Gynecocracy

CHAPTER 4

We assembled in the drawing room. I in a very low dress, which Elise had helped me to do. I had on one of my strictest corsets, laced "severely," and I was chiefly occupied with the hope that I should survive.

My shoes were cut low, my legs were encased in openwork stockings, and the heels of the shoes I wore were fearfully high.

I had roses in my hair, and a cluster of them at my breast. I was perfumed with eau de Cologne, my face was delicately rouged, and I endeavoured to comport myself like a young married woman and to meet my lover or husband for the once with aplomb.

He looked very well indeed, and I believe the girls envied me. Beatrice's face was a study; but just as I could not rid myself of the notion that I myself was acting, so an unholy and tantalising fancy kept bothering me that Lord Alfred Ridlington was doing the same.

Many symptoms appeared to me to confirm my suspicions. Notwithstanding all Mademoiselle's assertions and doings, I believed myself fundamentally masculine, and I began to think Lord Alfred Ridlington feminine.

However, the evening passed pretty much like that famous one which I spent for the first time in girl's dress when he had taken me to the conservatory, and my sensations were the same.

Lord Alfred took me into dinner and sat next to me. During it, and afterwards, he devoted himself to me, full of those little attentions so delightful to a girl. And upon this occasion we were quite en famille, there were no other men or guests.

At length, after a merry and exciting evening, I determined to exercise my prerogative and retire.

I kissed Mademoiselle as usual; and then, with a blush, I bade my lover good night. Prompted by some mischievous spirit, I said, as I did so: "You will not stay long in the smoking room, Alfred-you will come soon, won't you?" And I looked affectionately into his eyes. He gazed at me in return, first at my face and then at my gown and pretty ankles, which were disclosed by the way in which I had been schooled to hold up my dress when moving.

"Yes, dear," he replied, "at once if you like."

"Oh, no!" I answered, as a hot blush rose to my cheeks. "Give me time to get into bed." And I smiled at him.

As I left the room Beatrice also got up and wishing Mademoiselle good night, followed me.

She overtook me on the staircase.

"Julian, you wretch!" she exclaimed, with great disdain. "How can you behave like this? Don't you know you are engaged to me? Don't you know you are a boy, not a girl, and Lord Alfred-Lord Alfred indeed! Don't you know what he is!"

I very nearly dropped my candle.

"Don't you know?" continued Beatrice, with infinite scorn. "You are no more a girl than I am a boy, and he is no more a man than you are a girl!"

"No!" I at length answered, summoning up all the courage I possessed; and turning round, I looked her full and defiantly in the face. "I do not."

Beatrice flushed angrily.

"Go along to your room-do not let us have a scene here. Go to your room, and I will follow you."

Mercy upon us! I wished to be alone. Lord Alfred Ridlington, then Mademoiselle and her candle, now Beatrice and after her goodness alone knows what. However, I too felt we could not have a row there and therefore slowly ascended the stairs to my room.

"You think, I suppose," continued Beatrice, "that because you wear all this borrowed plumage you are a girl."

And she set about enumerating it.

"Because you have girl's shoes on, and a lady's stockings right up your legs, and drawers, and a chemise, and corset, and petticoats, you imagine that makes you a girl."

Beatrice's flush had left her by the time we reached the bedroom and she had grown stern and pale while with her flaming eyes she glared upon me.

She so frightened me that I could only ejaculate: "Oh, Beatrice!"

"Oh, Julian!" she retorted, setting down her candle. Then she placed her arms and hands on my shoulders and forced me down on to the sofa.

There was no room for doubting her sex. A girl, a very lovely girl, and now a very angry girl. I trembled.

She looked at me and then without another word slapped my face.

"Don't you know the difference between a boy and a girl yet? Have you not been often enough underneath my petticoats, and my hand often enough under yours? How can you be a girl with this thing?" And so saying she slipped her hand up my legs which fell apart instantly.

I gasped and shuddered under the violence of the assault.

"It is not my doing; how can I help myself?" I enquired coldly.

"Easily; you positively take a delight in belting your sex which is no longer yours to give away. Do you think I have not noticed all your tomfoolery with 'Lord' Alfred? I won't let you sleep with her."

"With her?"

"Yes, her."

"My goodness!" I observed. If he was she, the idea of sleeping with her was not, I must confess, altogether objectionable.

Beatrice saw she had made a blunder and I suppose this prompted the series of severe pinches she then gave me, the effect of which was to cause me to fall helplessly back upon the couch and to scatter all my ideas to the winds. She soon worked me into a condition of extreme excitement.

"There," she said, "how can you imagine yourself a girl now? Do you not long for me?"

"Yes," I replied, and in truth I did.

"Then lie flat down-on your back."

She whisked her skirts across my face and mine up to my middle. I very soon felt my mistress upon me.

