Anonymous - Maude Cameron And Her Guardian

Norah Byron timidly knocked at the door of Mr. Cameron’ s private chamber, as she had been directed to do so by Alice, who had met her and Charlene at the door of the house and indicated that Charlene was to accompany her to Maude’ s room, whilst Norah was to wait in the hallway till Alice came back to escort her to the interview with the principal.

The charming Miss Byron had no knowledge of why she was being summoned to an interview with the principal himself, but, being of high- strung emotional nature and not without a sense of secret guiltiness over her escapade with Charlene- indeed, the presence of Charlene at the house with her had given her a singular sense of foreboding- she was already in some considerable nervous trepidation as she timidly knocked at the door and heard his summons to enter.

His stem features did not altogether reassure her, nor did the fact that he was not suitably clad to receive a young lady as befitted his position at the school, seeing that he wore a dressing robe over his nightshirt, and slippers, though the robe was tightly belted and at least evinced sufficient propriety for the occasion. As for the brown- haired culprit, she was delicious in her regulation costume of shirtwaist and black skirt and the black silk hose which, despite the lowness of the skirt’ s hems, did not hide very fetching, shapely, slim ankles.

“ Good evening, Miss Byron,” he began gravely. “ I have to ask you to accompany me at once, without questions. It is essential that we have the utmost privacy, as what I have to say to you requires a good deal of delicacy, in view of your mature age and the circumstances which make this interview necessary. Come this way, if you please.”

Wonderingly, her cheeks already starting to crimson, Norah Byron followed the imperious head of the Cameron School for Girls, but her apprehension as she descended the narrow stairway leading to the cellar grew by the moment. “ Oh, sir,” she quavered, “ I don’ t understand-”

“ You will in due course, Miss Byron. Follow me. You will have adequate explanation before long, I warrant you,” was his crisply authoritative answer.

They had reached the cellar, whose gloomy darkness did not ease Miss Norah Byron’ s fears in the slightest, especially when, as Mr. Cameron now took his lighted taper and turned up the gas and lighted it, she suddenly perceived the curious accoutrements with which it was furnished. “ Ohh!” she gasped, shrinking back.

He had added several apparatuses to its confines since last year; a steel triangle, shaped like an isosceles, with a metal ring soldered at the very top and inside the frame- to which a captive’ s wrists could be securely corded; a solid, wide, square table under a ceiling pulley; a trapeze bar which already had been lowered to within the reach of hands raised above the head of an average- sized female; a dome cushion fixed to the floor, exactly like those in the gymnasium. And a leather- padded gymnasium horse, complete with buckling straps. Whilst on the walls, Norah Byron’ s dilated eyes could behold a panoply of hooks from which hung the cord grips of white rattan and Malacca canes, or leather tawses, or a model of the leather spanker which was used for Friday chastisements in the gym in the other building, as well as coiled rubber and leather dog whips and martinets with shining red or black wooden handles and tapering thongs whose sinister serpentining shapes foretold burning retribution for sins committed or obeisances omitted.

Her eyes suddenly fell on an oblong box from which emerged the cloth- bound handles of several birch rods of various thicknesses and lengths, and Norah Byron was suddenly terrified.

Staring at her with greedy eyes, Mr. Cameron observed the highly satisfactory effect this preview of his private Inquisition chamber had induced, and in his mind already were maddeningly tantalizing images of how her soft white flesh would be adapted to the numerous contrivances in this ominous subterranean chamber where she was now helplessly and completely his prisoner.

Yet in spite of the somber nature of the room, it had its elegancies too; a comfortable thickly upholstered armchair, a buffet table and sideboard, on which decanters of port, sherry and excellent whiskey posed. And it was in this armchair which Charles Cameron now seated himself, studying the trembling young lady before him with a stern expression which made poor Miss Norah Byron’ s heart erratically skip a beat or two.

“ Now then, Miss Byron,” he relished his carefully chosen words, this preamble to punishment’ s consequence, “ you are doubtless asking yourself the reason for my having ordered your presence here.”

“ Y- yes, s… sir.”

“ I told you that we must have complete privacy, which is why I brought you here away from the house so that my wards, who are your instructresses, would not be compelled to learn about your unspeakable misconduct, Miss Byron. For it they did, I have no doubt they would urge me to expel you at once, lest you contaminate the other girls assigned to my charge and theirs.”

“ Ohh- s- sir!” she gasped, putting out a hand by way of trying to say something in her own defense. “ You cannot recognize what I refer to, Miss Byron?” he shot her a steely glance.

Norah Byron’ s lovely, poignant face was flooded by a vivid blush, a characteristic trait of those addicted to the stealthy practises of onanistic stimulation, which is to say exactly what Miss Byron was inherently guilty of. Nonetheless, a faint, stammered, “ N- no- no, s- sir” exuded from between her trembling, full soft lips.

“ I understand your reluctance to confess your naughtiness, Miss Bryon,” he resumed, enjoying his discomfiture and marking how beautiful she became from the telltale blush, “ it is something a young lady does not care to discuss with a member of the opposite sex, for it is perverse and wicked to the utmost. But understand this now, my girl, I am your principal, not just a man, and it is because you have committed an unpardonable sin against the morals of my school that you are here this evening. My niece, Miss Cameron, detected you last night with Miss Davidson in the linen closet-”

“ Ohhhhh! S- sir!” Norah Bryon uttered a frantic gasp of shame, a hand to her mouth, and her blushes intensified, if that were possible. “ Then you admit your presence there and with the aforementioned young lady, who at this very moment, is being dealt with as she deserves by Miss Cameron?” he pursued.

Norah Bryon wrung her shapely, long slim hands, and her magnificent young bosom violently heaved under the thin, clinging shirtwaist. A pulse was hammering in her soft white throat, and Mr. Cameron’ s gaze avidly fixed that adorable hollow, divining what delicious treasures below that nook would soon be as bare as her throat, once shirtwaist and skirt and other more intimate garments had been cast off- as well they would be.

“ Your silence is damning confession, then, Miss Byron,” he gravely continued. “ There remains the consequence of your shamelessness, which is to say, your punishment. You may prepare yourself, therefore, to receive it.”

“ Ohhh!” Norah Bryon gasped again, her face averted, still furiously crimson. “ S- sir, I- I know I- I was in- indiscreet-”

“ That,” he broke in ironically, “ hardly begins to cover the nature of your naughtiness.”

“ B- but, I- I am a c- coward, and I- I cannot- cannot bear p- pain very well, Mr. C- Cameron, I.. I beseech you, please do not h- hurt me- I- I suppose you- you are going to- to c- cane my h- hands- I- I have heard that girls are p- punished this way in sc- school.”

“ It will not be your hands that are caned, Miss Bryon. No, the punishment is to be inflicted on a much more intimate place.”