His face a little paler, his cheeks a little hollower than usual, Richard stole into Harriet’s empty room. His governess had just gone out, leaving her pupil occupied with some schoolwork which she had set him as a holiday task.
“You will not leave your room while I am gone,” she had told him. “If you do, you will be well whipped.”
He had obeyed the order at first; then, despite the warning and the wholesome fear it implanted in him, he had dared to leave his worktable, open the door, and at last, drawn by his overmastering desire, to enter the bedroom filled with the subtle perfume of the young woman.
His heart was pounding with excitement: What had she just been doing there, he asked himself. He had no idea, could make no conjecture, but he was seized by an intense nervous disturbance at finding himself alone, for the first time, in this room where she lived, where she slept, this room haunted by the intoxicating fragrance of her clothing, her sachets, her body itself.
He approached the bed, and shivered slightly. On the silk coverlet, beside the pillow, the governess had left a cane whose end was split and beginning to fray. –That cane, he knew it only too well. The previous afternoon he had been whipped with it, as a punishment for his slovenliness in not having replaced a broken shoelace. His flesh was still tender from the effects of this correction, but the remembered sting of the rattan only intensified the ardour of his desire, –that mysterious and uncertain desire which betrayed itself by an irrational wish to be mastered, scolded, shamed and whipped by his governess, and to touch and breathe the odour of every object belonging to her, – above all, those objects consecrated to her most intimate use.
He picked up the cane with a trembling hand, and pressed his lips to the end which had felt her grip, imagining he could still detect the warmth and scent of the strong hand which had held it. Then, replacing the instrument of his torment, he let his gaze rove around the room. He was uneasy, oppressed, almost stifling, but the desire was stronger than everything else. Trembling in an access of precaution, walking on tiptoe as if he feared to waken someone in the empty house, he made the circuit of the chamber.
All at once he stopped, riveted to the spot. On a low, strawbottomed, high-backed chair whose form recalled that of a prie-dieu, a tiny handkerchief of fine batiste was lying, crushed almost flat. In front of the chair stood a pair of high-heeled shoes from which Harriet had changed before going out.
His throat dry, his heart beating wildly and his penis now almost bursting the cloth of his trousers, he bent over and knelt down; he took the handkerchief and carried it to his lips. It exhaled a delicious perfume, the same perfume which he had breathed on that unforgettable evening when his governess had undressed in front of him before going to bed. And this handkerchief was at once crushed and flattened! Immediately he understood that in order to change her shoes Harriet had seated herself on this chair, and therefore-on the handkerchief: the little square of batiste was thus doubly precious to him. He kissed it once more, long and passionately, and then hid it under his shirt, against his skin, against his heart. –What delicious hours he would pass that night, he thought, when he could bury his face in it, crush it against his taut testicles, wrap it around the head of his erected penis and at last shoot his warm sperm into its delicate folds! Already he was shaken with the thrill of anticipation.
But perhaps, even more than the handkerchief, the shoes attracted him. He picked them up, smelled them, covered them with such kisses as a lover would bestow on the body of an adored mistress; he stroked them tenderly, drew back the tongues and tried to kiss the inside, gazed at them with love and reverence and pressed them passionately to his breast. He felt in a confused manner the point-lessness, the madness of these endearments bestowed on inanimate objects; but then he began to ask himself if they were really so inanimate: he was dimly aware that there resided in this supple leather something more than the idea of the charming foot it had clasped, more than the sweet and intoxicating perfume it gave off, some immaterial essence which he was unable to explain and which, though he did not conceive or clothe the idea in comprehensible terms, was for him the symbol of an exquisite feminine domination.
At this point, absolutely unable to control himself, he opened his trousers, freed his rigid penis and began to masturbate; but the next moment, struck by an idea of marvellous simplicity and fitness, he slipped his member inside the shoe itself, drove it firmly into the pointed toe and began massaging and squeezing the soft leather from outside. The exquisite sensations he derived from this exercise were apparent in the nervous jerking of his hips as they unconsciously mimicked the genuine act of love. And now, quite careless of the consequences, he was about to ejaculate in the delicious leather prison itself, when a sound behind him chilled him to the marrow. He turned round and saw Harriet.
