A. N. Dedeaux - An English Education Read online

  The clyster was an old-fashioned one, with a long beak with a crook in it. The injection was of hot olive oil, usually given with a single drive of the plunger. Administered quite bent over, it seemed to shoot up its thick hot jet right into us, and one was soon trampling the boards uncomfortably after it. The enema had to be held for several minutes, on pain of cuts. Final relief was luxurious. Repetition of the offense was in fact rewarded with your class score of cuts (thankfully only three for mine) after the clystering. A further costivity would rate cuts both before and after. No one to my knowledge ever had them during; they were that merciful at Lowood, at least.

  At classes, which began shortly after, one stocked one's own ankles at small desks and sat one's knickered seat on hard deal wood. Fidgeting was especially frowned on. My first class was in Latin, with Miss Oakes, a young cheerful blonde woman. It was uneventful. I knew my Latin. The second was likewise, in French with pretty dark-eyed Madame Pierrot.

  Towards the end of this lesson, after a dictée, a big girl was found guilty of some fault. She had to stand up and bend forward right down over her desk. Her corset made a hard rap as she did so. Her skirt hardly had to be raised, but was so. The basin of her buttocks was spread in the pellucid knickers—white, for she was a Major girl, all the pedagogic classes being intermixed. Madame Pierrot gave her then five whistling, wristy slices with her cane; these cuts were administered vertically, straight-down, there being scarce room for a swing back. They bit crisply into the upper curves and seemed to cause the culprit some discomfort; though she made not a sound, the fatty cheeks cringed and clenched in expressively. She was made to stand for the rest of the period, with her skirt in a roll at her waist. She watched the weals darkening in hue, for she was in a forward row.

  After this came a break period, during which we were allowed milk and biscuits, and were addressed in a friendly fashion by Miss Temple. I began to think my fears had been excessive. But my next hour was to be in Greek, with Miss Scatcherd, and I knew I had to be on my toes.

  Like the Matron, this mistress was universally dreaded; she had been known to start off a term by flogging an entire form. She was a short dark unsmiling woman with high cheekbones and big rather slanting eyes, under silky black hair. She longed to cut into and cane us and did so pitilessly. I had been warned to stay out of her path and meant to do so. She had a way of making a girl feel throughly flogged, a talent she shared with Mr. Brocklehurst, forsooth.

  There was the silence as of death as she came into the room, holding a cold yellow cane of great length. This she flexed and bent as she paraded silently up and down our aisle, inspectingly. My shoulders rippled as she passed. Lastly, she stood on her dais confronting us, legs astride, her head back and her glossy eyes shining. She was the living picture of one who longed to use the rod, and it was not long before she did.

  "The trouble with you girls is, you're spoilt," she pronounced finally. "You're all lazy and idle and spoilt. You need more whipping. Well, this term I'm going to see that you get it. There's going to be an order of the birch for the first girl I find insolent." Our mild faces and lowly mien hardly betokened much mutiny, but the harangue continued: "I mean to make a lesson, of one of you, to start this term off on the right foot. Well, any volunteers? Come," she said with ironic smile, "I won't kill you." Then her eyes hardened and she snapped, "Helen Burns. Stand out."

  A big dark girl stood up. I had remarked her already, for her soft, luminous beauty and gentleness of expression. Though nigh on eighteen, this girl had been kept back in the Minor class by Miss Scatcherd's enmity. Tall and serene, Helen Burns had exceptionally long legs with full round calves, soft knees, and widely tapering thighs. Under their morsel of material her hips had a slumbrous roll, full of flesh. I sat up straight. This great girl was going to be punished. In the eye of a neighbor I caught the same eager gleam that I had seen in Eliza's during the caning of her sister. Helen Burns stood before the mistress, dwarfing her by a head.

  "Turn and face the class," came the command; and then, "Take down your knickers."

  When this had been accomplished, and the garment lay in miserable blue wrinkles round her ankles, she was bidden roll her skirtlet up into her belt. Interest went from extreme to acute. My fingers quivered at the spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger. The girl was going to be whipped for—nothing! And not a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression. The haired slot of her thickly seamed sex stared at us from the sill at the top of her close-joined thighs. She was most richly bushed, the transverse bar of the T her hair formed there extending widely across her belly and being crimped into close curls by the knicker pressure.

  "Dawes!" came the command. "Backboard."

  A little girl went to get one from the stack at the side. The Lowood version of this celebrated instrument was characteristically unpleasant, the board to which we were yoked being a thick and heavy plank. The neck strap was affixed, then the two thongs diagonally round the body under the armpits. Then she held out her arms and had her wrists strapped behind the board at either end projecting from her shoulders. After my first hour in one of these I felt as if my arms were leaving their sockets, and its application was entirely excessive now.

  "Lean forward, Burns. Enough."

  Miss Scatcherd stood back, measured aim, and with a tigerish pace that sent her own pleats swinging thrashed into the proferred buttocks. These visibly moved under the whirry whuck of impact, but Burns' face did not alter. Nor did she flinch at the second or third. After a long silence the fourth, and final for her class, was given.

