The Bride of Bowmanor

by Helen Highwater

 

Chapter Two

Miss Priscilla inspects me. In silk stockings and slippers. I am to be punished. Miss Helen's delight at my changed appearance. What two years at a girls' school can do. My bosom and Miss Priscilla's theory. Miss Helen tempts me to subjection in vain

************

I had despised her two years ago. I shivered with alarm now. Yet she had not changed. She was the same neat, precise, thin, elderly spinster with the patient air of submission. It was I who had changed and at her bidding. At an age when even the poorest of youths begin to gain their liberty, I, probably the very richest in the country, the head of one of the oldest families in the country had been calmly stripped of mine by this old maid and her niece; and they had been able to do it through their insight into my character. That is what I suspected at the time. What I was soon to know was the truth.

Miss Priscilla was dressed in a high-necked plain gown of grey silk; she wore the flat square-toed ugly shoes, which used to excite my ridicule. The solitary touch of luxury about her was a long pair of white satin gloves, which she wore upon her arms. She looked at me coldly, critically; there was no expression upon her face and so much had my two years at the girls' school done to effeminatize me that I became curious as to what she thought of my looks and a little hurt - yes, let me admit it - a little hurt that she was not betrayed into an expression of admiration. She opened the leather-cases and a rippling fire of jewels at once made the room glorious to my girlish eyes. She advanced to me. They were for me then those glittering streams of diamonds, those lustrous rows of pearls! Oh I loved jewels! She fixed a high collar of diamonds round my throat with a diamond bow and a tiny diamond tassel dangling from it, just behind the left ear. Around my shoulder she passed a double row of magnificent pearls which hung down to my waist. She fixed earrings of big pearls set with diamonds in my ears, which had been pierced. She fixed a diamond star amongst my curls, a diamond brooch in the roses at my waist.

"Give me your hands, Denise," she said and on my wrists she fastened lovely bracelets of gold flashing with diamonds and pigeon-blood rubies. They were very tight, and then she fixed another similar pair above my elbows smoothing up my long gloves carefully before she clasped them on.

"They will keep your pretty gloves tidy and smooth", she said. "Now you can join your hands again behind your back." With each movement the soft fire of the flashing stones ran over me like water. Oh now I wished to see myself in them! There were a couple of big full-length mirrors with three panels each such as one sees in a dressmaker's atelier. But the panels were closed.

"What is Miss Denise's waist-measure?" Miss Priscilla asked of Phoebe. "Twenty inches, Miss," replied Phoebe.

"And the height of his heels?"

"Four inches."

Miss Priscilla nodded her approval; she turned to me.

"Have you your big diamond buckles on your satin slippers?"

"Yes Miss Priscilla," I replied blushing.

"Lift your skirt and let me see!"

With a shy smile of pleasure - I could not help smiling - I raised in my delicately gloved fingers the exquisite satin frock. There came into view a pair of small slender feet in exquisitely-cut, new, glistening, white satin slippers with wonderful arched narrow Louis Quinze heels, pointed toes embroidered with pearls, butterfly bows of dainty white tulle and mounted on the bows big blazing diamond buckles. The slim little slippers were posed with the heels together and the toes turned out as Phoebe had arranged them. The skirt rose higher, a pair of round arched insteps and small finely moulded ankles showed prettily pink through tightly strained stockings of white silk with lace insertions. I had never seen such stockings, never even dreamed of things so beautiful. They were of the finest gossamer, transparent as cobwebs, filmy delicious ornaments rather than coverings with a soft sheen upon which was lovely. Stockings and slippers were fit for some blushing beautiful debutante of high birth and enormous wealth, to make her curtsey in before her Queen. No one else could have afforded them.

Miss Priscilla stooped and held out her hands. "Give me those pretty feet."

Coquettishly I hesitated, just like a pretty girl who pretends modesty the better to display what she knows to be her best points. "Oh Miss Priscilla," I said.

"At once, Denise."

I extended a foot. She took it in her hands, tried the buckle to make certain that it was secure, felt the slipper to see that it was tight enough and measured the heel.

"They are very pretty", she said with cold contempt.

"Put them together again Denise. You disobeyed me."

"Miss Priscilla, I only hesitated".

"You were trying your little coquetries on me, Denise," she said with a shrewd smile, which brought the blushes to my face. "But I punish coquetry. You were indulging your vanity by making play with your dainty slippers and I punish vanity Denise. You will go down to dinner and sit through dinner with your pretty mouth gagged".

"A very good thing for Miss Denise," said Phoebe delightedly. I was startled.

"Oh Miss Priscilla! I am to sit amongst the guests at a dinner-party - in this lovely frock - in these satin slippers and stockings - with my mouth gagged!"

"Yes Denise!"

"Diamond shoe buckles and high heels for my feet and a gag for my mouth. Oh, oh!" I gasped.

