Miss High-heels

CHAPTER 6

It was Helen's policy to make my life as a girl delightful to me. The next few months were pleasurable although tempered by fits of regret and remorse. But the fits did not last long. I was surrounded with luxuries. I was spoilt. I had beautiful dresses, a horse to ride, Violet to run about with, dainty tyrannies to endure, a great deal of liberty, and even better, exciting punishments. Miss. Priscilla's mind was extraordinarily fertile in this area. Her design was to mix pain and pleasure in an inextricable confusion in my mind, so that I should never be able to think great pleasure possible without the accompaniment of pain. And once this belief was implanted in my mind I would always long to remain in subjection to my feminine tyrants.

I remember addressing a flippant impertinence to her at a garden party. She took me at once to the motorcar and drove home with me. I was dressed in a long trailing frock of misty dark grey crepe de chine, with a big grey satin hat to match that was trimmed with grey ostrich feathers and a bow of green ribbon. I was wearing black silk stockings and little high-heeled patent leather button boots, smart and quite new. Miss. Priscilla led me into the punishment room where a sewing machine stood. She strapped my feet in their smart boots into the treadles, pushed a long mirror in front of me, and said, "Now get to work, Miss. High Heels!" I began to work the machine.

"Quicker! Quicker!"

I obeyed. In the mirror, I could see my little feet in their fashionable dainty boots flashing up and down, undergoing punishment.

"Still quicker!"

My thighs bruised one another. My face got red, not merely with exertion but also the delirium of passion. My feet raced up and down, and a wanton smile shone in my eyes and on my lips. Miss. Priscilla made me go on working the sewing machine in my dainty gown and fashionable bright buttoned boots for the rest of the afternoon.

That first autumn Helen gave a ball at Beaumanoir. I was dressed for the occasion in a plain, exquisitely fitting, long white velvet gown that moulded my figure like a glove and fell in softly gleaming folds to my feet. A white satin sash about the waist broke the line. Diamonds and pearls flashed on my white neck and shoulders. The gems glittered about my white-gloved wrists, and sparkled amidst my curls. My stockings, of course, were of the finest gauze silk and glittered with gems, while the fronts of my white satin slippers blazed with diamonds, and were finished with the daintiest bows made of diamonds. When my feet peeped out from the hem of my dress, one saw two little sparkling shields of diamonds. When I showed myself to Helen before the dance she gave me a warning.

"There's a great many coming to the ball, Denise, and very likely the ballroom will get hot. People no doubt will go out into the garden or onto the terrace between the dances. But you must not. Remember that! On a night like this, thieves may be lurking about the house, and you are wearing thousands of pounds worth of jewels. Your lovely little flashing slippers alone are worth a fortune. You wouldn't like to be kidnapped and robbed, would you Denise?"

"No," I replied with a shiver. "No indeed!" But secretly I did want to be kidnapped. I secretly wished to be tormented by faceless captors. And so I disobeyed Helen. Halfway through the dance, I went out onto the terrace and smoked a surreptitious cigarette with Violet. As I returned through the glass door into the drawing room I saw Helen. Worse-she saw me. She beckoned me across the room to her. She seized me by the hand and turned me with my face to the wall at her side.

"Your heels together at once, Denise, and your hands behind you," she whispered in a savage voice, and to Violet she said, "You can go to bed at once."

Miss. Priscilla, in a dress of dark mauve satin with a chemisette of lace filling the bosom, joined Helen. They waited until the other guests had returned to the ballroom. Then Helen slid back the panel that led to the punishment room and pushed me in roughly. Priscilla followed and closed it.

"I am sorry," I faltered, "that I disobeyed you, Helen."

Helen was in a rage.

"Gag her," she said savagely to Miss. Priscilla. A lace scarf gagged my mouth in a flash. They pinioned my elbows to my side and bound my hands in front of me with leather laces. I was dreadfully frightened. Helen was so furious, she was pale with anger.

"Stand up! Press your legs and feet tightly together, Denise!"

