Scent of Ginger

Chapter 04: Lessons in Restraint and Decorum

'Ravenscourt.' The gatepost sign catches the last light of the setting sun as the hansom cab drives past it. The letters are faded and nearly unreadable, but I know them well. It was the manor at Ravenscourt that took me in, suckled me, taught me to do useful work, and raised me into a woman. If I felt stifled there, still I counted myself fortunate that I had a roof over my head and a key to the library bequeathed to me by my young mistress Clara, whose childish lessons I took as my own. If I grew with an imagination twisted like the trees on the moor, it was not only the fault of this manored landscape, where affections blew hot and then, with Clara's passing, chill again. Perhaps those gusts tossed my branches some, but in my grain already there was imbued a certain tendency.

Always, was I distant. Always I disliked physical touch. But I endured certain physical pains with something more than stoicism. A rap on the hand for pinching sweetmeats; a game of Pony with saddle and reins. I was never ill-used, not 'that way.' If I had been, perhaps my inclinations would be more understandable. The tree twisted by gales of abuse is easily explained. I am not such a being. Ravenscourt tried to train me up true, and my limbs are straight on the surface. It is on the inside that I am as knotted as the oak tree that imprisoned Ariel in its entrails. And I grew this way of my own accord and inclination. Hannah Ravenscourt I am, Ravenscourt's creature I am not.

This is all true. And yet, I cannot say how deeply it saddens me, to be finally and forever rejected by the place which gave me, as an orphan, its name. Lottie and Polly may stay. Though they were the ones who held and teazed me into convulsions, they get to stay, while I am cast out.

'Is it not what I wanted?' I ask myself now, as I sit stiffly writing in the cab that is drawing across the dim plains towards the institution that haunts my dreams. Did I not want to be placed once again in the hands of the Doctor? Remembering his treatments, I feel the heat begin to rise in my cheeks. But at the same time there is an ambivalence, a counter-impulse in me. I do not like what he represents. I do not want for me to be a woman, and he to be a man, and he to do to me what he will because of this. The reactions in my body to what he does are undeniable. But is it to him that I react, or is it to my own imagination, the liberation of my voice, my experience of my own body reaching the limit of its capacities and crossing over?

***

Such questions were still running through my mind as we pulled up to the gate. No rufous cabbie now, but a closed-faced, square-bodied orderly, opened the door and lead me to a room quite different than the one I'd had before. The cell I was kept in during my first stay here, with its single low bed and desultory bedpan, was not fit for long-term habitation. This room, though spartan and still dominated by an iron-framed, white-sheeted bed, had at least a washstand, a table, and a sturdily-bound chest for storage. It suggested a longer-term stay.

I was brought to see the Doctor almost immediately following my installation in this little room, and as I suspected, he confirmed that I had been committed to stay in his sanitarium for an indefinite period of time, due to my 'delicate condition.' He laid down the rules for me in quiet, severe tones. I was not to leave the building unaccompanied. I was not to wander the corridors. I was to follow the strictest regimen concerning diet, grooming, and conduct. And I was to report to him weekly for sessions aimed at curing my disorder.

"To begin," he said, "remove your servant's robes, and adopt those of a patient here."

"Must I disrobe now, here?" I asked. Involuntarily, my hand crept up to the bosom of my dress, where my papers seemed to flutter their wings with my quickened pulse. His cut-glass eyes narrowed as he noted my hand's destination. He said,

"Yes, I see now that you must. What are you hiding, crafty Hannah?"

A panic seized me. He mustn't get the pages. He had seen my body's shame already and heard my cries, but for him to read this most private of confessions--no! My head snapped round like a sparrow's when the falcon is on it, seeking escape. I flew impulsively for the open door behind me.

"Door!" the Doctor called, nonchalant. Someone just outside gave the heavy door a push, so that I was dashed like a wave against the wood. My breath was suddenly loud in my ears and hot on my face against the finished oak. I could hear chair-legs scrape behind me as the Doctor rose.

"Now, now, Hannah. For all your irrationality you are more reasonable than this. Give it to me, whatever you have secreted there."

I turned to face him and shook my head, silently pleading. His tone sharpened into a whip-stroke of command.

"Come to me. Now."

I knew I should obey. My every impulse was to submit to him. And yet, terror at what I would be revealing froze my limbs in what must have seemed a posture of defiance.

The Doctor sized me up for a long, long moment. His gaze seemed to pass through me to the papers concealed at my breast. Then, in two long, swift strides, he was on me. He pushed me back against the door and with a flash of cold silver he slit my dress from belly to neckline. It was as if he had cut my living body open: I gasped and tried to clasp the wound closed with the hand that was not pinned between the door and my back.

