The first two girls, a sister and a cousin of the male watchers, slipped off their peignoirs, revealing their enticing costume and delicious breasts. Mary adjusted their gloves and consulted her watch.
“Seconds out,” she called, well tutored in these matters by the eldest son, and the other two girls stepped off the large Turkey carpet that they had designated as the ‘ring’. “First round!” and she struck a cloisonne vase that gave off a resonating gong sound to start the contest.
In true professional style, the two girls circled for a minute, feeling each other out with jabs of their left hands, seeking the vulnerable breasts but foiled by the other’s blocking arm. Having sized up her opponent, Jenny, a dark athletic type, an inch taller and longer armed than her opponent, opened up the fight proper, punching in rapid succession to head and body, trying to either shock her opponent by striking her on the face, or hurt her by bruising the tender breasts. She did score on both counts, catching the shorter Claire on the cheek, and then, as she wavered, punching her hard on one white globe, leaving an angry pink patch and drawing a gasp of pain, but her more compact opponent came back to get inside her guard and give back the blow, and another like it, so that Jenny had two bruises on her bosom when time was called at the end of the round.
Their seconds bathed their faces and breasts with cold sponges and a little cologne water, and Mary struck the vase again. Once more they sparred to start with, testing each other, but soon moved in to trade punches to chest and face. By the end of the round the honours were even, each girl a bit puffy round the eyes and cheeks, both sporting angry red patches on their breasts where they had each taken several bruising blows.
For the third and final round they both came out punching, taking and giving serious punishment. They could abide the blows to their breasts but flinched from the punches to the face. The one was merely pain, the other a devastation of their looks, and no young woman would hesitate to place the former as more supportable than the latter. It ended with a blow to Claire’s nose that brought tears to her eyes and blood from her nostrils, and she retired hurt to leave Jenny the victor.
The other pair of female pugilists performed much the same balletic battery of each others delicate physiognomies and tender mammaries until, in the third round, Caroline, Jenny’s sister, dealt a deadly blow into poor Sophie’s stomach, that doubled her over, gasping and honking for breath, quite unable to continue. It was felt by some that this might be a low blow by the new rules but, on the other hand, vanity had caused her to wear the band of her drawers very loose, to expose her smooth rounded belly of which she was inordinately vain, and it was finally held that the blow was not ‘below the belt’, since she had set her belt so low as to expose her navel.
The final was now between the two sisters. The first two rounds were very even, each girl giving several hard blows to the breasts, leaving them gasping and red-eyed, but they battled gamely on into the final round. Here they began to really ‘mix it’, the ‘mill’ becoming fast and furious, tears and blood flowing freely, until they fell into a clinch, leaning on each other quite exhausted. So exciting had the bout become that the boys had thrown caution to the wind, coming out of their shelter to cheer, while the women were equally carried away, and hardly noticed their presence.
“Break,” cried Mary, “you must let go and step back before you continue.”
“Break indeed,” thundered a voice from the doorway, “and you shall in no way continue. Desist at once!”
All looked in horror at the door where the girls’ mother, all unnoticed, stood seeing all. All was confusion. The girls rushed to cover themselves as best they could, though the matron had seen their nudity and all else. The boys slunk out as fast as they could while the mother vented her wrath on the combatants and their seconds and, most particularly, their governess.
“Go to your rooms, all of you,” she declared when she had expressed herself comprehensively and at length, “as to you, Miss Rivers, you will attend me in my room in ten minutes.”
Mary made sure her charges went to their rooms then, in fear and trembling, reported to the lady of the house to hear her own fate. She found her in a mood of quiet anger.
“I am very disappointed in you, Miss Rivers. I realize these girls are growing to that state of young womanhood where they are difficult to control, but that is your duty. The disgusting activity in which I caught them this evening was not only unladylike, but bade fair to damage their value in the matrimonial market. I do understand that none of them has taken any permanent harm, but that was no thanks to your lack of discretion in the matter. Their bruised faces and breasts will recover soon enough, and are probably punishment sufficient in itself, but suppose a nose had been broken, or a nipple split. The girl would have been damaged for life and her chances of making an advantageous match much reduced. They understand their folly, and are sore enough to be sorry, but you must be punished for letting the risk be taken.”
It was no more than Mary expected, or believed she deserved, but the nature of her punishment, when her employer pronounced it, quite took her aback.
She was made to strip, not unexpectedly since she anticipated a whipping, but it was to be more than her drawers she had to remove. Before the implacable eye of Lady Bagrain, she must remove also her stays and shift, until she stood in stockings and shoes only. First she was made to bend and receive six cuts of a heavy malacca cane in her buttocks. The black rod sank into her flesh with venomous force, the welts rising finger thick at once, and still prominent and sore two days later. She was no stranger to the rod, and took then without flinching, though she grunted a little and her nether cheeks writhed and clenched with the pain.
This was no more than she had anticipated but, on its completion, though she was allowed to rise, it was only to be made to bend over a hard-backed chair, her hands on the seat. In this position, the vengeful mother delivered a dozen blows of a thick heavy leather strap across the white shoulders, until the tears sprang unchecked into her eyes, and she cried at the pain of every stroke.
