticoats and dress up about her waist, disclosing her left leg, naked, from the end of the stocking. Maud, with little ceremony, then turned her round, and, taking the ribbons at her right side, tied them across her left shoulder, thus removing the other half of Alice's covering and displaying the right leg. She then carefully arranged the frock and petticoats, smoothing them out, tightening the ribbons, and settling the bows. And by the time she had finished, from the black band round her waist nearly to her garters, Alice was in front and behind perfectly naked-her breasts and arms and thighs and navel and buttocks. The lower petticoat was, it will be remembered, lined with yellow, and the inside was turned out. It and the stockings and the two black bands intensified her nakedness. She would sooner have been, she felt, stripped entirely of every shred of clothing on her than have had those garments huddled about her waist, and those stockings, which, she instinctively knew, only heightened the exhibition of her form and directed the gaze to all she most wished to conceal.
"Now, miss," said her uncle, "this will save you the trouble of vain and silly efforts to conceal yourself."
"Oh, uncle! Uncle! How can you disgrace me so?"
"Disgrace you, my dear? What nonsense! You are not deformed. You are perfectly exquisite. With," he continued, passing his hand over her, "a skin like satin."
Feeling his hand, Alice experienced a delicious thrill, which her uncle noticing, recommended her to sit down and write out her imposition a task which was now a hundred times more difficult. However could she, seated in a garb which only displayed her nakedness in the most glaring manner, write such words?
"Alice," said he, "you are again becoming refractory."
Putting his arm round her, he sat down and put her face downwards across his left knee. "You must have your bottom smacked. That will bring you to your senses." Smack-smack-smack-smack-smack-smack.
"Oh, uncle! Don't! Oh!" she said struggling. "I will write anything!"-smack-"Oh! How you sting!"-smack-smack-"Oh! Oh! Oh! Your hand is so hard."
Then, slipping his hand between her legs, he tickled her clitoris until she cooed and declared she would take a delight in saying and writing and doing the "most shocking things."
"Very well, miss! Then go and write out what I told you; sign it; and bring it to me when it is finished."
So Alice seated herself-the straw seat of the chair pricking her bottom-resolved, however, to brazen out her nakedness, and wrote with a trembling hand: "I peed like a mare before my uncle; I peed like a mare before my uncle; I peed like a mare before my uncle." Before she had half completed her task, she was so excited and to such an extent under the influence of sensual and voluptuous feelings that she could not remain still, and she felt the delicate hair in front about her cunt grow moist. Before she had completed the fiftieth line, she was almost beside herself.
At last, for the fiftieth time, she wrote: "I peed like a mare before my uncle." And with a shudder, signed it, Alice Darvell.
During her task Maud had looked at what she was writing over her shoulder, and Alice glowed with shame. So had her uncle; but Alice was surprised to find she rather liked his seeing her disgrace, and felt inclined to nestle close up to him.
Now Maud had gone to bed, and she was to take her task to her uncle.
He was seated in a great chair near the fire, looking very wide awake indeed. He might have been expected to have been dozing. But there was too lovely a girl in the room for that. He looked wide awake indeed, and there was a fierce sparkle in his eye as his beautiful ward, in her long yellow stockings and low dress, her petticoats turned up to her shoulders, and blushing deeply, approached him with her accomplished penance.
She handed it to him.
"So you did, Alice," said he, "so you did," sitting bolt upright, "pee like a mare before me, and here is, I see," turning over a page or two, "your own signature to the confession."
"Oh, uncle, it is true, but do not let anyone know. I know I disgraced myself and behaved like a beast, but I am so sorry."
"But you deserved your punishment."
"Yes; I know I did. Only too well."
He drew her down upon his knee and placed his right arm round her waist while he tickled her legs and her groin and her abdomen, and lastly her clitoris, with his hand and fingers.
He let her, when she was almost overcome by the violence of her sensations, slip down between his knees, and as she was seeking how most effectually to caress him, he directed her hands to his penis and his testicles. In a moment of frenzy she tore open his trousers, lifted his shirt, and saw the excited organ, the goal and Ultima Thule of feminine delight. He pressed down her head, and, despite the resistance she at first made, the inflamed and distended virility was very quickly placed between the burning lips of her mouth. Its taste, and the transport she was in, induced her to suck it violently. On her knees before her uncle, tickling, sucking, licking his penis, then looking up into his face and recommencing, the sweet girl's hands again very quickly found their way to his balls.
