The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Title: How to Tame Her with Slumber

Chapter the Seventh: Neither a Borrower, nor a Lender, nor a Spender

Synopsis: Mrs Mary Dracogild has her hoard of gold, but will spend none of it—not even for her husband! Her husband thinks he would handle her funds far better than her, and so hires Mrs Leashem to make his wife less covetous of her wealth.

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What greater evil could you wish a miser, than long life?

—The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus

From just examining their home, a passer-by would never conclude that Mr and Mrs Dracogild’s bank account keeps the Bank of England running. I can taste their home’s cheapness in the air, its damp walls and carpet fornicating with the stench of open sewer outside, while the clamour of a pedestrian suffering a mugging is drowned by a rag-and-bone man hawking smashed glass he found in the Thames. I say ‘their home’, but matters of ownership are very much why I’m here today.

‘I married Mary for many reasons,’ says Mr Dracogild. ‘I would be lying if I excluded from those reasons “wealth”.’ He does his best to look suave, despite his clothes consisting more of patches than original cloth, and his hair oil smelling suspiciously of butter. ‘I would be lying if I denied that wealth was the deciding reason.’ He offers me cake, but when a cockroach scurries out from under the lifted slice, we both decide to fast.

I have not brought Eugenie today for she has been awfully pugnacious about our occupation. When I am simply commissioned to make a wife eat fewer bonbons, Eugenie plays along. But when my job is as vital to a marriage’s well-being as a woman’s finances, Eugenie starts questioning our methods. I don’t like her questions for they make me… defend things I would prefer to take for granted.

Mr Dracogild claps his hands. ‘Point is, I engaged her in 1882, thinking that, when we married, her assets would come to me—as was the case for Englishmen since before we spoke English. But what do you know, the day I married her, Parliament said a married woman gets to keep all her goods.’ He scowls at the past, and at this living room, which doubles as a kitchen, which triples as a bedroom, which quadruples laundry room.

‘Already, sir,’ I say, ‘I understand your request. However, while I agree that women should not overburden their minds, and hands, with finances, I agree only to the extent that husbands are better able to act as their agents. You married your wife for her money; I must know whether you would treat her less well when you have it.’ Depending on how he answered this, I will decide whether to mesmerise him in addition to his wife. Ever since Eugenie forced the idea on me during the Thwacks’ case, I’ve discovered more and more men in need of mesmerism.

Mr Dracogild sighs and leans back in his chair, which breaks the chair’s back, making him yelp as he tumbles backwards, kicking the tea table over—a tea table so feeble that his kick un-nails its four legs. After an exhausting minute, he stands to address me.

‘I know, I know,’ he says, ‘you hear about gamblers and drinkers and eccentrics, the kind of men ministers warn young women from marrying. Yes, I have expensive tastes, and I would indulge them—but she has enough money, and I enough restraint, that our pleasure will be sustainable. Prodigality may be a sin, but isn’t it also a sin to shiver away the life God gave you because you refuse to buy a coat?’

His face seems earnest, but then no scoundrel could marry an heiress if they did not seem earnest. I let his argument sway me, for now, but make a note to check up on the Dracogilds after I’m done with them.

‘Very well, Mr Dracogild, I shall make your wife more than willing to entrust you with her bank account. Will she be home soon?’

He shrugs. ‘No clue. Everyday she looks through gutters for buttons and threads, and won’t come back till she has a sewing kit.’ He laughs. ‘You could catch her if you run out after her,’ he says half-jokingly, but the thought of a woman so devoted to miserliness as this plutocratic-scavenger spurs me to save Mrs Mary Dracogild as soon as possible.

I trudge through the cold and stinking streets, asking pedestrians and shopkeepers about the ‘rich madwoman’. After hours of scouting, I chance upon her down an alley, dipping an ungloved hand into a bin. She wears no clothes, rather she wraps herself in fabric. A stiff breeze could strip her naked.

‘Mrs Dracogild!?’ I call to Mary.

‘This is my patch!’ she snaps, poshly. She pulls a burnt cinder from the bin and drops it in her sack.

‘I have no desire to steal from your rubbish bin,’ I say, approaching her.

Rubbish bin?’ Mary scoffs. ‘The wastefulness of the new generation.’ She heaves from the bin a boot, or what was a boot. ‘If I went to the Rag Fair, this here would cost a penny.’

It’s a wonder she hasn’t died of infection, or murder, or pinching pennies so hard she broke her fingers. It’s a wonder, as well, that she looks even somewhat attractive, though that may be the squalor surrounding us making her seem good by contrast. I cannot mesmerise her here for, while this does appear to be her habitat, I can’t speak in a soothing voice while my teeth chatter and my nose curls.

‘I just want to talk with you, Mrs Dracogild,’ I say, failing to be more interesting to her than the broken umbrella she’s examining. ‘Over coffee.’ She shakes a cockroach from the umbrella before putting it in her sack. ‘I’ll pay.’

Mary grabs my arm. ‘I know a place.’

