I had just replaced my shoe, when I heard the noise of a horseman coming fast. The lane at that point was a solid sheet of ice, and I judged it prudent to stay by the stile while the rider passed. The first creature to pass me though was not a horse, but a great black dog of the Newfoundland type, that ran down the road as a sort of outrider to its Master, then a great black horse and, on its back, a man.
He passed me in a rush and a clatter of hooves then, as I turned to follow his progress with my gaze, the horse slipped on the ice that covered the causeway, collapsing into the ditch in a clamour of iron, a thud of falling flesh. I left my seat on the stile and hurried over.
“Are you injured, Sir?” I cried. “Can I assist you?” and straightway my own feet flew from beneath me on the same slippery spot that had been his undoing, and now was mine.
I landed hard and painfully on my bottom, my hands behind me, and slid towards him, my skirts staying behind, my legs and loins leading the way. I finished, legs wide, sitting on the ice only a yard or so from where he had struggled to his knees. It is a matter of regret that, before setting off on my walk, I had wrapped up warm against the keen frost, with mantle, muff and bonnet, but had omitted to don any drawers. Now I sat, my bottom soaking in icy water, my legs as wide as Thornfield gates admitting a carriage and pair, displaying fully to his quizzical gaze my plump pudenda, with its dense mass of glossy black curls.
For a stunned instant we faced each other, I taking in his saturnine features, his stocky body, the black bushy eyebrows, raised in interrogation, he equally intent on my equally black and bushy parts. Reader, you must judge for yourself whether this extraordinary introduction, so embarrassingly painful, and painfully embarrassing, had any influence on the outcome of my story.
“It seems,” he said drily, “that you have difficulty helping yourself. Stand aside, and give me room.”
I scrambled to my feet, my buttocks cold, wet and sore, my cheeks flaming redly, and stood a few paces off, but would not quit the ground. With much cursing and effort, he coaxed the horse to its feet, where it stood, seeming to be none the worse. The stranger examined his own leg and ankle, which seemed to be giving him trouble, and hobbled across to the stile I had but recently quitted, and sat.
Something of daylight remained and I could see him clearly now, away from the hedge, as clearly as he must have seen my naked thighs and bare belly, to say nothing of the private parts between. He was a man of middle height, not young, but not yet in middle age, I would put his age at about thirty-five.
He asked me where I was from, and I told him Thornfield Hall, the home of Mr Rochester, and offered to go there, or to Hay, to fetch help, but he dismissed the idea.
“Have you met this Mr Rochester?” he asked and, when I replied in the negative, and adduced also, to his further questioning that Mr Rochester was from home and I did not know where he might be, nor when he might return, he asked me what my position might be in the household.
“I am the governess,” I told him.
“The governess,” he repeated, “deuce take me, if I hadn’t forgotten. The governess.”
He scrutinised me again for a while, then made as if to rise, making a disgusted sound when he found his leg would not answer.
“I fear I must call upon your aid after all, if you will.”
“Yes Sir.”
“See if you can catch hold of my horse’s bridle and bring him to me. You are not afraid?”
I would have been afraid to touch a horse if I had been alone, but when told to do something, I was disposed to obey. I put down my muff and went up to the horse. He waited my coming, but would not let me touch him, shying away each time I reached for his bridle. Eventually the stranger told me to leave off and go back to him.
“Necessity compels me to make you useful,” he said, and put a heavy hand on my shoulder. I bent under his hand, as he limped to where the horse stood, mastering it as quickly and as easily as he did me. With a bound not unaccompanied by a grimace of pain, he gained the saddle.
“Now hand me my whip,” he ordered, and I fetched it from where it had fallen in the ditch.
“You had best make haste with the letters to Hay,” he said, “and return as fast as you can.”
He spurred his horse and was gone. I picked up my muff and set off for Hay, the wet skirts clinging icily to my buttocks behind, my other muff hot and tingling before, as if he had burnt it with his piercing gaze.