At last, excited beyond his self control, gazing through his half-closed lids at the splendid form of his niece at his feet-her bare back and shoulders-the breasts which, sloping downwards from her position, he yet could see-her bare arms-the hands twiddling and manipulating and kneading with affection and appreciation his balls; his legs far apart, himself thrown back gasping in his arm chair; his own most sensitive and highly excited organ in the dear girl's hot mouth, tickled with the tip of her dear tongue and pinched with her dear, pretty, cruel ivory teeth-Sir Edward could contain himself no longer and, grasping Alice's head with both his hands, he pushed his weapon well into her mouth and spent down her throat. He lay back in a swoon of delight, and the girl, as wet as she could be, leaned her head against his knee, almost choked by the violence of the delightful emission, and stunned by the mystery revealed to her. How she loved him! How she dandled that sweet fellow! How she fondled him. What surreptitious licks she gave him! She could have eaten her uncle.
In about twenty minutes he had recovered sufficiently to speak, and she sat with her head resting against the inside of his right leg, looking up into his face; her own legs stretched out underneath his left one as she was still sitting on the floor.
"Alice, you bold, bad girl, to pee like a mare. I hope you feel punished now."
"Oh no, uncle, it was delightful. Does it give you pleasure? I will suck you again, if you wish," she said, taking his penis, to his great excitement, again in her warm little palm.
"My dear, do you want to pee?"
"Yes, before I go to bed."
Then here is the key. Run along and go to bed."
"Oh, I would rather stay with you."
"Although I have whipped you and birched you and smacked you and made you disgrace yourself?"
"Yes, dear uncle. It has done me good. Don't send me away."
"Go, Alice, to bed. I will come to you there."
"Oh, you dear uncle, how nice. Oh, do let down my things for me before I go. Some of the servants may see me. And," she continued after an instant's pause with a blush and looking down, "I want to be for you alone."
Touched by her devotion, her uncle loosed the ribbons, let fall, as far as they would, her frock and petticoats, and giving her a kiss, and not forgetting to use his hand under her clothes in a manner which caused her again to cry out with delight, allowed her to trip off to her bedroom. But not without the remark that she had induced him to do that which did not add to her appearance; for the rich, full, and well developed girlish form had been simply resplendent with loveliness in the garments huddled about her waist; the petticoat lining of yellow silk relieved by the black bands from her waist to her shoulder crossing each other, and bits of her black frock, with its large yellow spots, appearing here and there. And as the eye traveled downwards from the pink flesh of the swelling breasts to the smooth pink thighs, it noted with rapture that the clothes concealed only what needed not concealment, and revealed with the greatest effect what did; and, still descending, dwelt entranced upon the well-turned limbs, whose outlines and curves the tight stockings so clearly defined.
Sir Edward, who had made her stand facing him, and also with her back to him, was much puzzled, although so warm a devotee of the Venus Callipyge, whether he preferred the back view of her lovely legs, thighs, bottom, back, neck, and queenly little head, with its suggestion of fierce and cruel delight; or the front, showing the mount and grotto of Venus, the tender breasts, the dimpled chin and sparkling eyes, with the imaginations of soft pleasures and melting trances which the sloping and divided thighs suggested and invited.
The first thing which Alice noticed upon reaching her room was the little supper table laid for two; and the next that there were black silk sheets on her bed. The sight of the supper-the chocolate, the tempting cakes and biscuits, the rich wines in gold mounted jugs, the Nuremburg glasses, the bonbons, the crystallized fruit, the delicate omelet delighted her; but the black sheets had a somewhat funereal and depressing effect.
"What can Maud have been thinking of, my dear, to put black sheets on the bed; and tonight of all nights in the year?" asked Sir Edward angrily the instant he entered the apartment, and hastily returning to the sitting-room, he rang and ordered Janet up. She was directed to send Miss Maud to "my niece's room, and in a quarter of an hour to put pink silk sheets on the bed there."
Then Sir Edward returned, and giving Alice some sparkling white wine, which with sweet biscuits she said she would like better than anything else, he helped himself to a bumper of red-standing-expecting Maud's appearance. Alice was seated in a cozy chair, toasting her toes.
