Edith's New Governess

By HandPrince

Chapter 13. Edith Floats to the Ceiling

    "It isn't fair!" sobbed Edith, springing to her feet from behind the Noah's Ark chest.  "You won't tell Lily's Mama!  Why must you tell my Mama??" Plainly a great deal of dust must have accumulated behind that chest, leaving Edith's white Sunday frock visibly smudged in several places.

    "You have emerged from concealment of you own volition, Edith, and that does you credit.  I shall overlook your earlier naughtiness in hiding from me.  And if you commit no further faults, I shall not recommend to your Mama that you be caned."

    "Mama is WRONG!" cried Edith in angry tears.  "She says Lily is bad!  But it isn't true! She's good!"

    Flora took a deep breath and closed her eyes.  Let Edith think I am mastering my temper, she thought.  Let her not recognize my current moment of weakness.  "I don't believe Lily is a bad influence.  But your Mama's word must be obeyed."  Flora strove to keep her tone level and to stifle the note of apology she felt in her heart at the prospect of disciplining Edith for breaking a rule with which Flora herself disagreed.  "Your mother's word must be obeyed by both of us.  This is not up for discussion and if you know what is best for you we shall hear nothing further from you on the subject.  You are in enough trouble as it is."

    "Why must Mama be told, but not Lily's Mama?" whimpered Edith again, as tears tumbled down her cheeks.

    Flora almost replied that it was her duty to do so, but then upon reflection realized that Mrs. Fogarty had actually never imposed such a requirement upon Flora, consistent with the woman's lack of interest in the work of her staff so long as it did not directly inconvenience herself.  

   "Perhaps your Mama needn't be told," replied Flora.  "That shall depend upon a choice you shall make in the next few minutes."  She beckoned with her hand, "come with me," then turned, walked back into the room and retook her seat on the sofa.

   Edith followed, teary-eyed but no longer crying, wondering what manner of alternative lay before her as she stood before Miss Field.

   "I daresay, you watched as Lily received her smacking." 

   Edith blushed, and wondered if she were in trouble for that.

   "So you doubtlessly noticed what a well-behaved girl Lily was, lying obediently across my lap and making no naughty efforts to escape her chastisement, as certain naughty girls..." Flora paused and fixed Edith with a particularly arch glance, "...are wont to do!"  Edith swallowed and lowered her eyes.

   "Here is your first choice, Edith.  You may receive your correction at once and I shall deem the matter closed.  I shall not inform your Mama.  And should she somehow find out, I promise I shall strongly recommend to her that you receive no further discipline, and shall endeavor to convince her to trust my professional judgment in that matter."  Edith hopefully looked up and met Miss Field's gaze again.  "However, you must choose to submit to your punishment from beginning to end, just as you saw Lily do.  Should you instead choose to cover your spanked spots or otherwise strive to hinder your receipt of correction, you will have made the second choice.  In that event, you shall be marched straight to Mama in your soiled frock, to whom I shall make a full report of the full extent of your faults.  You shall then receive whatever punishment your Mama commands me to administer.  Now choose and be quick about it!"
 
   Edith thought both choices awful, of course, but with the latter plainly awfuller than the former.  "I don't want Mama to know," she murmured in a frightened little voice.  "I want to choose... the first... b-but," she glanced over at Lily sitting bolt upright on the edge of the wicker chair, then back at Miss Field.  Her voice broke and she sobbed, "I-I don't know how to be b-b-brave like Lilyyy!"

   Before Flora could respond, "Sure ye do, Miss Edith!" urged the voice from the wicker chair.  "Jus' 'old yerself still 'til it's over is all!  It'll 'urt, but then it'll be all over right quick an' you'll be in the clear you will!  I knows for a fact as ye gots more courage than ye thinks ye does Miss Edith!"

   "Lily! Hush!" ordered Flora.  Turning to Edith again, Flora declared, "If you continue to dawdle, you shall thereby have chosen the second course and I shall take you to your Mama straightaway."  Wordlessly, Edith nodded Yes, her lower lip trembling.  Calmly, Flora commanded, "Unfasten your knickers, lift your skirts in back above your waist, and lie down across my lap."  As she spoke, Flora smoothed the wrinkles from her own skirt and patted her lap.