I obeyed. The two women stooped and while Miss. Priscilla gathered my lovely velvet dress behind my legs, Helen with a strong carpet needle actually sewed it up from my haunches to my ankles, spoiling the gown and sewing my legs together in a tight sheath of gleaming white velvet that revealed their contours. Oh, there would be no more dancing for me tonight in my sparkling satin slippers!

Then while Miss. Priscilla supported me, Helen tied my ankles, which were exposed, tightly together with a leather strap and knotted it angrily.

A bright fire was blazing. They placed me a on a chair close to it and then Helen sat down on a stool at my side.

"Take care that Miss. Denise does not fall off the chair, Aunt," she said grimly.

Miss. Priscilla held me firmly by the shoulders. Oh, what were they going to do with me? I was helpless! Helen stooped, lifted my legs rigid and helpless in their gleaming velvet sheath, and held my strapped feet in their diamond-covered slippers close to the blaze of the fire.

"I'll teach these pretty high-heeled things to walk where I tell them," she cried, and she held my legs firmly while the heat of the flames tortured my feet. I writhed and struggled.

"Yes, twist about, Denise!" she said savagely. "A lot of good it will do you."

Perspiration burst out on my forehead. My slippers were scorching, and my toes curled and twitched inside the slippers. The diamond bows and sparkling fronts flashed and glittered. I was helpless. I could not even cry out. The flames almost touched the soles of my shoes. The pain was terrible. I was on the point of swooning when they took me from the fire and stretched me out on a sofa for the rest of the evening. I did not recover the full use of my feet for a week.

Soon afterward, a young and rising politician who had made his way without influence or friends came to our neighbourhood to make a speech. I went with Helen and Violet, and sat upon the platform. The speaker had a great reception and made a magnificent speech. The cheers and enthusiasm of the meeting tortured me. If he, without help, could rise so soon to such a position, what a splendid career I ought to have with all my advantages! I returned home sad and discontented. I followed Helen to her boudoir.

"How long is this going to last?" I asked. "How long are you going to keep me in girls' clothes, and rob me of my position?"

Helen looked at me calmly.

"Not a moment longer than you wish, dear," she said. "You shall come out of your girls' clothes now."

I was wearing a very pretty black velvet gown ornamented with big satin buttons, patent leather shoes with silver buckles, a big black hat with blue ribbons of satin tied on one side under the chin and long white kid gloves. Helen stripped me there and then of everything except my black silk stockings and garters, and my high-heeled shoes. Then she strapped my hands behind me.

"Come, Denise," she said, taking me by the arm. Opening the door, she pushed me into the passage. I was dreadfully ashamed. I tried to hide myself against her. I begged her pardon.

"Too late," she said grimly.

She took me down into the little drawing room and made me stand in the corner there until it was time to dress for dinner.

"There is a dinner party tonight dear," she said to me. "You shall appear as Dennis Beryl and I hope you will like it."

Phoebe dressed me in a girls' chemise and drawers with heavy lace frills, laced me into a corset tighter than I usually wore by an inch, gloved me to the shoulders in white kid, put a very decollete corsage of white satin and lace onto me. And then she produced a little tight pair of black velvet knickers, which only reached to the middle of my thighs and were fastened there with diamond buckles and big jewelled buttons, leaving the frills of my drawers exposed. Girls' transparent black stockings strained tightly up to the corsets held up by garters of blue satin just above my knees. The frills of my drawers were constantly exposed. Then Phoebe put me in girls' patent leather shining slippers with diamond buckles and scarlet Louis Quinze heels five and a half inches high, setting off my legs and feet.

A short-sleeved black velvet coat, made in the style of Fragonard's pictures, lined with white satin and smart with jewelled buttons, was slipped over my bodice and cut tightly into my corseted waist. It was open in front and showed my decolletage, my swelling bosom, and my girl's throat. My hair was taken down, arranged in long shining curls, and held back from my face with a white satin ribbon tied in an enormous bow. Earrings, necklaces, and bracelets completed this costume. What made it still more humiliating was a horrible arrangement in front of the tight knickers. A grotesque leather codpiece covered and cupped my penis, to bring exaggerated attention to it.

In this degrading dress, Phoebe dragged me with jeers along the passages of my own house to Helen's bedroom.

