He was taken aback, feeling a sensation of uneasiness and a certain shameful alarm. 'Oh yes, Miss,' he stammered at last.
'But you are a long time getting to sleep, are you not?'
He mumbled an inaudible reply.
'This evening you will come and read to me in bed. That will leave you tired and able to fall asleep sooner.'
That night, after they had said prayers in her room, she put a novel of Mrs Sherwood's into his hands. 'I am going to bed now,' she said. 'You will remain here while I get ready, and then you will read to me.'
'Yes, Miss,' he murmured. He was obviously carried to the height of excitement by the prospect.
Harriet looked at him impassively, hiding the pleasure she took in his nervous disturbance. 'Leave your book on the table for the present,' she said, 'while you help me undress. Come here and unlace my shoes, please.' She sat down on the edge of her bed, drew her skirt up and crossed her legs.
Richard watched her in a kind of stupor.
'Well?' she said. 'Have you turned to stone? Down on your knees with you, and undo my shoes.'
He obeyed, and began to unfasten the laces from the highly arched foot which, encased in its high-heeled shoe of supple fawn-coloured leather, was swinging under his nose. He noticed the slenderness of her ankle; he saw her leg also, in its fine, transparent silk stocking, the lace of her drawers, the hem of a white petticoat. His hands trembled as he untied the shoelaces. When he drew off the shoe itself, his excitement was such that he let it fall on her other foot.
'Clumsy!' said Harriet, leaning over and slapping his face smartly. 'Pay attention how you take off the other, if you please.'
The warm, intimate odour of her unshod feet put his senses in a fever. He rose from his knees, trembling slightly.
'You would make a poor lady's maid,' smiled Harriet, standing up. 'Go and sit down over there, and wait until I am in bed.'
Calmly she began to undress, letting fall first her skirt, then her petticoat; she removed her bodice, and then, standing in corset and drawers, she let down her beautiful hair, shaking it out to its full length so that it fell in a thick wavy mass covering her croup whose firm outline appeared through the fine linen of her drawers; then she divided her tresses and swiftly plaited them in two long braids. When this was done she removed her corset, drawers and stockings, and stood in front of Richard in her shift. His eyes did not leave her for an instant.
'Bring me my slippers,' she said. 'You will find them over there by the window.'
He brought them from their place and laid them in front of her; but she stretched out her naked foot.
'Put them on,' she ordered.
He would gladly have kissed these exquisite white feet with their pink nails, but he did not dare. He fitted the slippers onto them, and then stood up.
Harriet stepped to the closet from which she took a long silk nightdress, and then deliberately let her shift, which was held only by two straps passing over her beautiful bare shoulders, fall to the carpet.
She had taken no precaution to shield herself from the boy's gaze. But he, despite the desire he had to see her, had not dared keep his eyes on her until the very end... It was only when she turned back towards the bed, clad from neck to heels in the long ribboned gown and holding her shift in her hand, that he realised that for a few moments she had been entirely nude in his presence. At the thought, his face suddenly glowed a deep red - as if the display, far from having been accomplished by slow gradations, had been made all at once.
She laid the filmy garment, still warm and impregnated with the odour of her magnificent body, on the back of the armchair where he was sitting, and went into the bathroom.
No sooner had she left than he turned round, seized the shift whose light folds were brushing his nape, and pulled his face into it, breathing in with eager and trembling nostrils the subtle and disturbing perfume which clung in the soft linen creases, intoxicating himself almost to madness. All at once he heard a step behind him.
Harriet had re-entered the room quietly. As he saw his governess beside him, erect and severe in her long nightdress, her penetrating gaze bent on him, his heart seemed to skip a beat - She saw me! he thought; and, mixed with his resignation to the punishment he knew was coming, he was conscious of a certain pride.
'Richard! What were you doing?'