  The mistress looked into the girl's face.

  "Hardened thing! You will have another cut, since you are of age for a Major."

  At this injustice the trace of a tear glistened on Burns' round cheek. The cut was a vicious one and made her gasp.

  "Turn round and lean forward," said Miss Scatcherd. "Show your marks."

  It was hard for the girl to obey, harnessed heavily as she was, and she had to bend her knees to support herself doing so. The cane had clawed its dark lines close at her underseat. The anal crater was plumply sunk. Finally she was made to stand on a high stool with her marked back to the class; she climbed up the rungs and perched there perilously, in view of all, her welts empurpling.

  "Anyone else for a licking?" Miss Scatcherd asked, her eyes snapping. "I mean to flog you all this term."

  Only when she had put her ominous instrument aside did I breathe again. The lesson followed without further incident but for one girl, a fidgeter, I fear, being sent from the room to have a saddle strap put on her. This horrid device was a strip affixed to the busk of the corset in front, drawn through the sex lips and up the anal valley behind to be buckled tightly there. The most moderate version was a rather hard round strap, like the collar of a dog and it cut you in two when you walked. Bending was appalling. The girl re-entered in mincing gait, frowning, and Miss Scatcherd inspected the strap's tension. While the girl winced with pain she tried to draw it up one notch, but could not. The poor creature sat down at her desk extremely gingerly. As we filed out Miss Scatcherd called me to her and inspected my knickers, running her hand in front over my hairless bulge for any wetness. Fortunately all was dry and so I scaped off.

  The day passed uneventfully enough. In a break period in the afternoon I wandered among the forms and tables and laughing groups to seek out Helen Burns. She was alone, reading, an absorbed, silent, abstracted figure in a chair by a fireplace. I asked her about the book, and it was Rasselas. Her great beauty again struck me.

  'That teacher, Miss Scatcherd, was cruel to you," I said. But she only shook her head.

  "Not particularly. She can hit far harder than that."

  "But you hadn't done anything!" I objected.

  "Still, it did me good. I will remember, and be more careful in future."

  "If I were in your place I should hate her. It seems disgraceful to be flogged so, a great girl like you, bared and before us
all."

  Helen Burns looked at me steadily. At last she said, "Scatcherd and Mrs. Harden are the only ones who beat us with dislike. The rest do so in love. I deserve to be whipped and I fret if I am not, at least once a week. You see this." She drew my attention to a large white button pinned on her tunic at the left shoulder. I read the word IDLE upon it. "Miss Smith gave me this Demerit. I forgot a rule. This means that tonight I shall get four benders, in the Duty Room. You know what they are, don't you?" I nodded. I did. "Yes, four tremendous whistlers over the board, with the Duty cane. You've seen those, haven't you?"

  "Yes."

  'Twill hurt twice as much as those flicks this morning. Four juicy beauties just above the fold, enough to make you jump out of your skin. But that girl over there"—she indicated a plump back— "she must have eight this evening. Two Demerits. She'll howl before it's over with a bit of luck. Yes, fortunately she is senior to me and I shall watch it before getting mine. It always increases the tension for me."

  I heard her with wonder. I could not comprehend this doctrine of endurance; and still less could I understand the forbearance she expressed for her chastiser.

  "Are you so in love with punishment then?" I asked her.

  "I need it, I get it," was the simple answer. Then she went on, "One day before I leave Lowood I should like to see if I could go a full count with the soko, in front of the school. Oh! you've no idea how our birches sting. After you've gone a dozen your whole being feels beat. And Nell has ways of making you so tender behind, before you go up. There's die mustard poultice for one. Heavens, how those first cuts sting. And then you realize you have to go to thirty, or even more, with the last ones drawn out longer and longer till you're yelping like a puppy."

  I wondered away, puzzled but excited. I knew that punctually at nine the Duty Prefect of the day would enter evening preparation and collect the quaking culprits on Demerits for their quotas of corrective agony. They would be bared and bent over the celebrated board and their backsides lashed with that remedial rod. Each would take to bed with her the witness of weals well written on her flesh, and a glowing pain to be assuaged by the probing finger. . . .

  I wrote on, as darkness came and the rush-lights were lit in the rooms.

  At ten minutes before six o'clock I went to present my lines to Marjorie Parker, the monitor who was my Dorm Head. I had laboured long over these, while the others had been able to stroll in the gardens, and I was proud of what I had done. The writing was meticulous.

  Each monitor at Lowood had a small private room, as her personal study. I knocked and went in Parker's. It was modestly but cheerfully furnished, with a fire blazing in the grate. The girl was working at a desk.

  "Oh it's you, Eyre," she said.

  "I've brought you my lines."

  I approached her but she did not deign to look up for quite some minutes. When she as last did so it was with a hostile expression on her rather ordinary face. She stood up and, saying "These are no good," took the lines from me; looking me deliberately in the eye, she tore them and tossed them on the flames. A stab of anger flashed through my heart, and when she reached for a small yellow square of paper hot tears of injustice pressed behind my eyes.