She was smiling, her thin lips parted in that terrible curve which he knew so well.
As if stricken by paralysis, all the strength fleeing from his body as the blood gushes from an open wound, he could not move for an instant. He tried to unsheathe his member, but she halted him with a gesture.
“Stay as you are!” she said.
Deliberately she took off her bonnet and gloves and laid them on the dressing-table. Then she approached the boy who, with the shoe still fitted over his penis, his eyes wide with terror and entreaty, watched her coming towards him without a cry, without a word or a movement.
“So you are enjoying my shoes, sir!” she said in a low voice. She picked up the other shoe and, seizing his long hair in her fingers, rubbed the leather vigorously against his face, which from being livid swiftly became as red as fire. “So, you like my shoes!” she cried, her anger bursting forth. “That is what you like, is it? Put your hands behind you! Yes, behind you, I said. There now, kiss it; kiss it again–you wretched boy! Again–again! Have you had enough of such vileness now?” Her anger suddenly mastered her, and dropping the shoe she slapped his cheek with all the strength of her arm: so hard was the blow that he would have fallen if she had not still held him upright by the hair. Deliberately, she slapped him again. “And now down with your trousers!” she cried. “Down with them you wretch! Ah, you like shoe–leather, do you? You shall have it then!”
His head ringing from the blows of her hand, choked with sobs, his mouth sore and already swelling from the friction of the shoe, Richard fumbled desperately with his belt; the next moment his trousers had slipped to the floor.
Harriet seized him and bent his unresisting body towards her, clasping his lowered head between her knees. The bare flesh of his buttocks, on whose ivory pallor faint signs of the previous day’s caning were still visible, was stretched, taut and quivering, before her. Grasping her shoe by the heel, she began striking with sharp blows of the smooth elastic sole.
The reports of leather on bare flesh continued for almost a minute, mingling with the muffled cries of the boy who, feeling suffocated by the pressure of the strong young knees, was nearly fainting with pain and terror.
Harriet, her face livid, her lips drawn back to show her small white teeth, had begun by striking with all her strength. Her anger, perfectly genuine, evoked by the evidences of a perverted taste which was entirely at variance with her plans, gradually subsided, however, as she experienced the sensual relief which such an exercise unfailingly brought her. By the time she had ceased the boy’s buttocks were a rich glowing scarlet and she had recovered herself completely.
Released from her grip, Richard crumpled to the thick carpet and lay there prone, his face in his hands, sobbing and gasping weakly.
She regarded him calmly for a few moments; then, with the point of her foot, she turned him over. Little by little, the sensuality of the punished boy was re-affirming itself now that his fright was receding. Harriet knitted her brows with determination. –I shall have to take further measures, she thought.
“Get up, sir,” she said. “And put your clothing in order. How dare you give such a vile display? Your shamelessness is revolting.”
He rose and drew up his trousers. His cheeks were burning; he was filled with such a mingled sense of shame and unappeased desire that he could not meet his governess’ eyes.
“Go to your room, undress yourself, and wait for me there,” she said coldly. “I am not through with you yet, Richard.”
He obeyed. No sooner had he taken off his clothes than Harriet entered his room; she was carrying the leather belt and sleeves she had ordered from the saddler. “I did not know we should have occasion for the whipping-harness quite so soon, Richard,” she said. “Indeed, I had hoped it would not be needed for a long time. But your conduct has shown me that I must take the most extreme measures. You have disappointed me more than I can say.”
The note of reproach in her voice affected him even more than the prospect of further chastisement. A great sob of anguish rose in his breast, and falling on his knees before her he burst into tears. “Oh miss, miss, I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I – I couldn’t help it ... I’ll never do it again! Only please, please don’t be angry with me ...”
