The Entertainments Of The Young
The house party was in no hurry to disperse. In addition to the inducements of the continuing fine Spring weather, and Mr Rochester’s generous hospitality, the younger members had even more exciting motives for staying.
While Blanche continued her predatory pursuit of my Master, other courtships were making more substantial progress. Mr Frederick Lynn was now seen at each dawn creeping from Mary Ingram’s room with the wrung look of the exhausted lover. Blanche’s mild sister might be a lamb in the drawing-room, but she was a tiger between the sheets. Mr Henry Lynn had found his way into the heart and the belly of Louise Eshton, while her sister, Amy, had been entertaining the languid Lord Ingram between her warm thighs as often as he wished, where his demeanour was not always as limp.
The young women would exchange these confidences in my hearing, as I sat unheeded in my window seat, treating me as if I was a part of the furnishings. I have always found it curious how the very highest and the very lowest in our society have more in common, when it comes to such behaviour, than each has with those more close to them socially. Where the wives and daughters of tradesmen, lawyers and physicians might blush at the sight of an ankle, or hush any reference to one of their number being with child, tavern drabs and high born ladies will discuss all, provided there be no man presence, with equal frankness, and satisfy the lusts of their bodies with a common lack of restraint.
A further source of wonder and amusement was the way each generation comes to the sport thinking it alone has invented those variants that increase the excitement of the amorous arts. Amy was lavish in her praise of Theo Ingram for his cleverness in mitigating her fears of a swollen belly when surrendering to his embraces by thrusting his member into her pink bumhole, rather than the more dangerous front portal. Her sister, Louise, was of the opinion that none but she had had the idea of riding her swain to climax, rather than have him do all the work, until Mary pointed out that Blanche had demonstrated that very act during the charade. Mary herself, claimed to have invented a very tender and personal method of showing her love and devotion, especially when Frederick was resting after a dozen congresses, and needed revival, taking his manly instrument in her mouth, where the moist warmth, and her vigorous sucking, soon brought him back to a state of readiness sufficient to fill her again, and bring her to another ecstasy.
Nor were their elders in any hurry to spirit them hence. Mr Eshton, the Magistrate of the district, had found Mrs Dent’s quiet charms very much to his liking, and kept her company in her room, while the gallant Colonel stormed, breached and ravaged that fine figure of a woman, the Dowager Baroness Ingram, who was heard to remark to her crony, Lady Lynn, that he went through her like a squadron of Dragoons, with their band at the head. Lady Lynn herself, it would appear, preferred infantry to cavalry, since the tall footman, Thomas, was requisitioned to carry his pike to her room, where he was encouraged to exercise it with vigour.
It would seem that all had found partners conducive to their taste save the elder Miss Ingram. Though Blanche had made it obvious to Mr Rochester that she was available for sport, he had signally failed to take advantage of her availability, and there had been no congress, if one discounts the scene in the ‘bridal chamber’ when, it must be said, she had taken advantage of him, rather than he of her. Her frustration at this failure of her charms, as she must have seen it, began to express itself in a renewed animosity towards myself, as if I somehow stood between her and her ‘prey’, though how a rational being, with eyes in their head, could suppose that one so plain and small as I could mask her exuberant charms from his lustful eyes, I could not imagine.
Be that as it may, they had all been at their merry sports for some two weeks from the time of the depiction of the BRIDEWELL scene when Blanche discovered that she had the means to persecute me further.
The Second Duel
It came about because she chanced to overhear, and correctly interpret, a remark from my Master in the corridor outside his study. AdŠle had been a little above herself in the drawing room and Blanche had complained in his hearing that the child was a nuisance, and it was a pity her governess had not trained her better. Mr Rochester had taken me to one side and told me I should check the girl, and he would award me six cuts later, for my failure to ensure a proper behaviour in the child.
Coming up to him, and ignoring my presence altogether, she had offered her services.