  At the same time my lips quivered, my stomach went hollow. I was going to get my first "Yellow."

  No prefect was allowed to chastise personally at Lowood without permission. The dormitory cuts we new-knicks were receiving were on superior order. In all other cases the monitor had to fill in a form which the offender had to take to a mistress for signature. She could only give the number appurtaining to the girl's class and furthermore—only over knickers. The cuts had all to be on the buttocks, too. Never in my time at the school did I know a senior girl abuse these privileges. The most merciless punishment would have been the result. There had been some monitor who had given more than the proper number, it seemed, in the days before I came. The girl she had whipped showed her bottom to a mistress and the older one was had up at Assembly, reduced to the rank of Minimus, her head wholly shaved and then her bottom brutally beaten by Mr. Brocklehurst. Thereafter until the end of that term she received a severe birching every Friday, in front of all the school.

  The Yellow was a very simple request for punishment. Mine, when I took it from Parker, looked like this:

  Jane Eyre

  PERMISSION TO GIVE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  3

  STROKES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  Marjorie Parker

  ORDER OF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  COUNTERSIGNED. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  "Get a good cane," said the girl.

  Anger emboldened me. "You did not look at them. The lines were well done."

  She glared at me coldly. "You have the right to appeal, new-knick. But I must say it's not much gone in for here. My word will count against yours, and a failed appeal always means double the cuts, by the Duty Mistress with a Duty cane."

  "I shall not appeal," I said as evenly as I might. "But I do not deserve flogging."

  "You're going to get it," said she. "And if you're not careful, Eyre, you'll get another Yellow for lip."

  Tears were pricking at my eyes as I sought out a mistress, in the Common Room. The woman looked up from her book, signed mechanically, said "I hope it hurts," and went on with her reading. I went down again and tried to find a rod that would hurt less in a classroom. But they were all beastly whippy things. I stood outside the door with it in my hands. My heart was in my boots but a fury of injustice beat up in my breast. I would not show this great girl my smart, however it might be.

  There was another girl with her this time, whose name I did not know. She grinned at me and said to her friend, "Oh lovely and chubby!"

  Parker took the chit and cane and made me stand in front of the fireplace, leaning forward slightly and gripping the mantlepiece. The skirt was raised from my rounded bottom and put in my belt all round.

  "Oh, lovely bum"

  Three, I thought, only three.

  She took an absurdly long time positioning me. "Brace back your knees more. Press back. Stick out your bum. Arch your back more, so that it spreads. Tighten your knickers." I made no movement at this since how might they be any tighter?

  Indeed, the other girl laughed and said, "They're bursting."

  The first cut whistled into me. Such was my indignation, such courage did my anger give me, that I veritably believe I made no move beyond the indentation of my flesh behind. My jaws were locked as one.

  "Lower," said the girl watching, in a soft tone.

  "No I'll put them all across the center. She's so fat down there."

  There was a long pause. The heat was flaming up. Heavens, how it stung! Far more than that morning. The second whipped in like lightning. My head rang, as if my ears had been boxed. Infernal! My breath harshened, the inside of my rump cheeks wriggled together, but otherwise I made no sign.

  "I tell you, Marj, you're not hurting her enough."

  "She's so fat, and beside this cane is too light."

  "Bend her double and give her this last one low."

  "Oh, all right. Eyre, bend right over and touch your toes. Come on, right down, as hard as you can."

  "There," said her mentor. "Now cut under her."

  The pain was mounting miserably. It was a really stingy cane, a brute. After a long wait again the girl gave the third. I gasped, but that was all. I managed to keep down until with a bored "All right," my tormentress tossed her cane to one side. Though my hands longed to grasp my seat I controlled myself to make them collect the wicked instrument and, face blazing but otherwise composed, I said to Parker, "Is there anything else you want?"

  "Three more like that tonight, mind."

  I picked up the cane and walked steadily towards the door. I did not want them to see the tears that were threatening to burst behind my eyes. It was ridiculous that thr
ee could sting up so, and I think it was my sense of injustice that made them do so.

  I negotiated a bend in the the corridor but got no further. An access of white-hot flame scalded me unspeakably, for the true pain of a caning is only felt some seconds after it is over. I dropped the horrid implement and grabbed my buttocks, hoping that by rubbing them I could ease some of the awful smart. There was a step but I did not notice.

  "I say. Someone not a million miles away with a well-whipped bottom. Does it hurt a lot?"

  I looked up. Pretty Miss Miller's blue eyes danced into mine. "Terribly, Miss," I said, sniffling. I pushed the back of one hand into my right eye.

  "What did you get?"

  "Three, Miss. From Parker."

  "Is that all?" She laughed merrily, then said, "And don't you usually curtsey when a mistress comes by?"

  "S-sorry, Miss." I ducked a knee hastily.

  "I'll let you off this time, don't look so crestfallen; though next it'll be three real whistlers in the Duty Room. I tell you what, as it's really your first day I'll give you a treat. Run and put that cane away and come back here."