I was in tears. Helen chained my hands behind me and fixed little black fetters of polished steel on my ankles. She was deliciously dressed in pink satin.

"Turn around, Miss. High Heels," she said sternly.

"That is your name for the future-Miss. Dennis High Heels; the only name you will be known by. Turn around and let me see that the seams of your delicate stockings are straight." She showed me to myself in the mirrors. I looked just like a freakish grown-up girl wearing the external costume of a boy for some fantastic masquerade.

"Oh Helen," I moaned "you can't show me off dressed like this. You promised that I should be dressed as a girl."

"You certainly aren't dressed as a young lady, Dennis," she said with a laugh. "Young ladies don't show the frills of their pantaloons as a rule, nor so much pretty stocking. Nor do they wear flaunting scarlet heels as high as yours. Only improper women and young effeminate gentlemen wear five and a half inch heels on their dainty shoes."

"But the codpiece in front-that's horrible."

"You will wear that, dear, as the symbol of your subjection to my sex, the sign that the sex of women is imposed over your sex."

Handcuffed and fettered in this dress I was carried downstairs in Phoebe's arms into the drawing room, and presented to my neighbors assembled for dinner. I could have died of shame. Congratulations were showered upon Helen.

"What an improvement!" cited Mrs. Dawson, the vicar's wife. "He is very like Denise."

"Yes, I wish Denise could have stayed," said Helen, "for us to compare them. She has gone home to her aunt this afternoon, where I am afraid she is not very happy."

The ladies crowded round me, the men guffawed contemptuously.

"I think the fetters and handcuffs complete the dress so prettily," said Lady Hartley.

"The shoes are very smart," Lady Hartley continued. "High-heeled girls' shoes are such a good thing for wilful and disobedient young gentlemen."

"He has certainly never looked so pretty," said Guy Repton with a snigger. "I am sure he ought to be very grateful to his young stepsister for the dainty care with which she has dressed and moulded his figure."

Thus they talked of me as though I were nothing more than a statue. I stood red with shame. During dinner I was made to stand up at the centre of the table before them all with my heels together, and was only allowed to eat when they were having dessert. After dinner I shuffled in my fetters into the drawing room. Helen placed me in a chair with my feet on a satin footstool, gave me some embroidery to work at with my gloved fingers, and told me to be silent.

At ten o'clock she took the work away. "You mustn't spoil your pretty eyes, dear," she said. "And you mustn't read a novel for you would soil those dainty white kid gloves with the cover, and you mustn't dance for your scarlet heels are too high. You had better come with me. Violet, will you come too?"

Helen slid back the panel of the punishment room, and made me lie face downward on a white satin ottoman. She placed a white satin cushion under my bosom to lift it up.

"Hold up your head, Evelyn High Heels. That's right." She took a little patent leather strap and bound my white-gloved hands tightly behind me. Then she carefully turned up the lace frills and strapped my legs together above the knees. With a third biting little patent leather strap, she fixed my ankles together. Finally with a fourth strap, she tied my feet back to my hands in the most painful fashion.

"Violet will you see that Miss. High Heels keeps her pretty face up and does not move."

Violet took a book and sat down in a comfortable chair beside the ottoman. She would not even deign to speak with me when I was dressed as Dennis.

I was so strained in my miserable position that I could not keep still, and holding my head back and face high in the air wracked my neck. Yet, if I stirred Violet pinched my calves mercilessly, and if I lowered my face to rest my neck, she boxed my ears until my head sang.

"I thought you loved me, Violet," I said.

"I loved a very pretty girlfriend called Denise," she replied coldly.

"How do you like being a man, Miss. High Heels? Keep your bright little slippers still! It is not entire joy being a man after all is it? It would have been, had you remained a girl."

Helen and Miss. Priscilla came back in an hour, sent Violet to bed, and took down my knickers.

"We are going to start you off on your new career as a high-heeled young gentleman with a good birching," said Helen.

