The hours I passed with adorable Miss Rosey in our discreet apartment will always remain in my mind as imperishable memories, for she caused me to enjoy sensations that can never be forgotten.
I now had to think of my departure. It was drawing nigh. I regretted to have to go. In Chicago, I had met the incomparable female flagellants: Miss Nelly Lamb, Miss Florence, and above all, Miss Rosey, the sweet little hotel-bookkeeper, who, beneath an appearance of candid simplicity, hid the soul of a bacchante and the sculptural form of a legendary princess. Where on earth should I ever find again such a casket of pearls? My passionate devotion to birching games had increased and developed through being enjoyed in the company of such ideal partners.
That lovely Thursday with Miss Rosey had been one long dream of radiant voluptuousness, but her rod unnerved me, when it ought to have appeased my craving. Her strokes, on the contrary, had awakened my desires, creating an impetuous inward need for some great, energetical shock. Therefore, before leaving the windy city, I sought for some severe punishment, which I thought should be inflicted on my shrinking stern, not by a lascivious flogging beauty, but by a severe governess, capable of inspiring me with awe.
I was within an ace of going to see Miss Florence, when a fortuitous circumstance caused me to find something better.
I luckily met once again the disciplinarian matron of the neighbouring school, who, it will be remembered, had so rigorously birched the young chambermaid at my boarding-house. The flogging lady was alone at this time, and I had to summon up all my courage before I dared address her. I stammered out my request quite timidly, but I had hardly uttered a few words before she flatly refused.
“No, sir, I don't whip men for their pleasure! There are heaps of women who make a business of this sort of thing. Go to them!”
I persisted, telling he that I prized a beating at her hands, because she was no common whipping woman, and that to be punished by her was almost ah honour; a privilege possessing peculiar piquancy.
“No, no, I cannot consent,” she said, “except on one condition. Had you committed some fault that really deserved chastisement, I might see things in a different light.”
Her declaration caused a glimmer of hope. I fancied I had found a way to realise my secret longing idea by mentioning some trivial motive, but I had hardly opened my lips than she stopped me.
“You are about to invent some foolish story. It won't go down with me. If you should do something deserving of punishment, write to me at the school. I shall then reflect. If I judge that the nature of your backsliding permits me to intervene, I will drop you a line to that effect.”
She turned on her heel and left me rather puzzled. I imagined a thousand things, rejecting them soon afterward one by one, until, at last, I recollected perfectly well that a few days before I had indeed been guilty of an error that was worthy of expiation.
I bought some gloves and neckties in a large drapery story, paying with a hundred-dollar bill. The young woman who served me had handed me fifteen dollars too much when she gave me my change. I saw the mistake soon after I left the shop, but out of sheer carelessness, I did not go back to reimburse the lady assistant.
I therefore wrote to my stern governess accusing myself of this slight sin of heedlessness. I awaited a reply with a feeling of great anxiety, but a note soon reached me. It read thus:
“Sir, ” wrote the whipping matron, “what you call negligence is real larceny. You had discovered the mistake and knew who would have to suffer from it. Your education and your social position ought to have rendered you incapable of such lightheaded conduct, causing you to neglect to set that striking example a man of your rank in the world should always be able to show his inferiors. There is not the slightest doubt but that your duty is to return without a moment's delay the sum of money you dishonestly appropriated to the person to whom it belongs. I will chastise you. You deserve severe corporal punishment. In order to endure it, you will present yourself at the school to-morrow, Saturday, at three o'clock, after the pupils have left. The janitor will show you my office. My fee is one dollar.”
I had attained my ends. I was to be deservedly birched by an official whipping matron, almost a legal flogging governess, if I may venture to say so. The modest figure of her emoluments proved that she deemed herself invested with honourable functions and did not seek to make money.
When I reached the school, a boy between twelve and thirteen, holding a letter in his hand, was talking to the janitor, who, as he lead me to the office of the disciplinarian schoolmistress, told the lad to follow him as well.
The flogging teacher, without troubling about me, except by replying to my respectful bow by a slight nod, glanced at the note brought by the youth.
“Quite well, Harry?” she said. “Your father and mother ask me to give you a good dressing down. Come along here, I shan't be long over it!”
On hearing these threatening words, the little chap started as if he had received a shock from an electric battery, and began to sob.
“Oh no, please ma'am! Don't whip me! Oh don't, I pray you!”
“I shan't be more than ten minutes birching this young fellow,” she said coolly, addressing me. “I will attend to you immediately afterward.”
She opened the door of an adjacent room and dragged the boy, still lamenting and struggling, in with her.
“Down with your pants!” was the order given to the weeping lad.
“Oh no, please forgive me, ma'am! I'll never do it again!” howled the child.
The door had been left ajar. I could see distinctly what was going on in the other room, where there was a heavy form and a heap of birch-rods piled up in a corner.
“Didn't I tell you to let down your pants!” repeated the matron in an authoritative tone.