He did not reply. She took his head between her hands and forced him to look her in the face. 'What were you doing?' she repeated. Then she fixed him with a gaze that grew harder and harder. 'Yes,' she said. 'I saw you! You sensual, wicked boy! I have already noticed this side of your nature. I have said nothing, but I have been watching you! Come here, Richard.'
'Miss...' he mumbled. He was choking with a peculiar excitement.
Now, for some reason, he did not fear the pain of the approaching correction: he was as if drunk with the sense of his own subjection...
Gently, with movements slow and deliberate as those which are part of some ritual, she picked up her shift, folded it once to make a gag of it, and then bound it over his mouth and nose: the filminess of the material did not hinder his breathing - but every breath was as if it were taken from between her breasts or thighs. Then she bent his body beneath her arm, drew him tightly against her and raised his shirt; between them there was nothing but the thin silk of her nightdress. Her hand rose, and fell.
At last she drew him to the bed, and sitting down made him kneel between her feet; she leaned over... With an impression of ecstasy that was boundless, Richard abandoned himself to the touch of her hands. Never before had she acted thus, never before had he experienced such sensations! With her head close to his, so that he breathed the heady fragrance of her hair and the perfume of her breath, she was speaking softly in his ear: 'This is how I shall correct your wickedness. Richard... Do not mistake this for a caress! This is a punishment, a shameful punishment... Whenever I see that you are becoming too fond of me, I shall inflict it on you after I have whipped you well... Do you understand, you wicked child! Now back over my knee with you! I am going to beat you again...'
Once more, in the warm, dimly-lit room, was heard the slow, regular cadence of a palm striking flesh: it continued a long time...
At last she stopped, sighing deeply; she removed the gag from his face, and then, taking him in her arms, pressed her lips to his in a long, shuddering kiss.
'Try to behave yourself, now!' she said, pushing him away abruptly and slipping between the sheets of her bed. 'Hold your book in your left hand, and put your right hand in mine. Just so, my dear. I wish you to have the constant impression of being in my power, of being in my hand...'
He was burning with a fever of the senses, he had no more strength than a two-year-old child. He abandoned his hand to Harriet and began to read.
The reading lasted a long time. In order to turn the pages, he placed his book on the edge of the bed and used his left hand...
Harriet was falling asleep. From time to time Richard darted a swift glance at her, seeing her resting quietly, the two heavy braids of hair framing the noble head - the head beautiful as that of a goddess. An even breath raised her creamy half-uncovered breast, and he fought down a wild desire to put his lips to it - or at least to imprint a kiss on the soft hand which still imprisoned his own and which had struck and caressed him so recently. Then the great grey eyes half opened and were turned on him.
'Close your book now,' she murmured. 'Say goodnight to me, and go to bed like a good boy. And think of what happened to you this evening - will you not? You will think of it?'
'Yes, Miss,' he whispered.
He bent over her and respired her warm, perfumed breath as their mouths clung together in the evening kiss.
His face a little paler, his cheeks a little hollower than usual, Richard stole into Harriet's empty room. His governess had just gone out, leaving her pupil occupied with some schoolwork which she had set him as a holiday task.
'You will not leave your room while I am gone, Richa
rd,' she had told him. 'If you do, you will be well caned.'
He had obeyed the order, at first: then, despite the warning and the wholesome fear it implanted in him, he had dared to leave his work-table, to open the door, and at last, drawn by his overmastering desire, to enter the bedroom filled with the subtle perfume of the young woman.
His heart was pounding with excitement. What had she just been doing there? he asked himself. He had no idea, could make no conjecture, but he was seized by an intense nervous disturbance at finding himself alone, for the first time, in this room where she lived, where she slept, this room haunted by the intoxicating fragrance of her clothing, her sachets, her body itself.
He approached the bed, and shivered slightly. On the silk coverlet, beside the pillow, the governess had left a cane whose end was split and beginning to fray. That cane, he knew it only too well. The previous afternoon he had been whipped with it, as a punishment for his slovenliness in not having replaced a broken shoelace. His flesh was still tender from the effects of this punishment; but the remembered sting of the rattan only intensified the ardour of his desire - that mysterious and uncertain desire which betrayed itself by an irrational wish to be mastered, scolded, shamed and whipped, by his governess, and to touch and breathe the odour of every object belonging to her - above all, those objects consecrated to her most intimate use.
