A. N. Dedeaux - An English Education Page 3

  Frantic anguish produced wild sobs. But in vain. This time they hung me straight. My arms secured at wrist and elbow I dangled from the high ceiling pulley, my legs restrapped at knee and ankle. I could just touch the ground with my toes.

  "To be so hard to me," I whimpered. "I am only a girl."

  "A wild one, and no mistake," said Bessie, tautening a draw-cord.

  In this position my rump was thrust ripely back for the rod, its heavy halves braced together and held clenched by me.

  Abbot took one withe from her choice, a long thin birch limb of the type I had often, myself, had to make into a rod for her. She stood back and whined it into me.

  "Uingh!"

  I lurched, losing my footing with the first stroke.

  She cut expertly, and the term described her activity entirely. The thin wand of wood sliced into my fatty parts with venom, like a kitchen knife. She worked, as usual, on my underbum but utilizing the bluish bruises left by Bessie. I was soon kicking up my heels like a stranded salmon. Once, after the fifth I think it was, the pain so caught me I swung hissing, doubling my knees up almost to my chest—at which I got such a cut I screamed and jacked my legs down straight, my bottoms juddering. That one had gone right through me like some pure flame. I held it out for the rest stiff as a sentry presenting bunched buttocks for their livid striping. Only my head rolled, and my disobedient tongue fairly barked out short cries, hoarsely. After this they "hoisted" me.

  Of all the punishments I endured at Gateshead Hall this was the one my mind most hated; for now that my flesh had smarted, it too was to suffer. I have always had an inordinate dread of heights and what they did to me then, small as it may seem to more fortunate mortals, harassed me quite horribly.

  Stout leathern cuffs with rings set in them were strapped about my wrists and ankles, and then the latter swung up to join the former. Working contentedly together, the heartless pair doubled me entirely, head on knees, the hook dangling from the ceiling passing through wrist and ankle rings. Begging and imploring, I was then hauled to its apex and was tethered to its vault, terrified. For if I fell— and for every second of those thirty minutes I would imagine I were just about to drop—I should surely break my back.

  "You can cool your sides up there now, Miss."

  "Bessie, please. Let me down. You don't know how ... oh give me more cuts, only please let me down."

  They went away, locking the door. I sobbed, dangling, trying not to look downwards, only at the great steel hook holding me, I hoped, so firmly. The minutes ticked inexorably by. I had come to some kind of calm in the center of my panic when I heard a boy's low whisper, from just beyond the door.

  "Lizzy! she's nowhere to be seen. They must have hoisted her again. Hurrah! she always hates that."

  "It always makes her pee." Georgiana gave a giggle.

  "Was it nice and tight, Jane Eyre?" pursued the mocking boy. "Did they scratch your bum a bit more than you did my cheek?"

  "Teach! teach! teach!" crowed Eliza's hissing tongue. "You got a juicy dozen. If you ever breathe so much as a word of what we do to you to Mama, I'll see you get two like that, only with her switch."

  "Come on, Lizzy. We can't see her. Let's go and have some fun."

  They ran off, Georgiana complaining, "Jack, it's my turn. I declare you're always sticking it into Eliza these days."

  I sweated as I hung. The minutes passed. I began to grow crimson. Their suggestion had been explicit. Soon I knew I was going to, I had to ... I couldn't stop it whatever I did, helplessly hung in this position. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair. Always this effect on me. With a strangled cry that turned into a torrent of tears the inevitable warm stream frothed from between my flailing thighs and cascaded, in a loud waterfall, on the boarding. I cried softly when it was over.

  The key turned stiffly in the lock. I heard their exclamations before I saw them.

  "Just look, Miss Abbot. She's weed again."

  "The disgusting little thing!"

  "And such a copious flow, you'd think she'd been saving up for it a'purpose. Well, she'll have to be reported for that, 'tis sure."

  When they let me down I was sobbing but, ah yes, contrite. I lay on one side, my knees drawn up, while they undid my bonds. Suddenly a hand gripped me at the back of the neck and my nose was rubbed into the wetness on the floor, as one might a puppy's. It was rubbed till it felt raw and I squirmed out of Bessie's grasp.

  "Troublesome child! Always up to some mischief."

  "Let us put this on her, Bessie, and see if she is so free of her hands, after."

  The item referred to was a restraint device with which I was uncomfortably familiar. After I had donned my dress, the skirt of which was pinned up high behind, leaving my martyred bottom bare, a leathern belt was fastened tightly round my waist, in the back of which were set two cuffs; in these my little wrists were strapped, one over the other, in a manner to brace my chest forward. No hardened convict could have been securer. I hated it particularly since it allowed the children their way with me so easily.

  Bessie surveyed me from behind, shaking her head.

  "Will ye never learn, Jane?" Abbot contented herself with smacking my face, one, two, three, four times, till my head rang— "Come with me."

  She alone led me the long walk to the east wing of the mansion where Mrs. Reed's bedroom lay. Walking behind her I could only be thankful to be spared the taunting of the children, evidently occupied elsewhere. But these for me were awful regions, on which it dismayed me to intrude. I stood trembling before the door as Miss Abbot knocked on it.

