With the natural gaiety of childhood we found that there was more to laugh at than to fear in Mr. Gostock. With great irreverence we would mock his mannerisms and his words. We laughed at his senile passions; his expression of face; and his clothes. Nothing about him escaped our raillery.
His animation always increased as the tears of the victim flowed faster; when the sufferings. became more intense and the cries more piercing.
When the punishment was ended, it was Mr. Gostock's wont to congratulate Stella in pompous language wich was really ridiculous. He always thought it necessary to allude to the decency and high morality of the proceeding. His face would be as red as a tomato and his trembling hands would shift about here, there, and everywhere. He usually found it necessary to toy affectionately with Stella's chin or to else pat her white arms.
There was nothing astonishing, therefore, in his marrying her.
The ceremony was a notable one. We learnt through the gossip of the servants the real reasons of the marriage, together with certain edifying details regarding the married life of this virtuous man.
He was very rich. It was this fact which decided exceedingly good-looking Stella to accept him as husband and to humour his whims. It may be added that the taste for whipping was shared by both.
The coquetry of this child succeeding in securing a man so ripe in years and so free, on account of his wealth, to choose a partner from any country or station in life which took his fancy, would seem very strange, if due account is not taken of a certain prime factor – astute Lady Flayskin.
The head-mistress had planned to join in indissoluble union these two being so admirably suited for one another. She succeeded without difficulty. Stella understood perfectly her ladyship's directions as to what should and what should not be done in her courting of the American.
Never for a moment had she deviated from the rules laid down for her guidance by Lady Flayskin.
She had become skilled, while keeping her air of childish innocence, in whetting the appetites of Mr. Gostock. The cruelty and science of her chastisements made her irresistible in the eyes of her elderly admirer, and she knew further how to stimulate his feelings by her gestures when her punishments were terminated. She would notice by signs he could never dissimulate that his passions were awakened and she would then as though inadvertently, lay a caressing hand upon the rounded spheres in front of her. At such moments, Mr. Gostock had difficulty in containing himself.
We children had discovered many things during nights spent together in the dormitory. We had even reached the stage of rendering one another certain small services in the presence of the under-mistresses and the directress herself, for we had found that such services were a very great relief to the feelings after a painful flogging. We knew the best medicine for poor smarting, itching thighs and the whip always had upon us a certain nervous effect. It was due to this knowledge that we perfectly understood that the actions and gestures of Stella for all her attractive air of a innocence, were only a piquant preface. We were able to follow all the stages of Stella's treatment without difficulty, the American's looks and movements betraying all to our childish but discerning eyes.
This Puritan was a widower.
By his first marriage he had had, and still had a troop of children, the eldest of whom was twelve and the youngest five. He had left them in America in the charge of a woman – a saint as he was wont to say in whom he could repose entire confidence.
Ah! his confidence was well placed! She was in effect a holy woman, after the heart of the respectable Yankee. By her vicious practices, the pious dame had taught bad habits to the three boys. Then, under the pretence of punishing them, she had obliged them to behave in the presence of their father in the manner they behaved when alone. Naturally such seances ended in terrible collective floggings.
During the lifetime of his first wife, Mr. Gostock had had carnal intercourse with this holy woman. She had grown old and Mr. Gostock saw Stella at work and had be come enamoured of the girl. He counted upon her to punish his boys and see to the education of his daughters.
He was not disappointed in his hopes.
As I have already frequently had occasion to remark, everything became known that transpired in the mysterious establishment of Lady Flayskin. Tongues were not idle. Voices were not raised high, but they talked none the less for all that. Our sharp ears surprised every happening. The girlish education and costume seemed to arouse in us boys a feminine appetite for scandal and gossip.
If means of information as to what was happening about us were otherwise lacking we found in the servants' gossip all we sought. It was for the most part perfectly reliable, for the servants; like other members of the humbler classes, did not believe that any embellishments proceeding from their own simple brains could make truth more wonderful or interesting.
They would tell what they knew, in the course of conversation, to the elder pupils who naturally found nothing better to do than to repeat what they had learnt to the younger children.
The stories would go the round of the school and, contrary to gossip in a bigger world, did not vary nor grow as it passed from mouth to mouth.
In this way we were kept fully informed of the doings of the little world about us.
Thus, too, we learnt what happened in Mr. Gostock's new home.
The day after his wedding, the American decided that he could not occupy himself better than in beating his children. The scene was the dining-room at the hour of dinner. He found that all of them were in fault and to each addressed a reproof, although not one of the poor children was to blame. Since the death of their mother, they had been in the habit of payingtrembling attention to their good conduct. Deprived for long of all affection or tenderness, very unhappy in the charge of the woman to whom their father had entrusted them, they hoped to find in their stepmother something of that love and maternal devotion they so sadly missed.
Children readily believe appearances and believe in the goodness of those they find young and beautiful to look at. For children, fine appearances are a rich source of deception, though it is true some carry their delusions on this score with them through their riper years.
The poor children, fork in hand, now listened to the slow measured tones of their austere-visaged father who told them many things they found disagreeable to hear, to gether with a plentiful sprinkling of such word as decency and morality!
Malicious Stella had immediately under stood to what such observations, addressed by her husband to his children by first wife, were intended to lead.
As she spoke, the children were charmed by her pure crystal tones, and feeling reassured, they turned their attention anew to their plates.
Alas! they were greatly in error.
What pretty Stella proposed to her virtuous husband was simply to flog, there and then, the bare bottoms of all these brats.
"They really merit a flogging on account their behaviour at table," she said. "It is plain that they have been brought up deplorably and if the whip is not immediately applied we shall have a great deal of trouble with them in future. We shall no be able to have our meals in peace with the children at the table. We shall have to be continually employing cross words. In my opinion the children of so respected a father should have good principles instilled into them, and the sooner the better, in order that as they grow up, they may be respected in their turn. If you have no objection, we will begin immediately?"