   Lip quivering, Edith knelt, took hold of her hems and began to raise them.  Then an awful thought entered her mind.  What if she managed to endure until Miss Field raised her palm to administer Edith's final slap, only for Edith's hands to cover her bottom of their own accord, despite Edith willing them not to??  Then she would be taken to Mama, and what if Mama ordered her spanked all over again??  "Miss Field I... I don't know if I CAN!" she cried in an anxious voice.
 
   "Very well then," replied Flora, seizing Edith by her wrist and rising from the sofa, "we shall go see your Mama forthwith."  Flora easily recognized Edith's hesitancy as born of doubt of her own ability to endure rather than of a stubborn refusal to obey.  Flora hoped her present bluff, for bluff indeed it was, would suffice.

    A cacophony of "No Miss Field's" erupted both from Edith and from Lily.  Flora ignored Lily's outburst and fixed her attention upon Edith for several seconds, as if weighing a decision Flora had in fact already made.

   Flora normally didn't believe in forcing a naughty child to wait long in frightened anticipation of a promised punishment.  An image came to Flora's mind of occasions when she had been younger than Edith and having difficulty sitting still very long on the hard wooden pew during church services.  After an earlier whispered admonition or two from nanny to sit still if she knew what was good for her, and after she had squirmed to try and get herself comfortable one time too many, came nanny's terrible whispered words:  "After services, you shall be whipped when we return to the nursery."  From that moment forward, little Flora's young mind had no space for lofty thoughts of Heaven and Salvation, only dread of her looming fate, which drew ever nearer with each passing minute.  Looking back, Flora could see no disciplinary benefit to herself from that ensuing hour of fear.  Brevity and promptness was, after all, one of corporeal chastisement's virtues. 

    But in this instance, a few moments of suspense might just provide little Mistress Fogarty with the impetus to move matters past their current impasse.

    Flora seated herself again and declared, "Very well then, Edith.  You shall have one last chance.  Over my lap now, my girl.  And not one word from you until you have obeyed!"  Flora maintained as best she could the pretense that either of Edith's choices was equally acceptable to herself.  But the more she thought upon it, the more she also preferred not to involve Mrs. Fogarty and the complications which might ensue involving Lily and Helen.  To Flora's relief, Edith quickly reached under her skirts and, after fumbling a moment for their fastening, allowed her bloomers to drop.  She then knelt, rucked up her skirts, and placed herself across Flora's lap.

    Freed now from Miss Field's admonition not to speak a word until she had placed herself into the position Miss Field commanded her to assume,  Edith looked over her right shoulder at the calm visage of her soon-to-be torturer, and cried, "Oh Miss Field!  I shall try my very hardest to be brave like Lily.  Truly I shall!  But please... I beg of you... please don't... please don't be severe with me!"

    "I shall spank you with the precise measure of severity I deem appropriate Miss Fogarty, and not one bit more or less.  Before we begin, please tell me-"

   "Ye can do it Miss Edith!  When it starts to 'urt a lot, just picture yerself away is all!"

   "Lily!  You know better than to interrupt!  If I have to ask you again, I'll-"  Flora knew she wouldn't actually spank Lily again and thought it wise not to issue a threat whose empty character would stand revealed should Lily interrupt yet again.  Then she remembered how Helen had made her daughter hush.  Pointing her finger at Lily, Flora in a stentorian tone commanded, "seen and not heard!" 

   The child's lips tightened as she bowed her head and shifted back into her chair from the edge whereupon she'd previously sat. Returning her attention to Edith, Flora repeated, "before we begin, please tell me each of your faults for which you shall shortly be smacked."

   Edith, her neck beginning to hurt from turning so hard to look back at Miss Field, faced downwards at the carpet and at her dangling fingertips which didn't quite reach it, and at the hem of Miss Field's skirt which did.  "I talked to Lily even though Mama said I was forbidden.  And I hid from you and got my frock dusty.  And I-"  Edith had begun to confess to the purloined sugarplums, but remembered in the nick of time that Lily had finished the last one before Miss Field entered the room and that her governess hence knew nothing about them.

   "And what, Edith?" inquired Flora, her eyes narrowing.

   "And I... and I... and I'm dreadfully sorry for being a bad girl, Miss Field." Edith's voice trailed off weakly.

   "And well you should be.  In future, should temptation arise to misbehave as you have this afternoon, let this help you keep that sorry feeling close to your heart and never forgotten, so you may resist such temptation henceforth.  Without another word, Flora began to slap Edith's plump little upturned nates in a steady unhurried rhythm.