Her torment though was not finished, the worst was yet to come. Made to stand upright, Lady Bagrain addressed her once more on the folly and risk she had courted in permitting the fight and, in particular, the blows to breast and belly. Coldly, displaying neither pity nor anger, she dealt her three blows of the strap across her soft belly, then made her put her hands behind her head, thrusting out her breasts, and brought the belt slashing down across their full white globes three times more, pausing each time to order her, under threat of dismissal and disgrace, to straighten from where she had folded in pain, and offer her soft breasts and tender nipples to the next blow.
Finally she lectured her anew on the iniquity of allowing the girls to hazard their looks and, with calm deliberation, struck her open-handed across the face, great stinging blows, left, right, left, right. As her head swum, Lady Bagrain ordered her to gather up her clothes and, with the bundle hugged to her sore breasts and belly, she staggered, almost completely bare, to her room.
To Lady Bagrain’s credit, she considered the lesson learnt and the matter closed, never referring to it again, but Mary was more than relieved when the news came to her of the inheritance we were to share, and which would enable her to leave Lady Bagrain’s employ.
More Girl Talk: Diana
Diana too had her reasons for relief at quitting the governess’s profession. In her case she had maintained a better control of her young charges, three close cousins of the family. Her governance, however, was not strong or strict enough to defy nature, and the girls formed liaisons with the young males of the family that courted disaster of the most public and scandalous kind for the young men, forgetting all discretion and good manners, had not been content with pleasuring themselves in their inamoratas’ mouths or pretty pink rear dimples, but had penetrated them in front, maidenheads bursting before their rampant pricks.
Worst of all, they had been so unmannerly as not to withdraw before their cli
maxes, spurting their potent young seed against the foolish young women’s ripening wombs. It was only by the greatest of good fortune that Diana caught them at this dangerous amorous play before the seed took root. She dismissed the young men with a lecture on good manners and how they should serve any young unmarried lady with whom they had congress, employing her less vulnerable apertures, then turned her wrath on the young women, those supposed guardians of their own purity, or at less the flatness of their bellies, holding them by far the most culpable, since the young gentlemen were only doing what the male inevitably will, if not firmly refused, while they could and should have said ‘no’, or at least, ‘not there’.
Having expressed herself freely on how, when and in what fashion a girl might safely submit to the tender sport, she set about ensuring they would remember the lesson. Each girl had to report to her room and receive an exemplary beating. Each crept to her bed with two dozen throbbing stripes crossing her buttocks, too sore to sit on for several days, giving plenty of time for each to consider the foolish risk she had taken when, with proper preparation and caution, she might have had as good enjoyment without the possibility of maternity anticipating matrimony.
Their appetite for sport with men somewhat blunted by this painful lesson, it was only natural that they should turn to each other for those affectionate caresses, and passionate stimulation that young women need for their spiritual and physical health. When two of the cousins developed a particular and exclusive desire for one another, the third girl quite naturally turned to Diana for affection, which was immediately reciprocated, and the affair blossomed into a passionate attachment quite as hot as the two younger women.
Their amour however was doomed to a premature disruption. The girl’s mother became aware of the affair and called both parties before her. She could sympathise with the amorous practices they had indulged in, if it was simply a matter of caresses between equals, but a governess could in no way be equated with the daughter of a Countess, and destined to acquire a coronet in her own right soon, if not the Strawberry leaves of a Duchess. Such presumption on the part of the employee, and social gaffe on that of the daughter of the nobility, could not be overlooked, and a stern lesson was called for.
The Countess was not vindictive, and in any case, did not wish to incur the tedium and risk of hiring another governess for the two years at most that one would be required in the household. She gave the erring pair a chance to achieve redemption and, in Diana’s case, escape dismissal and disgrace, if they accepted her punishment. This they readily did, but neither was prepared for the nature of the sentence, when the lady pronounced it.
Diana was to receive a birching, of three dozen strokes on her bare buttocks, enough to draw blood if properly laid on, and the girl one dozen, enough to signify punishment without equating her to the more lowly Diana. The factor that raised the sentence from out of the ordinary was that the girl was to inflict the stripes on her lover’s hinds and, if she failed to apply them with sufficient vigour, which meant in effect if she failed to draw blood, Diana would be subjected to the whole again, and would receive the girl’s dozen on top, while the younger woman would avoid punishment altogether.
At first sight this might seem an open invitation to the girl to simply apply the strokes lightly, then leave Diana to take a beating of four dozen with the birch on her own, but the Mother had judged her daughter shrewdly. A combination of noblesse oblige and her deep affection for her lover, meant that there was no way she could leave her to her fate. Indeed, as the Countess had calculated, the thought of going unpunished when Diana was whipped to the blood, would have pained the girl far more deeply than any whip, or bundle of springy birch rods could ever do.