* * *

When she isn’t paying the bill, Mrs Mary Dracogild turns quite prodigal. She munches into her fifth serving of sausages, washes the bites down with her third mug of hot chocolate, and wipes her face with toast. Of all the coffeehouses, Mary chose one she remembers from her childhood, her very spoilt childhood. Thank God, my contract with Mr Dracogild is twenty pounds plus expenses.

‘Mrs Dracogild,’ I say over her loud slurps. ‘Mrs Dracogild!’ I have to yell even though we sit on the same sofa, in the same quiet room.

She grunts that she can hear me. At least, she cannot disturb the other patrons with her manners, as I plumped for a private room in the coffeehouse’s upstairs. The club room is larger than the Dracogilds’ home, and far more hygienic. Far more suited to my purposes, as well. Unless I pull the service bell, not even waiters may enter.

‘Mrs Dracogild,’ I say. ‘You’re attitude to money fascinates me.’

‘You’re from a charity?’ Mary slurs ‘charity’ as a Tory would slur ‘anarchist’.

‘No, no,’ I say, soothing her. ‘I just heard tell of you, and found our attitudes towards money, though divergent, have much in common.’

She doesn’t even nod.

I continue, ‘You please yourself by amassing funds; I please myself by collecting pieces of currency.’

From my purse, I retrieve a coin, with such reverent slowness that it might have been a fragile flake of gold. It’s a dirty penny, but at such short notice I had to improvise my mesmeric props. As though handling a premature egg, I hold the coin between me and Mary.

‘This coin,’ I whisper, ‘has only one hundred brothers—for it refers to our Queen as Victoria II.’

Mary chomps on a sausage.

‘To the right collector,’ I say, ‘it would fetch ten pounds.’

Mary drops her knife and fork as her hands reach towards the coin.

‘Dirty hands!’ I say, hiding the coin on my breast. ‘Syrup and sausage juice could reduce this to its face value.’

Like vipers from a flaming torch, her hands retreat, as she wipes them on her rags. ‘That? That little thing is worth ten pounds?’ says a woman who has never considered firewood worth paying for, much less collectables.

‘A true numismatist would expect and accept no less,’ I say, keeping the coin a good distance from her eyes. ‘I myself bought it for a single pound, from an amateur who’d no clue what he possessed.’

Mary barely blinks as she stares at my coin, her mind alchemising this pocket-variety penny into a doubloon. I roll it back and forth between my thumb and forefinger, smiling when her eyes shift left and right.

‘But I knew what the collector possessed,’ I say. ‘I knew what he had, and could not forget what he had, could not look away from this coin, this pretty coin, even as he spoke and spoke about lesser coins, for this coin was more important than his other coins, more important than the whole room, more important than anything else I had planned. I wanted this coin, but I could not let him realise I needed this coin, that it had swelled to surround my every thought. I needed this coin, so I needed to play it calm, so I listened to every word he said, and I breathed in… and out.’

I breathe in, and, slower, I blow out, once, twice, thrice, until Mary does likewise.

In… and out, till my arms, my legs, my chest relaxed into still and steady calmness. For this coin’s sake, I calmed and relaxed myself, for this coin was my one desire.’

I move the coin back and forth, back and forth, and Mary’s eyes roll back and forth, back and forth.

‘By relaxing myself for this coin, I earned this coin. By relaxing yourself for this coin, you have earned this coin.’

Avarice almost jars her from trances, her hand twitching, ready to grasp the coin.

Relax. A girl who is not relaxed, who does not breathe deeply does not deserve this coin.’

Her rising hand drifts to her lap, so weak and yielding that I take her wrist and place the coin on her palm.

‘Do you see how precious it is?’ I whisper in her ear. She grunts yes. ‘So precious, yet so small. Overwhelming, like a star in a grain of sand. You have so much in your palm, so much preciousness entirely in your grasp.’

Mary smiles like a cat, seeing glimmers of gold in the browning penny. I guide her to her feet. Her eyes do not flicker as I lead her to the centre of the room.

Still holding her wrist, I say, ‘What if you lost this coin?’

She shudders, as she folds her fingers over the coin.

‘Is that enough?’ I ask. ‘Protecting the coin, I mean. If you keep this precious penny safe too long, a year, a decade, maybe no collector will want it. The star in a grain of sand becomes just another grain of sand. What if someone offered you twenty pounds for this coin?’

‘Sell…’ she murmurs.

‘But what if, if you waited a year, someone offered thirty pounds?’

Her face burns so hot in panic I can feel its radiance. ‘I wo- wo—’

‘What if you sell it for a hundred pounds, and it turns out to be a forgery. Your customer sues you for everything you have, and then you don’t even have a penny.’

She shivers, quakes, looks primed to vomit. With all the food she scoffed down I should probably end this before she does vomit.

‘This is a very heavy penny, isn’t it? Heavy with choice, with risk, with disaster. It weighs the weight of a million branching futures.’

I release her wrist. Her clenched fist, laden with worry, sags.

‘Sell, don’t sell, sell low, sell high, get rich, go broke, stay clean, get sued,’ I taunt her, each taunt adding an anxious ounce to the penny, each ounce dragging her hand down until her hand hits the floor.

Mary is on her knees, staring at her white fist, sweating.