Poignant emotions stirred me, troubled me, and provoked my passions. I am to tell the whole truth. I was ashamed but I anticipated the punishment with a strange secret thrill of delight. Ever since I had been a boy, I had been from time to time besieged with queer fancies, which at first I had laughed at, which afterwards at once fascinated me and frightened me. I recognized in them a danger to my character, to my ambitions and an obstacle to the great career, which lay before me. I had dreamed, in a word, of a world in which ladies, in order to punish me, dressed me as a girl in the most exquisite of frocks and high-heeled shoes, gloves and corsets and, then laughing at my pretensions to a career, kept me in bondage and subjection as a toy for their amusement. I had fought against these fancies because I felt them to be enervating, effeminatizing, and likely to sap my will. I had ridiculed them as preposterous. Yet they seemed part of my nature, they returned and now - they were translated into fact, and being translated into fact fascinated and obsessed me with a force a thousand times stronger than ever. If it had thrilled me with strange delightful emotions to imagine myself dressed in the luxurious gowns of a fashionable girl, undergoing punishments and humiliations and dainty tortures at the hands of a laughing beautiful woman deaf to my prayers, how much more was I of necessity thrilled and excited when the dream became true as it was true now!

I tried however to struggle against the strange sweet pleasure which invaded me. For I knew that Miss Helen hated me, that she thought I had by inheriting my father's fortune, robbed her; and I was afraid that she and Miss Priscilla t were seeking by mastering me completely to get it back. I was afraid that Miss Priscilla, with her knowledge of psychopathia, had guessed my secret fancies and by translating them into fact was seeking to reduce me to a willing servitude. Was I right? Let the reader read on. Meanwhile the pleasure mastered the fear as it had done before. For it was the enervating pleasure of a dream fulfilled which made me offer so miserable a resistance to my first corset and my banishment to a girls' school. There! The truth is out.

Miss Priscilla had one more question to ask of me as I stood there before the mirror with my ivory ankles together and the big buckles flashing on my glistening slippers.

"There was a third, tight white satin glove I arranged for you to wear. Have you it on?" I went scarlet. But if I did not answer I should be punished. I hung my head.

"Yes Phoebe buttoned it on," I replied in a whisper of confusion. Miss Priscilla was content.

"It will teach you to be modest in the presence of women, Denise, and to remember that you are under their authority. You will wear it always."

She pulled down my skirt and arranged it so that the toes of my slippers and an inch of silk-stockinged instep were exposed. As she finished, Miss Helen, looking beautiful in a sweeping décolleté gown of black velvet and wearing shoulder length white satin-gloves entered the room.

I had not to complain of any want of admiration on her part at all events. A look of wonder and delight shone in her face. She uttered a little rapturous cry. She ran to me, hugged me and with passionate kisses bruised my lips.

"Denise! I am proud of you."

I hung my head, conscious for a moment to the full of my humiliation. I was her victim.

"Oh Denise!" She laid her face against mine with a bubbling laugh of delight. "Your cheek is as soft and fresh as a peach. You are a lovely girl."

"I am not a girl," I protested.

"Aren't you darling? You shall decide for yourself."

One of the great mirrors was placed behind me. Oh, how excited I became!

At last after two years I was to see what they had made of me. The second was placed in front of me unfolded and the bulbs of electric light which surrounded the frame of the mirrors and were so shaded as to throw the full light of their rays upon the person standing in front of them, were turned on. I stood in a blaze of light. I stared at myself. I uttered a cry and covered my face with my hands.

"Oh I am! I am a girl!" I admitted with a sigh.

I saw a girl, fair face, mine but refined, softened, improved out of knowledge. A wealth of fair glinting hair, done up in the most fashionable style crowned it. A broad white forehead and arched eyebrows darker than my curls, big wistful eyes of dark blue with long dark eyelashes, a delicate nose, cheeks in which the colour came and went. The colour of pale rose leaves, red lips in a Cupid's bow smiling (alas! they were smiling now) and showing a perfect set of small white teeth, a small rounded chin, little ears - such was Evelyn Highwater when he came back from school. Thus Violet Hunt described me in a letter. Violet and Doris Hunt were cousins of Miss Helen. They had come to live with Miss Helen just before I had gone away with my tutor. Violet was a very pretty auburn-haired girl six months younger than I. Doris was fifteen. I spare myself the humiliation of describing myself by quoting from her letter, which Miss Helen has given me to use. It goes on.

"The small dainty head is supported on a slender white throat which rises from a dimpled lovely white girl's bosom and shoulders. He has the round white breasts of a girl. The pretty valley between them, the little rose-petals, everything. His figure is slender, the legs long, the feet and hands delicious. He is tall, in his high-heeled shoes, taller than Miss Helen and about the same height as Miss Priscilla. He is a girl."

