A. N. Dedeaux - An English Education

by P. N. Dedeaux

  "Three more," she said thoughtfully—and delivered them, three of the most unbelievably punishing thrashes I had ever seen, with the whole weight of her body behind each and small interval between. Then she stood well back with a gasped, "All right." Then she added, "Unlatch her ankles, Jane."

  Eileen Parsons reacted with strange somnambulistic slowness. She had taken the last two risen a little and now straightened to her full height with a drawn-out gargle or slow retch of pure agony, mounting in tone, as if about to vomit—"Aaaarggggggugh!" Her wealed cheeks jammed together as if suddenly clutching something between them and she grabbed them in handfuls with her hands. But her face was what drove the marrow from my bones. It was crimson in hue all over, martyred in expression, and in the dribble on the chin were flecks of blood. She turned and tottered, as if scarce able to credit the extent of pain accorded her.

  "You may go now, Eileen. Well done."

  The girl doubled in agony—"Oouuuuu! Owwww! Ah God oh God. . . ." She seemed unable to see where she was, took two faltering stiff steps, then straightened like a marionette in another drawn-out spasm. Her right arm was freely bleeding where she had bitten into it. I gazed in open horror. My turn next Finally, the poor thing found the door like some spastic but could not wrench the handle open. She ducked down, perhaps an attempted curtsey, said, "Th-thank you, Miss," finally found strength to open the door and staggered out.

  Miss Miller was staring at me. I remember thinking that her dilated nostrils looked twice their width. Oh heavens, how frightened I felt. She was staring at me in a dazed way, almost dreamily, and finally she shook herself, saying, "I can't remember when I have ever given three better cuts than those last ones. Mr. Brocklehurst himself could not do better. Don't you think they hurt her tremendously, Jane?"

  "Tremendously, Miss," I echoed faintly.

  Still in the same trance-like way, she set down her stick and came towards me. Then this strange whimsical woman put an arm about me and my head on her breast; I could hear her heart throbbing under the lump of easily moving tit. When she spoke it was almost mournfully:

  "And now I am going to have to teach you your place in life, am I not, Jane Eyre? How you are the lowest of the low. Scarce fit to drink my urine, which you will do every day next week. There will be a carafe on the side and you will take your dose from it daily, and gladly. The constituents are no more than those of beef tea, with a little uric acid added. Yes, yes, you will begin to learn your role in life and that when a mistress tells you to keep your eyes on a behind, you will do so and not look under her skirt. Oh yes, I saw you, mischief. And every one of your cuts will be as hard as those last three, or harder if I can make them."

  I had begun to cry again. "I shall never be able to bear them, Miss," I whimpered.

  "Oh yes you will, for if you do not it's the Chamber, tied up like a parcel and the whole over. But for you, Jane, since you are nice and tender behind, I shall use a thin cane, the thinnest that I have, no more than a pencil in thickness. They are hard to find these days. The bruise is less but the sting far more intense, more especially when I take you among your bruises and slice up. Oh it will snip in here, and here. . . ." She started to feel me.

  I blurted impulsively, "Ah Miss, I love you . . . please, I didn't mean. . . ."

  She thrust me imperiously from her and to my dismay I saw I had turned her into fury again. A new Megaera. I was in despair.

  "Incorrigible minx. Do you mean to seduce me, too? Bend over that table and let me show you what a cane whipping can be." And she went to the wall for her rod.

  It was, indeed, an unspeakably stingy one and its infliction atrocious. I stood three, a count I was growing accustomed to by now, but dashed my hands back at four. At five I had to be corrected again. I was by now terribly tender behind and each slice seemed to me like a knife. After a frightful sixth, endless in coming, I stood up—"Aaaah! It's no good, Miss, I can't bear more."

  It was the truth. "Bend over at once," was my reply, given with venom in the voice.

  Indeed I tried. I was half-over when the seventh lashed me with its streak of fire. I screamed and sat down on the carpet, tripping back on the ankle-bar. I lay there, moaning desperately as I kneaded myself, and looking up at the giantess—for so she seemed— with the great-haired gash beneath her skirt who towered over me.

  "Foolish girl! You will see I keep my promises."

  She strode to a bell-pull. A maid came at once.

  "Elsie. Take this child and if you can find one of the Chastisement Chambers free put her in position four. I mean to show her that a punishment can be taken calmly."

  The maid looked pleased. "Yes, Miss. Punishment corset too?"

  "A notched saddle, Elsie. And the pear. Take your time. I shall be along to cane her shortly." She looked down at me in disgust. "By the time Elsie's finished with you, Jane, you won't be able so much as to twitch. Off with you now."

  "I think I'll just get some straps first, Miss, if I may."

  The smiling maid went to a drawer, took out some evil-looking straps of hard thin leather, and approached me as I sat, nursing my wounds.

  "Come," she coaxed, as one might address a pet— and then she indeed secured my neck in a pretty, ornate dog collar, attached to a leash which she held in her hand. I rose to my feet, sobbing brokenly.

  "Ah please, Miss, please ... I tried, I did try. . . .”