  "Come in," answered Mrs. Reed's low, almost manly voice and I was pushed forward into the light. Indeed, there was too much of it for my blinking, tear-dimmed eyes. I could not see past the row of jets, into the darkness of the bedroom beyond. But I could hear.

  "Well, Abbot, did you make her sorry?"

  "Yes, Ma'am."

  "And thoroughly submissive?"

  "I'll wager so, Ma'am."

  "Turn, Jane. Good, you whipped her well. Now, Miss, are you satisfied with all the trouble you have created? Do you feel like raising your hand to my son again?"

  "No, Ma'am."

  "Thank Abbot for chastising you."

  "Thank you, Miss Abbot, for being so kind as to correct me," I parroted.

  "All right, Abbot, you may leave us."

  "Beggin' y'r pardon, Ma'am, but she was incontinent."

  "What!"

  "She weeweed all over the floor."

  "Jane, is this true?"

  "Yer-yess, Ma'am."

  "Disgusting child! Well, I suppose I shall have to deal with that. Thank you, Abbot."

  The lady's-maid left. I felt, rather than heard, Mrs. Reed approach behind me. There was a susurration of her silken limbs, a creak of her corseted torso, that was all.

  "Excellent. Well wealed on the right, but no skin broken. I'll bet that made you skip a bit, Jane Eyre. Well, that's the last tantrum you throw in this house. I am sending you to school. You are not fit to associate with children of mine."

  The pain having abated a little, I longed to retort: They are not fit to associate with me. Instead I got out, as steadily as I could, "I should indeed like to go to school."

  A mirthless laugh greeted this comment. "Not this school you will not. If you're thinking of a place where young ladies sit demurely in the stocks, wear backboards, and get a few cuts with the birch about the neck, you are sadly mistaken. I am sending you to a disciplinary academy, to learn some manners. But first, I mean to correct you for your incontinence. Fetch the switch."

  After a second I turned and went to a certain corner nearby where stood the slim outline of a dreaded instrument, one with which my sides had been laced until they quivered and shrank with the pain. My duty was to bring it to Mrs. Reed which I did in the only way I properly could, in my mouth, like a dog.

  I saw her now, a buxom, black-haired woman, beautiful but shrewish. She towered over me on shining stiletto heels, her dark gauz
y stockings held taut up her thighs by red jeweled garters, and wearing nothing above these but a gleaming corset over a short lace shift. It was in truth too short by far, forming no more than a brief billow at the bottom of the strong spoon of her corset. Mrs. Reed was strongly, closely haired and, as she stood astride, this thick crop above her sex extended under the corset busk. She saw me looking and tscked.

  "Impudent child! will nothing cure you? You wait till you get to Lowood. After your first birching there you won't take your eyes off the floor for a week." My eyes implored her as she took the switch. "Now then, let me get at you. Turn about."

  "Please, Ma'am. Have pity. May not I be punished another way? I have been thoroughly beat and am completely repentant. It is . . . when they hoist me so, I could never bear it, and I cannot help myself."

  "Do you wish to go now?" Dumbly I nodded.

  "Filthy animal. Get it done with then." She fetched a large vase and placed it between my legs. "Hurry, what are you waiting for?"

  I strained, blushed, but the only exusions from my person I could produce were more tears. Mrs. Reed crossly removed the receptacle.

  "Wasting my time. Turn to the wall, Jane, and lean well forward. I shall be clement this time and give you but four." As I bent, I thought I heard a sound in another part of the room. "Do you understand?"

  "Yes, Ma'am. Only, if you please. . . ."

  "What is it now?"

  "Please to spare me where Miss Abbot cut. It is so terribly tender there."

  "They'll be good licks, low down."

  They were. The first sting of the wasp was bearable, just. The second elicited a pant. But the third was a devilish streak of pure white pain, right in the crease. It was more than I could bear and I straightened, hopping.

  "Get over, girl. You will have an extra for moving out of place."

  As I strove to obey, I heard a growl. A mutter. I went cold and hot all over. A man is here, then. I had never been beat before a stranger in my life.

  "Yes, that is right," said Mrs. Reed in evident agreement, "bend further forward, girl, so that I may cut you in there again."

  I shivered, waiting.

  Thhhhsppp!

  "AOW!"

  One more. Pray God I could hold out for just one more.

  "Jane, you are not bending forward enough. Your body is being punished to save your soul. It is for you to profit from such moments. I intend to give you this last cut as hard as I have ever hit anything in my life."

  THHHHSPPP!

  "YOW!" I howled, jerking up again and dancing like a dervish.

  Suddenly her breath was urgent in my ear—"Jane, you will stand here facing the wall with your legs apart, so, bent forward with your forehead resting absolutely on the wall and you will not move, is that clear? You will close your eyes and if you open them and look back, I shall send you upstairs again and have you hoisted all night, with a couple of dozen more stingers with this across your rump. Now!"

  She tossed aside the switch and paced irritably away from where I restlessly quivered, my head cold on the wall, my bottoms well parted and burning.

  "Quite an exposure!" Yes ... a low man's voice.