Presently Maud arrived in a lovely dishabille, her rich dark hair tumbling about her shoulders, the dressing-gown not at all concealing the richly embroidered robe de nuit beneath it, and the two garments clinging closely to her form, setting off her lovely svelte figure to perfection. Her little feet were encased in low scarlet slippers embroidered with gold, so low cut as to show the whole of the white instep.
Her manner was hurried and startled, but this pretty dismay increased her attractions.
"Maud," asked her uncle, "what do you mean by having black sheets put on this bed when I distinctly said they were to be pink?"
"Indeed, indeed, uncle, you said black."
"How dare you contradict me, miss, and so add to your offense? You have been of late very careless indeed. You shall be soundly punished. Go straight to the yellow room," he went on to the trembling girl. "I will follow you in a few moments and flog you in a way that you will recollect. Eighteen stripes with my riding whip and a dozen with the cat-o'-nine-tails."
"Oh, uncle," she gasped.
"Go along, miss."
Alice, to her surprise, although she had some little feeling of distress for Maud, felt quite naughty at the idea of her punishment; and, noticing her uncle's excitement, concluded instinctively that he also felt similar sensations. She was, consequently, bold enough, without rising, to stretch out her hand and to press outside his clothes the gentleman underneath with whom she had already formed so intimate an acquaintance, asking as she did so whether he was going to be very severe.
"Yes," he replied, moving to and fro (notwithstanding which she kept her hand well pressed on him). "I shall lash her bottom until it bleeds and she yells for mercy."
"Oh, uncle!" said Alice, quivering with a strange thrill.
"Go to the room, Alice. I shall follow in a moment."
Poor Maud was in tears, and Alice, much affected at this sight, attempted to condole with her.
"The riding-whip is terribly severe; however I shall bear it I can't tell; and then that terrible cat afterwards; it will drive me mad."
"Oh, Maud, I am so sorry."
"And I made no mistake. He said black sheets. The fact is, your beauty has infuriated him and he wants to tear me to pieces."
Sir Edward returned without trousers, wearing a kilt.
"Now come over here, you careless hussy," and indicating two rings in the floor quite three feet apart, he made her stretch her legs wide, so as to place her feet near the rings, to which Alice was made to strap them by the ankles. "I will cure you of your carelessness and inattention to orders. Your delicate flesh will feel this rod's cuts for days. Off with your dressing-gown; off with your night-dress." Alice was dazzled by her nakedness, the ripeness of her charms, the whiteness of her skin, the plump, soft, round bottom, across which Sir Edward laid a few playful cuts, making the girl call out, for, fixed as she was, she could not struggle.
Alice then, by her uncle's direction, placed before Maud a trestle, the top of which was stuffed and covered with leather, and which reached just to her middle. Across this she was made to lie, and two rings on the other side were drawn down and fixed her elbows so that her head was almost on the floor, and her bottom, with its skin tight, well up in the air. Her legs, of course, were well apart. The cruelty of the attitude inflamed Alice.
"Give me the whip," said her uncle. As she handed the heavy weapon to him, he added, "Stand close to me while I flog her, and," slipping his hand up her petticoats on to her inflamed and moist organ, "keep your hand upon me while I do so."
Alice gave a little spring as he touched her. Her own animal feelings told her what was required of her.
Maud was crying softly.
"Now, miss," as the whip cut through the air, "it is your turn"-swish-a great red weal formed across her bottom, and she writhed in agony. "You careless"-swish-"wicked"-swish-"disobedient"-swish-"obstinate girl."
"Oh, uncle! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! I am sorry, oh, forgive..."-swish-"no, miss"-swish-"no forgiveness. Black sheets, indeed"-swish-swish-swish-"I will cure you, my beauty."
Maud did her best to stifle her groans, but it was clear that she was almost demented with the exquisite torture the whip caused her every time it cut with relentless vigor into her bleeding flesh. Sir Edward did not spare her. The rod fell each time with unmitigated energy.
"Spare the rod and spoil you, miss. Better to spoil your bold, big bottom than that," he observed as he pursued the punishment. The more cruel it became, the greater Alice found grew her uncle's and her own excitement, until at best she scarcely knew how to contain herself. At the ninth stripe, Sir Edward crossed over to Maud's right to give the remaining nine the other way across.
Swish-swish-swish-fell the heavy whip, the victim's moans and prayers absolutely unheeded.