“My dear Edward,” she had said, the intimacy implied by her use of his first name cutting me more than any cane could, “you should not concern yourself with such trifling domestic matters. I will save you the trouble, and whip her myself. After all, it was I who was incommoded by the child’s antics, and bothered you with my complaining in the first place.”
He looked at her for a moment in silence, but seemed to accept the logic of her argument.
“Very well, then,” he conceded, “but no more than six then.”
“Thank you, Edward,” she said, then turned to me. “Come with me, girl, and bring a proper cane with you.”
My ears burning, my stomach sick, with anger as much as fear, I slipped into the study and took the heavy punishment cane from its place behind my Master’s chair, then followed at her heel as she led the way to her room.
Once there, she made me close and bolt the door, ‘so that we might conduct our business undisturbed’. She bade me strip, and I removed my gown, my petticoats, my drawers, and stood in my shift and stays.
“Strip, I said,” she iterated in an imperious tone that brought up that rebelliousness, that seems, somehow, to coexist within me with that instinct to obey that is always present.
“The last time we met thus,” I said with spirit, “you declared you did not wish to see my ‘dismal dugs’, as you so graciously put it.”
“Impertinent chit!” she hissed, “you should have extra for that.”
I tried to face her out.
“Mr Rochester has said I am to have only six,” I said with a stoutness I did not feel.
“And so you shall,” she promised, “and I’ll wager you’ll feel them. But first you shall strip. There is no man to see you, and it will help humble you, and make you know your place.”
I understood then. This proud, haughty yet beautiful creature was actually jealous of a small plain Jane, and had stopped short of humiliating me before, because she thought my naked charms, poor though they were, might work upon the man she had marked out as her own. I was almost cheerful as I stripped myself bare before her, though, when I was as naked as the day I was born, conscious of the slightness of my bare figure, like a skinned rabbit against her fine voluptuous frame, adorned with rich silks and velvet, my momentary happiness evaporated like morning mist, nor was it in any way restored when she discarded her outer garments, as on the first occasion she had whipped me, so that she could move the more freely to inflict the maximum pain on my poor trembling body.
“Now we may begin,” she purred, like a tigress with a lamb caught under her paw. She pulled out the low day-bed that was set at the foot of her four-poster.
“Lie here,” she commanded. “On your back, and draw up your legs.”
When I had done so, she made me clasp my legs behind the knees, keeping my feet quite two feet or more apart.
“You shall take your strokes thus,” she said, adding, in a tone that carried a vicious bite to it, almost as sharp as that of the cane she menaced me with, “and woe betide you if you drop your legs, or move your hands to your hinds, or close your thighs. Keep exactly as I have commanded you, or the stroke shall not count, and you must take another.”
It was a fearful position for a woman, the under side of my buttock and thighs quite exposed. She could strike down with all her strength directly into the tender crease at the top of my thighs. Moreover, the cane would land across my plump sex, the tightly bent position making it pout between my thighs so high that it would be vulnerable to the rod, especially if she were to deliberatel
y shorten her stroke, so that the tip of the cane might whip in and catch the split ripe fruit with its cruel bite. In Blanche’s present mood I did not doubt she would cut me so, and I was already near to tears before she struck a blow.
It did not help that I could see her as she made her dispositions, her bosom heaving with her emotion as she prepared to lash my bare and cringing flesh. When she laid the rod across my trembling thighs, just where the line of the crease crossed the split of my fig, I winced as if already cut, and closed my eyes to shut out the sight of her lifting the cane high above her shoulder. When it came, I could hear it parting the air before the crack of impact on my skin, and the burst of flame in my thighs.
This first stroke she had laid full across both, just at the crease, and I whined and writhed as the pain built within them, seemingly for ever, until I heard the rod’s descent again, and felt it cut me an inch above, although in truth, in my inverted position, just below, the first. Again I hissed and squirmed, like a beetle on its back, but held to my legs, nor let them close. Bad as it was, to earn extra would be worse, and she would seize on any excuse to cane me beyond the six allowed.