  "It certainly seems to have had its effect on you, sir. My God, I declare it gets bigger every time I see it. How you expect any woman. . . ."

  "So this is the girl you told me of, who calls you aunt."

  "The same. Her father was a poor clergyman. Grandfather Reed considered the match so beneath her mother, he cut her off without a shilling. Both taken off by the typhus fever."

  "And you have been left with the infantile Guy Fawkes. This violence in a child is all most repulsive. How old is the brat?"

  "Fourteen."

  "Her size is good."

  "As is that of this crowbar of yours I am holding." I heard soft sounds from the distant bed; her voice lowered conspiratorially. "Come, stick it in my guts, quick. I'm dying for it, you know I am. This way you can see her fat, streaked ... oh God, not so ... oh, ah, my heaven, man, give me a moment to . . . breathe!"

  There were categoric squishing sounds, of carnal entry, heavy breathing, steady thumping. The latter was caused by my Aunt Reed's battering on the breast of her pugilistic paramour.

  "Dear God . . . so . . . stop . . . ough! No deeper. I feel it in my . . . finish, shoot it into me, come, come, I'm. . . ."

  She finished in a forlorn wail and her confederate in a sort of animal snarl. Their contented murmurings then escaped me as I stood, the pain subsiding to a rich warmth in my lower person.

  Then, "You don't fuck a woman, you impale her," I heard Mrs. Reed say. Followed by, "I may depend upon this child being received as a pupil at Lowood?"

  He laughed shortly. "Madam, you may. She shall be placed in that nursery of chosen plants—and I trust she will show herself grateful for the inestimable privilege of her election."

  Some minutes then passed in silence, interrupted by sighs, protests, the sounds of clothing resumed or rebuttoned. After a while I was aware of Mrs. Reed touching me at the shoulder. She looked soiled and sweaty, and thoroughly satisfied. Her bush hair glistened slickly. She turned me and I looked up at—a black pillar! Such at least appeared to me the straight shape standing erect on the rug, in his trousers and shirt sleeves. The grim face at the top was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft by way of capital.

  "The Reverend Broughton Brocklehurst," said Mrs. Reed.

  "Your name, girl?"

  "Jane Eyre, sir."

  "Well, Jane Eyre, and are you a good child?"

  Mrs. Reed answered for me with an ironic twist of her mouth: "The state of her nether person speaks for itself, I fear, Mr. Brocklehurst."

  "Come here, closer," he beckoned. I stepped to the rug and he bent from the perpendicular. What a face he had, what a nose, and what a mouth! "No sight more salutory than that of a naughty child with well-whipped buttocks. You have just been flogged, Miss Eyre?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "And did you enjoy it?"

  "No, sir."

  "It hurt, I hope?"

  "Very much, sir."

  "So that the next time you are tempted to throw a temper tantrum at your betters, you will reflect, will you not?" I said nothing and he went on. "Come now," he coaxed, "confess that the next time you wish to hit and strike a better you will hesitate, for your flesh will know that it will be even more strictly chastised. Admit it now, Miss Eyre."

  The term better for John Reed was what galled. I dropped my eyes and said, "I suppose so."

  The man chuckled. "This is a delightfully mutinous spirit, even with its hands bound behind it. I shall warn Miss Temple to tell her mistresses. They will take pleasure in breaking Jane Eyre in, especially as she is so richly fleshed."

  "She shall go to bed without supper and spend the night confined as she is, and if she is no better in the morning I shall deal with her as I never have before."

  "So you admit, Jane Eyre, that corporal correction is effective?"

  "If it is fair, sir," I replied.

  "It is always fair at Lowood," he thundered sternly to that, evidently incensed by my answer, "and every girl is always in the wrong there. The school that I direct, and to which your benefactress is having the kindness to send you, is founded on corporeal correction for young ladies. You will be thrashed and thrashed again, Miss Eyre. You will go in daily, hourly dread of chastisement during your first quarter for, though you are above the age for such, I shall give instructions that you will join the lowest class, the most punished. The superintendent and her staff enjoy whipping nasty, deceitful girls; and they can do it to the letter. You will receive canings across those plump buttocks of yours that will make your eyes start out. And before you have left you will be birched to the blood. You will feel the switch, strap and, yes, the whalebone which cuts like a razor into a girl's soft flesh. There will be days, Miss Eyre, when you'll wish you had not been born with a bottom; you will sob your heart out simply waiting in a corridor or cold room. Yes, you will le
arn about punishment at Lowood, child; even if I abolished cane, whip and strap there tomorrow, there are instruments a-plenty to test the fortitude of the most rebellious, like yourself."

  "Do they still use those stools that you showed me, for Detention? Ugh! I should hate to sit on one of those for a minute."

  "Unfortunately a culprit seldom does so for less than fifteen, but I admit I have never seen a look of great joy in the face of one so embedded."

  "It must make you want to go, after."

  "I should not want to be in the shoes of one who did so, however. No, control of sphincter muscle and urinary tract alike are taught. Matron takes care of that. After the latter training Jane Eyre here would never have known her little accident just now."