Gynecocracy

I) "that, if you like, you shall some day give me a portion of that which you long to give Mademoiselle."

I must add by way of epilogue to this portion of my experiences that it was not pleasant to kiss and lick a bottom, although a maid's. It gave one a shocking sort of thrill such as the ancients may have known when sailing through the Symplagades. They dreaded that the giant rocks might close and crush them. I did not feel sure what a bottom might not do. I had had a fright in the bath. Mademoiselle had not made me kiss hers. If she had, I should have had no fear. With Elise it was different. I wronged her by my fears, however. The contact of her flesh was very sweet and she did nothing indelicate. Would, Lady Alfred Ridlington, I could say the same of you! But I am anticipating.

After breakfast I was hung up again. I urged all I could think of, imagine, or invent. I begged, I prayed Elise; I grovelled on the ground and besought her to let me off this terrible maddening punishment.

She only answered with her dog whip.

In the afternoon, I was made to sew in the workroom- the task was only an excuse for tormenting me. At frequent intervals I was laid across the sofa and, my clothes turned up, a handkerchief stuffed into my mouth, and I was lashed for clumsiness and for not performing the impossibilities I was ordered to accomplish.

CHAPTER 20

Under Elise-lent To Maud

I was driven to distraction, my eyes were full of tears, my hands trembling. I could not sew; and Elise had jumped up to practise some newly invented torture upon me when steps sounded outside. This awakened a faint hope of rescue, to be extinguished almost as soon as alive, for who would interfere to protect me? Who could it be, on that day, at that time? For it was Saturday, a half-holiday.

Maud came into the room, and to my great surprise, calmly begged Elise to lend me to her, telling her that she wanted to birch me, to pull me about, to have me at her mercy, and to make me obey her during the afternoon. Elise at first was obdurate, said she feared Mademoiselle, and dared not take the risk, as she would lose her place. At last, however, she sold me. Maud offered her three pounds. Elise would not hear of it. "Four!" — Nonsense, she would take nothing; it was not a question of money. — "Five!"

"Well, really, Miss Maud, you are too importunate; but five pounds are not to be gained every day, and-and- Mademoiselle is out and she need not know anything about it-and if you give them me now-"

Whereupon Maud took out her purse and told down five golden sovereigns, which Elise greedily snatched up.

"Now listen to me," she said, addressing me, and smacking my face and head till my ears sang, "one word of this to Mademoiselle and I shall hang you up for three hours tomorrow. That will be Sunday and there will be nothing to prevent me doing so. Three hours whether you die of it or not."

Maud had already got me by the ear.

"There he is, Miss Maud. He is yours till teatime, anyhow. Take him."

"Come along," said Maud, giving my ear an unpleasant jerk.

Maud was the eldest of the three sisters and was the very proper and faultless one. I believe she would have expired of spleen, had she been convicted of a fault, so implacable did she regard herself, and so thoroughly was she convinced of the fact that whatever she did must necessarily be right. She was cold, hard, proud, and formal; she spoke in measured phrases, never on any occasion betraying the slightest agitation; thoroughly wrapped in herself and her own perfections, her selfishness was astonishing.

As soon as we were outside the workroom door she let go my ear and stared coldly at me from head to foot.

"You look like a girl," she said in a disappointed tone. "I wonder whether after all you are really one. Follow me to my room anyhow." And she led the way to the back stairs, which, holding her skirts up daintily in front, she slowly ascended. As she did so immediately before me I could not help seeing what a nice girl she was. Her skin was white, her hair a delicious brown, wavy, and thick. Her form was elegant and with a girlish promise of development about it that was exciting; all her movements characterised by a graceful ease that gave her swing a decided charm.

She had two rooms on the third floor opening into each other and overlooking an Italian garden. One was furnished as a bedroom and the other as a studio. It was in elegant and artistic disorder with all an artist's litter about. Maud's forte was painting, drawing, and modelling in clay.

She took me through into her bedroom and locked both the outer doors; each room having a door opening upon the landing.