Maud Comes for Valentine

When I heard Charles speaking I went softly back up the corridor and made a noise as if I had just come down the stair. He opened the door fully then. I felt languorous still; tired out with the hysteria. Charles smiled so kindly at me.

"Dear Maud, I am sorry to see you looking pale and your eyes so heavy," he said gently. "I believe I may have found a cure to your illness and Mama has consented to take you to try it."

The tears gushed to my eyes. If only! If there could be some way to cut these traitorous feelings from my body, so that I might just be the perfectly behaved young lady Mama tries so hard to mould me into. I would do anything, like the Amazon warrior maidens who cut off a ... b-b-breast that they might shoot better with the bow. I would sacrifice anything to be a lady and make my family proud.

Thus it came about that Mama took me to Dr. Jones's rooms in Harley Street.

We sat stiffly together on plush dining chairs in a charming waiting room with some other women -- many of them young like myself and evidently accompanied by their Mama or governess. Magazines and a wonderful bouquet of lilies and roses had been arranged on a mahogany table in the centre of the room. Mama had been previously to discuss my condition with the good doctor and he assured her his therapy would be beneficial to me. I could hardly bear to believe it.

A woman came through the heavy padded door into an inner room. She supported another of the young women -- a very pretty charming brunette in a most fashionable gown. The young brunette looked a little dishevelled but as she smiled round on us all in a beatific manner, we were easily able to overlook this. A smartly dressed governess came to offer an arm and say in sympathetic tones: "You look so much better again, Gwendolyn. Let me help you down to the carriage now."

"Miss Jermyn?" the attendant woman enquired, looking round. She was dressed neatly in a blue woollen gown with a crisp white ruffled apron over it. I felt Mama become tense for the woman was young and extremely beautiful, with flaming bright auburn hair like many of the women in pre-Raphaelite art.

She smiled so kindly at me that I could not help smiling in reply. I began to tremble at thoughts of what Mama would say of her later, then I saw the woman had a simple gold band on her wedding finger, which might excuse her tidily dressed but inappropriately bright flaming hair.

Mama had been instructed that I was not to be put in my corset and I could breathe freely in my loosely cut lavender walking dress with the purple soutache braid. My feelings of anxiety wore off.

"This way, Miss Jermyn," the woman said in a gentle sweet voice with a slight thickening of accent.

I faltered when Mama did not come too. Encountering only a basilisk glare when I glanced nervously back at her, I hurried through the padded door which shut behind me with a soft thick sound.

Inside was a good sized room, well-lit by long windows over which hung soft muslin curtains to discreetly shut out the world. In the middle of the room was a padded green leather couch with a raised back for the patient to lean on. By the side of this couch was a small table with some implements arranged on a tray and covered by a snowy white linen cloth. A steaming kettle stood on a trivet by the table with a copper bowl in front of it.

Beside the couch stood Dr. Jones and another attendant -- also young, a pretty plump blonde woman who showed dimples in her cheeks as she too smiled at me.

Dr. Jones was an older man with some grey in his hair and beard, dressed as befitted a professional man in a frock coat of dark superfine cloth. He did not smile but his dark eyes looked in such a sympathy for my plight that I felt instant trust in him. He waved his hand to the couch and the blonde attendant and said in low and serious tones:

"Miss Jermyn, please don't be in any way alarmed. I realise that for a young lady of your quality this will be difficult, however my treatment requires the application of medical instruments and a professional manipulation on your most intimate body parts. Nurse Smith and Nurse Wiggins will help you to undress and to relax. Rest assured that they will remain with you as chaperones as well as my assistants throughout the procedure."

Although he was so very professional, I could not help a small sob of anxiety escaping me and my breath started to come fast, my bosom to heave.

The good doctor said: "Nurse Smith, I think a small glass of brandy for medicinal purposes. Sip it slowly, Miss Jermyn."

I made up my mind to it, although when I would pour drinks for papa and my brothers, I never did like the smell of spirits. However, the blonde Nurse Smith brought me such a delicate little glass on a tray. It was quite like you might imagine Queen Titania of the Faeries might drink from: the size of a large nut and with gold tracery patterned on it. The scent of the brandy when I hesitantly raised the glass to my lips was delicious: of woodbine spices, and the musk of oranges. It tasted so sweet and fragrant, with a tingling heat as it passed over my tongue that was not unpleasant.

