"There," she cried, with exultation, "now show yourself to Mademoiselle," and making me stand up and holding up the garments with both hands, which I could not do myself, as my hands were tied, she obliged me to turn round and, to my shame, display myself.
Mademoiselle looked, and so did Elise, with pretty shocked exclamations and heightened colour, whilst Miss Stormont complacently enjoyed her triumph, and the train rushed on. When they had gazed as long as they cared, Miss Stormont dropped the garments and began pulling up my trousers.
Mons. Priapus decreased in stature and girth, but the skin did not right itself.
"Suppose we leave him so for an hour or two," quietly observed my fair tormentor. "What he has behind is on your account. What he suffers in front will atone to me-he has to thank me for it, and it will teach him in future to restrain his impudence and to behave himself in the presence of strange young ladies."
She was so charming that really I did not very much regret having something to thank her for, but I felt woefully uncomfortable, notwithstanding.
"Yes, certainly," cried Mademoiselle, delighted. "Button him up, Elise!"
Elise caught me roughly, and without ceremony bundled me over to her, and drew up, adjusted, and fastened my clothes. Then I was again made to occupy the seat between Miss Stormont and herself, my hands still bound, wretched in front and behind.
"Just before you came in," observed Mademoiselle, "my maid was sitting on him. Shall she resume her place-or as you have taken possession of him in front, will-?"
"To be sure I will," exclaimed Miss Gertrude with alacrity before Mademoiselle had time to finish her sentence.
She jumped up and plumped flop down upon me without another word. I wriggled into as comfortable a posture as possible and panted for breath. The more I moved the more closely she pressed me with her thighs and her pretty back. It was a more agreeable experience than Elise's sitting on me and she did not treat me so roughly; although I was pressed well into the arms and cushions, and thoroughly well oppressed by her, she did not give me the severe and painful nudges Elise had given me, nor thump me with her elbows. And so the minutes and the miles passed, Mademoiselle and her new-found friend chattering and laughing, utterly ignoring me. They compared notes, chiefly on education; spoke of various instruments of punishment, told anecdotes, discussed the corset, strait-waistcoat, stocks, backboards, callisthenics, amp;c.
Mademoiselle amused her friend hugely by describing the perplexity of a lady, the mother of a boy and girl, who had been left a legacy on condition that she dressed them both alike until they attained twenty-one years of age. She did not know whether to dress both as boys or both as girls.
"I should have had no difficulty. I should have dressed both as girls," said Mademoiselle.
"Of course," exclaimed Miss Stormont with a determination and conviction which settled the question.
CHAPTER 9
By the time we had reached Liverpool Street, Miss Stormont and Mademoiselle had, to my great dismay, struck up a close friendship and agreed that they would take rooms at the same hotel. She had given my governess an account of the slavery in which she kept her young brother and of the floggings she gave him periodically, not always because he was naughty, but because she considered them good for him; and I was very much frightened.
At Liverpool Street I was waddled across to a hansom cab and obliged to get in first and sit in the middle.
By the time we reached the hotel in Piccadilly what little spirit remained in me had disappeared.
As the train had sped along, and I had become warm under Miss Stormont, and my pulse seemed to throb with hers, and our beings seemed to mingle, I had ventured upon a little affectionate pressure, at first with extreme hesitation. She took no notice of it for some time; I repeated it with more assurance.
Her hair, the back of her head, looked so beautiful, she was so coquettish! Would she betray me? I was not left in doubt long. The pressure was gently returned, and if she and Mademoiselle had struck up friendship by the time we reached the station, so had I struck up a warmer one, and as we got out of the carriage had had a little glance which told me I was understood. This made me very happy. But the drive to Piccadilly extinguished it; only for the time though. I could not help feeling indignant at the calm air of possession with which the majority of the women we met had plainly contemplated me, as if I were annexed, and definitely subject to the petticoat, and they knew it.
The smiling hostess of the quiet private hotel where Mademoiselle stayed increased my dismay by her curious and intelligent looks at me.
My bedroom as at home opened off Mademoiselle's, and the landlady pointed it out incidentally and quite as a matter of course, taking it for granted it was what Mademoiselle would wish.
I should have expected her to consider it strange that a youth of my size should sleep in a room to which there was no access but through a young lady's; and should have been much gratified to find my expectation realised. But the fact that Mademoiselle was my governess appeared quite sufficient explanation to her. And if I had been but five or six years old, I could not have been treated with more indifference by these women.
I found that Mademoiselle frequently used the hotel, and was well-known there.
Miss Stormont's room was on the opposite side of the sitting room.
Of course my hands had been unfastened just before we alighted from the train. The first thing Elise did when we got in, and I was waiting in the sitting room while the apartments were being decided upon, was to tie them up again.
CHAPTER 10
And then, with great scorn, they got Sir Dinadan into the forest there beside, and there they despoiled him unto his shirt, and put upon him a woman's garment, and so brought him into the field, and so they blew unto lodging. And every knight went and unarmed him. Then was Sir Dinadan brought in among them all. And when Queen Guinevere saw Sir Dinadan brought so among them all, then she laughed that she fell down. So did all that were there.
Mort d'Arthur
The chief effect of my treatment at the time was undoubtedly a delicious delirium of priapism which fitted me for the accomplishment of one of the reputed labours of the redoubtable knight, the Sieur Hercules, who, in the course of one night got fifty girls with child, if my memory does not deceive me.
There was a delicious contrast between Mademoiselle de Chambonnard and Gertrude Stormont.
Mademoiselle, dark and peremptory, and "capaciously serene," to use an expression of Wordsworth's, reminded me of Zenobia, Queen of the East, while Gertrude was the impersonation to me of Vivien, in the Idyll of Merlin and Vivien.
It is difficult to convey in words the multiplicity, the multifariousness of women upon me, to which, at that moment of fatigue after my journey, I felt exposed, and my effort to convey it may appear somewhat rhapsodical. With the influence of Mademoiselle and of Gertrude was joined that of my laughter-loving Venus, Beatrice, and of Maud. Agnes was an indistinct, undivided part of the potion which made me love sick.
My second feeling was an extraordinary and ecstatic exaltation of all my faculties, particularly of my memory.
I had an extraordinary envy of old Merlin always. No doubt he had Vivien towards the close of that dreadful storm before he told her the charm, and no doubt it was delicious to have a creature like she was.