"Kneel down in front of me," she ordered, "and don't move!"
Miss Sunway obeyed. A long half hour elapsed without a word from the governess. She was sipping her coffee, smoking cigarettes and nonchalantly leafing through magazines. Mabel hardly dared to breathe. She looked up fearfully into the magnificent face of Dorothea, her fine: rumps sprawling on the couch and her bare legs, white hands with ruby-red nails, her insolent revealing their shapes under the hitched up skirt. And she could not help admiring this splendid creature whose iron will was weighing upon her as a law. And yet, who exactly was this Dorothea? A mere governess hired by Lord Kelingson — a subaltern indeed… and there she was, happy, carefree and enjoying a luxury she was not entitled to, while Mabel, a young girl of nobility and good breeding, an heir to a great fortune, was obliged to kneel like a slave with her hands tied up. The young English girl realized how that situation made the social classes topsy-turvy and she was appalled. But then she thought of the punishments she had received and understood that the Whip is a great Master and all-powerful magician, to be able to bring about such social upheavals.
The governess looked at her wrist-watch.
"Your time-table for the afternoon is about to begin, Mabel! You know you will have to submit to it whether you like it or not, for if you refused the worst punishments would await you and would bring you back to the straight path. Until further notice, your schedule will be divided into three parts: from two to three you will have a lesson, for I suppose that your education is far from perfect in spite of your eighteen years of age. From three to six you'll do some housework as I intend to make you my chambermaid and you'll have to get prepared for it. Then, from six to seven, I'll give you a rather special lesson which I'll name 'a lesson of humiliation' in order to make you obey better and to teach you to be a passive thing submitting to all my whims and happy with your degrading situation. Now, follow me to the office which I've transformed into a study-room!"
She stood up and led Mabel to Lord Kelingson's office. There, to the girl's great surprise she untied her hands and indicated a heavy armchair in front of the desk.
"You're going to sit here," she ordered, "and I want you to lift up your skirts before sitting down, for I want the seat always to be in direct contact with your bare flesh or your thin panties. Execution!:
She punctuated her order with a alight stoke of the horsewhip on the pupil's, calves. So Mabel hitched up her skirt up to the waist and sat down on the armchair. Then the governess took two small chains, each supplied with a padlock, and chained up the girl's ankles to the two forelegs of the armchair.
"I keep the key to the padlocks!" she said with a mocking smile. "So, even though your hands are free, you will remain attached to your seat!"
She gave a large book to Mabel.
"Here's your study book. I won't make you study history or literature or such things that have no more interest for you. As I want you to become a perfect slave, only one thing must interest you from now on — the story of the slaves, their ways of life and submission to their masters, as well as the punishments they are inflicted when they don't obey. So this is 'a Treatise on Bondage' which dates from the earliest periods of our times until now. Every day you will have to read ten pages and learn by heart two pages. Work and beware if you don't know your lesson when I come back. Understood?"
"Yes, Mistress," Mabel sighed mournfully.
When the governess had left the room the girt started reading. The first chapter described the treatments given to the slaves of ancient Rome by the demanding patricians and their wives. It seemed to Mabel as if her own brethren were telling her their lives.
She read about ten pages and started learning the first two by heart. Luckily enough she was gifted with an excellent memory, so that when Dorothea came back, the girl told her humiliating lesson without a single mistake.
"Not bad," the governess said condescendingly, "I give you eight marks out of a possible ten. And you can call yourself lucky for a seven or a six are punished with a whipping with birch twigs, a five or a four deserve a horsewhipping on the breasts and an inferior note the dog whip on the buttocks. Remember that for the next lessons!"
She detached the poor slave and rang for the maid.
"Bridget," she told her, "this girl will have to do three hours of housework. We shall make her sew, iron and clean the rooms. I intend to oblige her every day to stitch for me some pretty ornaments of material, but for to-day we shall make her do the washing only. Let's go down to the wash-room!"
With Bridget and the governess on each side of her Miss Sunway went down to the cellar of the castle where a modern wash-room had been installed.
"Did you get down my dirty linen, Bridget?" Miss von Berner asked.
"Yes, ma'am, the one you were wearing yesterday and the one that was in your trunks. In all there are mine pairs of stockings, three slips, six handkerchiefs, two bras and fine pairs of drawers. I also have then linen which Mabel was wearing about her when she arrived at the castle."
"Perfect," said Dorothea. "And what about you, Bridget, have you got dirty linen of your own? Mabel must wash it since she's your maid."
Bridget blushed with pleasure and pointed at a parcel in a corner.
"There, I have pyjamas, two hygienic towels, stockings, a chemise and two pairs of panties. If you'll allow me, I'll add the one I'm wearing now and which is rather dirty."
"But of course, do."
Bridget lifted up her skirts, took off the blue panties which Mabel knew only too well. She picked them up and tossed them at the girl's face.
"Here you are, slave, and let these be clean!"
"I do hope so," Miss von Berner added, "looking at Mabel severely. I'll give you three hours to wash all that And I'd better warn you that I'm very particular about my own linen. If I find the least stain on it I'll tear the skin off your bottom with a horsewhip. Now, to work!"
She cast her slave a despising look and went out with Bridget, taking good care of padlocking the door behind her. Mabel could come and go but she was a prisoner just the same since the only window was an air-vent and the room was lit by electricity.
The girl sighed deeply. So this is where she had sank: down to washing the dirty linen of the governess and even that of the chambermaid!
She started working. First of all, she looked after Dorothea's; linen. It was handling the gossamer bras, and the silk or satin drawers, the slave could not help thinking of the splendid flesh and the perfect shape which these clothes had imprisoned. She felt a strange sensation thinking that what she was washing Dorothea herself had soiled with the most intimate contact of her body, that it was Dorothea whose triumphant breasts had caressed the material with their hard nipples, that it was Dorothea who had worn under her skirt these coquettish pink panties and had soiled them… Suddenly, without thinking, she took a pair of panties and smelled them. Its odour was heady like a voluptuous perfume. She lost her head and kissed ardently the tepid material.
Then, almost at once, she was ashamed of her gesture and resumed her working. The chambermaid, although coquettish, had but a relative degree of hygiene and her linen was frankly dirty, and its cleaning was particularly odious to the unhappy heiress.
Three long hours elapsed in frantic work. Mabel had just finished when her two mistresses came back. Dorothea ordered her slave to show her the different articles of her clothing one after the other and she examined them scrupulously, with eyebrows knitted by concentration.
"It's all right," she said at last, "quite perfect. Bridget, have a look at yours and then send Mabel up to my room for the lesson of humiliation."