While I drank my medicine, Nurse Wiggins had arranged a screen around the couch. I resisted the childish temptation to stick my tongue in my glass and get at every last drop of the brandy! Nurse Wiggins and Nurse Smith took me behind the screen and helped me to undress.

I had to remove my lavender gloves and my bonnet. They unbuttoned my walking dress, which they disposed carefully on a chair (I had left my coat with Mama in the waiting room). Then my over petticoat with its embroidered scoop hem, and the hoop skirt over which my dress hung. (Mama used to say often what a blessing this great invention was. In her youth she would have to wear as many as six petticoats to keep her large skirts out as they should be.) Nurse Wiggins assisted me to sit on the couch and helped remove my lavender silk stockings and my garters.

I was clad only in my chemise and my ruffled pantaloons. The pantaloons are of course open at the ... bottom, and I felt very conscious and exposed. The two kind nurses helped me to sit on the couch so I was leaning back in the seat. They loosened the bows down the front of my chemise and Nurse Smith murmured to explain that it might be necessary to massage my ... my bosom. I blushed, and began to feel anxious again as they parted my legs and drew wider the opening of my pantaloons to expose my hairy mound and most intimate female parts. Luckily the warmth of the brandy in my ... (pardon me) stomach made me feel more relaxed than usual.

"Excuse me for saying of it," Nurse Smith murmured, "you are quite beautiful down below." She grinned at me as she said this and I could not help smiling back to her.

"Do ... do you think so?" I asked.

"Why yes," she said. She took my hand and laid it on my hairy mound. "It is just like a soft little pussy," she said to me. "Do you not think so? Shall we call it your little pussy?"

"I suppose." The hair was soft under my cupped hand.

"Pussies like to be stroked," Nurse Smith said to me. "That is what the doctor will do to your little pussy. Don't be alarmed, you must submit to it, you know, if you wish to get better."

"I'm s-s-sorry," I said nervously. "Will it hurt?"

Nurse Wiggins came to sit on a stool by my side and took my hand in hers. "It should not hurt," she said soothingly. "You must tell me if you feel pain and the doctor will stop stroking you. It will feel strange but you must relax and let the doctor help you to get better. We have had many ladies come here of the highest quality -- just like yourself, and he has helped every one of them, just as he will help you."

I did wish my Mama could hear her say I was a lady of the highest quality. I made up my mind to endure the treatment as the other ladies had done, so that I might recover sufficiently to make my family proud.

With a light warning cough, the doctor came round the screen. I was all of a tremble to think he would be seeing me nearly naked, but Nurse Smith murmured to me that it was but my little pussy he would be looking at. I imagined it so and felt easier.

"I must inspect the patient thoroughly," Dr. Jones said in his stern serious voice.

Nurse Wiggins squeezed my hand comfortingly while Nurse Smith put her hands to my 'pussy'. Dr. Jones stood by the couch, looking with concentration while Nurse Smith used her fingers to spread the two hairy lips to my cave of Venus.

"Excellent," murmured Dr. Jones. "Very good."

I felt a spasm of pleasure, hoping that I presented even down there as a young lady of quality should do.

"Spread the inner lips," commanded Dr. Jones.

I felt Nurse Smith's fingers touching my folds in a way which caused me to tingle. I clasped Nurse Wiggins' hand tightly and she smoothed my brow gently with her other hand. Nurse Smith opened me up with her fingers, holding the flaps of my lips wide, to Dr. Jones's gaze. He reached to the table of implements and drew a hand mirror from under the snowy white cloth.

"As you can see, Wiggins," he said, angling the mirror around my intimate parts, "entirely healthy apart from her sad hysterical symptoms."

He positioned the mirror so that Nurse Wiggins could see the entrance to my cave of Venus. I could not help seeing myself too. I gave a gasp. There were Nurse Smith's white fingers -- like Nurse Wiggins she had a modest plain gold wedding band on one. She held open roseate pink and peach flesh exposed like the painting of a sunset within my dark hairy pussy. The entrance to my cave glistened with mucus. I could see above it a small interesting bump of flesh and below a darkened area where the skin led down to my unmentionable back passage.

Nurse Wiggins was making some approving noises, to my relief. She said to me: "You look well down there, befitting a young lady of such quality."

"Your husband will be a lucky man." Nurse Smith looked up from her ministrations between my legs to give me a smile.

