The Beguiled

by Thomas Cullinan

  “It’s because she don’t know who she is—she don’t know what she is.”

  “How do you mean, Mattie?”

  “She’s got black blood in her.”

  “Mattie . . . Mattie,” I whispered, horrified. “You must never say a thing like that.”

  “I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.”

  “But, Mattie, she’s no darker really than little Marie Deveraux, and her features are almost as sharp as mine . . .”

  “Take another look at her, Miss Harriet. Take a good look at her eyes. That’s why her Daddy keeps her here. That’s why he never lets her come home.”

  “Now, Mattie,” I said as firmly as I could. “No matter what your personal opinions are, you must never repeat a word of this to anyone else.”

  “No ma’am I ain’t gonna.”

  “Not even to Miss Martha.”

  “I ain’t gonna say any more about it. I wouldn’t’ve said it to you, only you brought it up.”

  “Even if it were true—and I’m not prepared to accept it, Mattie—but even if it were, it wouldn’t make any difference. Maybe the child doesn’t even know it herself.”

  “She knows.”

  “Nevertheless we must never mention it again—to her or anyone. Nobody else in this house shall hear of it from either one of us.”

  “Maybe one other person has already.”

  “Who?”

  “That Yankee over there. He had his eyes open a minute ago and maybe his ears too.”

  I turned instantly but he seemed exactly as before—pale, motionless, breathing regularly but hardly noticeably. “You’re mistaken, Mattie,” I said after a long moment. “He’s still unconscious. It may have been the way the light played on his face.”

  “Yes ma’am . . . whatever you say.”

  Alice Simms entered hesitantly then. A little Dresden figurine is the way I always think of her. However low the estate of her forebearers, there could certainly be no doubt of her racial background. With those blue eyes and blond hair she needed only a staff and a green hillside behind her to play the lovely shepherdess.

  “We’re omitting evening prayers tonight, Alice,” I informed her. “As a group, I mean. You may say your prayers in your room. We want to keep it as quiet as possible in here for the sake of our patient.”

  “Yes ma’am,” said my little pastoral maiden, coming in anyway.

  I have long been determined to make something of this child. It is my theory that a girl like Alice can grow beyond her beginnings to the loftiest of estates, and it is for that reason I have stood by her and taken her part on several occasions when my sister was becoming most discouraged with her deportment and her ability and desire to learn, and was once or twice at the point of putting her out of the school. Alice is not the most difficult of students by any means but there is the financial problem and that, unfortunately, adds to her sins in my sister’s eyes. However one of the problems in Alice’s case has lately proven to be a blessing. Even Martha cannot send a girl away in these days if she has nowhere to send her.

  “I believe he looks more handsome now than he did before,” my homeless one observed.

  “That’s probably only because he’s cleaner,” I said. “I washed his face and combed his hair a bit before I came in to dinner.”

  “He needs to be shaved too,” said Alice. “His beard is too boyish to be really distinguished looking and the way it is now, it’s only scraggly.”

  “Well I suppose I could find an old razor of my father’s or my brother’s but I wouldn’t attempt any such operation in his present condition. We’re not putting him on exhibit . . . we’re only trying to make him well.”

  “He probably ought to be given a thorough washing though, don’t you think, Miss Harriet?”

  “How do you mean, ‘a thorough washing’?”

  “Well . . . a bath maybe.”

  “If the young man recovers, he can take his own bath.”

  “Yes ma’am,” said the golden one unabashed.

  Emily Stevenson, our cadet sergeant-major, came in then. “Miss Harriet, Miss Martha would like to see you in the kitchen. At once,” Emily reported.

  “All right. We’re not having evening prayers in here tonight, Emily, so you can go to your room any time you like.”

  “Thank you, Miss Harriet,” she said, not quite saluting. “Did you mention that to Miss Martha? She told me we would have our prayers in here as usual in ten minutes and she desires me to inform the other girls.”

  “All right,” I said, a trifle peevishly I suppose. “Miss Martha has apparently forgotten that some of the girls have been sent to bed already.”

