"Oh yes, Miss. She's tasting it nicely."
"And will swallow a bit when she gulps, eh? Good. Now. Where do you think I should cut in order to make it hurt most—on these last ones?"
"Yes, Miss, they're lovely. But frankly I think she's going to feel it almost anywhere like this. It's a fine thick pair to work on."
"Just sponge them for me first, will you. I like 'em wet for these very thin canes."
I felt the water slide with curious humiliation over my beaten flesh; tears began to stream reciprocally over my suffocated upper cheeks. Miss Miller stood well back and doffed her high-heeled shoes. As she came forward swinging, her skirt again flared up and I saw her strongly haired slot. Then there was the yellow flash, the meaty thump, and a goddess drew a white-hot iron on my bum. She cut excruciatingly low and the pain seemed double that I had suffered in her room. I wanted to jump a yard away, succeeded in raising my heels from the floor with a deep belly-grunt of pure agony. I heard Elsie say calmly, "Good shot, Miss." I snorted snot.
Two fell in total silence, and three. Impossible to describe the pain I was in. After an endless interval— four!
The maid said, "I think you're hurting her nicely now."
"I'm trying to. It's all she understands. Sponge her down again, would you."
After the infernal sixth Elsie said, "You've drawn, Miss."
"Good heavens, I believe I have. A graze at least. It's been years since I drew with a cane."
"You're getting beautifully inside the cheeks, too, Miss."
"That's because you spread them so nicely for me, Elsie. Now then, let's see if I can just split that tip-mark with one. of these last two."
"Split it like a plum, Miss,, and she'll never forget it."
When that living hell was over I heard the mistress talking in the red mists above me, the scarlet pain waves laving my loins, my whole being. She was saying thoughtfully, "Give her ten minutes like that, put some pimentade on that graze, and then bring her to me. That was good exercise."
She left. Before she went to get the stinging stuff, the maid said, "There now. You see, you took that beating perfectly stoically, didn't you?"
When eventually I was returned to the mistress's private room, from which I had first issued, it was merely at leash's end and with my wrists secured behind me. I was completely cowed and overpowered. Something in me had given up. The sting in my buttocks still sung through me from that lancinating lashing. All I knew was that I wanted the world to come to an end.
After I had curtseyed I looked glumly up and saw Miss Miller standing in the middle of the room with her legs apart. She looked flushed of face, which was fulfilled, almost sated in expression, yet still deeply hostile, and she was holding a thin cravache.
"There," said Elsie, "she's much better now, Miss."
"Do you think she knows her place?"
"Oh yes, Miss, I'm sure she does."
"We'll see. Come here, Jane Eyre."
I stood before her.
"Still feeling above yourself?"
"Oh ner-no, Miss," I quavered.
"Very well. I shall now show you your true relationship to a mistress. We have discussed the scum buss, have we not? I shall accord you the privilege of giving me one now. Kneel down behind me, after you have first lifted my skirt behind, and then get it right up, mind."
I went behind her. There being no other method to complete her order I bent and caught up the hem of her morsel of skirt in my teeth and laid it on the arch of her crupper. The woman's body was lightly quivering and smelt hot. Kneeling behind her well-spread legs I saw she had affixed sharp round rowel spurs to each ankle. The superb buttock mass before me was supremely there; for a giddy second the room seemed full of arse. The cheeks were fully fatted and I had to push in with my face between them, to reach the crinkled rose-coin. I found the damp medallion, pressed with the tip of my tongue and sank it forward, half-smothered in rich thick bum flesh.
"Further up than that," I heard, as if from some mellow distance. "Get it right clean up."
I was held to the filthy task for a good ten minutes. I heard Miss Miller say, "There, Elsie, don't you think that's her real position in life? You may go now but be ready to come back at once if I want you."
"I shall be right outside the door,"—and then I heard it slam.
After a little wriggling, Miss Miller drew away and addressed me with intense dislike—"Well, girl, did you feel anything? Is there something up there, then?"
"I der-don't ... I can't say, Miss," I stammered breathlessly.
"Try again then."
I set myself once more to the abominable task and this time, after some minutes, was able to reply to the resultant catechism—"Yes, Miss, I think there is s-s-something there."
"Good. Now come here." She led me, licking my bitter lips, to one side of the fire where a chair had been set out in a special way, with a towel on its seat. My heart failed me. The human cushion! I had come to this already. It was one of the vilest degradations we could be subject to.
Miss Miller was looking at me gravely, holding my trembling chin in her free hand.
"You know what a brown nose is, Jane Eyre?"
"Yes, Miss."
"You're now going to get one. Yes, I shall condescend to teach you your real role in life, my child. Sit down in front of this chair, put your head back on the cushions and your knees high." These last were secured by straps provided therefor, to the armrests of the comfortable chair. My cunthole yawned wide spread. "Now then, Jane Eyre, you will get your nose up where your tongue has been and keep it there, for as long as I choose. If you do not, you will feel the braided trainer of this switch in your most sensitive spot. I shall use the spurs on you without mercy. First, you will need this. For I shall grant you the favor of breathing, you see, though every now and then you may have to inhale my other insides, as I choose." She put a red tube in my mouth and, after settling a hassock before the chair, bestrode me; my being shook, my breasts trembled. My head was back, expectant. My arms were secured behind me and my bent legs parted. All I could see? think of, imagine was the great mass of buttock-cheek bunched above me. Then, holding the arm rests of her chair, the mistress descended her huge hams an me. The hinds parted, lushly forested within; I saw their insides somewhat flabbily approaching, and then I saw no more.