"Oh ... I have no thoughts of marriage." I began to blush.

"Well, if you have not I am sure many men of your acquaintance do," laughed Nurse Smith.

"Hush, Smith," Nurse Wiggins said reprovingly. "A proper lady such as Miss Jermyn does not waste her time with such frivolity, however many admirers she may have."

Nurse Smith turned her head away as if abashed but she gave me such a cheeky grin as she turned that I could not help laughing in reply.

Dr. Jones recalled us with a discreet cough. "Speculum," he said sternly, holding the mirror out.

Nurse Smith removed her fingers from my pussy, took the mirror to put it back and fetched out a strangely curved implement from under the snowy cloth. "I must warm it, sir," she said. She poured some hot water from the kettle by the table of implements into the copper bowl and immersed the speculum in it.

"There is a little tension," Dr. Jones said. "It will be necessary to palpate the breasts to relieve it."

"Excuse me, miss," Nurse Wiggins said apologetically. She let go my hand and reached into the loosened front opening of my embroidered chemise. I gasped as she placed her warm hands on my breasts and momentarily shut my eyes in embarrassment. Nurse Wiggins manipulated my breasts gently, then she focussed her touch on the nipples. Such feelings rose in me at this: like little darts of electric light shooting along my nerves. I moaned and could not help restlessly moving my legs.

"The room is sound-proof, Miss Jermyn," Dr. Jones's voice spoke above me. "It will be beneficial to the process if you allow yourself to make noises should you feel impelled to do so."

I gasped and moaned again as Nurse Wiggins gently pinched my nipples. I put a hand on her arm and she murmured soothingly to me.

"Please open your legs wider, Miss Jermyn," Dr. Jones commanded. "I must be able to see your ... pudenda without obstruction."

I spread my legs obediently and opened my eyes to see him looking gravely but very kindly at me. I blushed. He looked quickly back down to the area of his professional interest. Nurse Smith was drying the speculum with a clean towel and she now handed it to Dr. Jones.

She put her fingers back to my 'pussy' and spread the lips for the deeper examination Dr. Jones was about to make. I whimpered as the hard warm metal touched my soft inner lips. Slowly Dr. Jones inserted the implement into me. The breath began rising in my chest. I was panting heavily, my bosom heaving to Nurse Wiggins' manipulative fingers on my nipples. Dr. Jones paused, then I felt myself stretched as he opened me up with the speculum.

"Some clitoral stimulation," he said curtly to Nurse Smith.

She moved her fingers from my pussy lips and placed one up higher on the little nub of flesh I had seen in the mirror. Gently and slowly she began to rub it in circles. The electric feelings which were already darting about my body from Nurse Wiggins' pinching my nipples increased tenfold. As if the metal implement deep in my pussy were the bow of burning gold from William Blake's poem, arrows of desire seemed to come shooting from Nurse Smith's fingering me.

"Excellent," Dr. Jones murmured, stooping and peering closely at me. I felt my cave of Venus being stretched wide to reveal all its wonders to his penetrating gaze. I moaned and panted, spreading my legs to his eyes. "Very good," Dr. Jones murmured, closing the speculum and withdrawing it gently from my body.

As if at a signal, Nurse Smith and Nurse Wiggins ceased the gentle fingering of my most sensitive parts. I lay panting and lightly moaning, my legs lying loosely and helplessly open. A surge of emotion was choking me. I began to weep. I felt worse than ever before, in despair. I was trembling and in a spiritual agony.

Was I to be Dr. Jones's first failure then? Not sufficiently a lady to respond to his treatment? The good doctor had gone to the side of the room to make some notes in a book he took from his pocket. His face was turned from me and he looked grave.

I gave an involuntary sob. The Nurses hurried to apply a delicate kerchief to my tears, asking if I was in pain.

"Oh no!" I wept, "but it has not worked. I feel just as bad -- worse."

"Dry your tears now," Nurse Smith said gaily. "The best is yet to come!"

Nurse Wiggins shot her another reproving look. "The procedure is not yet begun," she said to me. "That was but the examination."

I trembled and panted with anticipation.

Dr. Jones crossed back to us and bent his stern yet kindly stare on each of the two attendants. "Hold her," he said.

