"Ah, here's the androgyny!" Helen cried as I entered the room. "Come and sit down! How do you like your corset and your bright little shoes?"
The company tried not to laugh. I was so confused that I wished the floor would open and swallow me up. I ate my dinner not knowing where to look.
"We have just been discussing your future, Evelyn dear," said Helen.
"I prefer not to discuss my future with acquaintances," I replied haughtily, looking at the guests.
"There's no reason to discuss anything," said Helen, "for we have settled it with a unanimous vote. You are too young still for College. For reasons of which you are aware, you cannot be safely sent to a boys' school."
I grew scarlet.
"And you are too overbearing and untidy and impossible to remain in this household with a tutor. There is only one thing left for you, dear, and that's a girls' school."
I started up in a rage, although I can now freely admit that my heart soared.
"This is really too much!" I shouted, attempting some modicum of behaviour.
"Come with me," said Helen, with a look on her lovely face that frightened me. She had absolute control of me and my inheritance for eight years. She took me up to my bedroom.
"I am quite serious about this, Evelyn," she said in a gentle voice. "It is the only thing to be done. I don't know whether you are aware that I can, if I think you fit for your position, let you come of age when you are twenty-one. If you behave very obediently as a girl for two years at the girls' school to which I am going to send you, I may perhaps shorten your minority."
It was a strong inducement. Besides, she need not have offered any inducement. I actually wanted to go pose as a young lady. I desired no escape.
I was deeply, mysteriously thrilled.
"Of course if I go as a girl to a girls' school for two years, I shall be allowed to dress as a man at the end," I said, in case I appeared freakishly happy.
"If your schoolmistress reports favourably."
Of course I consented. During the next day, I was busy with Helen's dressmakers, Helen's milliner, Helen's boot makers, Helen's corsetiere. In ten days I was fetched by a governess. I went by train in the summer uniform of the school-a pretty pink frock of Ninon (ankle length), a big white straw hat, long brown glace kid gloves, and patent leather button boots with very high heels. At the school I had a bedroom to myself. No one was to know that I was not a girl.
I went through the most rigid system imaginable, all designed to make me completely girlish in mind and body. Hair was removed from every part of my body, except my head, by electric needles and depilatories. Every morning and every evening I was massaged for an hour to reduce my waist, develop my bust, and soften my limbs. Exercises with the same objective were carefully supervised. I wore face masks for my complexion, gloves at night to whiten my hands. My skin was very carefully tended. My hair was treated with lotions so successfully that it grew extraordinarily thick. In two years my hair hung down below my waist in luxurious light curls. Of course I was exceptionally aware of the curves that were forming where before there had been boyish angles. The muscles were all vanishing from my legs and arms which were already naturally round. My breasts were developing into the pretty white, round, delicately veined apples of a girl.
Now back at home, I was waiting for Miss. Priscilla to inspect the result of those two long years. I was in a bedroom that had been altogether refurnished in mauve. Over a thick carpet, a covering of mauve kid leather had been tightly stretched, and it was delicious to feel under my sensitive feet. The room was clearly a girl's bedroom, the dressing table covered with feminine bottles of perfume and lotion, jewelled powder boxes, gold-backed brushes. Why I asked myself, since I was to be returned to the world of manhood again tomorrow? A beautiful little marble-tiled bathroom led from it on one side, and a dainty boudoir on the other. The bed was exquisite in the shape of a swan. It was altogether a lovely suite of rooms-for a girl.
"I shall not sleep here tomorrow," I said sadly to myself. I loved the room. The door opened and Miss. Priscilla entered carrying a number of leather jewel cases in her hands.
CHAPTER 2
I had despised Miss. Priscilla two years ago. I wondered if my feelings had changed. She had not changed. She was the same neat, precise, thin, elderly spinster with the terrifying air of authority. I had changed, and at her bidding. At an age when even the poorest of boys begin to gain their liberty, I, one of the richest in the country, the head of one of the oldest families in the country, had been calmly stripped of my freedom by this old maid and her niece. They had been able to manipulate me through their insight into my true character.
Miss. Priscilla was dressed in a high-necked plain gown of grey silk; she wore the flat square-toed ugly shoes that used to excite my ridicule. The solitary touch of luxury on her body was a long pair of white kid gloves. She looked at me coldly, critically. There was no expression upon her cold face, and so much had my two years at the girls' school changed me that I became strangely curious to know what she thought of my looks. I was a little hurt-yes, let me admit it-a little hurt that she was not betrayed into an expression of admiration.
She opened the leather cases and a rippling fire of jewels at once made the room glorious to my girlish eyes. She advanced to me. They were for me then! Those glittering streams of diamonds, those lustrous rows of pearls! Oh I loved jewels! She fixed a high collar of diamonds round my throat with a diamond bow and a tiny diamond tassel dangling from it, just behind the left ear. She passed a double row of magnificent pearls round my shoulders. The strand hung down to my waist. She fixed earrings of big pearls set with diamonds in my ears, which had been pierced. She fixed a diamond star among my curls, and a diamond brooch among the roses at my waist.
"Give me your hands, Denise," she said, and on my wrists, she fastened lovely bracelets of gold flashing with diamonds and rubies. They were very tight and the sensation of confinement thrilled me. And then she fixed another similar pair above my elbows smoothing up my long gloves carefully before she clasped them on.
"These bracelets will keep your pretty gloves tidy and smooth," Priscilla said. "Now, join your hands again behind your back." With each movement the soft fire of the flashing stones ran over me like water. Oh, how I wished to see myself in the mirror. There were a couple of big full-length mirrors with three panels each, such as one sees in a dressmaker's atelier. But the panels were closed.
"What is Miss. Denise's waist-measure?" Miss. Priscilla asked of Phoebe.
"Nineteen inches, Miss.," replied Phoebe.
"And the height of her heels?"
"Four inches."
Miss. Priscilla nodded her head in approval; she turned to me and said, "Have you your big diamond buckles on your satin slippers?"
"Yes, Miss. Priscilla," I replied blushing.
"Lift your skirt and let me see!"
With a shy smile of pleasure-I could not help smiling-I raised the hem of the exquisite satin frock in my delicately gloved fingers. There came into view my slender feet in exquisitely cut, new, glistening, white satin slippers with wonderful arched, narrow Louis Quinze heels. They had pointed toes embroidered with pearls and butterfly bows of dainty white tulle. Mounted on the bows were big blazing diamond buckles. The slim little slippers were posed with the heels together and the toes turned out as Phoebe had arranged them. I pulled the skirt higher, exposing a pair of round arched insteps and small finely moulded ankles. My flesh showed prettily pink through tightly strained stockings of white silk with lace insertions. I had never before seen such stockings, never even dreamed of things so beautiful. They were of the finest gossamer, transparent as cobwebs. They were filmy delicious ornaments, rather than coverings, with a soft sheen that was lovely. Such stockings and slippers were fit for some blushing beautiful debutante of high birth and enormous wealth, to make her curtsey in before her Queen. No one else could have afforded them.