I concluded my mission to Hay and returned to Thornfield, keeping the cold at bay with brisk walking and blood warming recollection of the meeting with the stranger. I was almost reluctant to end it by re-entering the house, and lingered a while staring at the moon, and recalling his compelling gaze, the thrill that ran through me at his command, the wish to serve a man like he.
At last I abandoned my fancies and went into the hall. As I passed the doors of the great dining room I was aware that there was, unusually, a fire burning, and I could hear voices, but I pressed on to Mrs Fairfax’s room. She was not there but, on the hearth a great black Newfoundland dog. Astonished, I rang for Leah. She came smiling, as pert as ever, despite the many times I had thrashed that tight rump she sported, an attention for which she appeared to bear me no illwill, though I would make her squeal and squirm most delightfully.
“Whose dog is this?” I enquired.
“He came with the Master, Miss.”
“With whom?”
“The Master, Mr Rochester - he has just arrived. Mrs Fairfax and AdŠle are with him now. He sprained his ankle when his horse slipped in Hay Lane, and they have sent for the surgeon.”
“Fetch me a candle, Leah,” I cried, quite overcome, and made for my room.
A Master in The House
Next day no sign of the Master of the house, but AdŠle was not easy to teach, being over excited, and wanting to speak only of Mr Rochester, not of her lessons. I had to sting her palm for her to gain her attention, and repeat the prescription more than once. Mrs Fairfax was engaged all day, putting the house in suitable order, seeing the surgeon when he called, chivying the servants and generally making herself busy. The atmosphere of the house had changed. It had a Master now, and I liked it better so.
In the afternoon, Mrs Fairfax called at the schoolroom to tell me that Mr Rochester had asked to see me when he took his tea, at six o’clock.
I attended him as instructed, wearing my best pearl grey dress, my hair swept smoothly back, my person neat and clean, for Mrs Fairfax had warned me that he expected those around him not to display slovenliness or disorder in their dress. At first he quizzed me about my relatives, or the lack of them, and my time at Lowood school, remarking that he had heard that the Principal was a parson, and opining that, as all girls, I must have been in love with him. I hastened to deny it, assuring him that Mr Brocklehurst was a strict, harsh mentor, more feared for his cruelty than loved for his piety or position as our pastor.
“And what form did this cruelty take then, that you disliked him so?”
“He starved us, and cut off our hair, and beat us most severely.”
“Come now,” Mr Rochester snorted, “every school girl, and young wives too, needs a swishing from time to time, if she is to remain docile and obedient. Surely that was not cruelty.”
“It was, as practised by the Reverend Brocklehurst,” I protested indignantly, “he beat us, or instituted practices where by we were beaten by the teachers, beyond bearing and justice. I agree that as young females we needed the rod from time to time, but at Lowood we were whipped to the blood, sometimes three or four times in a week. We learnt to cringe at the sight of the rod, and our bottoms were never free of welts and pain.”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” he replied, quoting the bard, “I cannot see a milk and water creature like yourself enduring such a whipping. Why, if I lifted one of those sticks at you,” pointing to the collection of canes and other rods that reposed in the umbrella stand in the corner, “you would run a mile, rath
er than endure even a schoolish six with it.”
“Indeed Sir!” I cried, caution and sense gone out the window, so provoked was I by his belittling of the sufferings we had had to endure for all those years, “if you wish, you may prove it for yourself on my person, that is so used to the kiss of the rod, the bite of the cane.”
“Ah. The kitten has spirit. She arches her back and spits. I like that in a woman. Very well, Puss, I accept your invitation. Let us see of what stuff you are made. Fetch me your choice of rod from the stand, and you shall demonstrate how you take your cuts at Lowood.”
I stared at him a moment, appalled at the outcome of my foolhardiness, but I would not back away now. My blood was up, and I would show him, though I would suffer for it a most apposite penalty under the circumstances. I advanced to the stand, keeping my chin high, and looked over its direful contents. What should I choose? Even the thinnest of them was springy enough to sting abominably in a strong male hand but, if I chose such I had no doubt he would mock my courage again.