“Yes, ma'am. But oh! — do pardon me. Never again will I be naughty!” the wretched boy trembled like a leaf, and the impatient woman slapped his face with such force that his head waggled about his shoulders for a few seconds afterward.
“So you won't take down your breeches?” she said.
“I'm letting them down-really I am!” stuttered the youth.
Without allowing him to complete this necessary act of partial disrobing, the termagant, in a rage threw herself upon him. Gripping both his hands, she tied them together at the wrists. She then threw him brutally on to the bench, passing a thick rope over his loins so as to bind him securely face downward. She then tore off his trousers completely, and wound a second stout cord round his legs, while he never ceased struggling and howling.
Catching up a strong rod, she set about flogging him with might and main, hitting him with real vigour. The lad yelled as if mad, bounding and writhing, despite his bonds. The terrible birching lady paid no attention to anything but her task. It looked to me as if she had lost her wits, for putting her entire strength, she literally covered the brat's little bottom with formidable slashing strokes.
It was a thrilling sight-this tall female, as frenzied as an enraged lioness, mercilessly cutting these palpitating boyish buttocks with practised, mighty blows of her stout birch. Her victim roared with acute pain. I trembled in every limb thinking how in a few minutes, I also should be bound down on that same bench, to be birched still more brutally, as I was older, and able to support still greater agony.
Nevertheless, the sensation that benumbed my entire being was not devoid of infinite voluptuousness. I struggled against a natural impulse prompting me to fly from such severe correction, and yet I remained as if my feet were nailed to the floor, incapable of movement. I was actuated by a furious desire to endure the torturing ordeal.
The spectacle became very thrilling; the teacher going on with her fierce birching, and her captive twisting about under the burning twigs, as he uttered heartrending cries.
Bits of birch flew about all over the room, and when at last the female executioner threw away the work stump of her rod, I breathed again. She unfastened the ropes and bundled the boy outside, without even giving him time to adjust his disordered garments.
Passing in front of me, she gave me a look that made me shudder.
“Go in the corner and undress!” she said roughly.
Just as the little boy left, a girl of about fifteen years of age came in. she brought a letter that the governess glanced over after tearing it open impatiently.
“What! More punishment?” she exclaimed. “Can I never have a moment's peace? They won't let me alone even during play-time!”
At the word 'punishment' the lass started.
“If you care, madam, to attend to this young lady before me, I can wait.”
She turned toward me in a fit of temper, and again eyed me with her cruel, piercing glance.
“I told you to strip, did I not? Have you heard what I said?”
I retreated in fear, and rapidly divested myself of coat and trousers. I felt very awkward at having to undress in the presence of the young girl, who, in the next room, could see me quite plainly.
The schoolmistress, without troubling about such a trifle, rummaged in the pile of rods, choosing a couple-the longest and strongest. She threw them on the floor near the bench, towards which she pushed me.
She tied a rope tightly round my back, winding another cord about my legs. They she bound my hands, without saying a word; her eyebrows knitted and her face distorted. Taking up the rod, she at once set it going smartly on my bare bottom. Blow succeeded blow at express rate, and I started and plunged, howling with pain. She flogged me with insensate exasperation, soon causing me to shriek in agony. I made useless desperate efforts to burst my bonds, but my struggles only caused the ropes to sink deeper into my flesh. The rod never ceased torturing me with its reiterated sting; swishing, cutting, mangling the sensitive skin of my posteriors. I groaned and choked, losing my breath under the excruciating avalanche of lashes that swept over my smarting rump like a torturing hurricane. The cruel monitress, caring nothing for my sufferings, never ceased flogging me pitilessly. Throwing down her rod, reduced to a mere stump, she grasped the second one, and my martyrdom continued without a moment's respite.
The fresh birch dug deeper than its predecessor into my raw rump, now bruised and tender. My blackened, swollen flesh quivered and pulsated at the renewed attack. I tugged at the ropes in despair, not knowing what to do to escape from such intense suffering. Each blow that flattened out the twigs with a tremendous crashing noise on my scalded stern, caused me to jump like a fish just hooked.
Blow after blow fell with regular monotony. The torture seemed to have lasted hours. When it came to an end at last, and the disciplinarian governess had loosened my bonds, I could hardly stand, so weak was I. Passing my hand over my excoriated hindquarters, I found my fingers suffused with blood. When I returned home after this thrilling experience, I met Miss Rosey in the hall.
“What ails you?” she said stopping me. “You're quite pale! You seem quite upset.”
“It's nothing,” I replied. “Just a trifling bilious attack.”
I had formed an idea that this brutal chastisement would perhaps have quenched my passionate thirst for birching torments, and even cure me entirely of my love for passive flagellation.
Nothing of the kind took place, and a night or two after this terrible punishment, my blood boiled again in my veins, carrying to every artery the burning lava that impelled me to seek for the ardent voluptuousness which can only be aroused by the influence of the rod.