Accordingly, the next evening, the Countess, the Lady Patrica, to give her her proper name, and Diana met in the former’s boudoir, where a leather padded ‘horse’ and a bucket, furnished with several bundles of hard-budded birch twigs, stood awaiting a rider. Diana mounted first. Having stripped herself of all her clothes, she bent her bare and lovely form over the padded top, reaching her hands down towards the legs on that side, her feet planted well astride on the other.
Patricia fastened the ankles firmly to the bottom of the legs, then went round to secure the wrists in a similar fashion. Now her lover was stretched over the trestle, the ‘saddle’ thrusting her buttocks up into much prominence. The height of the apparatus, and the way her wrists were pulled down on the other side, ensured that she was lifted up onto her toes, and the under side of her buttock exposed, the most efficient area in which to work a birch, if efficiency is measured in terms of the pain inflicted on tender flesh and the lasting effects subsequently.
The Countess indicated the birch with a nod.
“Three dozen, Patricia, well laid on,” she directed, “I shall require to see blood flow on her thigh if I am to be satisfied, otherwise, she shall have them again, and yours with them. Now commence.”
The girl, or rather young woman, for she was eighteen years of age, and with a fully formed figure, matured by horse-riding, archery, and a general love of exercise, besides that to be had in a lover’s bed, took up the rod and prepared to strike. She was not used to the management of a birch, her experience running only to the training of horses with crop or carriage whip, but she had consulted Diana the previous night, the latter at first unwilling to abet her, arguing instead that she should leave her to her fate at the Countess’s hands and spare her own young flesh. She had yielded in the end to the girl’s distracted pleadings, recognising eventually that it would be cruel to her to leave her to the pangs of guilt, when a mere dozen of the birch, an everyday thing for many schoolgirls after all, might give her penance and absolution, if a bottom that would be a trifle sore for some days.
Accordingly Diana had given her some tuition in the use of the birch and some practice on a heap of pillows laid over a chair back. Now she was to put her lessons into practice.
She was far from being the witless ninny that the sheltered upbringing of the upper classes too often breeds, and recognised the position for what it was. She knew she had to smother her own feelings, and whip Diana with a will, until her mother was satisfied, or it would be even worse for her lover. The unkindest cut of all would be to treat her with gentleness and earn her even more and worse strokes.
Accordingly she put all Diana had taught her into the swingeing stroke, the birch making a rushing sound as the air parted around it on its way to meet Diana’s rich white buttocks where they were held upraised over the horse, immobile, vulnerable and canted to receive the birch rods on the tender underside. It met the cringing flesh with an audible ‘thick’, the twigs spreading over a large part of the under-buttock which leapt under the blow, thin red lines springing up immediately.
Diana hissed at the pain surging in her hinds but held still and otherwise silent. She appreciated what the girl was doing and why, but it did nothing to ease the immediate force of her whipping and the scorpion bite in her behind.
The next fell and the next, not drawn out for quite maximum torment but Patricia dare not try to do too much to mitigate matters, such as deliver all the blows in one mad rush, or her mother, the Countess, might declare the punishment insufficient and take over herself as she had threatened. She maintained a steady rhythm as Diana had taught her one should for any form of corporal punishment, but did not try to extract the ultimate, as a professional, or even an unloving amateur, might.
Gradually the white globes turned darker and darker red, an angry purple patch forming on the right flank. Patricia desperately wanted to avoid this sore area but again her good sense prevailed. To draw blood with three dozen almost certainly required the whipper to work the flank until the birch tips, whipping round the curve of the buttock their iron hard budded ends digging deep, had distressed the soft skin there beyond its yielding point, and the accumulated welt burst to release the trickle of red that, reaching the thigh, would spare Diana any further torture and ensure that she,
the Lady Patricia, would go to the block herself, to receive the thrashing that would partly ease her guilt and shame.
She kept at it then and Diana’s whining hiss and anguished clenching increased with the rising tally and the swelling tumescence at the top of her right thigh. Patricia paused between each dozen, until the Countess ordered her to continue. Half way through the third dozen the plummy bruise on Diana’s flank broke, and blood did indeed begin to trickle down the outside of her thigh. With twenty-seven strokes delivered, and the criterion for success achieved, the Countess spoke again.
“And for the last three, whip in,” she commanded, “I trust Miss Rivers has instructed you in the procedure.”
She had indeed, anticipating that the implacable mother might demand this traditional finale for a birching. Patricia had refused to countenance it at fist, and maintained that, under no circumstances could she bring herself to do such damage to that part she had loved ‘not wisely but too well’, as the poet has it, but Diana had over-ruled her, making her practice the technique, that she could satisfy her mother’s inevitable demands. Even now she held back, her first shot falling accurately across the left thigh, the tips of the twigs ‘whipping in’ correctly, but there was not sufficient force behind the blow for the mother’s liking and she chided her daughter again.
“One more pat like that and Miss Rivers stays there while I demonstrate how it is done, and it won’t be just three. I’ll cut her purse right out,” she snapped. “Now take up your birch again and put some weight behind it. I want to see her squirm like a cut worm.”
Jane and Her Master Page 16