After two, she crossed to the other side. Although it might be thought a mercy that in the defenceless position I maintained, the venomous bite of the cane’s tip, wrapping round my unprotected sides, would not be taken entirely by my right flank but shared with the left, it gave me fresh cause for fear that she had such control of me, and the way the cuts could be directed from not only either side, but from the front, if she so chose, slicing down into my open and vulnerable vulva from directly above. For now it seemed like a gift from heaven that she should lash me across my thighs again, much as she had done from my right. The pain was none the less, and my mewling and wriggles were as heartfelt, but at least I had not been cut in my fork.
But I was not to be entirely spared. She crossed back for the fifth stroke, and deliberately let it fall short on my thigh, so that the tip caught my fat vulval pouch, biting deep into one plump lip. I screeched with the pain, but held on, though my knees wavered in the air, closing and opening in a panicked frenzy, as I sought to hold my position. She grinned evilly, and crossed back to my left. The stroke was the mirror image of the last, and this time I could not bear it. My legs closed and dropped, my feet touching the floor at the end of the couch, my body arching upwards in a bow of pain, lifting my buttocks off the upholstered seat. As I sobbed and strained, my fingers thrust between my thighs to nurse my wounded person.
Blanche spoke again.
“Tut tut,” she said softly, “did I miss your fat bottom?” Then, more sharply, “get your hands away, and your legs back in the air. There is another stroke to come.”
“It is not just,” I wailed. “You are to cane my buttocks, not my cunt” - the word forced from me by my distress - “Mr Rochester would not approve of it if he were here.”
“But he is not, and I am,” she replied. “I cannot be expected to make my aim good every stroke, especially as you wriggle like a cut worm.”
I think, though, that my protest made her consider what the position would be, should I indeed protest to my Master and, when, tearful and trembling, I resumed my position, she delivered the last, extra, stroke, across my buttock, just above the crease. When I was released from my bed of pain, she bid me make haste and get myself out of her room. Since I shared her wish to be gone, I pulled my gown over my head and, gathering up the remainder of my clothes, shuffled painfully to my own room.
The next day I was sore underneath, though I have been as sore before, but my poor sex still ached and throbbed if I held my thighs too tight, and I caught myself waddling wide-legged, like a goose, or walking ansty as we used to say at Lowood.
By evening things had improved such that I could appear in the drawing-room after dinner with something like dignity, to keep an eye on AdŠle’s behaviour. The child was not particularly tiresome and, in fact, showed quite good manners towards the guests but, after a while, I observed Blanche move to Mr Rochester’s side and, a few minutes later, she came over to where I sat in my usual place in the window.
“The child is annoying the guests,” she opened, “and you should be punished in her place. Since Mr Rochester seems grateful that I spared him the necessity of doing it himself yesterday, you shall come to my room again this evening for correction.”
I flushed at the injustice of it, but did not give her the satisfaction of having me either protest in vain, or plead, equally unprofitably, for mercy, but only asked when I was to report.
“At ten o’clock,” she replied, and turned away to rejoin the other guests.
At that hour precisely, by the great clock in the hall, I knocked on her door, and was bidden enter.
“You are late,” she greeted me, “that will cost you an additional stroke of the cane on your fat bottom.”
I protested that the hall clock had struck the hour as I had knocked, but she only pointed to the handsome brass and crystal carriage clock with which she travelled. It stood at five minutes past the hour, and I said no more.
“Strip,” she commanded. She had already had her maid divest her of most of her own clothing and sat waiting in a silken robe de chambre. I did as bidden and, when I had laid the last aside to turn and face her, I found her standing equally naked, the cane already in her hand.
She was a magnificent and awesome sight. Blanche was very tall, over-topping me by at least six inches, her body of classic proportions, with round limbs, full high breasts tipped with large red nipples, that seemed very engorged by her excited state. Her waist was very delicate and narrow, flaring out to full but not heavy hips and buttocks, that curved tightly under her to join long straight thighs. At their junction, below the gentle mound of the smooth belly, she carried a dense triangle of glossy curls, as black as the sable mane that, loosened for the night, hung down between her shoulder blades. With her broad brow, magnificent dark eyes, the aquiline nose above full red lips and strong but delicately moulded chin, she had the beauty and terror of a Greek Goddess, and I felt my bones turn to water at the sight.
