“Indeed Sir, I do not,” I replied, all indignant at his accusation, and I pulled the little red book from my pocket, where it always rested. “See, here is my notebook. I will settle with you whenever you wish.”
“At once, Jane,” he responded. “At once. Let me have your drawers.”
I was not to be outfaced by his directness and reached at once under my skirts to unfasten and remove my drawers, passing them, still warm from my body, into his hand. He put them in his pocket and bid me bend.
Next morning, when John took me up in the coach, I travelled the long and bumpy ride to Gateshead with a dozen welts across my hinds as sore as any I had known, but curiously content to be carrying these throbbing mementoes of my Master. For his part he seemed to have taken a fancy to those soft beribboned pantaloons that had lately adorned my nether parts, before I had removed them to receive his parting gift.
I arrived at Gateshead and very grateful I was to lift my poor bottom from the seat on which it had pounded painfully for mile after mile. I found my cousins, Eliza and Georgina, had taken Jack’s death badly, and sat sadly in the day room, in gloomy silence, punctuated only by the occasional outburst of reminiscence of some doing or other of Jack’s, generally disreputable, often concerning themselves and, even at this time, with he in his grave, and their mother like to follow, arguing jealously as to who should have had his favours at any particular time. There was no doubt from their conversation that, in order to obtain those favours, each had taken the quite indefensible risk of allowing him, not only to make use of their no longer virgin vaginas but, worse, to stay lodged there when his crisis came upon him, and discharge his seed directly against their unprotected wombs. It was only by the grace of providence that they had not succumbed to the swollen belly so dreaded by rash girls.
When I could wean them from their wallowings I was able to ascertain that their mother, though she had repeatedly entreated them to send for me before it was too late, was now subject to relapses into insensibility and, indeed, was in such a state at this moment. It might be days before she became conscious of her surroundings again and I would have to wait until that time before I could usefully see her. I realised I might have waited until my welted backside was fit to travel, but I had not known that when I set out, or I would have saved myself much discomfort. My only consolation was the warm thoughts I had of Mr Rochester all the way, his behaviour proving that he at least cared enough to mark me as he did, and take my most intimate garment as a keepsake.
Gateshead Again
It was over a week before my Aunt’s mind had cleared enough that I could visit her in that room to which, in the past, I had been summoned so often for chastisement or reprimand. There was the footstool, over which I had knelt so often to be punished for crimes uncommitted by me and, in a certain corner near, the slim outline of a once dreaded switch that lurked there, ready to leap out, imp like, to lace my quivering palm, my neck, my plump nether cheeks.
There, too, was the great four-poster bed, with its amber hangings and, propped on the high pillows, my Aunt, her air as forbidding and unkind as ever, the gauntness that her illness had wrought only serving to increase the severity of the look she cast upon me. Mrs Reed seemed at first to barely know me, but gradually she became aware that it was indeed I.
“Such trouble I have always had of you, Jane Eyre,” she declared, “such a wicked, angry, disobedient child. I had you whipped often enough but still you were not docile or grateful. I hope you were more appreciative of my birthday gifts to you at Lowood. Did they come to you each year, as I ordered?”
“Yes Aunt,” I assured her, with feeling, for her generous ‘gifts’ consisted of a sound whipping each birthday, one stroke for each year of my age.
“Every year without fail, I hope. When were you whipped last?”
“Every year, Aunt, the last, of eighteen cuts, just before I left Lowood to take up my present appointment, almost a year ago.”
“Then you are due another now,” she said sharply. “Why has it not been done?”
“Why, Aunt, I am no longer at the school, and did not think myself obliged to undergo it still.”
Until this time she had been lying in her pillows, limp and pale. Now colour came back into her face, and her body stiffened, so that she lifted herself a little, with something of her old fire.
“I have not said it should cease,” she exclaimed in a voice much stronger than before. “Rectify the omission at once. I have something of great import to disclose to you, but I will not until I have seen nineteen stripes embedded in your flesh. Go at once, Eliza will inflict them, then return here and, if I am satisfied that they have been laid on well enough, I will continue with what I have sent for you to hear.”