"No! No, please!" I cried. But he caught my wrist in his free hand, and with the hand that was still holding the knife, he plucked the pages from my bodice. The air seemed to fill and hollow me at once: cool and empty was I, flooded with bereft space. He gave my beating heart, which he held in his hands, the barest glance before pulling me forward and calling to his doorman again to open the way.

"Take her to her room." He ordered. "Make sure she is dressed properly. And make sure she sleeps. Use the chloroform if you must."

I did not see him take up my papers. Not then, not ever. But read them he did, while I was made through a noxious compound to sleep.

Now, I write at his command.

***

At our next meeting, the Doctor looked upon me with a fresh and avid eye. He seemed excited by some new discovery, and wasted barely a moment in discoursing upon it.

"Ah, Hannah," he exclaimed as I entered. "Sit, and listen well. What I tell you now will greatly impact the course of your treatment." I sat apprehensively on the leather couch he indicated. He began at once.

"To date, I had believed yours to be a simple case of hysterical nymphomania. But now that I read your very interesting confessions-" here I flinched, and here he smiled "--I believe yours to be a more complex and interesting case. Have you heard of the new classifications of Kraft-Ebing?"

I remained silent.

"No, of course you haven't. This good German doctor has collected many fascinating case studies of sexual perversion. It is fortunate that I was able to send for his volume through a dear friend of mine in Heidelberg --for you see, though I am a country doctor, I have my connections throughout the continent."

I plucked at my gown in impatience. The Doctor rapped his desk with his cane.

"This concerns you, so do attend. Among the studies in this volume are cases of women, much like yourself, who find erotic pleasure in pain and humiliation."

"I do not—"

"'I recalled with a strange sort of pleasure the cool of air playing on my back, and the resounding sting of his blows against my flesh,'" he quoted verbatim. A chill went through my belly to hear my words in his voice --a chill, and then a heat.

"You do take pleasure in pain." He continued. "You do not wish to, being at the same time frigid, and yet you do. I see now that my previous methods of treatment have only exacerbated your condition, which incidentally is known in the literature as 'masochism' after some wretched German fantasist or other."

At the mention of literature and fantasists my interest perked; but he seemed to see that this was a distraction to me, and sighed.

"We must proceed with another course of treatment. It is clear to me that these impulses cannot be eradicated through the traditional corporeal punishments. We cannot beat out of you a desire to be beaten. In order to become a sane, civilized woman, then, you must learn to first express, and then to restrain yourself. You must learn decorum. Speak, Hannah; but temper your speech."

"How am I to do that?" I asked intemperately. "I cannot control my voice. That is why I write. I try to control myself, but I am only incited more by all those around me, by memory, by my body's presence so close, always. How can I control it?"

"With training. We will train your body, as we train your mind. We will train it to first find a healthy release, and then to practice restraint and decorum."

I could not imagine what he meant, so I merely bowed my head.

"Good girl," he murmured at my submission. Then, he stood and said, "Come with me."

I followed him out of his office and down a long, windowed hall. Shafts of pale, watery light layered the corridor. I passed through this striated space in an agony of apprehension, as each diagonal pane of light seemed like a membrane I shuddered to breach. But he led, and so I was forced to follow all the way to the end of the corridor.

At its terminus, we passed through a doorway into a room filled with the strangest scent. Not ginger, but what they call 'ozone,' like the scent of the air after lighting has struck. In the centre was a table bound tightly in leather, with cuffs in all four corners, and near it an engine of some kind. It appeared to be a 'steam-engine.' I was so fascinated by the workings of this device that I did not notice the Doctor behind me undoing the ties on my linen shift until fell from me and left me naked, exposed before the machine. I cried out, my hands covering myself defensively, but the Doctor seized me by the arm and walked me across the room.

"You want this, Hannah. You do not know it yet, but I am about to grant you the release you crave, in a way that will be eminently suited to your constitution."

"I do not want it!" I protested. "You mustn't touch me!"

"Oh, I don't plan to. You are about to experience the wonders of modern Science: clean, objective, dispassionate, and wholly effective. Consider it fortunate that a poor orphan and servant such as yourself can contribute to the development of this great cure for women's hysteria."

At that, he strapped me to the table. I must admit that though I struggled, I could feel at the same time a slickness welling in me. The posture, with my arms and legs spread wide, recalled that fever-dream of being bound in my sickbed, and the chill and flush of that fever seemed to rush over me once again.

"You see how already it affects you," the Doctor murmured. He raised with his hand a metal wand that was connected by a thick shaft or armature to the steam machine. As he spoke, he slid the wand's tip into me, along my cleft, just once: a single stroke up that made me shiver violently with its very lightness. Then he inspected the tip. It glistened. I know not whether it was me or the machine he intended to test. But after some moments, he pressed down on a lever, made a contact that set the machine roaring, and lowered the shaft yet again.