    Edith cried "ouch! ouch! OW!" as her unprotected buttocks sustained each of Miss Field's initial smacks, then dissolved into wailing tears.  Edith gritted her teeth and strove to resist her impulse to reach back and shield her backside with her hands or twist onto her back.   Her hands sought the fabric of Miss Field's skirt and gripped it tight.  She hoped if she held tightly enough her hands couldn't fly back to shield her bottom, which stung with ever greater urgency with each solid slap of Miss Field's gloved palm. 

   Oh wretched beastly horrible Miss Field! thought Edith, quite incapable of speech and hence in no danger of uttering such cheeky words aloud.  Oh! How I hate her!  She wished a genie from a magic lamp like in books might make Miss Field a little girl and herself a woman so that she might spank Miss Field just as hard as this.

   As Flora continued to slap the little girl's blushing buttocks, she noted the hardness and defiance in Edith's cries, although the child remained in position.  Every child must learn to submit in her heart, Flora reminded herself, the sooner to bring that child's correction to its conclusion.  Edith would learn, as every properly-disciplined child sooner or later does, that her wilful sinful nature brings chastisement, while repentance and submission bring salvation and right standing with the Almighty.  "Fear of the rod is the beginning of wisdom," Flora's nanny used to say.  Little Flora hadn't understood at the time.  But now as an adult she appreciated that when a child submits her own selfish will in favor of obedience to her adult authority figures, she thus prepares herself for her later submission, at a less tender age, to divine law and obedience to her Heavenly Parent.

   As she had on that first day across Miss Field's knee in the schoolroom, Edith wondered amidst her heaving sobs and wailing tears how her governess's delicate feminine hand could sting so bitterly.  Then she remembered Lily's admonition to picture herself elsewhere and tried to imagine herself curled up snug in her bed in the night nursery with a ripping adventure book.  But that image seemed but a fleeting irrelevancy in the face of the sharp, steadily mounting sting from her bottom as Miss Field renewed and increased that horrid sensation with slap after slap after firm, resounding slap. 

   As Flora smacked Edith's now solidly-reddened bottom, she hoped the little girl's stubborn will would soon break, and not force Flora to report Edith to Mrs. Fogarty as a result of rebelling against her chastisement and attempting to shield herself.  If Flora did inform Edith's Mama, she would have to reveal Lily's involvement.  And how then might her employer react?  Might she dismiss Helen and Lily, fearing that the latter constituted a corrupting influence on her child?   To avoid such complications, Flora had half a mind to cease punishing Edith. But she knew that if she didn't continue until correction had worked its miracle in Edith's heart, still further behavior issues would surely arise until she did so - best to discipline the girl correctly at once, and hopefully its salubrious effect on her conduct and attitude would persist a goodly while.  Edith once again felt as if her two little haunches were being held close to the burning coals of the hearth, burning and blistering in that terrible heat.  She desperately wanted to escape, and even a temporary respite began to seem worth whatever consequences might follow later.  Then she realized that she looked down from above, like a puff of vapor hovering just below the ceiling.  On the sofa sat Miss Field, although Edith barely saw her face so much as the elegantly coiffed top of her head.  Across the woman's lap lay a disheveled heap of snowy white fabric which Edith dispassionately recognized as a little girl's white frock, petticoats and bloomers.  And in the midst of that heap lay a little girl's pale upper thighs, and two deeply reddened cheeks of her bottom, both quaking slightly with each hard, resounding slap of Miss Field's tightly-fitting gloved palm. 

   And that little girl was Edith. 

   And yet it wasn't. 

   And yet it was.  She could feel herself across Miss Field's lap still, her face wet with her tears, bawling from the pain as her governess soundly and relentlessly spanked her. Yet she also floated against the ceiling, serenely watching it all happen as if to someone else.
 
   Edith would later reflect upon about this odd sense of being not only in two places at once, but also two people at once, one embodied and getting a spanking from her governess, and one disembodied and not.  But in those moments Edith didn't reflect upon this.  She simply lived it.

   Then she was wholly embodied again.  And in that moment, all of her schemes and larks with Lily seemed like worthless rags.  No amount of fun could ever be worth this.  Oh how she wished she hadn't prevailed upon Lily at their most recent meeting in the abandoned gardening shed to try this new dumbwaiter scheme.  It had seemed like a capital idea then, in view of chillier weather rendering their regular meetings in the shed less and less comfortable.