"A girl must have her bare bottom whipped"-swish-"occasionally; there is nothing"-swish-"so excellent for her"-swish-"it teaches her to mind what is told her"-swish-"it knocks all false shame"-swish-"out of her; there is no mock modesty left about a young lady after"-swish-"she has had her bottom under the lash."
Alice trembled when she saw the cat-o'-nine-tails, made of hard, tightly twisted whip-cords, each tail bearing several knots, and when she looked at the bleeding bottom, she grew sick and pale. But when her uncle began to lecture Maud as he caressingly drew the terrible scourge through his fingers, and to tell her that for a hardened girl such as she, such a whip was insufficient punishment, and that she must also be subjected to the cat's claws, Alice began to revive, and she noticed that, while Sir Edward again approached boiling point, Maud gave as much lascivious movement as her tight bonds permitted.
But the first three strokes, given from left to right, evoked piercing yells and shrieks; the next three, given across the other way, cries and howls of the wildest despair, followed by low sobs. The purplish-red marks thus given swelled immediately above the surface of the skin.
"You will not forget again, I know," said Sir Edward as he wielded the terrible instrument. "You careless, naughty girl, how grateful you should be to me for taking the trouble to chastise you thus. The cat has quite irresistible arguments, has she not?"
The last six were given lengthwise, first along the legs, then round the bottom, and lastly on the cunt. Maud's roars and yells were redoubled, but in an ecstasy of delight, she lost her senses at the last blow.
Alice, too, was mad with excitement. Rushing off, as directed, to her room, she, as her uncle had also bid her do, tore off all her clothing and dived into the pink sheets, rolling about with the passion the sight of the whipping had stimulated to an uncontrollable degree.
Sir Edward, having summoned Janet to attend Maud, hastened to follow Alice.
Divesting himself of all his clothing, he tore the bedclothes off the naked girl, who lay on her back, inviting him to her arms, and to the embrace of which she was still ignorant, by the posture nature dictated to her, and looking against the pink sheet a perfect rose of loveliness. Sir Edward sprang upon her in a rush and surge of passion which bore him onwards with the irresistible force of a flowing sea. In a moment he, notwithstanding her cries, was between her already separated legs, clasping her to him, while he directed, with his one free hand, his inflamed and enormous penis to her virgin cunt. Already it had passed the lips and was forcing its way onwards, impelled by the reiterated plunges of Sir Edward, before Alice could realize what was happening. At last she turned a little pale, and her eyes opened wide and stared slightly in alarm, while, finding that her motion increased the assault and the slight stretching of her cunt, she remained still. But the next moment, remembering what had occurred when it was in her mouth, it struck her that the same throbbing and shooting and deliciously warm and wet emission might be repeated in the lower and more secret part of her body, and that if, as she hoped and prayed it might be, it was, she would expire of joy. These ideas caused a delightful tremor and a few movements of the buttocks, which increased Sir Edward's pleasure and enabled him to make some progress. But at length, the swelling of his organ and his march into the interior began to hurt, and she became almost anxious to withdraw from the amorous encounter. His arms, however, held her tight. She could not get him from between her legs, and she was being pierced in the tenderest portion of her body by a man's great thing, like a horse's. Oh, how naughty she felt! And yet how it hurt! How dreadful it was that he should be able to probe her with it and detect all her sensations by means of it, while on the other hand, she was made sensible there, and by means of it, of all he felt.
"Oh! Uncle! Oh! Dear, dear uncle! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Wait one minute! Oh! Not so hard! Oh, dear, don't push any further-oh, it is so nice; but it hurts! Oh, do stop! Don't press so hard! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Please don't! Oh! It hurts! Oh! I shall die! You are tearing me open! You are indeed! Oh! Oh! Oh!"
"If you don't"-push-push-"hold me tight and push against me, Alice, I will-yes, that's better-flog your bottom until you howl like a dog at the moon, you bold girl. No, you shan't get away. I will get right into you. Don't," said he, clawing her bottom with his hands and pinching its cheeks severely, "slip back. Push forward."
"Oh! I shall die! Oh! Oh! Oh!" as she felt the pinches and jerked forward, enabling Sir Edward to make considerable advance. "Oh! I shall faint; I shall die! Oh, stop! Oh!" as she continued her involuntary motion upwards and downwards, "you hurt excruciatingly."
He folded her more closely to him, and, altogether disregarding her loud cries, proceeded to divest her of her maidenhead, telling her that if she did not fight bravely he would punish her till she thought she was being flayed alive; that he would tear her bottom for her with hooks; and he slipped a hand down behind her and got the middle finger well into her arse.
