Anonymous - Gynecocracy

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.

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.

The bedroom was girlish in its simplicity. Maud's own precocious corporeal development was no doubt attributable to her habit, originally compulsory, afterwards persisted in from pleasure, of tight lacing; her mental precocity or pruriency was attributable both to Mademoiselle and to nature. I noticed several clever pictures in her bedroom; all studies of the nude.

Turning to me she said: "I want an Adonis or an Apollo. Strip and let me see whether you can fill the part. Besides, I want to-to-to analyse you. I need knowledge of anatomy for executing the drawings I love. Besides which I love the study of male anatomy for itself. I shall therefore study you. So far as I am concerned you shall always remain masculine. I admire virility. If I punished you it would be for effeminacy. How disgraceful to allow yourself to be treated as you are. How degrading! Mean creature that you must be. But while Agnes was flogging you yesterday, I saw enough of your legs and back to make me wish to see more. Undress!"

She then sat down at her ease in a low armchair, calmly waiting to have her order carried out.

I leant against the bed, half sitting upon it. I had naturally expected by this time to have become hardened and indifferent to the ordeal of being divested of all my garments by a girl and compelled to expose my nakedness to her. But, to my surprise and consternation, I found I experienced quite as much trouble and confusion upon each repetition as upon the first occasion. Shame did not wear off.

The idea of undressing before this elegant girl, alone with her in her own room, caused me the greatest perturbation and confusion.

Steadfastly gazing at me she noticed my hesitation and reluctance. A queer light came into her eyes, and she moved her body in her low chair in a certain manner which I recognized and knew to portend mischief. She was resting her cheek on her hand, and her skirts, never too long, had worked halfway up to her knees. Her ankles were delicate and pretty. When she saw me looking at them, with a becoming consciousness, she tried to shake the garments down.

I wondered how much she knew.

I commenced a calculation of how far she would go. What it would be worth my while to do.

She was evidently in a flutter herself, and without that self-possession and repose so characteristic of Mademoiselle.

She was nervous plainly and sensible of the want of that impelling magic or mesmeric power which compelled obedience to Mademoiselle's orders however shocking and outrageous they might be.

So, feeling my advantage I began to sulk.

"Julian," she said, "do as I desire. I shall whip you if you don't." I twinged, and considered whether she could. "Undress yourself directly. Come, I have no time to lose; besides, I will not pay five pounds for nothing! Undress, I want to see you."

I still hesitated and only looked at her mutely.

"You are wasting all the time," she said, angrily. "If you do not undress at once I declare I shall call Elise and make her bind you, and will lash you without mercy myself. Come!" she said, half rising. "Must I, or will you do what I wish?"

Now the appearance of Elise on the scene would have spoilt all. I much preferred a quiet tete-a-tete with my cousin uninterrupted by Elise and her brutalities. But Maud made a great mistake in invoking another power instead of relying upon her own. I said so.

"I might do for you, Maud, what force and Elise could not make me do." I hazarded a gentle emphasis on the pronoun.

"Very well, then, be a good boy, and please me. I do not like force; I think its employment inelegant. I wish to conquer by my-by my- what Mademoiselle would call — charms," she said, with a most winning air of pretty embarrassment, coyly looking down as if frightened by her own temerity and uncertain of the response.

She had touched my weak point. "Indeed," I instantly answered, with a look freely expressing the admiration I felt, "they are sufficient." And my frank tone conveyed the sincerity of my conviction. The effect was magical.