A. N. Dedeaux - An English Education Page 4

  "So you see, Jane," said Mrs. Reed, "you are really lucky. You will be admitted to Lowood school and trained there until eighteen years of age or more. After which they will put you out to earn your living, as a teacher or a governess or custodian of some sort. I shall not care to see you again. In fact, the only time I enjoy looking into your face is when it is crying after a whipping, as now."

  "Twill be her normal expression for the first quarter at Lowood, I do assure you," comforted Mr. Brocklehurst. His large features were pressed and prim. "You have a wicked heart. You must pray to God to change it by correcting your flesh."

  "Only, stay out of sight of Mr. Bricklehurst's great cane, child. What a rod. It makes you faint to look at. Why he is so sharp with the tip he could cut a fly in two with it."

  Mr. Brocklehurst seemed pleased by the praise. His big head nodded, smiling. "Got another brace from Tom Arnold at Rugby, only t'other day, my dear. They do say they're being quite universally adopted in the boys' schools now. After all, Keate and Busby, at Eton and Westminster, respectively, were taking such a large part of each day in their birchings. With a cane you come quicker to the remedy, if perhaps a trifle less artistically. Anyhow, Arnold wanted to hurt his boys more and has perfected a fine instrument. You will be pleased to know that in my last visit of inspection to Lowood I tested it on a senior girl, a great big buttocky thing of nigh on nineteen who had been reported to me for repeated sloth. I made her recite ten of the Psalms, which she did entirely without error, and then I gave her ten of the best. I am proud to say she got to seven almost without wincing, but by the time it was over it was all she could do not to roll on the floor. I placed well. Her right cheek was a single weal. She had to hobble from the room."

  I began to feel faint. Slinging her arm around the man's waist, Mrs. Reed continued triumphantly, "I'll bet she didn't want to sit down soon after that."

  "Smelling salts soon restored her. No, I don't see any good in the discrimination of sexes. What is good for a boy is good for a girl. Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties; and it has been observed in every arrangement connected with the establishment of Lowood: plain fare, simple attire, unsophisticated accommodations, hardy and active habits; such is the order of the day in the house and its inhabitants."

  "Quite right, sir."

  I began to cry.

  "Ah, that is how I like to see her," crowed Mrs. Reed.

  "Do you say your prayers night and morning?" continued my interrogator.

  "Y-yes, sir," I blubbered.

  "Read your Bible?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Each new girl, on entry to Lowood, is given a little book entitled The Child's Guide. For her first day she is locked up with it and must get its contents by heart; for it contains all the rules and regulations of the establishment, and its knowledge precludes excuses thereafter—when and how to curtsey, to prostrate before the headmistress, comportment in Hall, and so forth. First thing every morning of her first week, excluding Sunday, a new girl receives three strokes from her dormitory monitor. Not much, but a reminder to go to bed with, that the first thing she will be conscious of when awakening is . . . impending pain. In your case, since you are so buxom, I shall give orders that you are to have three last thing at night before retiring, too. Thus you will be assured by the end of that week of three dozen on your bottom. Count into that a few cuts in this class and that, more if you are so foolish as to incur a demerit, and you will go like a mouse into your second week.

  "And now go like a mouse to your room," said the strong-limbed woman beside him, whose fondlings were becoming keener, "and stay there. Bessie will put you to bed."

  I curtseyed and backed to the door, whose handle I could only open, like that of my bedroom a minute later, from behind me, my hands being so fettered. I lay on my bed and cried.

  Bessie was in not long after, scolding and fussing. She undid my restraint-belt, made me naked entirely, and hauled me to the wash-stand where she inflicted a merciless scrub with cold water and a coarse towel on my face and person and then disciplined my head with a bristly brush. The news of my going to Lowood seemed to have got abroad quickly for as she busied herself about me Bessie dilated on it.

  "Ye won't half catch it there, Miss Jane, and no mistake. They'll be always after you, there. Now if you had a nice sore bottom like this, for instance, the mistresses would not leave it at that. Ah no. They would try to catch and trip you in another fault, so as to have the pleasure of whipping into already tender flesh."

  With which consolatory theory she made me lie face down on my bed. She put the restraint-belt on again and fastened my hands behind in its cuffs.

  "Not so tight, Bessie, please. Uff, I can barely breathe. No, you don't have to do that . . . please . . . who said? Did Aunt Reed. . . ."

  For the good woman had widely parted my legs and was engaged in strapping both to the extremities of the foot of my bed

  "There, that'll stop you turning over, and twisting, and playing with yourself like I know you do."

  "What happens if I want to . . . ?"

  "Ye'll just have to contain yourself this night, my pet. Don't you think you did enough up there just now? I've seen a stallion piss out less. Now then, I have to get to the kitchen. Madam has persuaded Mr. Brocklehurst stay the night, and he is partial to roast onions."

  As also to other morsels, I should have liked to add as the servant left me. She left me to pillow my head to darkness and dreams. But neither came. Something else came to me, as I lay.

  Thhhrrrwwppp!

  THREE!