After this, victory was assured. A few more shrieks and spasms of mingled pleasure and pain, when Sir Edward, who had forced himself up to the hymen and had made two or three shrewd thrusts at it, evoking loud gasps and cries from his lovely ward, drew a long sigh, and with a final determined push sunk down on her bosom, while she, emitting one sharp cry, found her suffering changed into a transport of delight. She clasped her uncle with frenzy to her breast, and throbbed and shook in perfect unison with him while giving little cries of rapture and panting-with half-closed lids, from under which rolled a diamond tear or two-for the breath of which her ecstasy had robbed her.
Several moments passed, the silence interrupted only by inarticulate sounds of gratification. Sir Edward's mouth was glued to hers, and his tongue found its way between its ruby lips and sought hers. Overcoming her coyness, the lovely girl allowed him to find it, and no sooner had they touched than an electric thrill shot through her; Sir Edward's penis, which had never been removed, again began to swell; he recommenced his (and she her) upward and downward movements and again the delightful crisis occurred-this time without the intense pain Alice had at first experienced, and with very much greater appreciation of the shock, which thrilled her from head to foot and seemed to penetrate and permeate the innermost recesses of her being.
Never had she experienced, or even in her fondest moments conceived, the possibility of such transports. She had longed for the possession of her uncle; she had longed to eat him, to become absorbed in him, and she now found the appetite gratified to the fullest extent in a manner incredibly sweet. To feel his weight upon the front of her thighs-to feel him between her legs, her legs making each of his a captive; the most secret and sensitive and essentially masculine organ of his body inside that part of hers of which she still could not think without a blush; and the mutual excitement, the knowledge and consciousness each had of the other's most intimate sensations, threw her into an ecstasy. How delicious it was to be a girl; how she enjoyed the contemplation of her charms; how supremely, overpoweringly delightful it was to have a lover in her embrace to appreciate and enjoy them! How delicious was love!
Sir Edward, gratified at length, rose and congratulated Alice upon her newborn womanhood; kissed her, and thanked her for the intense pleasure she had given him.
After some refreshment, as he bade her good-night, the love-sick girl once more twined her arms about him while slipping her legs onto the edge of the bed. She lay across it and managed to get him between them; then, drawing him down to her bosom, cried, "Once more, dear uncle; once more before you go."
"You naughty girl," he answered, slightly excited. "Well, I will if you ask me."
"Oh, please, do, uncle. Please do it again."
"Do what again?"
"Oh! It. You know... What-what-what," hiding her face sweetly, "you have done to me twice already."
"Don't you know what it is called?"
"No. I haven't the slightest idea."
"It is called 'fucking.' Now, if you want it done again, you must ask to be fucked," said he, his instrument assuming giant proportions.
"Oh, dear, I do want it ever so; but however I can ask for it-once more before you go!" and she lay back and extended her legs before him in the divinest fashion.
In a moment he was between them; his prick inserted, his lips again upon hers, and in a few moments more they were again simultaneously overcome by that ecstasy of supernatural exquisiteness of which unbridled passion has alone attempted to fathom the depths, and that, without reaching them.
Exhausted mentally and physically by her experiences and the exercises of the evening, Alice, as she felt the lessening throbs of her uncle's engine, found she was losing herself and her consciousness in drowsiness. Her uncle placed her in a comfortable posture upon the great pillow, and throwing the sheet over her, heard her murmured words of thanks and love as she fell asleep with a smile upon her face. Janet came and tucked her up comfortably. And she slept profoundly.
PUNISHMENT
Whipping grown girls is a pastime rare
Few males, if called on, could refuse to share.
-Romance of Chastisement
Alice lay awake next morning listening to the birds in a sweet trance as the recollection on which she dwelt of what she had passed through the night before. She felt completely changed, and could she have seen the dark stains upon the crimson sheet under her, she would have known that she really was so.
She met Maud in the breakfast-room and was warmly greeted by her.
"Well, love; well, Alice?" cried she, clasping both her hands in her own and gazing into her face with a glance in which there was deep meaning.
"Oh, Maud!" ejaculated Alice, blushing, and then, to turn the subject, "how are you, dear, after that terrible flogging? I could almost have cried at what you suffered one moment, and yet I could have made uncle tear you in pieces the next."