The second time, it was not at all like being touched by metal. It was like being touched by sound. The wand, powered somehow by the engine, was vibrating like the lowest notes of the pianoforte, only with double, treble the force. It moved and resounded at once. And this he placed on the tenderest tissues of my body.

The sensation was indescribable. He was not touching me, not at all with hand nor tongue nor cock, not even its approximation in vegetable flesh, and yet spasms wracked my body almost at once as if I were approaching the heights I yearn for and fear. The sensation was continuous, constantly modulating yet unceasing in intensity --or if anything, building in intensity as my body grew more and more attuned to it.

My mouth opened, but rather than words, I found that I could only make inarticulate sounds, moans cut short by my gasping breath. My voice too was already transformed, made into the expression not of wild fears and fancies but of direct sensation. My whole body began to weave and flex in its bindings, and he followed its coursings perfectly with the wand, now thrusting it deep into my bottom or between my lips, now drawing it up to the little bud I had found for myself. He explored, to see which site generated the most dramatic reactions.

"Still in the retrograde phase of clitoral orgasm," I heard him murmur as he pressed the vibrant wand harder into my complex tissues. But the words meant nothing to me; only my body meant, if feeling can be equated to meaning. I began to cry faster, faster as he adjusted the dials, upped the frequency. He raised the tone of vibration until I began to keen with it, my voice in tune with the machine until suddenly I pitched much, much higher. As if a star had burst inside of me, I arched my body hard against the wand, and screamed and screamed until in my fullness I overflowed, and was left warm, slippery, wet, and sensual against the leather table.

"That, little Hannah, is the new scientific means by which we rid hysterics of the excess energy they accumulate, which disorders the female system. It has proven quite successful in other cases, and seems initially effective on you."

"There is, however, a second step to be taken in your case. You are not merely hysterical or frigid. You are masochistic. You will come to seek this treatment more and more, rather than being weaned off of it into normal sexual functioning. You may even seek to inflict further pain on yourself, through your troubling self-abuse. You have experienced release. Now you must learn some restraint." He paused, then tilted my face towards his own with his hand.

"Hannah. Look at me. You may not touch yourself after these sessions. I, as your physician, am the one who knows how much sexual stimulation is correct for you. You mustn't upset that balance through onanistic activities."

"I won't, I swear it." I whispered, still prone and languid on the table. It seemed very easy to promise, in the fullness of sensation.

"So you claim. But women of your type are not like men, who can be satisfied once and have done with it. See here."

With that, he turned the machine on low, and once again slid its appendage in between my legs to touch the little bud he calls the clitoris. Languid though I was, pain and pleasure yet stirred in me. Like embers ruffled by a breath, I felt the glow revive. He was right: the fire in me was not doused, only smouldering. It could be stoked again, and soon. My mouth opened, but all I did was sigh. He knew what that meant.

"Yes. You feel arousal again, already. I can hear it. That is why you need this."

Striding over to the wall, he opened a cupboard and took out something made of a sleek black material. Returning, I saw that it was in fact a kind of corset, though one more elaborate than any I had ever seen, with a thick leather band running from the front to the back, where it was laced through an elaborate buckle.

"This is a garment design to prevent unwanted nightly behaviours. You will wear it at all times, until our next appointment. Doorman," he called out over his shoulder, and at that the square, taciturn orderly returned. He undid the straps at my wrists and ankles and stood me up beside the table.

"Hold her," the Doctor murmured, almost absently.

As the Doorman held my arms, the Doctor spread my legs and pulled the opened corset's undergirder between them. It was smooth and cool between my thighs, and loose at first, as my whole body still was, in trembling afterglow.

Then, however, the Doctor began to do up the laces. The corset covered my chest entirely, and he pulled the top laces so tight that I could barely get a finger in to either side of my breasts. He pulled at the waist too, so that suddenly I found myself gasping again --not just at the restriction of my airways, but at the sensation of my entire core, from breast to hips to between my legs, embraced tightly all round. He pulled sharply, perhaps too quickly, so that the laces burned against my skin, and I felt a long, deep shiver that I had to work to hide. When he tightened the buckle that held the strap between my legs, I did gasp aloud in excitement. But for once he seemed distracted, shifting his own narrow hips uncomfortably, and did not notice that what he did was inciting me to pleasure again. He tied off the laces and ran his hands down my body, now curved and yet hard as a seashell. Metal stays crafted my waist, leather pressed against my sex without entering me. I felt the glow and it was all I could do not to squirm with it. And yet, I began to realize that if I were to wear this restraining device all week, I would be in suspension, in a state of approaching yet denying pleasure that seemed unbearable.

"Please," I said weakly, "May I not remove it to sleep?"

"Certainly not. Especially not then. We will remove it only at designated times so that you can attend to your bodily functions, with supervision. No release, Hannah. You have had it already. Think now of restraint. I will see you again in one week."

He walked out of the door. And I walked out behind him into torment.