“But I am no longer angry with you, Richard,” she said calmly. “I am merely saddened to find such inclinations in you, and I am, more than ever, resolved to root them out. The whipping you are going to receive will be as much a corrective as a punishment of your wickedness. When it is all over you will be forgiven. Come now, get up and put on your harness!”
Under Harriet’s direction he buckled the sleeves on his arms, girt himself with the belt and attached the strap which protected and confined his genitals.
“Very good,” she said. “Now that you know how to put it on, I shall expect you to do so yourself whenever there is occasion for your wearing it in future. Turn around now, please ...”
He obeyed; she drew his arms behind his back, folded them tightly and snapped the catches in place.
Richard, feeling himself absolutely helpless, experienced a sudden emotion of panic; breaking away sharply, he began to twist and strain against the straps, bending and writhing ineffectually, his face pale, a hunted look in his eyes.
Harriet stood watching his struggles with a detached and outwardly impassive air; she well knew the effects of such restraint, and congratulated herself on their success in further breaking her pupil’s spirit. For a while she followed his disordered movements without speaking; when they ceased and the boy stood crouched in front of her, panting and trembling, she began to smile.
“Come now, Richard,” she said, “you see you must resign yourself. There is no use your struggling any longer, you will only tire yourself to no purpose.” She stepped forward and took him by the upper arm, supporting his body which suddenly became weak. “Lie down on your bed now ... Very good. I shall leave you now, and I shall not come back until the evening. It is then that we will settle our accounts.”
She pulled the coverlet over his trembling body, and drew the heavy curtains; then she turned away without another word and left the room, locking the door behind her.
For Richard, lying helpless in his bed, the hours until evening passed slowly. Outside, the world drowsed through the afternoon of a beautiful English summer day, the sunshine growing ever mellower and more golden as the sun moved lazily across a pure and cloudless heaven, lingering and prolonging itself as if unwilling to leave the quiet country landscape; the hours rang out faintly from the priory church in the town, and they too seemed to be deliberately spacing themselves more and more widely apart, in obedience to some timeless element of the day.
In the darkened bedroom of the house where the pinioned boy lay waiting, time seemed to have stopped altogether. Still tormented by a burning desire for something of which he had no conception, his imagination was tossed between thoughts of punishment and voluptuousness, prospects confused yet complementary, ideas inextricably entangled in a quivering, ambiguous sensibility whose only focus was in the image of the woman he loved. Indeed, he was a prey to such closely mingled trepidation and desire that he seemed to be awaiting, in the arrival of his beloved, at once the signal of a martyrdom and an appeasement. –Ah, how many of us, looking back on our own childhood, might not say that we too have been consumed at some time by such a curious amalgam of emotion? And how many would not admit that in such hours of anguished expectation was forged, more strongly than ever, the sensual link which so mysteriously unites the ideas of pleasure and pain?
Harriet herself, perhaps, had known such an experience. Of such a possibility we cannot speak with certainty; but her understanding of the conditions under which the mind is at its most impressionable entitles us to say, at least, that she was a psychologist both profound and practical.
She had entered the room so quietly that he had not even heard the rustle of the cape. The cool, pleasant voice startled him.
“Get up, Richard.”
He struggled off the bed and stood before her; he saw the mysterious leather martinet doubled in her hand.
“No,” she said, as if reading his thoughts, “you will not have the strap tonight. But do not congratulate yourself too soon, my dear. I am sparing you a strapping only so that you may make a long and thorough acquaintance with this new martinet.” She smiled, and shook out the heavy leather lashes in her hand. “I think you will find it is an instrument quite able to command your respect.”
He gazed at her and shivered. More even than her anger, he had learned to dread this pleasant, almost quizzical air; she was never, he had found, more merciless than when in such a mood. As the beautiful bare arm swung the lashes through the air with a soft hissing sound the muscles of his loins and thighs contracted involuntarily.
“Bend over, Richard.”