"Now prove to me that you are a boy and I will satisfy you as to what I am."

Of course it had to be as she wished and it was so.

"Now get up," removing her exquisite leg from across me, "now get up, and undress and get into bed and imagine yourself a girl again if you dare. And try to be honest tomorrow!"

She took up her candle to go and I offered to kiss her, receiving another sounding and stinging slap upon my cheek in return.

"Very well!" I exclaimed, testily.

"Very well!" retorted Beatrice, at once stopping. "What do you mean? How dare you address me in such a tone?"

I looked at her but said nothing; I felt too indignant.

"Very well; just you wait one minute." Then she returned after a moment's absence with Mademoiselle's riding-whip. "Lie across the bed-on your face."

And notwithstanding my struggles, she forced me down, turned up my petticoats, held me with one arm, and inflicted some half dozen vicious stripes across my legs, over my drawers-a very poor protection, for the whip bit through them, and besides, their construction left an ample portion of my frame bare.

"Now," she said, recovering her breath, "it is very well!"

Before I had done writhing, she had left the room. As soon as I recovered I proceeded slowly to undress. I felt it could not be long now before Lord Alfred would join me and I wished to be in bed when he did come. As the shock and the pain gradually wore off I noticed my charms as they were one by one uncovered, and at last, diving into the heavily laced and frilled girl's nightdress which was placed for me, I jumped into bed. How delicious, how comfortable it was!

Silently, but angrily, resolving upon revenge on Beatrice, I ensconced myself at its further side. Its width and two large pillows pleasantly suggested what was to come. The long nightdress down to my feet, the lace ruffles at my wrists, the richly ornamented and bedizened fichu down my bosom, the cut of the garment fitting closely to my figure, impressed me with a deep sense of my girlishness.

I did not lie very comfortably upon my back because Beatrice's flogging had waled my thighs and had made them sore; but I lost the sense of discomfort in the sweet dreams promised by the night in store for me. The first I should have ever spent alone in bed with a man! The dim light, the warmth and luxury of my entourage, filled me with voluptuous enthusiasm and my mind with erotic notions and figures. I let my legs fall widely asunder. I little by little drew up the garment in front, the touch of my own fingers upon my legs strangely thrilling me.

I pictured to myself that it would be there Lord Alfred would lie; that his cold soft hand would make itself at home in that shrine, and prove but the precursor of the whole man himself, whom I should envelop with my being-then suddenly the thought struck me that I should have to lie not so-on my back-but on my face, and this disappointed me extremely.

I was still under the influence of the discontent this reflection had set up in my mind when Lord Alfred entered in his rich dressing robe.

"Julia," he presently said softly, his eyes sparkling and his voice resonant with a tone of deep complacency, "you shall not escape so easily now. Look here!" said the wicked man with deliciously cynical shamelessness and a recklessness which I enjoyed because it took my breath away. I looked and saw at the top of his legs-which, by-the-bye, I observed were plumper, rounder, and whiter than my own-and at the bottom of his exquisitely undulating abdomen an engine, fierce and formidable, exactly shaped as what I had in front of me but much larger. He wagged it with glee, menacing me with it so that I tingled from head to foot and hid my face in the bedclothes.

"Oh, no! No!" I cried.

"Yes," he rejoined with electrifying determination, "this is the great High Priest of Love who will take no refusal but insist upon entrance. He will unite you and myself."

"Oh, Alfred!" I cried.

"Come, my darling. You have instinctively assumed quite the proper attitude."

To my astonishment I was lying upon my face.

"Come, surrender to the tyrant!"

"Get into bed, Alfred!"

"No, Julia, you must submit naked this time."

Must submit naked! I did not feel at all inclined to abandon the pleasant warmth of my couch. I should have very much preferred his getting into it.

"Why, Alfred!" I said. "It has got no hair about it like mine, and-and-why have you those ribbons about your waist?"

"Oh! You see, Julia, Lady Alfred makes me work so hard, as you know from Mademoiselle, who has told you what she is, that the poor fellow has to be supported. These are patent American suspensory bandages. I am obliged to wear them; and the reason that he has no hair about him is that it has been all shaved off."

"Shaved off?"

"Yes," he rejoined quite coolly, repeating reflectively and sadly a minute or so later the same words, "shaved off."

"Why-how-because-because-you like shaving?" I enquired, perforce smiling at his lugubrious air.

"Oh, no!" he returned, with a laugh. "But just before I came here, Lady Alfred had reason to be displeased with me-I was really very tired at the time-and she shaved it all off."

I felt completely puzzled.

"May I feel him?" I asked, moving across the bed and putting on my hand.

He let me do so. My manipulation of the engine did not seem to affect him or it in the least. I looked up into his face. He then began to affect throbs of passion. My observation was quite acute enough to convey to my mind that it was acting or affectation on his part.