"Yes," said Maud; "I have experienced the feeling. The result was that you and your uncle enjoyed yourselves the more. Now, wasn't it?"
After breakfast Alice remembered that she had to go straight to the yellow room. She did so without much dread, feeling that she could not have worse to go through than she had already suffered, although one or two chance expressions of Maud had made her doubtful of this conclusion, and the cold sternness of her uncle startled and alarmed her after his warmth and tenderness of the preceding evening. When he met her and wished her good morning in the breakfast room, he was apparently absolutely unconscious, and certainly totally forgetful, of what had passed.
Alice went with Maud arm-in-arm to the yellow room, wondering what the trapeze would be like.
Her uncle soon followed her and locked the door. He had a long carriage-whip and some sheets of paper which she recognized in his hand.
"You are Miss Alice Darvell, and this is your handwriting and signature?" asked he severely, showing the papers to her.
"Oh yes, uncle, they are," answered the girl, trembling with fright.
"You peed like a mare before your uncle, eh, miss?"
"I-I-I couldn't help it."
"Did you?"
"Y-ye-yes?"
"Well, you shall be flogged like a mare. Strip yourself."
"Oh, uncle!"
"Strip yourself absolutely naked, or," he said, raising the whip and lightly slashing it about her legs, for her frock only came down to her knees, "you shall have double."
She jumped as she felt the lash sting her calves, and drew up her legs one after another.
Then, seeing her uncle's arm again raised, she began to quickly undo her bodice and slip off her frock; her petticoats and corset soon followed, and, lastly, slipping off her chemise, she stood naked except for her long stockings, and covered with a most bewildering air of shame, not knowing whether to cover her face or not, or how to dispose of her hands and arms."
"Take off your shoes and stockings," said her uncle.
She had to do so seated in her nakedness, and the action added extremely to her confusion.
Sir Edward then went to a bracket or flat piece of wood screwed on the wall on which were two hooks fixed back to back and some distance apart; round them was fastened a thick crimson silk cord. As he unwound it, Alice saw that it communicated with a pulley in the ceiling over which it hung, and dangling from which was a bar of wood, about two-and-a-half feet long, the cord dividing about three feet above it, and being fastened to each of its ends.
"Now, Maud," said Sir Edward, "put her in position and fix her wrists."
Maud walked up to Alice and led her beneath the pulley. Sir Edward allowed the bar to descend to a level with the top of her shoulders. Maud then took the naked girl's right wrist and fastened it by a strap ready prepared to one end of the bar, so that the back of the hand was against it. And then she did the same with the left hand.
"Ready?" asked Sir Edward.
"Ready," answered Maud.
Whereupon he pulled the cord, availing himself of the hooks to get a purchase, until Alice's arms were stretched high above her head, and her whole body was well drawn up, the balls of her feet only resting on the floor.
"Oh, uncle! Oh, uncle! Oh, please! Oh! Not so high! Oh! My arms will be dislocated! Oh! It hurts my wrists!" and, involuntarily moving, she found very little would swing her off her feet.
Sir Edward, finding her sufficiently drawn up, fixed the cord, and, taking the whip in his right hand, played with the lash with his left as he gloated upon the exquisite naked girl, her extended arms, her shoulders, her breasts, her stomach, her navel, her abdomen, her back, her thighs, her buttocks, her legs, all displayed and glowing with shame and beauty.
At last, raising his whip as he stood at her left, he said, "So we 'peed like a mare before uncle,' and are now going to be flogged like a mare."
Alice, in silent terror, drew up first one leg and then the other, showing off the exquisitely molded limbs, and giving more than a glimpse of other charms.
"And," went on her uncle, "on the very part guilty of the offense." Whisp-whisple.
He had raised the whip, swinging out the lash, and brought it down with full force across the front of the girl's thighs, the lash striking her fair on the cunt. For a moment she was speechless, but the next elicited a piercing yell as she threw her head back and struggled to be free.
Sir Edward's arm was now across him.
Whisp, whisple went the whip as he gave the return stroke severely across her bottom, making her dance with anguish and leaving a red weal.
Whisp, whisple went the whip with merciless precision back again.
Alice's gymnastics were of the most frantic description. She jumped and threw out her legs and swung to and fro, showing every atom of her form, in utter recklessness of what she showed or of what she concealed.