He picked up the cane with a trembling hand, and pressed his lips to the end which had felt her grip, imagining he could still detect the warmth and scent of the strong hand which had held it. Then, replacing the instrument of his torment, he let his gaze rove around the room. He was uneasy, oppressed, almost stifling, but the desire was stronger than everything else. Trembling in an access of precaution, walking on tiptoe as if be feared to awaken someone in the empty house, be made the circuit of the chamber.
All at once be stopped, riveted to the spot. On a low, straw-bottomed, high-backed chair, whose form recalled that of a prie-dieu, a tiny handkerchief of fine batiste was lying, crushed almost flat. In front of the chair stood a pair of high-heeled shoes, from which Harriet had apparently changed before going out.
His throat dry, his heart beating wildly, be bent over and knelt down; be took the handkerchief and carried it to his lips. It exhaled a subtle perfume, the same perfume which he had breathed on that unforgettable evening when his governess had undressed in front of him before going to bed. And this handkerchief was at once crushed and flattened! Immediately he understood that in order to change her shoes Harriet had seated herself on this chair, and therefore - on the handkerchief: the little square of batiste was thus doubly precious to him... He kissed it once more, long and passionately, and then hid it under his shirt, against his skin, against his heart. What delicious hours he would pass that night, he thought, when he could bury his face in it! Already, he was shaken with the thrill of anticipation.
But perhaps even more than the handkerchief, the shoes attracted him. He picked them up, smelled them, covered them with such kisses as a lover would bestow on the body of an adored mistress; he stroked them tenderly, drew back the tongues and tried to kiss the inside, gazed at them with love and reverence and pressed them passionately to his breast. He felt in a confused manner the pointlessness, the madness of these endearments bestowed on inanimate objects - but then he began to ask himself if they were really so inanimate: he was dimly aware that there resided in this supple leather something more than the idea of the charming foot it had clasped more than the sweet and intoxicating perfume it gave off, some immaterial essence which he was unable to explain and which, though he did not conceive or clothe the idea in comprehensible terms, was for him the symbol of an exquisite feminine domination...
He was about to rise, when a sound behind him chilled him to the marrow. He turned around and saw Harriet.
She was smiling, her thin lips parted in that terrible curve which he knew so well.
As if stricken by paralysis, all the strength fleeing from his body as the blood gushes from an open wound, he could not move for an instant. He tried to rise, but she halted him with a gesture.
'Stay as you are!' she said.
Deliberately, she took off her hat and gloves and laid them on the dressing-table. Then she approached kneeling boy who, his eyes wide with terror and entreaty, watched her coming towards him without a cry, without a word or a movement.
'You were kissing my shoes, sir!' she said in a low voice. 'Yes, I saw you. You were kissing them...' She picked up one of the shoes and, seizing his long hair in her other hand, she rubbed the shoe vigorously against face, which from being livid swiftly became as red as fire. 'So, you were kissing them!' she cried, her wrath bursting forth. 'So that is what you like, is it? Put your hands behind you! Behind you, I said. There now, kiss it - kiss it again - you wretched boy! Again - again! Have you had enough of such vileness now?' Her anger suddenly mastered her, and dropping the shoe she slapped his cheek with all the strength of her arm: so hard was the blow that he would have fallen if she had not still held him upright by the hair. Deliberately, she slapped him again.
Her anger was perfectly genuine, evoked by the evidences of a perverted taste which was entirely at variance with her plans.
Released from her grip, Richard crumpled to the thick carpet and lay there prone, his face in his bands, sobbing and gasping weakly.
She regarded him calmly for a few moments; then, with her foot, she turned him over. Little by little, the sensuality of the punished boy was affirming itself now that his fright was receding. Harriet knitted her brows with determination. I shall have to take further measures, she thought.
