He had also succeeded, thanks to his obstinate importunity, in getting the government to decide that it was the duty of magistrates to exercise astringent supervision over the morals of the people and by the severity of punishments inflicted, to check every deviation from the narrow path of purity calculated to set a bad example.
In his present surroundings, he seemed entirely at his ease and quite at home.
When we entered, he addressed Lady Flayskin. After fixing on me his round, cold light grey eyes he remarked:
"Another pupil for you?"
"Why, certainly."
"He appears to me to be in need ot supervision."
"All have to be controlled and punished."
"I think so too!
"Oh! you and I know that we have ton; held identical opinions."
"That does us credit. In truth, the world would be a better place than it is if everyone was imbued with the conviction that youth requires moral training."
"Which only the rod can impart."
"Very true."
This conversation to which I listened open-mouthed was not reassuring.
I had already tasted the whip as applied by the rough hand of Betsy and did not feel tempted to renew its acquaintance. My little posterior still smarted from the whipping of the day before.
After Betsy had explained who I was, and had hugged me in her big arms, covering my face the while with a rain of kisses in effusiveness which I found more astonishing than affecting, Lady Flayskin entrusted me to the keeping of an under-mistress who had just entered the room in hurried response to the summons of an electric hell.
The latter was a thick-set dumpy woman of incredible mobility. Even when she was not speaking and was sitting in her chair, all her body Moved: eyes, nose, lips, and bust. She had movements for asking questions, for doubting, for hesitating and for signifying approval. Yet this was not through lacking a fine large tongue, as I was able to notice. During the few moments required to conduct me through the corridor to the class-room assigned to me, she found means to tell me a great many most curious things. Among other items of information, she told me that Lady Flayskin was a person of real distinction, a typical member of the aristocracy. That the profession of schoolmistress was with her nothing less than a sacred call. That as I could easily see, she had no need whatever to undertake occupation of any kind. That thank God! – the late regretted 21
Lord Flayskin had his wife an immense fortune. Then she broke off suddenly and enquired if I wore stays?
I was much suprised at the question and although the circumstances of my present position were by no means of a sort to incite me to gaiety, the idea that I could have stays on, made me burst into laughter.
Immediately this person who had been all smiles and pleasant chat, changed countenance with a suddenness which inspired me with terror. My laughter was choked in my throat. Withnostrils distended, her eyes full of menace, the stout little woman shook my arm roughly, pulling and pushing me here and there as though I had been the handle of a pump and she had resolved to pump out of me my crowning irreverence.
"Little wretch! What possesses you to make you laugh like that? If you are not accustomed to stays those I am going to put on you will make you suffer. We shall then see if you are still in a laughing mood."
We had reached the class-room. We found no pupils therein. All were in the dormitory, it being the time when girls and boys had to wash their hands before appearing at table. But the mistress under whose orders I was to study was still there. She proved to be a narrow strip of a woman with straight towcoloured hair, as angular and sparing of gesture as my fat, dark-haired and blackeyed conductress was rotund and vivacious.
"Mr. Stuart", said the dumpy woman, bowing pleasantly to the thin one, "this is young Sanderson of whose corning you have already heard. Shall he sit down to table as he is, or do you wish him to be dressed like the others?"
"What a question!" replied the other with a shrug of her lean shoulders. "Certainly it is unfitting that he should be different from the others. It would be notorious disorder and nothing less. Has not Lady Flayshin given you any instructions on the matter?"
"She must have forgotten. I neglected to ask her for precise instructions."
"Then the duty devolves upon me. Go immediately to the store-room and get things to fit him. If luncheon is finished, he will have 23
to eat by himself, that's all. But i am resolved that he shall not mingle in those outrageous clothes with the pupils. It would be a case of the wolf in the fold!"
I did not understand in the least what was required of me; but with feelings more affected than I can tell, I quietly followed my conductress who now took me to the outfitting establishment. Here a vast number of little girls' dresses were hung up by hooks, while boxes containing boots with high heels were arranged in their order of size upon the shelves. There were drawers containing glazed kid gloves. Others contained petticoats, dress ing-jackets and pairs of stays. Then again there was a little girls' drawers department. In short, it was a typical wardrobe.
She began by taking my measurements with a great deal of vivacity. Her hands went hither and thither over my body and irritated my nerves. I became ill at ease and ashamed. She noticed my confusion and only laughed.
She quickly took my clothes off and found fault with the cleanness of my body, although Betsy had washed me all over that same morning. She therefore took me into an adjoining room which proved to contain a bath. I was plunged into the water and abundantly soaped. Her ands affected me indescribably. She seemed to put both malice and craft into her movements. When I appeared to her sufficiently white and clean, she dried me, delaying the operation longer than appeared necessary, and then led me back again to the clothes store.
She began by rigging me out in a little sleeveless chemise such as girls wear. Then she put on my legs very long stockings of black spun silk. After that, she decked me out in a little girl's drawers and a pair of stays which she tight-laced with all her strength, almost preventing me from breathing. The stiff whalebones then proved painful. But this physical discomfort was as nothing in comparison with the shame I felt at being thus dressed up in a fashion so little in accordance with my sex. Like all children of my age, I was not a little proud of being a boy. It seemed to me that this costume changed me undoubtedly into a girl.
I was not at the end of my martyrdom.
My shame increased and became intolerable when she attached the stockings to the stays by garters, and put elegant boots on my feet.
The latter were very narrow, arched, buttoned boots with an exaggerated instep, and very high Louis XV, heels; "French" heels, as we say in England. They went very high up the calf of my legs and the material was kid. The toes were excessively pointed and highly varnished.
They would no doubt have appeared to me elegant and pretty enough if worn by some lady or young person of the gentle sex, although at that time I had not yet paid much attention to ladies' feet.
When I comprehended that they were going to replace my flat-heeled boots; my good, laced boots so serviceable for running and walking, they appeared to me grotesque, odd and ridiculous. It seemed to me that I had never yet set eyes on such boots. I was ready to laugh and cry at the same time. I stood there looking in a stupefied way at the boots in the hands of the under-mistress, the latter being on the point of putting them on my feet. She became annoyed at my listlessness.
"Well, watt possesses you? When will you be done looking at me in that stupid way?"
"You are surely not going to put those boots on my feet?"
"Then you suppose wrong! I am going to put them on you at once."
"In the first place, I could never walk and run with those high heels!"
"You will get accustomed to them. By paying a little attention, you will succeed in walking very well with those heels. That will cure you of your naughty temper. Run? I absolutely forbid you to run. There is no running here!"