Each of them took me by the upper arm and placed my hands on their arms, Nurse Wiggins adjuring me to hold tight. In my grip, I felt the warm soft cloth of the blue woollen dresses they wore under their starched white linen aprons. Each nurse now took hold of one of my thighs and gently they drew my legs open for the doctor, parting the split in my pantaloons wide.

Dr. Jones bent over me and placed his own hand on my 'pussy'. He slid a thick male finger between the lips and touched the nub of flesh which Nurse Smith had stimulated previously. Just as she had done, he began stroking it in small circles. The manly pressure of his digit was firmer, harder than her delicate touch.

The electric sensations began darting about my body again. I gasped and moaned, rolling my head, gripping on the arms of the two kind nurses.

"Come, Miss Jermyn," Nurse Wiggins said encouragingly. "Let it out now."

I was uttering guttural cries as the feelings rose and surged, screwing up within me to peaks of ecstasy.

"Come on, miss," Nurse Smith urged me.

My pelvis was lifting up towards Dr. Jones's hand as if possessed by some daemon from poesie. I cried out and thrust to his rubbing.

"You will have to give it her," Nurse Wiggins said cryptically.

"She is virgo intacta," the doctor replied. "I must be careful."

Suddenly I felt the tip of a finger inserted in my cave of Venus. Dr. Jones increased the speed of his circling on my nether nub. He put the tips of two fingers delicately inside me and rubbed them around my lips.

I felt an explosion of delight rocket through my body. It was as if that writhing daemon suddenly took flight and rushed through my body. I gave a great cry and thrust up to the good doctor's thick manly fingers, which he withdrew quickly from my body. He kept one finger on my nether nub, which throbbed almost painfully under his touch. I lay in the soothing grasp of the two nurses, panting and groaning.

The nurses began to praise me and stroke my body gently. Nurse Smith fetched warm water and bathed my parts, which were wet and sticky with release. I lay in the two kind women's hands, so proud and so happy. At last I was at peace in my tortured body.

Dressed once more in my embroidered and ruffled undergarments, and my lavender walking dress with the soutache braid, I prepared to leave the doctor's examining room. He explained to me very carefully that I must not perform these acts myself, as this would only exacerbate my illness. I blushed warmly as he told me I could permit my husband to practise such excitements on me; this would encourage healthy procreation.

Mama was brought into the examining room, and the doctor told her that the only permanent cure for my condition would be to submit to frequent marital relations. He earnestly pressed Mama to arrange for an early marriage. I was astonished when she said that Papa had had many requests from suitors, to pursue a more intimate acquaintance with me, and most recently one from a man she and Papa finally considered of sufficiently high position for me.

As the footman opened the front door to let us out of the doctor's rooms, I was wondering who might be the person my parents had finally decided was of sufficiently high rank for me. At the same time, I was a little self-conscious. My disordered dress was hidden by my winter coat but I knew I was flushed. Kind Nurse Smith had done her best to tidy the bun into which Betty had dressed my long dark hair that morning, however my hair was still dishevelled under my lavender bonnet with the ribbons sewn to it.

"Good Heavens!" Mama exclaimed in a tone of annoyance. "The last person I would wish to see us here. Quickly, Maud, get into the carriage before he catches sight of us."

I could not help looking about me. I saw Charles's friend Valentine and just then, he saw me. Our eyes met across the busy street. He gave an impetuous and lovely smile. I was so relaxed and easy after my treatment that I forgot to feel upset by his attentions, I forgot that I disliked him because of how he made me feel. I gave him a warm smile back. Then I blushed, looked down and tripped as our footman handed me up the step into the carriage. I sank back into the cushions and looked surreptitiously through the tasselled curtains festooning the carriage windows.

I saw Valentine throwing a coin to a ragged child who had swept the street clean for him to cross. I eased down the window -- to let in some air.

"Mrs Jermyn, what an unexpected pleasure," I heard Valentine say respectfully. He tipped his elegant top hat. "But are you at all unwell? I trust it is not Miss Jermyn's health which is the cause of your visit here today?"

"Gracious me, no," Mama said forcefully. "Maud is an extremely healthy girl. I have been to see the doctor myself about a slight nervous complaint," she gave a cough to substantiate this Banbury tale. "Perhaps you would like to dine with us on Thursday? It is Maud's birthday. We are having a very small dinner party: only family members, but she enjoys so much to hear you read, I will make an exception in your case."

I was well pleased to understand from this that I would not have to suffer the company of Clara and Mrs Macready.