  "Not hard enough," was the implacable answer. There was a ring in front of my collar, and a ring behind, and a ring in front of the belt I was buckled into, and a ring behind that also. Then I watched in dismay as a severe round long leather leash was clipped to my collar in front. This was passed down through my front belt ring, brought up between my legs, being carefully threaded through my lips there, up through the belt ring behind, and then passed through the collar ring behind also. My wrists were cuffed and raised high behind my back and the leash clipped tautly to them there. I gasped at the tension. This was the first "saddle" (as we termed them at Lowood) I had worn, though I had seen them applied to other girls already, who seemed to suffer atrociously whenever bending or sitting in them.

  I soon realized that my ignoble harness was such that unless I strained my arms back until they seemed to leave their sockets, my wrists exerted pressure on the leash—and I felt as if I were being cut in half under the cunt. As the glossy-faced, raven-haired maidservant then tugged me forward like a dog in this way, my head went back with a gasp; what fiends had devised this way of vexing girls? For the part of the leash that passed through my sex was rather thicker and lumpier and the leather on its inside must have been roughened in some manner, for it greatly abraded the tender flesh up which it rode. Never had anyone trod more like Agag, "delicately."

  "Curtsey," smiled the maid at the door. She had a switch in her hand. I looked desperately back at my place of martyrdom. For some reason the mistress was holding her head in her hands. I went down slowly on one knee —and squeaked! The lozenge of rough leather positively seemed to bite.

  Outside the door at last the maid hurried me briskly along the corridors to the Chastisement Chamber.

  "Please, Elsie," I begged. "Not so fast. This strap is cutting awfully."

  "Oh that's nothing. I'm going to put a far more interesting one on you in a minute, just you see."

  A mistress was coming towards us. It was Oakes.

  "Curtsey," I heard. I did. And gasped. It bit again.

  "Good Heavens!" said the mistress, standing with hands on hips and grinning for all she was worth. "What have we here?"

  "I'm just taking her along to a Chamber for a proper hiding, Miss," said the maid.

  "Poor Jane Eyre. Didn't I hurt you enough last night?"

  "Yes, Miss."

  "She got some lovely licks from Miss Miller, Miss. Look." Elsie turned me and they both admired my streaked cheeks.

  "I wish I knew where Miller got those thin canes," said Miss Oakes. "But let's see what I gave you. Bend over now."

  "Pleas
e, Miss. . . ."

  "What is it?"

  "It hurts so to, in this."

  Then I squeaked again, only louder. With a laugh the maid thrust me over by the scruff of my neck. Miss Oakes palped my welts of the previous night. When I stood up again she was shaking her head, "Dear me. I thought I'd hit you hard enough to keep you out of mischief for a day or two. Ah well, the perils of education, I suppose." She went her way.

  "Curtsey again!" said that grinning devil to me, and I had to. Oddly, as we walked on, I was becoming flooded with contradictory sensation; partly it was the constriction, partly the warmth of retiring pain, and partly the leather lump below, which, smoother at the top, would insist on rubbing at my stiffening sentry there.

  There were four Chastisement Chambers for the use of the mistresses at Lowood, at any time, and each was gloomier than the other. Truly they were more fitting for the Inquisition than for the care of girls like us. Roomy and vaulted, they were equipped with every imaginable appurtenance of restraint and correction. Directly she had closed the massy door on mine, the maid put me to a corset yard, my arms high raised and secured at the wrists. There was a cheval glass before me in which I could see myself. At least the harness was off.

  "Thank heavens for that, Elsie," I said; "that strap was a demon. Oh merciful God, I can never take another cut, as tender as this behind."

  "Just you wait," she said merrily, busying herself to one side. "By the time I've trussed you up, you'll take your cuts like a soldier. Without a move and without a single sound. For I have to gag you, first. You've never had the pear, eh?"

  I confessed I had not. She came forward and showed me the infamous choke-piece with its strong spring, for the jaw muscles are among the strongest in the body. When she had closed the pear against the spring, it looked like a small crab apple made of lead. When opened, it would hold my mouth splitting wide, so that I could not utter a sound.

  "First we'll flavor it for you, shall we," she said with a giggle.

  "No, you don't have to," I begged, knowing.

  She smiled and then spat on the frightening object. "Some of us only dip it in," she said, moving ominously behind me. "But I like to put it right up. Like that it always collects some stuff, you see. And it won't be the first you'll taste here at Lowood, I assure you."

  "Nooooouuuh!"

  I squirmed as the now slobbery pear was introduced up my rectum. I felt it slip up the sheath, quite high, and said, "Oh please. I shall never be able ... to expel it, Elsie."

  "Yes, you will. Unless it should spring open in your insides. Just think of that." This terrifying idea sent her into another fit of merriment. "But that's never happened yet. Now then. Like a glass of water before we start?"

  Never had well water tasted purer than that cold cup given me then. The maid powdered my torso completely. Her gloved hands, over which the soft leather stretched so tightly every indentation of her finger-nails might be seen, caressed me knowingly.

  "You've a lovely plump body, haven't you?" she crooned as she did so. "Just fit to be thrashed into, down here."

  I was beginning to cry again. "But I'm whipped so often, Elsie. And I don't want to be."