When three strokes had been administered backwards and forwards from the left side, Sir Edward went round to the right. There her bottom received the forward and her front the back strokes, and well laid on they were. Sir Edward delighted in the infliction of a punishment which left his victim no reserve or concealment whatever, and he made the whip cut into the flesh.
Alice, almost suffocated with her cries and sobs, writhed for several minutes after the last stroke. At last her agony became less intense and her sobs fewer.
A high stool was then put before her and on it a pot.
It was pushed close up to her, and Sir Edward inserted his hand from behind and tickled and frigged her cunt, saying, "Yesterday you peed to please yourself. Today you shall do so to please me."
Alice, beside herself, knew not what to do. She had not relieved herself since the night before. At last, with a shudder, a copious flood burst out, partly over her uncle's hand, and she gave a groan as she realized the manner in which she had been made to disgrace herself.
Her uncle then loosened the rope sufficiently to let her heels rest on the ground, and calling Maud to the sofa, which was immediately in front of Alice, he threw her back on it, while she quickly unfastened and pulled down his trousers, exposing his back view entirely to Alice. Maud, too, whose petticoats were up to her waist, threw wide her legs, and Sir Edward, prostrating himself upon her, fucked her violently before Alice.
Never was Alice so conscious of her nakedness as then.
Never, apparently, did Maud enjoy the pleasure of a good fucking more than she did in the presence of that naked and tied-up girl.
And never did Sir Edward acquit himself with greater prowess.
Alice's movements, as she saw her uncle's exertions in Maud's arms, and his strong, sinewy, bare and hairy legs, and his testicles hanging down, and heard his deep breathing and Maud's gasps and sighs began again, but this time from pleasure instead of pain. She could not, however, as she longed to, get her hands to her cunt, and could only imitate the motions of the impassioned pair before her by a sympathetic movement to and fro which expressed, but did not assuage her desires-and by little exclamations of longing.
At length the crisis was reached, and Sir Edward sank into Maud's embrace, while Alice could see, and imagined almost that she could hear, the throb, throb, throb that was sending thrill after thrill through Maud, and was causing her such a transport of delight that she seemed about to faint from it.
And then he untied her, and was about to leave them, when Alice said, in a most bewitching way: "Could you not 'f-fuck' me just once, dear uncle?" her face was covered with a deep blush.
Her half-closed eyes, her splendid form, her nakedness, reawakened her uncle's love and reinvigorated his bestowal of those sensible proofs of it in which bodies so delight. He replied, "Maud has made me work pretty hard, my dear; but," he said, putting one hand upon her shoulder as she faced him, "as you honor me with such a command, I should be an ungallant knight were I not to execute it-or at any rate to make an effort to do so," added he as he led the beautiful girl, nothing loth, to the couch whereon he had enjoyed Maud, and gently pushed her backwards. Amid her cries and exclamations and involuntary but pretty reluctance, he inserted himself into her embrace. She inundated him at once, and Maud, perceiving it, slipped her hand between his thighs. This help soon worked the cavalier up to a proper appreciation of the situation in which he lay and to a due expression of his sense of it, to the body's intense gratification especially as her forces were sufficient to enable her to, a second time-and this time at exactly the right instant
Tumble down,
And break her crown
and, fortunately, not "come tumbling after" Jack, as Jill does in the story.
Although her uncle gave her these marks of affection, he did not relent in severity. She was kept without drawers the whole fortnight-a severe punishment! And the stiff white petticoats kept what skirts she had well off her legs, so that, when she was seated, all could not fail to be seen.
And, indeed, after the lashing on the trapeze, she was not allowed any garment at all that day.
She had been given a notebook in which she was compelled to make an entry of every fault and the punishment she was to receive for it.
In her room on that particular day, aghast at her own nakedness, and thinking herself alone, she had taken up a pair of drawers which, by accident or design, were left there-she had gone to get ready for luncheon-and put them on, when suddenly Sir Edward entered the room.
"What do you mean, miss, by putting on those things? Did I not tell you you were to remain naked the whole of today?"
"I only put them on for a moment. I felt so ashamed of being naked."
"Take out your book and write: "For being ashamed of being naked, and for disobedience to my uncle, I am to ask him to give me two dozen with the tawse across his knee after supper this evening, and I am to remain stark naked for three days."
"Oh! Oh! Oh! Forgive me, dear uncle. I won't be ashamed anymore. I won't disobey you any more. I won't indeed."