At first I demurred, but it was my nature to feel pleasure in yielding to an authority supported like hers and to bend, where my conscience and self respect permitted, to an active will. For the moment she showed all her old authority and, besides, my journey might be wasted if she were not satisfied and kept her secret to herself. Moreover, her agitation, while restoring her spirits in the short term, seemed likely to be too much for her weak frame, and I feared to be the cause of her immediate demise should I refuse to accede to her request.
“Very well, Aunt,” I said, “I will convey your wishes to Eliza, and return to give you evidence of my compliance.”
I took the switch from the corner where it hid, and went to find the sisters in the sitting room.
“How did you find Mama?” Georgina asked, with little real anxiety in her voice.
“A little stronger,” I replied. “Eliza, I have a request to convey to you. I have no doubt you are aware it was your mother’s wish that I was to receive the cane each birthday. This is now overdue, and she wishes you to make good the deficiency. I am now nineteen.”
“Indeed. Then it will give me great pleasure to oblige dear Mama,” Eliza said in a slow and deliberate tone. “We will go to my room, where we will not be disturbed, and repair the omission at once.”
“Oh yes,” burst out her sister, “I cannot wait to see those plump chubbies sliced. I haven’t seen them for a long time and they appear to have rounded nicely, and I am sure she’ll squirm as delightfully.”
I thought of forbidding her to accompany us, but feared she would cause me even more loss of dignity by refusing to comply, and ignored her instead, walking behind Eliza, as she led the way to her room, keeping my head high, and such composure as I could, still carrying the hated switch in my hand.
Her room once gained by the three of us, Eliza turned and addressed me in a firm tone.
“Take off your clothing,” she said, “this will be best done bare.”
“Yes, yes,” cried Georgina, “let us see how she is formed.”
Again I tried to put her out of my mind. I handed the instrument of my correction, if it might fairly be called that under the circumstances, to Eliza, and proceeded to remove my garments one by one. When my drawers had joined my gown and petticoats on the bed, and I stood in just my stockings and stays, Eliza checked me.
“Leave those,” she ordered, “there’s no call for you to flaunt your teats, but roll your stockings down to the knee, so that your thighs are exposed.”
I complied, and stood while she walked round me as if assessing the material she had to work. Georgina, too, surveyed my nearly naked body avidly.
“See Liza, I was right. She has fatted out at her base. Oh she’ll cut beautifully. And so hairy between her legs. why it’s as thick as a brush. You must whip her to the blood for me. If it reaches her thigh I’ll lick you out, I’ll put my tongue in your bumhole, only make her feel she’s been cut to the bone.”
A Birthday Gift
While Georgina was in ecstasies over what might be done to my poor trembling buttocks, Eliza had stripped off her own straight gown, the better to execute my sentence. I observed that she wore no drawers, or even petticoats, but a curious woven rope between her thighs, of some coarse
hairy stuff, and more of the same appeared at the top of her corset, where others might show a little lace or Broderie Anglais.
I had little time to speculate what this might be, for she now directed me to pull out a small armchair into the centre of the room. While I did so she made some practice strokes with the switch. I had not heard its daunting note for nearly ten years, but now it brought back memories of all the pain and torment that I had suffered at Mrs Reed’s hands, and I could not help a shudder at the remembrance. Using the doleful rod as a pointer, she had me kneel on the chair seat and then place each leg in turn onto an arm of the chair.
It was a horrible position, even to pose in. let alone receive a length of whalebone in one’s naked buttocks. The width of the chair meant that one’s thighs were spread so wide as to stretch one in the fork, especially for one such as I, who cannot boast any great length of leg, the tension opening the fleshy lips of my private purse until it gaped.
Then I was made to lean forward. putting my head down onto the cushion of the seat, my arms clasped round the back of the chair, where Georgina seized them excitedly, and drew down on them firmly, so that I could not move in any way.