‘You could get rid of this weight,’ I suggest, standing above her.

I leave her shaking with indecision as I pull the service bell. In mere moments which seem to Mary eternities, a waiter cracks open the door. I whisper for him to send up the man I sent a message to when I first arrived.

I say to Mary, ‘Money and power and control were so desirable, but now you would do anything to abandon this weight. If only someone else could assume this burden.’

The door opens, and Mr Dracogild enters. Although shocked to see his wife shivering and sweating and kneeling, Mr Dracogild grins when I tell him all I have done, and exactly what to do next.

He gets down on one knee before his wife. ‘Darling,’ he says. ‘Look at me. The coin’s going nowhere, so look at me.’

Mary tears her eyes from her fist. ‘Stuart…?’

‘Give that coin to me.’ He proffers his palm, futilely. He sighs. ‘A single penny, darling? On your knees over a penny, all because you never before contemplated the responsibility money entails. How will you handle the millions of other pennies in the bank?’

Mary yelps, as the penny accrues the weight of its million brothers.

I kneel beside her. ‘Do you know why the law once commanded wives give all their possessions to their husbands? To avoid bouts of hysteria like this. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of a large purse requires a husband to hold it.’

‘But- but,’ she says, ‘I’m good with money…’

‘Darling,’ says Mr Dracogild. ‘There’s frugality, and then there’s foolishness. Every time the roof leaks you pull out a broken umbrella. Would you trust your money to a woman like you, someone who has no inkling of what “value for money” means?’

The penny drops, figuratively. Tears dew in her eyes, as she realises how buttery her grip on her finances has been.

‘I know how to handle money,’ says Mr Dracogild. ‘I will take it all off your mind, so you won’t need to know a penny from a pound. Does that sound nice?’ When his wife nods, he continues, ‘Give me that penny, and with it, all you possess.’

Knowing her hands are shoddy vaults, she opens her palm and begs him to relieve her of the weighty penny. Mr Dracogild takes the penny as though it were as light as, well, a penny. The boulder lifted, Mary moans with relief as irresistible fatigue rolls her into sleep.

Mr Dracogild tries to return the penny to me, which I refuse.

‘Good work is its own payment,’ I say. ‘In addition to my actual payment.’

* * *

After a month, I check on the Dracogilds to ensure Mr Dracogild is not abusing his financial supremacy. The two had moved from their flophouse to a country manor, older and more splendid than that of many lords.

Before I reach the master and mistress of the house, copious numbers of servants guide me through excessively decorated rooms. In the parlour, Mary meets me. Her metamorphosis buckles my knees. Where before she was a rag-wearing caterpillar, now she is butterfly wearing the Continent’s finest designs. Despite the ravages her previous lifestyle made on her, nutritious food, luscious clothes, and tasteful cosmetics have made her fit to be painted. At the table, we sip tea, her smile never weakening, this luxury still so novel.

‘This manor is larger than my neighbourhood,’ I say. ‘How much did it cost?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘And that dress,’ I say. ‘How much did the tailor charge?’

Mary giggles. ‘I’ve no idea.’

‘How many,’ I ask, ‘pennies are in a pound?’

‘No idea!’ We both laugh as though it were the greatest joke in the world.

She grabs my hand between hers, pulls it to her chest, as her eyes dew over. ‘Thank you,’ she chokes. ‘I have no idea what happened that day but thank you! I had no idea how much I was hurting myself.’

A servant opens the door for Mr Dracogild, who claps upon seeing me.

‘Mrs Leashem!’ he says, before smacking two kisses on each of my cheeks. ‘I’ve told all my friends—my new, respectable friends—about your talents.’ Before I can thank him, he continues, ‘You even undersold your services to me.’ He turns to his wife. ‘Take off your clothes.’

Mary blushes. ‘But, Stuart, Mrs Leashem is—’

Mr Dracogild places his finger on her lips. ‘Darling, don’t waste money by wearing out your dress.’

Her embarrassment melts into a smile. ‘Silly me!’ She strips to the bare without blush or hesitation. On seeing my surprise, she explains, ‘Stuart has so many thrifty ideas. For instance, I wanted a cat, but Stuart told me cats cost a fortune to keep. So, he suggested, if I wanted a cat, I should be a cat—Me-ow!

Mr Dracogild scratches his wife’s chin. ‘Only on Thursdays.’

‘And also,’ says Mary. ‘When we got that portrait painted.’ She points to the one of her on the wall. ‘It cost… well, I’m not good with figures, but Stuart told me it cost too much. Stuart, clever Stuart, said we could get it for free if I agreed to make love to both him and the portrait artist at the same time.’

‘More than free,’ says Mr Dracogild. ‘The painter threw in a few private sketches.’

And to think, I was kicking myself for forgetting to specifically mesmerise Mrs Dracogild to be obedient. But something about her slavishness disturbs me. Not that she obeys, but that she smiles at having obeyed, so obliviously. I suppose I would be a hypocrite for criticising a wife for glowing in her husband’s commands, but, nevertheless… I will discuss this with Eugenie. Though she says little, she seems to understand my concerns.