Wettened by my tonguing, the sphincter dimple opened on my nose at once, engulfing it deeply. Then as the whole weight of the massive mistress was lowered on me I panicked—was I to be suffocated alive in my first week at Lowood? I wriggled uselessly and squirmed in earnest as the spurs roweled me unsparingly right inside my thighs. The two halves of perspiring flesh obliterated everything. My eyeballs felt pressed back, my entire face was enclosed in the gluteal globes. I found I could just breathe through the tubing. The mistress put her feet up, to increase the weight, and appeared to be reading a book. Every now and then she made fatty stirrings, which sent a repulsive ooze over my face, the while she would grind her hairy pulp into my chin. Truly I thought to faint. My tears added salt to the bile.
How I wish I could say, gentle reader, that it was the only exusion that I felt there. Alas, after some half hour of this stupefying cushioning in sheer arse-flesh, the mistress saw fit to lean forward and frankly excite herself. She put her book down and frotted herself frantically, coming in strong spurts that she verily mashed into me. I tasted of this unseemly essence, too, as I sucked through the tube.
Perhaps an hour went by thus, possibly two. Gross blots of darkness floated in my eyes. Twice I thought to faint. Waves of lethargic flatulence passed into my nostrils, and over my face, from the relaxed sphincter. And then I felt it pinch me. I all but panicked as I realized what was happening. The mistress leant forward with a satisfied grunt, a pose in which I could better hear her voice, and I felt something solid sliding down the steamy, slippery aisle above me. At the same time, leaning well forward, Miss Miller insinuated a finger in my slot and busily rubbed up my button there.
I responded at once, helplessly. My tension made my excitement intense. The dread mass was emerging—fortunately short, and firm—and then it was being smeared over me by the mistress's movements.
"There, Jane, there," she was saying, as she made contented, catlike stretching of her bum-cheeks. "You repulsive little detail. You filthy object. That will show you your true place in life, here at Lowood, and I beg you never to forget it, else I will order you the birch until your skin is crimson. Now, now. Yes, you filth, you will go tonight to the kennels—though not before Parker has given you your nightly three— and you will not wash your face until tomorrow. It will be in your nostrils and you will breathe it all the night. There, there. You are coming . . . admit it!"
Admit it, I had to. The spurs dug, the foul turd was slowly mashed over my abused countenance— and I gave to my tormentress endless gouts of gismic glue. Thus was I "shown my place,"
"brought down a peg or two," by ardent Miss Miller.
Thhhwwwrlllp!
NINE!
Ye Gods, what mortal agony.
"Aiyyyyy" / cried aloud.
Mr. Rochester had never hit harder. He had prepared his meat perfectly by the first strokes and could now take,his time and cut into solid welt, fast oozing on the right.
I twisted back my tear-wet face and again begged him, "Mercy, sir. But come at me higher for these last three.*'
"Why should I, Jane, if it hurts more lower?'' he amicably answered and stood back to complete his hellish handiwork on my person.
I sank my head between my shoulders, sweat streaming down my back under the lights, and tried to remember Lowood. . . .
9
My first quarter at Lowood seemed a century; and not the golden one, either. It comprised a most-irksome struggle with difficulties in habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks. The fear of failure constantly harassed us, the threat of the whip was ever present—though it diminished in frequency, if not in intensity, with seniority.
At the end of that first, so frightful week, we were received by Miss Temple and all the mistresses in their common-room. It was Sunday after chapel and an august and imposing moment for us four trembling new-knicks. The Headmistress presided at the head of a table, wearing a short pretty plaid cloak and her usual agreeable smile. We always had to prosternate ourselves in her presence, head on floor, and remain thus until bidden to rise. We were lectured long and intimately. Miss Temple urged us to endure all, to keep our spirits up and to march forward "like stalwart soldiers." I, for one, felt much too dejected to respond to this advice; and Estella Moore, standing next to me, was crying openly, her behind being in like state to mine.
But with what pride did we not all on the following Monday morning don the new rosy knickers of the Minimus class to which we were thus graduated! At last the dormitory cuts ceased and it seemed to me that Parker looked on me, at least, with a more friendly eye. We were part of the school and soon formed "chums" and "pals." A week later I had the pleasure of seeing my first public birching, the first of many I was to witness under the grim roof of Lowood.
I say pleasure with intent for such I must aver it to be, as such it was to become, ere I left that mansion. For the sterile rote of class and commons soon came to condition its inmates to rejoice at any disturbance within it. Furthermore, these whippings were exciting on other scores: they were excruciatingly painful, almost on another level than any other applications to which we were subject, and they were happening to somebody else! Add to this the fact that they took place in the mid-morning break period after which all further classes were suspended for the rest of the morning, and you will recognize, gentle reader, the buzz of animation with which their knowledge was greeted amongst us.