Fired with indignation and renewed madness, I seized that penal rod I had used to thrash Ada’s fat globes and marched back to where he stood, presenting the rod on my two outstretched palms.
He looked from it to me. “This is a rod for a well grown woman,” he said, “I warn you, I shall not spare you, just because you are young and tender. You may change it now, for something more suited to a girl, if you wish.”
I did wish, my belly quaked, my knees quivered at what I had done, but my pride and anger ruled, and I thrust it at him.
“Mr Brocklehurst used as bad, or worse, upon our buttocks at Lowood, so you need not fear to employ it now.”
“Very well,” he replied, “it shall be as you wish. Now, prepare yourself, and we will put it to the test.”
“Prepare myself, Sir?” I stammered. “How may that be?”
“Why, I assume it was not done over skirt and petticoats at Lowood. Indeed, I understand the rule in school is bare bum, so off with your drawers, and your skirts over your head, while you grip your ankles on my hearth rug.”
“But Sir,” I cried in consternation, “it would not be seemly in front of a man.”
“Was Brocklehurst any less of a man than I?” he demanded, and I had to admit it was not so, having had the proof in my deflowering, “besides, Miss, it is a bit late for false modesty, seeing you have already shown me all you have.”
I blushed furiously at the memory of how I had thrust my naked fork almost into his face in the lane, and reached for my drawers. With them out of the way, I bent, pulling up my skirts at the same time so that, while I grasped my ankles as instructed, they fell forward, leaving me bare and vulnerable behind.
“Ah ha,” he said, “I see another side of you,” and indeed he did, for it was my back side, not my front, that was on display this time. “From the front I thought you but a slip of a girl, but from this angle you are definitely woman.”
It was true. At eighteen I appeared slight, but, uncovered, my buttocks betrayed a certain fullness that spoke of womanhood, a suggestion of fattiness in the underbum that attracted the best efforts of my chastisers, attentions that they were well able to withstand without my health suffering, although it could not be said that I did not suffer.
“This puts a different complexion on matters,” my own was fiery red, “I shall have to look to my laurels, if you are to be subdued. You shall feel these, Jane Eyre,” he promised, “and regret your boasting.”
I was regretting it already, but not about to give him the satisfaction of seeing it, and held my position, determined not to fail, though my poor rear cheeks clenched and shivered with fright as much as when in the presence of Mr Brocklehurst. It was not just the fear of the excruciating agony I knew was coming. In a different manner, this man affected me as strongly as the soul scarring clergyman ever did.
I remember it now as if it were but yesterday. A woman always treasures the first time she feels her Master’s hand and, although he has thrashed me at greater length, and with more force, a hundred times since, even today I can recall each stroke of my dear Master’s first chastisement of my cringing person. He was as good as his word, and did not spare me. As he promised, I felt every stroke keenly, and my regret welled up about my eyes and trickled down my cheeks, but I would not speak, or give more cry than a sob forced from my throat by each impact, a moan as I rode the pain that heavy rod, those searing strokes, brought in their train. I took my six without surrender, but, when I rose at his command, I knew I had entered on a new career of chastisement. He had hurt me as deep as I had ever been, and I had had much experience of pain, and I knew my new Master would be one I would never cease to love, honour and respect.
I think he looked at me with a new respect himself, as I stood before him, red faced, red cheeked, before and behind, red eyed, but with my head still held high.
“You are a remarkable young woman, Miss Eyre,” he observed. “First you are like an elf, that springs from the hedge to throw my horse, then you display the courage of an Amazon in the frame of a child.” I bridled, for I felt that, at eighteen I was grown. “I dare say you would like to go to your room to touch your hair, or mend your face, whatever it is that young ladies do at these times. When you are composed, come to me again, for we have matters to discuss.” Then, as I accepted my dismissal, for the time-being at least, he held out my drawers on the point of the rod, which he still held.
“Here. Take these. You don’t think I have any use for them do you.”
Blushing still redder, I snatched them from the stick and fled.