This is what I saw in the mirror - this girl sparkling with jewels from her feet to her curls, and dressed for a ball in the London season. Miss Helen was in raptures. She might well be, since this was her doing.

"You have exceeded all my expectations, darling," she said.

With little cries of delight, she ran her gloved hands over me, feeling and pinching me behind until I was scarlet.

"Oh Miss Helen, You mustn't," I protested.

"Nonsense, dear! I am your guardian, keep still.

"Ah," cried Miss Helen enthusiastically, "you love your exquisite satin frock darling, don't you?" It rustled delightfully under her hands.

"And the tulle band here with the big sparkling buckle in front and the big bow behind?"

"It ties my ankles delightfully," I stammered. Oh was it I who was speaking?

"It is like a soft caress upon my limbs."

Miss Helen applauded me with a radiant face. She ran her daintily gloved hands down the dress behind feeling through its thin texture my legs and calves.

"They're charming," she cried. "They are as soft as butter. And you love your stockings too, Denise, don't you, the exquisite stockings I deck you out in?"

The feel of her hands pinching affectionately my calves, her dainty air of mastery - as though she owned me - intoxicated me.

"They are deliciously cool," I said.

"And your white satin slippers with the high-heels and the pretty bows and the sparkling buckles, you love them too? Lift up his dress to the knees Phoebe. You love your little girl's shoes, Denise?"

Phoebe raised my skirt until the knees, the white satin garters with the big bows and buckles and the dainty frills of my batiste pantalon were visible.

"Look in the mirror Denise and tell me gratefully that you love them!"

"If I have got to wear girl's shoes," I replied blushing deeply, "they may as well have high-heels and diamond buckles." Something stronger than myself made me speak. In the midst of her delight Miss Helen exchanged a quick glance with Miss Priscilla. It was a glance of triumph and it put me on my guard.

Phoebe let fall my dress and Miss Helen took me round the waist.

"You are delightful Denise. You are quite a girl now with that pretty white bosom."

"Yes, Ma'am," said Phoebe, "the breasts have come up wonderful. I think Miss Denise ought to be grateful to Miss Priscilla for the trouble she has taken in arranging the proper exercises and massage and medicines".

"Oh there was no difficulty," said Miss Priscilla, "the moment I discovered that Denise had the possibility of the milk vessels of a woman, I had no doubt that we could fit him with as pretty a pair of girl's white breasts as any young lady could wish for. The bathing and ointment, full of female hormones, brought on their development and of course, being able to suckle the babes of the village has helped them develop more fully to fill their function, and has fulfilled his duty of charity to the poor, also."

"Oh Miss Priscilla, I thought you sought to make my breasts smaller by that!" I cried.

Miss Helen laughed.

"In any case, Denise has a girl's bosom - for life." She touched them with her gloved fingers and daintily caressed them with little titillations of the nipples, sending waves of delicious sensation through my veins. "They are a real punishment, dear, for all the trouble you have given us. You can't get rid of them as you could of your girl's shoes and stockings even if we were to let you. They are a permanent proof to you of the wisdom of being gentle and obedient to women."

 

"But you are going to let me get rid of my girl's shoes and stockings to- morrow. You promised faithfully, Miss Helen," I said.

Miss Helen held me firmly, caressed me, bruised my lips with burning kisses.

"You don't want to get rid of them Denise. You love them! You love your dainty frocks. You will be much happier as a girl."

She pleaded with me, her voice, the perfume of her breath, the feel of her limbs through my dress against mine tempted me. I felt inclined to let myself go in her arms, to say, "Miss Helen I belong to you." But I remembered my ambitions.

"No, no I have your word," I cried. "I must be a man. I am to marry and begin a great family."

The three women burst out laughing, confusing me dreadfully. Miss Helen cried:

"Oh Denise I would love to see your wife's face when she first discovers your girl's bosom. No, no my dear, you shall love your pretty frocks, your smart corsets, your long gloves and your lovely little high-heeled slippers."

"No, no," I insisted obstinately, and Miss Helen with an exclamation of annoyance let me go. She had after all only pretended to be affectionate, though she had very nearly deceived me. Now her face became stem with anger. She looked at me with threatening eyes. "Very well," she said, "but I warn you Denise, you will come on your knees to me to ask me to put you back into girl's clothes. Now go down to the drawing room, and take care how you walk. Point your toes, arch your feet. Here's your fan!"

She gave me a lovely fan of ivory and gold. I turned from her towards the door when Miss Priscilla called me back.

"You forget that you have to be punished, Denise", she said calmly; and she told Miss Helen of my coquetry and of the punishment she meant to inflict.

  

  

  

*********************************************
© 2004 by Helen Highwater. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, and compilation design) may be printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without the express written consent of StorySite and the copyright holder.