  "But you're going to be, aren't you? Some more lovely violet lines back here."

  "Do you like seeing me, seeing us, whipped so much?"

  "But of course," she answered, genuinely startled.

  "And so will you, silly, by the time you finish at Lowood. You'll be fairly longing to send little girls up for Yellows. Now let's get a nice tight corset."

  It was a vise. To this day I shall swear that those punishment corsets were lined with iron. The one Elsie put on me as I puffed and dangled was short, and accoutered with thin straps. It finished under my breasts, practically cracking my ribs there, and it took my tummy away so that I could barely breathe at all. The maid worked like a veritable farrier about my body, tugging the laces and kneeing into me behind for greater leverage on them. I protested, panting, in vain. She used special tools with hook-ends to further tighten the stays. Finally, when I was a solid leathern tube from rib-cage to hips, she came and stood in front of me, her pretty face tilted: "I'm sorry to have to do this to you, y'know, but it's the only way to get them tighter."

  "But they woooooon't . . . ," I feebly began, only to feel every atom of breath belted from my body. The maid had swung her fist into my belly and for a second I was an empty balloon, fighting for air, for existence itself. I dangled slackly. In this state I was easily notched in tighter. When I came to something of myself, the air seemed red and smell-ling salts were pressed to my nostrils.

  "Now let's get that little toy out of you, shall we?" I heard.

  The yard was lowered. I found my feet. It was lowered further still.

  "Squat," she said, "and void it out of you quite."

  I found it surprisingly easy to do so, into the large pan Elsie placed between my legs for the purpose. The corset so held me in its iron grip that I felt no control of my lower person at all. No sooner had I squatted slightly than of its own volition I felt the hellish pear sliding out of me; it fell with a loud clang into the pan—which seemed much to amuse the maid—and then I was gasping hectically, "Elsie . . . please ... I can't help it . . . I'm going to do some more."

  I thumped a large, warm one into the waiting pan and then it was upon me, I felt it coming, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it at all. The hot gush came out of me, too, of its own accord and foamed into the pan.

  "Heavens, what a jet!" exclaimed Elsie. And she grinned when she removed the pan from behind me —"I've not seen a better head on Dortmund larger."

  When she came back from disposing of it it she stood before me and she was not smiling. She held up the slimy choke-pear. "You squeezed a bit of muck into it, new-nick, and like that you'll taste your waste while the mistress flogs you and shows you your true position in life, and not to be lippy with your betters."

  The horror was duly introduced and sprung. My jaws widened to total distension. And there I stood, facing the stranger in the mirror—gape-mouthed, purple-faced, lily-skinned and bisected by the glossy black corset, a wasp of waist whose hips looked twice their size. And then the fun started in earnest.

  Two thin straps sliced into my creamy shoulders, suspendering the cruel corset there. After this, there was threaded through my legs from the busk in front the most fiendish saddle strap imaginable; it was thin and hard and lined with brass studs on the inside. It was hauled up so excruciatingly tight at the buckle behind that I saw myself blink and heard myself choke.

  Elsie said slowly: "If you feel yourself retching, breathe in deeply. But you need not worry. A girl can vomit through a pear quite easily; besides there's the nose. However, you may get extra cuts if you do." She swung me to get that awful strap still tighter, and last made me draw my knees up to my chest and hold them there, while she yanked mercilessly. When I lowered my legs again, my eyes started with the agony. Tears formed and flowed down my cheeks.

  "There. What did I say? Like that you won't want to clench, will you. It gives them a lovely spread behind." She let me off the yard. "Come on, I love putting a girl to a Four."

  I tottered, rather than walked, spraddle-legged to another part of the room, where a large 4 was inscribed atop a post set in the wall, and furnished with many more straps. I was bent absolutely double against this, head on knees, and trussed like a turkey. First, my arms were strapped at wrist and above and below the elbows, the lean leather cutting into my flesh painfully. My arms were then drawn up vertically behind me, doubling me quite, and secured by-more straps to the wall-post there—at wrist, elbow, and with two more new straps holding my shoulders. My legs were strapped at ankle, above and below the knee, and at mid-thigh. My ankles were gyved immovably in a fetter that protruded from the wall and held them locked about a foot from it. Lastly a device was screwed out from the wall at my knees. This was a double bar, padded with leather, and it was adjusted to push back at my legs just ab
ove and below the knee-cap. It was tightened so as to be almost intolerable. My legs were braced in a bow, my body was constricted and doubled till I couldn't breathe, my mouth was gagged—I was so helpless I did not exist. It was true to say that my whole feeling towards my body was altered in this position; I couldn't contract a single muscle of my buttocks or legs, they belonged to someone else, inert and divided by the cruelly biting thong one stud of which had eased into my anus.

  Elsie administered the restorative salts once more, said "Don't run away" with a chuckle and again advised me to breathe deeply after each cut.

  Presently the door opened and Miss Miller came in. I saw her from upside down as she came up to me, holding the same thin cane.

  "Is she nice and taut, Elsie?" she asked. "As a drum, Miss. I think she'll be able to take this lot without moving at all."

  "Good gracious, her face is as red as her bum. Did you season the pear for her first?"