Rules Of Engagement
In my room, I lifted my skirts, and examined my wounds in the mirror. Six deep thick purple welts, raised and throbbing, the sorest I could remember until then, tracked close and level across the underside of my bottom, a tribute to his skill as well as the power of his arm. So this was to be my portion from now on. The thought should have filled me with terror and alarm. Instead, although fear and dread were there, squeezing my belly, making my breath come short, there was also this other feeling, this joy at being Mastered, of submitting to my Master, of enduring to earn the only thing that now seemed to matter in my life, my Master’s respect. I bathed my face in cold water, smoothed my hair and my dress though, foolish girl that I was, I did not replace those drawers he had presented to me on the rod, still warm from contact with my flesh. Fifteen minutes after he had cut me below, I returned, cool, at least externally, and composed.
“You wished to discuss some matter with me, Sir?” I said.
“Yes Jane. The purpose of your employment here, little AdŠle, your charge. Won’t you take a seat?”
“If you will permit, Sir, I would prefer to stand,” I replied, a little stiffly.
“I imagine so,” he answered drily. “Stand then if you wish. I must needs sit, even in a lady’s presence, since your unhorsing me yesterday, and the efforts I have had to make on your behalf this evening, have set my leg to troubling me again.”
In no degree as much as those same efforts are troubling me, I thought, feeling the throbbing in my bottom acutely, but I judged it wiser to keep the thought to myself. Great though the satisfaction was that I felt for having a Master who would treat me as a woman needed, further strokes on those ripening bruises would not have been welcome at that time.
“Now to our business,” he began, when I had taken up my place on the hearth rug, near the chair in which he sat, his injured leg supported on a stool before him. “I am anxious to discuss AdŠle’s education and, more particularly, her manners and the manner of their discipline. I am of the opinion that her tender age and, possibly, her relationship to myself,” I checked a start of surprise at this intelligence, “make the application of harsh stripes and raw welts inappropriate in her case.”
He paused as if to let this preface sink in, then continued.
“However, she has had a fractured upbringing to date, and there must be some incentive for either her or her go
verness to repair the deficiencies and lead her into better paths.”
“I agree with you,” I said, “that severe punishments would not be suitable. Indeed I deplore their use for any female short of puberty and coming womanhood. Then to spare the rod is indeed a mistake, and an unkindness in the long run, for a woman needs and should be made accustomed to firm guidance and salutary correction, but a child of AdŠle’s tender years should be treated more kindly.” I went on to explain the steps I had already taken, and the instruments of correction I had already chosen.
“Excellent, as far as it goes,” he conceded, “and I will admit you have already effected an improvement in her since you came, but she is very wilful and careless, she gets it from her mother I surmise.” He hesitated, then interposed in a voice expressing regret and bitterness in equal measure: “Wherever!” Another pause. “Well, it cannot be let pass unnoticed and, since we are agreed that her small buttocks may not carry the correction, then yours must, as an example, and an incentive to you to do better.”
I could not dispute his logic, although I foresaw a painful period of constant soreness in my rear until such time as I could get AdŠle to mend her ways.
“I propose that you should receive from my hand, stroke for stroke, whatever punishments you award AdŠle, the rod standing in for your strip of cane and slight strap and, in addition, I shall review her behaviour from time to time and award you strokes accordingly, together with additional cuts in respect of specific offences that you have not taken into account in your own settlement with AdŠle. I hope you see the justice of this course.”
I admitted I did, though I groaned inwardly. My throbbing buttocks gave me present reminder of what those strokes would be like, and, knowing AdŠle’s nature, I thought it likely I would never be free of the pain I was suffering at that moment. Mr Rochester elaborated on his plan.
“So that nothing may be overlooked, you will keep a notebook, with a record of AdŠle’s transgressions and corrections, and render an account from time to time, when I will give you other matters to enter as they come to my notice. I will consider, in the meantime, whether some formal accounting, say monthly, may be appropriate, when you may settle your debts outstanding.”
Jane and Her Master Page 3