She must have sensed something of my awe for she ordered me to kneel.
“That is better,” she said, when, overcome by her personality, I had obeyed. “I have shown myself tonight so that you may know what sort of woman I am, as well as to give me all the freedom I need to whip you properly, woman to woman. Now, draw out the couch and resume your position on your back as before.”
At that moment I had no will to resist. It is ever my inclination to submit to what is imperious and commanding, it is the foundation of my love for my Master and, though I hated Blanche with all my heart, my nature must needs submit to hers, as if by some natural law. That night she cut me seven times in that same soft succulent flesh that she had punished the night before.
Although this time she made no attempt to attack me in my vulva, I still lay on my back terrified, for I was wide open, and unable to do anything to prevent it, should she have decided that she wished to cut and bruise my woman’s parts as severely as my poor bottom.
Though I moaned and sobbed, and my rebellious body writhed under the torment she inflicted, I held my pose, kept captive by her hissed commands whenever it seemed as if I might let go my hold of my knees, or let my legs close. I think it very probable that, had I not surrendered to her will, I could not have held on else, for I was still very sore from the previous flogging she had given me only twenty-four hours before. She could have had the satisfaction of seeing me fail, and award me extra strokes, but I think she understood, and derived her satisfaction from the knowledge of the power she had over me. Besides, she already had my alleged lateens as excuse to give me seven cuts, rather than the six AdŠle’s sins merited.
I went to bed that night very sore, and my sleep was filled with confused dreams of Blanche and my Master. The next evening I could still feel the bruises under me as I took my usual window seat. At nine Blanche came over to where I sat, shifting on my so
re bottom, put a finger under my chin and, smiling as if greeting a bosom friend. “My room at ten o’clock.” I nodded, and she went off again.
I took care to knock on her door a full five minutes before ten that evening. She bade me enter, then, when I had closed the door behind me, called me to account.
“Tonight you are early,” she complained. Sure enough her little crystal clock showed it wanted five minutes to the hour, “moreover, when I spoke to you this evening you merely nodded, instead of saying ‘Yes Miss Ingram’. For that you will receive an extra stroke. In the meantime, strip and stand in the corner until I am ready for you,” and she returned to the book she was reading, lying languidly across her bed, her lovely limbs, as before, covered only by a thin silken wrap.
I was filled with indignation at her trapping me over the time, and the extra punishment she always seemed to find a pretext for inflicting, but I could still not shake off her authority. I made myself bare and stood where directed, facing into the corner, my hands on top of my head like a naughty child, which was, indeed, how she treated me.
I waited like that, conscious of the soreness of my bottom and what lay ahead, for a full ten minutes, until she deigned to close her book and attend to me.
“An instructive tale,” she commented. “Are you familiar with the Marquis de Sade?” she enquired, as she discarded her robe and took up that hateful cane, that she had already driven into my cringing flesh some fourteen times in two days, including those terrible cuts into my still torn and aching labia. I admitted that I did not know of his works and she continued.
“You should. The Marquis is, or rather was for he died a few years back to the loss of us all, a French Nobleman, much misunderstood in his own country, due to the implacable hatred of his Motherin-law. He was a philosopher who expressed through his novels, the ideas of individual freedom, and the follies of virtue. Justine” - she pointed to the small volume in white kid binding from which she had been reading - “relates the story of a girl of that name who, being virtuous, gets all that she deserves, being raped, beaten and tortured. I see her as being much like you, Jane, and since nature does not permit me to rape you, and Mr Rochester prevents me from torturing you, I must needs be satisfied with beating you, and that I intend shall be done with the utmost vigour I can command. Now, no more delay. Pull out the couch and expose those wilful buttocks for the rod.”
Jane and Her Master Page 8
