"Oh, oh," I murmured. I stood quite still, every nerve tense and alive. It seemed to me that Helen's hands had opened the door to an unimagined Paradise. She stared into my rapt eyes shrewdly.
Then in a triumphant whisper, she said, "You wanted me to chain your feet, Denise."
Her words brought me to my senses. It was part of her plan, I was sure, to produce in me a craving for these delectable punishments. It was part of her plot to keep me in a permanent state of submission.
"Lift the pretty creature down," said Helen contemptuously. When I was placed standing again on the parquet floor, she added with a slow malicious smile, "I think, Denise darling, that since you are so disobedient, before I put you back into your corner, I had better give your fleshy little ass a sound caning."
"Oh, please no," I cried in terror.
Helen turned to Lady Hartley.
"Don't you think that I am right, Lady Hartley?" she asked.
"Certainly. You will be doing Denise a kindness."
"Doris, will you go and find Phoebe and ask her to bring a strong thick cane for Miss. Denise?"
"Oh, please, Helen" I whimpered, "I have never been caned. Oh, I will go on my knees to you."
"You can't, darling," said Helen, "you have your pretty feet chained together. Don't be silly!"
She turned me around and ran her hand lightly over my buttocks.
She began laughing with excitement and pleasure. "I am afraid that even through this fabric the cane will hurt and sting you terribly dear. Your flesh is so deliciously soft."
I wriggled and struggled in vain. Oh, what a fool I had been to let her bind and fetter me! I was helplessly at her mercy now. My heart soared with secret bliss.
Phoebe brought in a long, thick bamboo cane. It was a dreadful weapon. Helen made it whistle through the air. I shrank and trembled.
Helen burst out into a callous laugh at my abject entreaties. The other ladies moved excitedly in their chairs, tapping with their heels on the floor, making their pretty dresses rustle. Clearly, all of them were eager to see me soundly caned in my lovely clothes.
"Come, Denise, don't disgrace the smarter sex by so much cowardice!" said Helen.
She seized me. She thrust her left arms in between my bound arms and my back, and lifted my hands off my back into the air.
"Bend over, dear."
She raised the cane high above her head.
How cruel women can be! Helen herself was flushed with pleasure. She grew more severe with each stroke.
"Seven! Oh, I love to see you crying, Denise!" she said. I writhed and screamed.
"Eight!" she cried triumphantly and the slashing cane burnt my soft buttocks like a hot wire.
"Keep still, Denise! Don't rub your knees together under your frock in that indecent way. You'll tear the lace frills of your drawers if you do."
"Oh, Helen!" I sobbed. "Let me go."
"Nine! And don't squeeze your satin slippers against one another. You'll ruin the butterfly bows. Ten! You are to dance in them tonight and show them off! Eleven!"
I shivered from head to foot, fearful that I was going to shoot my spunk.
"Now for the last! Twelve!"
The last was a dreadful stroke, and I very nearly reached climax.
"Oh, untie my hands!" I screamed. "Take my dress off! Let me plunge my bum into cold water! Oh, my flesh is on fire."
Helen laid down the cane.
"Shut up," she said. "Violet, Miss. Hartley!"
They lifted me up, carried me writhing in agony into the corner, and placed me once more standing with my face to the wall.
"Your head well up! Turn your shoe buckles out!" Helen barked at me. She looked flushed with the pleasure of having completely dominated me. Her eyes were lustily feverish. She looked beautiful.
"Now cry away, baby, as much as you like, while we go down to the village. Aunt Priscilla will sit here while we are away and see that you don't move," she whispered in my ear. "Think of your perfect humiliation! Think of your perfect submission, and my total dominion over your body and your mind," she whispered caressingly in my ear, tempting me with seductive images.
Soon the ladies put on their cloaks and went away. I was left in the little sitting room, standing in the corner, sobbing bitterly while Miss. Priscilla, sat at the bureau where she could watch every movement that I made. She callously ignored my weeping and wrote letters.
She had no pity for me in my bondage and misery. She was perpetually chiding me. One moment it would be, "Don't work your shoulders in that violent way. Keep them still and if you must cry, sob silently!"
Later she said, "I see your fingers twitching, Denise. Open your hands and let them lie quiet against your satin dress." And then moments later, "Your feet are trembling, Denise. Keep them still. Your slipper buckles are flashing so that they continually attract my eyes. I shall have to cut them off your shoes."
She came over to the corner with a pair of scissors in her hand. All my vanity, all my love for my dainty slippers, rose in alarm.
"Oh, please don't cut the buckles off. Please, Miss. Priscilla!" I begged her.
"Be careful, then," she said and rapped my insteps exposed in their open-worked thin silk stockings with the handle of her fan. My tears broke out afresh.
At last the pain of my burning flesh began to diminish. I sniffed rather than sobbed. Finally I said in a humble voice, "Miss. Priscilla?"
"Well, what is it?" she answered sharply.
"My hands are tied. Would you be kind enough to wipe my nose for me."
She consented. I was eighteen years old, a youth, the owner of this house, a young man of great wealth and position. And yet there I stood in a corner wearing a girl's evening frock of white satin, girls' gloves, girls' silk stockings and high-heeled shoes. Not only that, but girls' tight satin corsets and frilled batiste drawers were secreted under my dress. My long hair had been done up beautifully in a girls' coiffure. I was bound with my hands behind me, and my ankles chained, and I had to have my nose wiped by an old maid whom a year or two ago I despised. With what strange paradoxes and twists of fate does life provide us!
CHAPTER 4
The minutes passed with excruciating slowness. A little clock upon the mantel shelf struck the quarter, and afterward the hour.
"Miss. Priscilla," I said finally, my voice weak with submission.
"What is it?"
"Mayn't I be released now? My feet ache so, arched in these high heels."
"If you knew how pretty and smart you looked Denise, standing in your corner, you would never want to come out of it," she said calmly.
"But my corset hurts me, it's so tight, and the fetters gall my ankles. Oh, Miss. Priscilla, I am so unhappy," I cried piteously. Truthfully, I was not so much unhappy as bored.
Miss. Priscilla rose with a cry of annoyance. She came over to my corner, felt my hands, stooped and felt my legs.
"Your hands will do as they are," she said. "But your feet are hot, and the fetters tight. We can't have your pretty ankles swollen."
She took the little key from the mantel shelf and unlocked the fetters. What a relief it was! She unfastened the leather strap from about my knees, and let it drop on the ground.