“Oh ‘Liza,” she cried, “you must take her really low. I want to hear her cry out, and see the tears on her face.”
All this time Eliza’s demeanour had been hard, strict, severe, but it had smacked of stern duty and rigorous discipline, and she seemed not to approve of the cruel lubricity of her sister.
“You may be sure, Georgina, that I will thrash her to the blood, if my arm and skill permit it, but because it is Mama’s will that she should be disciplined so, and not to give you pleasure. Tonight, when you attend me to perform those services you have promised in the event she bleeds, as I think she will, you will receive a round dozen cuts to your own fat hams.”
I heard Georgina gulp at this news, but she was too far carried away by her lust to see me hurt, to be subdued by it, and her crows and exhortations continued throughout my beating.
Coming behind me, her movements now unemcumbered by outer clothing, Eliza laid the evil cutting length of the switch across my proffered cheeks. I flinched, despite my resolve to carry it off as if it were all no matter, and a thing to be taken lightly, but I remembered its venomous bite too well, even after all these years, and its touch on my bare flesh sent a spasm of fear through me.
The contact ceased as Eliza drew back her arm, then I heard the thrum of its passage through the air as it approached my vulnerably stretched buttocks, before it exploded in my poor rear like a red rocket; a veritable signal of distress. I gritted my teeth against the searing pain and tried to allow Georgina neither sound nor movement to give her satisfaction. I must have grunted a little I am sure, the shock was intense, and my buttocks must have jerked, if only from the impact lifting and jouncing them with its force, but I did not pull back against Georgina’s grip, nor cry out in any discernible fashion.
As I composed myself Eliza cut me again. The first had been across the widest and fullest part of my slightly fatted posterior, the next an inch below. A third, timed for just that point where I had had most benefit from its predecessor, laced me yet another inch lower.
I had never been caned by Eliza before. In the past, Mrs Reed had done the honours herself, where she felt the seriousness and nature of the offence justified it, while Jack had had my skirts up, and my drawers around my knees, time and again for sport, his and Georgina’s, and Eliza’s too at that time. It was the unsavoury practice of the siblings to allow him to use their nether orifices after, especially if he had made me writhe and cry in such a way as to particularly please them, but the girls did not wield the rod.
Eliza had been about nineteen when I had left the house for Lowood, so was now twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old. She had not put on the voluptuous flesh that Georgina had acquired, but she had developed a more wiry strength, from walking, domestic duties or whatever cause.
I did not know where she had learnt the skill she showed with that cruel rod, perhaps she had seen something of the Rev Brocklehurst, I knew he visited Mrs Reed from time to time, to rigorously use her in her four poster, or, maybe, Mrs Reed had invited her to share in the disciplining of the domestics, now she was an adult. However she had acquired it, I was by way of being a connoisseur of the cane, from long and very painful experience, and I knew I was being beaten. Not, perhaps the concentrated venom of a Brocklehurst, nor the searing strength of my own dear Master, but a whipping that bit and gripped, never-the-less.
With the steely deliberateness with which she seemed to do all nowadays, Eliza kept that stick slicing my poor bent hinds. Perched on the arms of the chair, I could do little to avoid the cuts, and I was at such a height that she could bring them up from beneath, lifting the jutting sitters with the force of the blow, leaving thick throbbing tracks where the whippy cane had bitten in. I felt each as a burning line of fire, when it first impacted in my soft flesh, then as an excruciating rising tide of pain, as if a screw was being turned in my buttock. It never actually seemed to lessen from its peak while I bent on the chair, it was simply swamped as the next agonised line of torment was added below.
For Eliza was still progressing down my bent buttock, each stroke an inch or so below the last. I had taken nine now, nearly half the total, and was still managing to keep my cries down to a level where I felt I had not capitulated entirely, robbing Georgina of her desire to hear me scream, but Eliza had passed that tender crease that demarcated the difference between buttock flesh, and the thigh proper, and I cringed at each stroke.