But it was no use.
At luncheon she had to sit down naked. All the afternoon she had to go about so. If only she might have had one scrap of clothing on! At dinner she could not dress, absolutely naked again, not even shoes or slippers permitted. And that to last three days more! All the evening naked, and as she thought of it she rolled over onto the pillow of the couch and hid her face, but notwithstanding, felt naked still.
After supper came those terrible two dozen with the tawse. The tawse is a Scotch instrument of punishment and in special favor with Scotch ladies, who know how to lay it on soundly. It is made of a hard and seasoned piece of leather about two feet long, narrow in the handle and at the other end about four inches broad, cut into narrow strips from about six to nine inches in length.
Alice had never seen, much less felt one.
She was commanded to bring it to her uncle, and had to go for it naked-not even a fan was allowed! How could she conceal the least of her emotions? Oh, this nakedness was an awful, awful thing!
She brought it, and opened her book and knelt down and said: "Please, uncle, give me two dozen with the tawse for being ashamed and trying to cover my nakedness, and for my disobedience."
"Across my knee."
"Across your knee."
"Very well. Get up. Stand sideways close up to me. Now," taking the tawse in his right hand and putting his left arm round her waist, "lean right down, your head on the carpet, miss," and holding her legs with his left one, he slowly and deliberately laid on her sore bottom two dozen well-applied stripes. Then letting her go, she rolled sprawling on the carpet with pain and exhaustion.
The three days' nakedness were rigorously enforced.
They entirely overcame and quenched every spark of shame that was left about her, and she was much the more charming. Her silly simplicity, her country ignorance, were replaced by an artless coquetry and a self-possession which took away the breath and struck those in her presence with irresistible admiration.
Other punishments, too, she had to endure, some of them of a fantastic character.
The fortnight passed rapidly, but the last week, during which she was mistress, was a trying one for her. The servants scarcely heeded a baby in short frocks with bare legs except for her long stockings, and became careless.
Many a smacking she received across her uncle's knee in the dining-room, or wherever they might happen to be, for some short coming; often was she sent away hungry from the table and locked up in a black hole for hours because she had not ordered this or that, or someone had done what he disapproved of. And after supper every evening, and all night if he was in the humor, she was required to be at his disposal and to give him pleasure in every form his endless ingenuity could invent. At the end of the week, when her drawers were restored to her, she scarcely cared for them; but had not worn them long when the recollection of having been so much without them gave her the sweetest sense of shame possible.
THE ENDQuoth she, "Before you tumbled me
You promised me to wed."
-Old Song
So life continued for a long while at Bosmere Hall. The summer ripened into autumn; winter followed, and then spring, when, on good authority, it is said the thoughts turn to love.
The hunting had delighted Alice, notwithstanding that she had been once or twice soundly birched by her uncle in the open air for some error of the m'nage and made to ride home without trousers.
She came, however, to like these punishments; but one day she thought she had seriously offended him, for he declared his intention of marrying her to his heir. She would have preferred him.
She met her intended at a ball. He was a charming young man. Alice's bashfulness had long since departed and she decided that if she was to be wed to him, to make him mad for her. The proposition wasn't altogether against her wishes, as she recognized some likeness to her uncle. Also, this was what her beloved uncle wanted, and she could not disappoint him. She waltzed five or six times with her cousin, who was intoxicated with her beauty and her short dress, her openwork stockings with the clocks at the side, the tiny little dancing shoes, the rosy flesh and the perfume of love in every breath she exhaled.
They went together to supper and afterwards retired to a distant conservatory. Soon his arm was about her, while his other hand was busily engaged, to her delight, underneath her petticoats. The honeyed phrases and sweet nothings that so please lovers followed, and they were to be married in three months. The period rapidly passed.
On her wedding day, her uncle presented her with a hundred thousand pounds worth of personal property of his own, which became her own, apart from her husband and the inheritance and settlements. He also presented her with the famous cairngorms.
Alice smiled and wept, as brides will, when it came time for her to depart. She was to spend Easter with her husband in Rome.
She taught him much, and, on the other hand, learned one or two things from him. But what surprised her most of all was that, while she from time to time recalled the days spent with her old aunt in Yorkshire, as one recalls-now dimly, now clearly-the vanished hours of childhood, she always regarded with genuine satisfaction those spent at Bosmere Hall, and felt she would ever consider them the true beginning of her life.