"I really don't know what it is," I observed, discomfited and dissatisfied.

He did not appear to me altogether comfortable.

"Lie across the bed and I will show you," he reiterated.

The situation had made me feel naughty, and I was disposed to acquiesce; but I remembered, when he turned up my night robe, he would be sure to see the wales of Beatrice's whip. How could I account for them? They might suggest certain things to him and he might, besides, mention them to Mademoiselle and then there would be a row and more wales, undoubtedly.

However, I knew he would have his own way in the end, and that, then seeking a reason for my obduracy, he would be led to attach undue weight at the marks which he would be sure to regard as the motive. Delay, it appeared, would be a mistake, so I exclaimed.

"Oh, Alfred!" and hid my face.

"What a coy girl it is!" he cried, amused and delighted.

Pushing away the bedclothes, he uncovered me, and drew my right leg across the mattress away from its sister leg.

Then he got between them both and embraced me. Removing a hand and arm, he inserted the implement and I noticed he kept his hand upon it.

My throes were very violent as he fell upon me, and before I went off in front, where his other hand had got to, he made the thing inject a quantity of warm fluid.

Then I got up. "Get into bed, Alfred," I directed, my suspicions fully aroused. "I shall tear that thing off when I return."

I hurried on a dressing gown and departed, knowing from experience the inconvenience I should suffer.

On my return I got into bed.

"Now," I said, "I shall play the part of a masterful wife! You shall be underneath, my boy!"

In the struggle the thing slipped; there was between it and him a total disconnection.

"Alfred," I exclaimed, "you are an impostor! I shall make you feel and receive the expression of what I feel."

I found an opening in front like Mademoiselle's; I pushed what I possessed into it. It was hairy like Mademoiselle's, but the hairs were so fair, so like the colour of the skin, that I could scarcely have detected them even if they had not been covered as they must have been.

I was extremely excited. Beatrice's reproaches rushed upon my mind. The unusual circumstances of being master also stimulated me. Notwithstanding protestations and observations, I pinned her down. I was really the stronger.

"Now I shall fuck you!" I cried.

She was silent, evidently meditating vengeance.

I did fuck her very violently.

"Lord Alfred," I then said, "you are a woman."

I tore open her nightshirt and played with her breasts-of course they were a woman's.

I saw it all now.

"What business have you to wear trousers?" I asked.

"How dare you wear petticoats?" she retorted with a bitter smile.

This dumbfounded me.

Lady Alfred jumped up at the first chance. She was Wild. "I shall call Mademoiselle," she said, and not heeding me, "he" hastily threw on a dressing gown and left the room.

Presently the door opened, and she re-entered; and immediately behind her came the stately form of my governess, carrying in her hand, to my great dismay, a long, lithe birch.

"So," said Mademoiselle, "you have turned a man into a woman, Julia, and insulted your lover."

"And he," I cried, defiantly, "has proved to me that I am a man after all."

I trembled and had grown very pale.

"I will argue with this," answered Mademoiselle, shaking her weapon.

Lady Alfred drew me, now incapable of resistance, from the bed, and put me on the couch. Then she dragged me across the end of it and held me down. Between them they got my nightdress up to my shoulders, and Mademoiselle then birched me until I was beside myself.

"There," she exclaimed at last, "now, Lord Alfred, I shall leave her to you. She has had a lesson she will remember."

I was too much overcome to object to the misuse of the pronoun.

I spent that night with Lady Alfred Ridlington, and she made me work very hard. She played the part of a husband, and I was made to lie on my back while she worked her wicked will.

Exhausted, towards daybreak we both fell asleep, and I dreamt that Lady Alfred Ridlington had metamorphosed me into a girl and had made my male attributes her own. I awoke to find her leg across me.

A long time seemed to pass before the matutinal refreshment came, as it did come at last, in the shape of chocolate.

"You are to be a girl and I a man still," she said, "because you must wear petticoats. I shall tame you. I know how you behaved to your governess just as she knows how you behaved to the nursery maid. You shall not pry underneath women's garments for nothing. You shall not make the indecent advances and the insulting propositions you made to your governess without punishment and therefore you will please understand you are a girl. Now turn over!"

The order was accompanied by the exercise of some physical persuasion, which, weakened as I was I did not know how to counteract or resist. The persuasion was indeed force; and from white feminine arms I could not withstand it.

It was terrible, though, to be outraged thus by a woman.

"You shall be made to be a girl to punish your naughtiness. I quite agree with Mademoiselle. It is the most effective punishment."

And so, before I got down to the breakfast room, I had to endure again, what I considered the last degree of degradation, three or four times.

My discovery certainly alleviated its severity, and the strangeness of the sensations gave me a certain animal gratification; but I knew that Lady Alfred Ridlington had no right to know me anywhere but in front.