   She cried, from sorrow and remorse, wishing she had simply obeyed Mama's rule.  It all seemed so clear now.  She should have simply obeyed.
 
   With a sigh of satisfaction, Flora ceased slapping Edith's crimson buttocks and rested her arm.  The timbre of the little girl's cries had just shifted from her "I hate you" cry to her "I'm sorry" cry.  Edith's correction had gone well.  And thank Heaven she hadn't rebelled during her smacking, so Flora had no need to make good on her promise to involve Mrs. Fogarty!

    Flora shifted Edith off her lap and onto the sofa to cry herself out, removed her glove from her smacking hand, took up her shawl and gloves and walked over to Lily, curled up in a ball in the wicker chair, her knuckles pressed to her lips, her teary eyes fixed upon Edith.
 
   "Come along now, Lily," said Flora gently.  We must be getting you back below stairs, out of your frock, and back into your uniform before Cook misses you."  Lily looked up at Flora for a moment, then back at Edith, still crying hard on the sofa and rubbing her bottom.  "Lily," said Flora a bit more firmly, "I know you probably wish to comfort your friend.  But she is forbidden from associating with you, and you must accept that prohibition until such time as Mrs. Fogarty changes her rule, if she ever does."  Flora took Lily's hand, and the girl quietly rose and accompanied the woman out of the room, casting several sad backward glances at Edith as she walked.



    As Edith's tears gradually subsided, she kept her eyes closed, not feeling ready to see Miss Field or speak to her.  Finally there was only the sound of her own breathing.  Opening her eyes, Edith, to her surprise, found herself alone.  After she had pulled up and fastened her bloomers she lay on her tummy on the sofa, her skirts raised in back, rubbing her still-smarting buttocks through their fabric.

    She had done it.  She had been brave like Lily.  Yet she felt no pride in this accomplishment.  She didn't feel brave in her heart. 

   She lay motionless on the couch, unwilling to move, and unaware of any reason to do so.  The dressing gong sounded.  Nanny would expect her in the nursery soon to dress her for dinner.  But still she lay, unable to muster the will to stand.  Beyond the window, high clouds turned first golden, then flaming orange, and then went grey as the gloaming hour commenced. 

    At last Edith rose and walked, out the door, through the halls of the shut-down section, and hence into inhabited realms.   Their familiar carpets, paintings and carvings seemed not quite real, as if she dreamed rather than saw them.  She felt less an embodied girl than a ghost traversing again the corridors she had once walked in life and along which she now drifted as ectoplasm.  Finally she entered the nursery.
 
   "Goodness gracious, child!" reprimanded nanny, "you've soiled your frock, you naughty girl!  Where have you been?? It's nigh on half an hour since the dressing gong!  I ought to report you to Miss F-"

   "PLEASE nanny!" wailed Edith, falling to her knees and beginning to cry anew.  Nanny's reproachful tone, no harsher than usual, now pierced Edith to her core like a rapier thrust. Through her sobs she begged, "please don't scold me, nanny!  Not now!  I can't bear it!  Please!"

   "Oh my lamb," exclaimed Mrs. Brown, kneeling in front of Edith and glancing for the first time at the child's puffy reddened eyes, "my poor little lamb."  She guided Edith to her feet and led her into the night nursery.  "Let's get you out of that dirty frock and into a clean one, and be quick about it, before the dinner gong sounds."

   Edith raised her arms high and allowed nanny to remove her dress.  "I'm not hungry, nanny.  May I be put to bed now?"

   Her brows knit with concern, Mrs. Brown felt Edith's forehead.  "You don't seem feverish," she muttered to herself. And then to Edith, "Still, if I'm to notify your Mama that you've taken to bed and won't be joining her and Miss Field for dinner tonight, I'd best be sending for Dr. Bankwell."  The prospect of herself across the table face to face from Miss Field provided Edith further impetuous to forsake her dinner.

   After Mrs. Brown had rung for a footman and given him his instructions, she returned and continued to undress her young charge.  Edith still experienced her familiar surroundings as vaguely dreamlike, and herself as nearly insubstantial.  She faced nanny as the woman removed Edith's knickers and helped her into her nightgown, preferring nanny not notice Edith's reddened posterior, and the questions which would surely follow.  Edith didn't wish to think of her recent chastisement much less speak of it.

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