  Slapping into my limpened, spreading flesh the stroke forced a strangled grunt from my throat. It was another wounding cut, and for a second I made the triangle clink with my clenchings.

  These first three cuts had laid the basis for the whipping which I now knew was going to be terrifically severe.

  3

  They came like thieves of my dreams in the night. Georgiana slipped into the darkened room first, and had reached my bedside ere I was aware of it. Like me, she could in her thin slippers walk the matted floor as softly as a cat. The other two glided in straight behind her, Eliza soundlessly closing the door.

  "Get her, Georgy!"

  "Nooo—!"

  My cry was cut off in Georgiana's giggle as she kirtled up her skirts and in one leap straddled my head. Yes, she sat on my nape with her small nervous buttocks, squeezing me breathlessly into the pillow. I gurgled and struggled. In vain. I was held with my legs apart at their mercy, my hands fettered behind. With one of hers Georgiana reached under me, grabbed my bush-hair and elevated my pelvis. Eliza and the boy lost no time behind.

  "Get it right up for me again, Lizzy, quick."

  "I'd have thought you needed no help from me. Just looking at those stripes ought to do it to you. Gad, they limed her nicely. She'll carry those switch marks for a week. Mother laid on neatly. There, what did I say, it's kicking like a mule, Jack."

  "Now grease it for me."

  "She doesn't deserve it."

  "I'll never get it in, else. Just look, her bum-hole's no bigger than a thimble."

  Suddenly I felt the swing of his humid tube against me, under a buttock. I stiffened out and squealed without making a sound, or accomplishing anything except total loss of breath.

  "Hey, help me hold her, Lizzy. She's fighting like a hell-cat."

  "I'll settle that. Take your hand away a second."

  I felt a great blow in my side, driving what breath I had out of me. I knelt limp, gasping, half-suffocated, as the boy had his way with me.

  With his loathsome hands on each of my welted bottoms he puckered open, prying with his thumbs, the anal dimple, his favorite lodging place. I could not even tense slightly, so exhausted was I, and he secured purchase at once. I felt the rotten ridge of his corona slip past the sphincter ring, more of him squeezed into me, moved up and down and—no more, no more, my bursting entrails begged. Suddenly his whole foul length lunged and slucked into me.
I grunted with my entire being.

  "Now bugger her, Jack. Don't spare her, split her in two."

  "Plug her to the hilt each time, Jack," laughed Georgiana in unison. "Go right through her now."

  "She's so . . . damn . . . tight!"

  As he began to slide in and out, the coursing girth of his greased piston started to fill me to the gills. I was engorged with the penis of this disgusting boy. I could not breathe. I sweated, fisting my fingers at my back, cursing and sobbing in turn. Fortunately he was generally quick.

  "Bugger the shit out of her!"

  "I'm . . . going to come . . . pretty damn soon, y'know."

  "Hold out, Jack, hold out. She's not felt a thing yet."

  Eliza reached under me and taking a nipple between each finger and thumb twisted them as if I had no feeling there at all. A dry whine escaped my throat, and a derisive fart from Georgiana followed. The boy barreled into me, buggering in earnest now. "Come on," he panted, "try and shit me out. At the end. You know how to do it."

  "Squirt it into her, Jack."

  "Pump her so full she'll drip for days, go on." Georgiana managed my thighs completely perpendicular to the bed now as the last thrusts began. I was doubled in two and the glib gristle seemed to be pounding at my ribs as, with an anguished cry, he held still, then jetted into my rectum, falling forward over me.

  "Good," said Eliza, standing up quietly. "Clean it on her face before you use the towel, Jack."

  The foul boy did so. I collapsed forward, sobbing hysterically, too weak even to vomit. I felt totally used and abused, my poor dilated arsehole oozing.

  "Perhaps that'll teach you," said Eliza, "to think yourself our equal, Jane Eyre."

  They left me, then. But Georgiana came back. She was chuckling creamily.

  "I've come back to give you a goodnight kiss," she said.

  But it was my nether cheeks she fondled. Suddenly I stiffened.

  "Georgiana, please!"

  A cold greasy cylinder had slid up my unsuspecting rectum.

  "There. Perhaps that will console you for your buggering."

  "Oh please. I shall have to go, you know I shall. And no one will come. And I cannot get to the commode like this. Oh please, free my feet."

  She left the room, still tittering. I lay and cried my eyes out.

  The first cramps started ten minutes later. There is nothing more degrading for a human being than being made to soil herself, helpless. I withstood the pangs as long as I might, and even called for help. But the inevitable overtook me. And I sobbed again.

  Cold and dirtied as I was, I must have been exhausted by my struggles of the evening, for I fell asleep. I awoke to hear voices, dimly. The door of the room was ajar. Light lanced in, and I could hear Mrs. Reed and her maid talking.

  I heard the former tsck crossly, in her way, and say sharply, "Not again!"

  "Yes'm. And you should see her towel. She's a filthy slut, and no mistake."

  "Well, I suppose I shall have to thrash her again, and this time properly. What a nuisance the girl is, to be sure, and how glad I shall be to be rid of her.”