'Go to your room, undress yourself, and wait for me there,' she said coldly. 'I am not through with you yet, Richard.'
He obeyed. No sooner had he divested himself of his clothes than Harriet entered his room; she was bearing the leather belt and sleeves she had ordered from the saddler, and her face was stern. 'I did not know we should have occasion for the whipping-harness quite so soon, Richard,' she said quietly. 'Indeed, I had hoped it would not be needed for a long time. But your conduct has shown me that I must take the most extreme measures. You have disappointed me more than I can say...'
The note of reproach in her voice affected him even more painfully than the prospect of further chastisement. A great sob of anguish rose in his breast, and falling on his knees before her he burst into tears. 'Oh Miss, Miss, I'm sorry,' he stammered. 'I-I couldn't help it... I'll never do it again! Only please, please don't be angry with me...'
'I am no longer angry with you, Richard. I am merely saddened to find such inclinations in you, and I am, more than ever, resolved to root them out. The whipping you are going to receive will be as much a corrective as a punishment of your wickedness. When it is all over you will be forgiven. Come, get up and put on your harness!'
Under Harriet's direction he buckled the sleeves on his arms, fastened the belt and attached the strap. 'Very good,' she said. 'Now that you know how to put it on, I shall expect you to do so yourself whenever there is occasion for your wearing it in future. Turn around now, please...'
He obeyed; she drew his arms behind his back, folded them tightly, and snapped the catches into place.
Richard, feeling himself rendered absolutely helpless, experienced a sudden emotion of panic; breaking away sharply, he began to twist and strain against the straps, bending and writhing ineffectually, his face pale, a hunted look in his eyes.
Harriet stood watching his struggles with a detached and impassive air; she well knew the effects of such restraint, and congratulated herself on their success in further breaking her pupil's spirit. For a while she followed his disordered movements without speaking; when they ceased and the boy stood crouched in front of her, panting and trembling, she began to smile.
'Come now, Richard,' she said, 'you see you must resign yourself. There is no use your struggling any longer, you will only tire yourself to no purpose.' She stepped forward and took him by the upper arm, suppor
ting his body which suddenly became weak. 'Lie down on your bed now... Very good. I shall leave you now, and I shall not come back until the evening. It is then that we will settle our accounts...'
She pulled the coverlet over his trembling body, and drew the heavy curtains; then she turned away without another word and left the room, locking the door behind her.
For Richard, lying helpless in his bed, the hours until evening passed slowly. Outside the world drowsed through the afternoon of a beautiful English summer day, the sunshine growing ever mellower and more golden as the sun moved lazily across a pure and cloudless heaven, lingering and prolonging itself as if unwilling to leave the quiet country landscape; the hours rang out faintly from the priory church in the town, and they too seemed to be deliberately spacing themselves more and more widely apart, in obedience to some timeless element of the day.
In the darkened bedroom of the house where the pinioned boy lay waiting, time seemed to have stopped altogether. Still tormented by a burning desire for something of which he had no conception, his imagination was tossed between thoughts of punishment and voluptuousness, prospects confused yet complementary, ideas inextricably entangled in a quivering, ambiguous sensibility whose only focus was in the image of the woman whom he loved. Indeed, he was a prey to such closely mingled trepidation and desire that he seemed to be awaiting, in the arrival of his beloved, at once the signal of a martyrdom and an appeasement. Ah, how many of us, looking back on our own childhood, might not say that we too have been consumed at some time by such a curious amalgam of emotion? And how many would not admit that in such hours of anguished expectation was forged, more strongly than ever, the sensual link which so mysteriously unites the ideas of pleasure and pain?
Harriet herself, perhaps, had known such an experience. Of such a possibility we cannot yet speak with certainty; but her understanding of the conditions under which the mind is at its most impressionable entitles us to say, at least, that she was a psychologist both profound and practical...
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