"There's to be a flogging!"
This whisper, at breakfast, set faces flushing, elbows nudging, eyes sparkling. Two girls had evidently been caught in bed together, after Lights Out. Wagers were taken on the count to be allotted and we stole glances around to see which of our number were missing, for any girl to be birched was put into Solitary until expiation.
The infliction was carried out in the Long Chamber or refectory, in front of all the mistresses, who sat on the dais, Miss Temple in their center, and the assembled school ranged along the three remaining walls, as to the Minimus class facing them, Majors on the right, Minors on the left. The monitors faced inward to these three classes, until punishment commenced. The block was in the middle, and every eye was upon it. Even to this day I cannot write of it without trembling fingers, so unspeakably did those birch-twigs flick and sting, for minute after minute. They were prolonged, ferocious thrashings and you felt the weals for a week.
During the break period Miss Temple usually made announcements, said a few prayers, and dismissed us. However, she also ordered punishments which were administered publicly, before us. There were usually reports of some Prefect who wished a girl to get more than her class share of cuts and "put in" for such. The girl had to stand out, her offense was read and she was asked if she had aught to say. On the conventional negative she bent double after dropping her knickers, her skirt was lifted, and the white-clad Duty Prefect of the day duly administered six terrific swingers "of the very best." If the Pre' (as we called her) failed to send the girl back to her ranks other than gasping and gripping her bottom, in literal agony, she had not performed ardently enough, and—so it was rumored—would be accordingly rewarded by the Duty Mistress that evening. Meanwhile, in front of all her colleagues and comrades, the victim strove amain to show no signs of pain. It was a veritable duel between them, one nearly always won by the wielder of those wicked rods. There were one or two great big Yorkshire girls who could "swallow" a sixer without blinking, but they were rare; and however they hid it, they were still ablaze beneath when it was over, like any one of us.
There were other orders also, during these break periods. I well remember that regularly every birthday I would see Miss Temple smiling gently towards me from her lectern on the dais: "Stand out, Jane Eyre. Today is Jane Eyre's birthday and her Aunt Reed wishes her to have cuts." And I would receive a tart "present" from that horrible woman of six stingers on my bum.
"I am sorry to have to say," Miss Temple began on the particular day in my first half that I mention, "that two among you have been caught in a disgusting sin and shall have to be punished severely. Bring in—" and she read out two names, only one of which was known to me. The Duty Prefect went to a door behind our rank and opened it to lead in two sorry penitents, both bare-footed and completely nude, with arms fettered wrist-to-elbow behind, and round each neck a small sign hanging—TRIBADISM. After prosternation these two luckless girls stood facing the dais for their sentencing.
They could not have been more contrasted. The older of the pair, whose name I did not know, was nearer a woman. In her last term at Lowood, already spoken for as a governess in Lincolnshire, she was shorter than her younger accomplice in crime, with reddish-brown hair cut short and an appealing, rather pretty face. Her rich, close-curled bush was auburn, too. Her figure was unusual in the extreme. Her shoulders were gently sloping, her waist narrow, her legs normally tapering; but her stout bottom was wide to the point of deformity. It was not a long buttock, like that of Helen Burns, it was, rather, a short, strong, stocky one, surpassing in breadth of base any I had seen. The roll of fat at the overhang was solid and already somewhat tumified-looking. I could not help feeling a sense of satisfied anticipation at seeing this broad-arsed girl I did not know waiting for it, as we all had to; it was also rumored she was a well-known seducer of younger girls for such pleasures, and that there had been some rivalry with her dormitory monitor in the matter. She seemed to have resigned herself to her fate and, though not quite as impassive as a soldier, her crupper seemed to me a "stalwart" one. It shone a rosy hue on the right, where Nell had pre-treated it; for all girls due for the birch had to lie on a bed while the massive, flaxen-haired housekeeper applied hot towels to their rumps and then pumiced the cheek
s with a pumice-stone until the integument sometimes felt so thin a fingernail's touch would have split it.
The other girl was called Jessica Cameron and was exceedingly pretty and slim, with sleek dark hair; her whiter bottoms trembled like jellies before our eyes all through Miss Temple's long peroration on their sin. She was clearly terrified of her ordeal.
We were all breathlessly awaiting the sentencing and, I confess, hoping that for the older girl it would be a tolerably strict one. Nell had told us two or three dozen was the usual rule, so that the final verdict was met with no less than a mild susurration of surprise round that long chamber.
Speaking slowly but sternly to the older girl, Miss Temple said: "As the chief culprit here in this disgraceful matter, you will bend over the block and your naked buttocks will be flogged forty-eight times with the birch twigs." Four dozen! "Further, you will then receive ten stripes of the martinet, also on your naked buttocks. You will suffer two days in Solitary and three hours of Detention. You, Cameron, will also bend tight your bottom and you _will receive thirty-six strokes of the birch-rod, followed by five with the martinet. Let this be a lesson to you. Proceed with the punishment."
A. N. Dedeaux - An English Education Page 13