Helen birched me in this ridiculous costume until I thought my head would burst. They removed my knickers and laid me again on my face on the ottoman. They doubled back my legs and tied my right foot up to my right gloved elbow, my left foot to the left elbow, my hands, of course, being still strapped behind me. Then they dragged my thighs apart and secured them in this position. Helen took a new birch. In her exquisite rustling frock of pink satin, her little satin slippers peeping restlessly out beneath the skirt, her face flushed and radiant with enjoyment, she looked wonderfully pretty. She stood beside me with her back to my head. Holding my left foot in her left hand, she flogged me between the thighs, attacking the soft white flesh viciously.

I screamed for mercy.

"You had better be thoroughly birched tonight, darling," she said, "The recollection will save my pretty Miss. High Heels many a birching in the future."

The twigs split and slashed me between my thighs, curling up onto my stomach underneath and torturing the most tender parts of my body.

Then she set me free.

"Put on your knickers, Dennis," Helen said with disdain.

Writhing with pain, I took off my slippers for I could not have gotten the tight knickers over my high heels. I drew on my pantaloons and knickers, and Miss. Priscilla fixed them up and buttoned and buckled the cod-piece at my poor, welted thighs. Then she removed my coat, stays, and chemise, stripping me naked from the waist upward. There were some panels of looking glass in the walls. How strange I looked in the reflection. The buckled slippers the silk stockings, the frills, the pretty black velvet knickers with the jewelled buttons-and rising out of them the white bosom and shoulders of a girl!

They forced me on the ottoman at the end to which a pair of stocks was fixed. They put me on my face, fixing my ankles in the stocks and my hands down to the legs of the ottoman.

"It is your turn now, Aunt," Helen said to Miss. Priscilla.

I was sobbing as if my heart would break.

My thighs were on fire.

"Oh, please, no more," I wept piteously.

Helen took a seat in front of me and slapped my tear-stained face with playful fingers.

"We are going to dress you in a scarlet corsage dear, which will go extremely well with your smart black velvet knickers. It will be a skin-tight decollete corsage, and Aunt Priscilla's birch will do all the dressmaking. I am not sure that it ought not to be a high-necked corsage. We will see. Go on, Auntie."

Miss. Priscilla took a new birch, long and supple and horrible. She swished it up and down and then she began cutting my back from left to right, and afterward from right to left, carefully avoiding the skin of my shoulders, which an evening bodice would have exposed.

I struggle and yelled and sobbed.

"Oh, it's dreadful! It's intolerable! Oh, take all my fortune! Turn me out as a beggar! Only don't torture me!" I was feeling none of the pleasure with this pain, for I was not dressed in my lovely women's clothing.

Helen laughed and lifted up her lovely little pink satin slipper to my mouth.

"Kiss my foot, dear!"

I obeyed. The feel of her warm dainty instep under my lips almost made me forget the pain and terrible loss I was suffering.

"There, that will do," said Miss. Priscilla. She released my hands and bound them behind me. I had no power of resistance. I was twitching and writhing and torn with sobs, but they had no pity for me. They turned me over on my back and then Miss. Priscilla birched my stomach. The agony of that punishment was the worst of all. When she released me, I was trembling from head to foot, my teeth were chattering, I was going to swoon.

"No nonsense, Miss. High Heels," said Helen sternly.

"Stand up prettily in your bright-buckled slippers and pretty velvet knickers."

She gave me some champagne and brandy. Then she took a little riding whip.

"Oh, no more!" I screamed in horror.

"We shall teach you obedience, darling. There is a good one and here's another. Oh, we'll cook you well. All your wealth. All your jewels. All your pretty clothes and high-heeled shoes won't save you."

She kept turning me round, searching out white spots on my body, and when she found one, she slashed it until it matched the rest of me.

"There you are dear. A scarlet corsage!" she said, kissing me contemptuously. Phoebe was rung for, and she carried me, half-naked and sobbing bitterly, upstairs and put me to bed.

I remained in bed ten days, thinking-thinking very hard. On the eleventh day, I was able to bear corsets once more around my breasts. I was allowed to get up. It was evening, after dinner. I was dressed in the most wonderful costume of palest lavender satin: decollete corsage, a sash with long gold-fringed streamers down to the heels of my shoes, and a great bow at my back, short satin knickers with a ruby buckle in front, and diamond buckles at the thighs, the frills of my drawers- which also were short and did not hide my knees-fluttering, open-worked silk stockings and satin slippers that were covered with diamonds and had diamond bows besides and five and a half inch heels, and, of course, long white kid gloves.