He obeyed, hardly able to control the shaking of his knees as she stepped behind him.
The first blow drew a scream from him. The rounded, tapering thongs had seemed to cut into his buttocks like hot blades.
“Oh ... miss! Please–I can’t–I can’t bear it!”
Harriet laughed. “Ah, you will have to bear it, Richard.” She raised her arm and lashed him again, drawing another wild scream. “It stings, doesn’t it?” she said calmly. “It has a different sting, I dare say, than the sting of your wretched sensuality! Keep telling yourself that this good whip is driving out those evil inclinations, and be thankful for its virtue ... Straighten your knees, please! We have just begun.”
Very slowly, very methodically, the correction proceeded. Harriet was taking her time. –He is really going to suffer tonight, she told herself, thrilling to the idea of his helplessness and her own power; already her own sensuality was aroused, her cleft had begun to grow deliciously moist.
Richard was in such an agony as he had never known before. Accustomed heretofore to the keen but superficial smart of strap and cane, he was receiving with terrified amazement the strokes of an instrument whose bite seemed to penetrate his entire loins, as if the thongs were literally tearing him to pieces. He tried to retain his bent position, to keep his knees stiff, to present his buttocks to his tormentress in the way to which she had so carefully trained him. But as the minutes went by slowly he found himself weakening. It was not, he thought desperately, that his resolve was giving way, it was his limbs themselves that were refusing to obey him. His screams of agony no longer gave him any relief. He found himself swaying on his feet, his legs bending, his body involuntarily swinging from side to side.
“Richard!” said Harriet in a warning tone. “You are forgetting yourself. Do not make me angry with you, or you will regret it...”
“I – I can’t help it,” he gasped, straightening up and turning to her piteously. “I’m trying, miss ...”
Harriet drew the lashes through her fingers as she looked at him with a cruel smile. “You must try a little harder then,” she said. “Bend over properly now, keep your knees straight, and let us have no more of this foolishness. –Your knees, sir, I said! Your knees!” She lashed him shrewdly in the tender hollows of his knees, and with a sharp scream he straightened his legs convulsively. “That is better,” she said approvingly. “You will find it better to do as you are told.”
She resumed the task of discipline with an appearance of calm. But by now she was deeply stirred: the blood had mounted to her head, her breath was coming faster, the secretions poured ecstatically from her womb and bathed the passage and the very lips of her throbbing vulva. With her left hand she drew the folds of her cape tighly around her hips, feeling the contact of the material against her bare flesh, stiffening her spine voluptuously as if she were offering her own magnificent buttocks to some imaginary flagellant. She began to wield the lashes more swiftly.
But Richard had now reached the limit of his endurance. When his strength deserted him it did so suddenly, and he fell limply to the floor.
Harriet, as if balked at the last moment of her goal, gave an exclamation of rage. “Get up!” she cried.
He struggled to his knees; but with his arms strapped behind him he could get no further. And then, suddenly invaded by an immense and overpowering weakness, he crumpled to the floor once again, sobbing with pain and exhaustion.
“So you will not obey me?” she said, her voice almost stifled with suppressed fury. “So much the worse for you!”
She pulled the hood over her head. Richard, seeing the ominous gesture, gave a shriek of terror and closed his eyes. The next moment he felt the leather lashes cutting into him where he lay.
For the next minute the young governess seemed possessed by a demon. Stooped over her pupil’s writhing body, she plied the whip with all her strength, bringing it down on whatever part of his flesh she could; secure in the knowledge that the harness protected the boy’s precious genitals from any injury, she was able to forget everything but her own crescendo of lust. Under the savage blows he rolled and twisted helplessly on the carpet, his whole body doubling and straightening, his legs beating the floor, his pain and terror released in sounds like the insensate howling of an animal. Then all at once the tall caped figure drew away from him; the martinet dropped from a nerveless hand; the whole superb body, swaying and supporting itself against a heavy chair, began to tremble as long sensual shudders passed through it from head to foot. A great breath, half sob, half groan, burst from her breast, her loins jerked ecstatically, and her breathing prolonged itself into a profound and quivering sigh. She dropped into the chair, her hand pressed between her thighs as she coaxed the last vestiges of sensation from her streaming genitals.