Two more and I was pulling back from Georgina’s grip, my head lifting off the cushion, my buttocks going back and down as my knees bent, trying to cover my poor thighs.
“You are cringing,” Eliza cried out. “Straighten yourself in the pose I set you.”
“Cut me in my buttock then, Eliza,” I replied, “and I will try and hold still, but you are caning my thighs instead.”
“And how else would you have it? Mama is a sick woman, and she may not see so well. How is she to distinguish that you have had your full score, if I do not separate them, and if I give good measure between them, then I must work your thighs as well as your plump hinds.”
I had to grant the truth of what she said.
“You are right,” I conceded. “Take me on the thighs and I will try and hold still for you.”
Reader, it cost me dear. I put down my head, and opened up behind, lifting my buttocks, and exposing the backs of my thighs for Eliza. She accepted my offered columns and sped the rod into the meagre flesh that covered their rear. The pain became such that I could not contain myself any more, and Georgina got her desire after all, as I screamed and writhed on my spread knees. When Eliza had delivered the last I lay there and frankly blubbered, until Georgina lifted my face so that she could gloat over my tear and snot-strained features, my red rimmed eyes, my riven mouth.
“Oh, ‘Liza that was heaven. Just look at her face. Have you ever seen anything so delightful? Does she bleed behind? Oh, tell me quick.”
“She does, indeed, and therefore, you have a debt to pay this evening. But I will not wait until then for you to pay your other due, despite what I promised earlier. I warned you that you went too far. Jane, put yourself in order, and take your stripes for Mama to count. You, Georgina,” and her tone hardened, “will take Jane’s place this instant, and receive the dozen I promised you.”
I snatched my hands from hers, and struggled painfully to my feet. While I resumed my clothes, and put some order in my person, using Eliza’s wash basin and ewer, Georgina took off hers, revealing great sleek masses of pink flesh. As I left to make my way to Aunt Reed’s room, she was mounting the armchair, her drawers round her knees.
The Letter
When I limped into Mrs Reed’s room again, to show the proofs of my correction, I found her much as I had left her; quite aware, and propped up on her pillows.
“Well girl,” she demanded, “h
ave you been well beaten?”
“Yes Aunt,” I replied, “Eliza has carried out your instructions, and I carry your birthday greeting in my buttocks.”
“Show me,” she ordered peremptorily, and I approached the bed, lifting my skirts, and dropping my drawers until they clung to my knees. As I did so my eye caught some wet looking red patches where they had rested on my right flank. I turned my throbbing, welted posterior towards my Aunt. She leaned nearer to peer at the now ripening bruises, and I flinched as she dug a bony finger into a swollen ridge on my thigh.
“Eliza displays competence,” she remarked. “Since I began to ail, I have had her conduct the necessary corrections within the household, and she has learnt fast.” I realised my guess as to the source of the daughter’s skill with the rod had been correct.
The finger prodded that sore track and then the next, until she had climbed the whole excruciating ladder to the fattest part of my hinds.
“It seems correct,” she admitted, almost reluctantly, as if she had hoped to find some deficiency, and have an excuse to send me out to have it made good. I realised that I owed Eliza a debt for ensuring that my bill was writ large and clear to read, even though the writing of it on the white pages of my thighs had cost me dear.
“I told you I had something to impart,” she went on, lying back now on the pillows, as if her main purpose was accomplished, and this was a matter of only minor importance. “Go to my dressing case, open it and take out the letter you will see there.”
I obeyed her directions.
“Read the letter,” she said.
It was short, and thus conceived.
Madam,
Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my niece, Jane Eyre, and to tell me how she is. It is my intention to write to her shortly, and desire her to come to me in Madeira. Providence has blessed my endeavours to secure a competency; and as I am unmarried and childless, I wish to adopt her during my life, and bequeath her at my death whatever I may have to leave.
Jane and Her Master Page 10