I was led to Helen. She kissed me affectionately.

"Helen, please don't keep me dressed like this!"

"But I love you like this," she said leading me to a long mirror. "Stand with your satin slippers together. You look exquisite, dear, with your curls swinging down to your waist and your tall slender figure encased in lavender satin."

"But I can't go out dressed like this."

"This is an evening dress, darling. You can go out in your velvet knickers and your little buttoned patent leather boots."

"But everybody will jeer at me."

"I think that you will find that they will make love to you, dear," Helen answered with a smile.

"But when am I to be allowed to wear trousers again?"

"Never," said Helen decidedly. She sat down. I stared at her aghast.

"Never?"

"Of course not. How can you wear trousers with those hips and that waist and that pretty posterior?"

"But it's my corset that intensifies the girlish look of them," I said blushing deeply.

"No doubt, but you can never get rid of your corset darling. Remember that you have a girl's round breasts. You must have a support for them, otherwise your figure would soon be ruined. It would be ridiculous to let you wear trousers. You look pretty now. You would only look silly and rather improper in trousers."

I got red with confusion.

"Yes," Helen went on, "I am responsible for your good name. That can never be."

I saw that it was in vain to bend her. I recognized the truth in her observations. She and Miss. Priscilla had gotten their revenge. I had inherited my father's fortune and in return they had irrevocably made me a girl.

I fell on my knees before her, as she had prophesied that I would.

"Then Helen I have been thinking. Let Dennis Beryl disappear altogether."

I saw a flash of triumph in her eyes.

"Let him die! You will become mistress of the estate. Let Denise return to you. I am never to marry. I am never to wear trousers. I want to be your pretty slave. Let me have the life of a girl."

Helen kissed me ardently. She had been bringing me to this.

"I will make you very happy, Denise," she said. "I will keep you beautifully dressed. You shall have Violet, your friends, all the fine enjoyments."

So it was settled. With Guy Repton's help, my enormous fortune was easily arranged. I was sent down dressed as a girl under Miss. Priscilla's charge to a little lonely house by the sea. Helen announced that Dennis had gone to a German university to complete his education. A student dying of consumption with a very poor family was bribed (as were his parents) to assume my name. He died and was cremated as Dennis Evelyn Beryl. His tombstone is in a little churchyard in Bonn.

Helen went to Germany for the funeral. No one raised any difficulties or suspected fraud. Guy Repton was well paid. All over my estate, the tenants were delighted that Helen was now the real owner and mistress. On her return, she announced that she was going to make a home for Denise Beryl out of memory for poor Dennis. Denise had made herself popular. Denise was welcomed. I came back as a girl. Violet was delighted. What of me? Let one final scene be the answer.

Two years later a magnificent ball is held at a great house at the height of the London season. A conservatory is screened with palms and dimly lit. Through the door comes the languorous music of a waltz. Inside the conservatory two armchairs sit close together. In one sits a girl dressed in a lovely rich frock of white velvet, pink roses in her corsage and in her hair, jewels on her white neck and her gloved wrists. Her red lips are smiling, her bright eyes sparkling, her fair face radiant with pleasure. At her side, bending toward her, is a young handsome man with a forceful look upon his face. It was the young man who made the brilliant speech in Hampshire and become a cabinet minister. The young man speaks. "Denise, I must call you Denise. You are adorable from your curls to the tips of your satin slippers."

Denise laughs, blushes and coquettishly places together the little white shining high-heeled shoes in his view.

"My heart is beneath them," says the young man. "How shall I prove it?"

Denise turns her sparkling eyes to her companion.

"Kiss them on your knees," she says. They think they are alone. The young man drops on his knees and reverently kisses the small feet. Denise springs up with a laugh.

"I must go. I have a partner for this dance."

"You will give me your hand?" the young man implores.

"You ask too much," says Denise with a smile, "I have already given you my feet."

She runs lightly to the ballroom. She has lost her position, her fortune, her authority as a man, but she has gained, as a girl, a power that few men ever enjoy.