  “No, she remembers that. I am instructed to summon the punishment girls to the living room so that they may pray for forgiveness.”

  “I think that is very unfair,” Alice commented. “If one is sent to bed without dinner, one should certainly not be required to repent in public later.”

  “What you think will not change the course of history, I’m afraid,” Emily observed. “Also there seems to be some doubt as to whether the girls in question have gone without their dinners. Miss Martha has discovered that some food is missing and she believes that Marie and Amelia may have plundered it.”

  “Oh now, now,” I said. “I must speak with Miss Martha about this.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Emily cooly. “She would like you to do just that.”

  My sister has sometimes declared that she could leave Farnsworth in the charge of Emily Stevenson and be secure in the knowledge that Emily would run the school as efficiently as she ever could, and very likely much more efficiently than I. It is probably a fair enough estimate of Emily’s capabilities. Unfortunately, Emily is also aware of her talents for leadership and this, at times, makes our relationship a rather awkward one. However I had no time to worry about it at the moment. I was too busy trying to think of ways to explain the shortages in the kitchen without involving Marie and Amelia.

  “Come with me, I need you,” I told Mattie. “Emily, inform the others as you have been instructed. Alice, keep a watch on the young man—but don’t touch him.”

  “Touch him?” said Alice, wide-eyed. “Why in the world would I ever do that?”

  Alicia Simms

  Did I touch him? Well, yes, when I was alone with him, I leaned over the back of the settee and touched him ever so gently with my finger on the tip of his nose. Then I touched his forehead, then I touched his cheek. He really ought to be shaved, I decided. He would be ever so much more handsome if he were clean shaven.

  I had a rather crazy thought then. It was that I would like to kiss Corporal McBurney. I would kiss him ever so gently, I thought, not hard enough to awaken him but only just enough to make him aware that someone was kissing him and to make him dream of that person, so that when he finally did awaken he would remember and would seek that person out and say to her, “Alicia Simms, I remember you from my dreams. I have come for you now, Alicia. I have come to take you away from here forever.”

  Then he would propose to me and I would accept, and we would be married right here in this parlor. And my mother would come to the wedding and all the girls and their parents and their brothers in uniform.

  There would be officers of all ranks from our armies . . . generals and lieutenants and captains, and maybe some handsome common soldiers too. And beautiful ladies in velvet and silk and brocade dresses, trimmed with lace and gold ornaments, and wearing rings and necklaces and jewels in their hair, and on their heads the latest and most fashionable hats from Paris, every one of which would be surmounted by a gigantic ostrich feather.

  And my father would come too. Perhaps my mother would bring him. Maybe she would find him again just in time to bring him to the wedding, and he would come to the parlor of the Farnsworth School on that afternoon—it would be a late spring afterno
on when the jonquils and the lilacs were in full bloom and we could smell them through the open doors and hear the bees in the fields and the bobwhites in the woods—and he would see me for the first time, standing here, and he would simply not believe it.

  “I positively cannot believe that this is my little girl,” he would say to Mother. “She is even more beautiful than you are, Sarah.” And then he would grab hold of me and hug me and lift me off the floor as though I really was still a little girl. “And then,” I thought, “my father will take me by the hand and lead me over to the garden window where you will be waiting, Corporal McBurney.”

  “I love you,” I thought, and said it. “I love you, Corporal McBurney,” I said. “I would like to kiss you.” And did. I leaned over and did it—quickly the first time and more slowly the second.

  The second time I would have sworn he kissed me back. It startled me, I will admit. I drew back and looked at him, but he seemed the same—still very pale, eyes closed, breathing very softly. Or was it quite as softly? The other girls came in then for evening prayers, which prevented my checking Corporal McBurney’s reactions a third time.

  “Hurry along, hurry along,” Miss Martha was telling them as she drove them forward with her Bible. “We don’t want to keep this lamp burning all night.”