  "I will go in and clean her up a little first, Ma'am."

  "And I shall get my switch." It was said grimly.

  "Abbot, you agree that 'tis in the best interest of these girls to be merciless to them?"

  "I do, Ma'am."

  "Jane Eyre has simply not been punished enough."

  "I wager she'll be punished enow at Lowood, Ma'am." That, too, was said grimly. And Miss Abbot came in to my room, while the mistress of the house sought out her switch to punish me.

  Wh-wh-whrupp!

  FOUR!

  Oh atrocious!

  "Owl" I cried loudly.

  Despite my braced position the cut made my buttocks bound and I lurched in my bonds, groaning. Mr. Rochester examined his handiwork; as always, he had formed the base for a regal flogging. A purple band of pure agony now stretched across my hinds. He palped the weal on the right, where it had swelled thick as a finger.

  "Are you feeling it, Jane?" he asked solicitously.

  "Y-yes, sir," I answered hectically.

  "You are cutting nicely today. I think I'm going to enjoy this dozen."

  And he drew back to continue it. I shut my eyes and clenched my teeth. I did not clench my bum. . . .

  4

  My reward, if such it may be called, came the next morning. After second breakfast, at which John Reed had gorged himself with chops as usual, I was sent to assist Eliza in a long withdrawing-room in which there was a piano. I was to turn the sheets of her music while she practiced, and did so, standing "close enough so that I can pinch your well-wealed bottom for you if you get it wrong."

  After a while John came in and Eliza went to talk to him at the other end of the room. Neither molested me. The presence of the Reverend Brocklehurst in the house had cast a distinctly subdued veil over these children.

  Suddenly Georgiana burst in, walking fast, in a charming gown of dove-grey velvet, close-fitting, and with a white lace collar. She appeared distraught, and clasping her hands strode hastily up and down. Eliza looked up.

  "What on earth's wrong, Georgy?"

  "I'm to be whipped."

  "Good heavens, what for?"

  "Oh after John had stuffed Jane like that last night I went back and gave her a suppository. She spurted all over the sheets, it seems. Mama was furious. Not about Jane, of course, but she said I'd come close to spoiling some good sheets."

  "So it was all that wretched Jane Eyre's fault again," said Eliza, advancing menacingly on me. I recoiled. In the state my bottom was in the touch of my clothing was oppressive.

  But Georgiana shook her head. "Oh Jane got it again for incontinence, I'm glad to say, but she didn't peach. Abbot found the end of the suppository she'd voided in her writhings and reported it to mother."

  Eliza thought. "But Georgy, you must have known of this last night?"

  "Oh I thought it would simply be the usual from mother. You know, beastly, but bearable." She paused. "A few minutes ago I learnt that Mr. Brocklehurst has charged himself with the execution."

  There was a shocked hush in the room.

  "No!" gasped Eliza.

  "Brocklehurst is . . . tight," John Reed got out in awe, his jaw slacking.

  "Of course he is," cried Georgiana wildly, resuming her frantic pacings up and down, head ducked and face ghost-like. "He's severity personified. That man could make a stone squirm. Oh God, I'll never bear it. I don't know what I'm going to do. He'll cut me in two," she concluded on a sob.

  The three of us watched this extremity of apprehension with an awe mingled with fascination. Indeed, a light had come into Eliza's dark eyes, I saw. The poor Georgiana continued to walk up and down, putting her knuckles to her mouth and once feeling behind her, cupping her willowy buttocks as if testing their resiliency to bear the rod.

  "Dear God, I'm going to get it. You remember when Mama let us watch him giving it to Molly in the under-pantry. Why, you could have put a ruler over the marks after. Heavens, I shall never bear it, never."

  "Georgy," said Eliza in a new tone, and with a thin smile on her lips, "do you have no clothing on underneath that gown?"

  "None. Mama said not. The easier to ready myself for the rod."

  "What exactly is he going to take to you, do you know?"

  "Oh how should I know? That man could make a slipper sting like the fires of Hades." And in a sudden access of broken sobbing she collapsed into a chair, head in hands, crying. The bowed, humble line of her neck and back looked very penitent, indeed. My own throat went dry for her.

  "Come on," said John, nudging his older sister, "it's not going to last for ever."

  Georgiana looked up directly at me, her tear-stricken face frowning.

  "Oh Jane, you don't know what a whipping is till you've had one from Brocklehurst. He doesn't simply flog your flesh, he beats your mind. He . . . completely dominates you, body and mind. Stripping in front of him is ev
en an ordeal. Mama says one fuck from him's worthy twenty from any other man. Feels as if a whole brass band's been through her, cymbals and all. And he cuts so damnably cleverly, just where it hurts most and when the pain's at its worst. With six . . . and it can't be more nor six . . . he'll. . ."

  With a little startled cry, half-gulp half-yelp, she sprang to her feet, ashen-faced. A step had sounded, and the creak of a well-oiled boot. We froze as one, really frightened. And when Mr. Brocklehurst strode in, we three mere girls dropped curtseys like soldiers. The man looked well-fed, warm, cheerful and strong, his whiskers much in evidence.