Through the half darkness of the room, as if from far away, Richard’s voice sounded, faint and almost strangled with sobs.
“Miss ... Oh miss–is it all over–now?”
“Yes,” said Harriet softly. “It is all over, Richard.”
She rose and bent over him, unfastening his arms. “Get up now and come over here,” she said.
With the release of his limbs, and hearing Harriet’s tone of tenderness, he felt his fear passing away like a black cloud before a fresh and healing breeze. But more than this, added to his relief like some priceless pendant, he had heard a new note in his governess’ voice, something carrying a different message than any ever before conveyed to him, a vibration in which he sensed the expression of a love deeper than any she had hitherto avowed, and with which was mingled the suggestion of some mysterious acknowledgment, of some gratitude ... As she drew him gently onto her lap, he laid his head against her shoulder, and then, raising his lips to her ear, whispered through the folds of the little hood which still confined her hair, “Oh miss, miss. I love you, I love you ...”
Harriet tightened the embrace of her arm around the naked boy; in the darkness, her own lips, so recently curled and drawn back in all the ferocity of her ardour, trembled slightly. “Yes,” she said, in a voice which she strove to render calm, “I am afraid you care for me only too much, and in a way which I must condemn ...” She felt the sudden throb which answered the pressure of her hand. “Richard,” she said in a tone of warning.
He was seized by an uncontrollable trembling, filled once more with that mingled emotion of terror and desire; but it was the latter, now, that prevailed. “Oh, miss,” he whispered, “I can’t help it... Please, please don’t be angry with me!”
Harriet drew a deep breath; but when she spoke her tone was calm and even. “Get up now, take off your harness and go to bed.”
She remained seated while he obeyed. The room was now almost dark; outside, the moon had risen above the treetops and was penetrating faintly through the curtains.
Lying on his back, the coverlet pulled up to his chin, Richard watched the tall, silent figure in the chair. Then he saw her rise, and standing erect draw the hood from her head; he saw the bare arm raised to the throat, –and the next moment, with a splendid sinuous movement of the beautiful shoulders, the long cape was slipped off and fell in the chair behind her. Harriet was absolutely nude.
She stood for a moment in the centre of the room, presenting to the boy on the bed a vision of such beauty that he was breathless with ecstasy; then she advanced slowly. He could see her face now in the semi-darkness, grave and intent; but he had no eyes for anything but this magnificent body which swam before him like that of some antique deity.
With a deliberate gesture she drew the coverlet below his hips, and sat down beside him on the bed. Once again, he felt the intoxicating pressure of her hand on his half-risen member.
The two nude figures, shadowy and indistinct in the dark bedroom, remained thus for a few instants; a shaft of moonlight, peering through the narrow opening in the curtains, fell on the motionless white bodies, illuminating them like marble, turning them to a statuary group at once tender and pagan, a piece of sculpture in which was symbolised but one more variant of the ineffable aspiration of mankind, but one more aspect of that divine and multiform Eros who can do no wrong.
“Oh, miss,” he whispered as he felt his member swelling under the touch of her fingers, “please ... please don’t punish me–the way you did last time ...”
“No,” she said softly, “this time I will make you spend properly, Richard. Do not be frightened ... Lie back, relax ...”
Her hands began to move slowly, firmly, ringing the shaft and the bulb itself with a deep and satisfying friction, –etching on the boy’s affections a message never to be forgotten, a sensual memory, a type and pattern of voluptuousness to which he might turn back with longing for the rest of his life, as if it were the indelible imprint of herself. And as his orgasm was achieved, his hot puerile sperm gushing in short spasms into her strong hands for the first time, she leaned over and joined her parted lips to his, receiving like a viaticum the breath of his young rapture.