  Miss Harriet and old Mattie were leading the procession, the two of them red-eyed—from recent weeping, obviously. In fact Mattie was still sniffling a bit. Apparently Miss Martha had been reprimanding them in the kitchen over the problem of missing food. Very likely Miss Harriet had been up to her old tricks again of begging food from Mattie to take upstairs to the punishment girls and Miss Martha had trapped her at it. If that were the case, however, I couldn’t think ill of Miss Harriet, since the dear old soul had done the same for me on several occasions when I was being punished, and even several times when I hadn’t broken any rules but when Miss Harriet simply thought I wasn’t getting enough to eat. And that is all of the time recently, if anyone is interested.

  “What are you doing there, Miss Alice?” Miss Martha demanded now.

  “She’s watching the injured young man,” Miss Harriet said in a somewhat broken voice. “I left her here to watch over him. Did I do wrong there too, sister? Did I exceed my authority in that?”

  “Harriet, you will please control yourself,” Miss Martha told her. “If your emotions are such that you cannot pray quietly with us, then I suggest you leave the room. That applies to Mattie too.”

  They didn’t leave because they didn’t dare to leave. Evening prayers have always been a very serious matter with Miss Martha. Had Miss Harriet and Mattie gone off as she suggested, very likely they would have had something worse to weep about on the following day.

  “Now then,” said Miss Martha, “if you will take your places. Miss Amelia and Miss Marie may stand for prayers this evening.”

  The rest of us took our chairs and the two culprits and Mattie stood in back of us. That, of course, was perfectly all right with Marie because she never takes any active part in our services anyway, since she is a Papist, except for maybe muttering a grudging “Amen” once in a while when she is feeling particularly sociable, which isn’t often. Most of the time she is in some kind of trouble with Miss Martha anyway by the time evening prayers come around, and she therefore tries to make herself as quietly offensive as possible.

  “Stop fidgeting, Marie,” Miss Martha directed her now. “Bow your head and fold your hands like the others. I’m sure the Pope won’t mind. Amelia, what are you eating?”

  Amelia, frightened as usual, gulped and choked and had to be pounded on the back by Marie. “It was a hazelnut,” Marie reported. “It’s gone now.”

  “Almighty God,” Miss Martha sighed, and paused just long enough to make it seem a curse. “Almighty God, we ask thy special blessing on this school tonight. The troubled times continue—the hardships increase, but we can endure if Thou will but give us the strength. Our chief prayer is that this school and its occupants will escape Thy total wrath in the days ahead. We ask this in all humility, knowing that we are not worthy of Thy attention. Some of us are weak, very weak. Some of us who should be strong and capable of giving good example to the children in our care have not enough of Your wisdom in us to enable us to see that good discipline is the greatest kindness we can offer to our charges.”

  As Martha paused for breath Miss Harriet began to weep again. “Amen,” said Emily, leaping into the breech. Emily is always ready to second any call for discipline.

  “Spare the rod and spoil the child is as true now as it ever was,” Miss Martha went on. “Now I will impose no further punishment on the two girls who were given their dinner after I had sentenced them to bed without it. I cannot see that this is in any way their fault. May the Lord forgive the person who is guilty and make her see the error of her ways.”

  Miss Harriet stood up then. “The Lord isn’t the one offended here,” she cried. “Or if He is, He isn’t complaining about it. I’m afraid you are the only one who is offended, Martha.”

  Well we all practically went right through the floor at that. That was the first time in the memory of any students at the Farnsworth School that Miss Harriet had ever had the gumption to speak back to her sister.

  “It is all well and good to talk about troubled times and hardships.” Miss Harriet continued in a trembling voice, “but there is such a thing as unnecessary hardship, and also something called the virtue of mercy, which ought not to be out of place at a school for children.”

  Then she started to weep again which more or less spoiled the whole performance. Miss Martha told her that kind of conduct was disgraceful and asked her to please sit down and be quiet and not interrupt the prayers again. Miss Harriet sat down but she did continue to sob a bit.

  “I am inclined to be somewhat tolerant of these irregularities and emotional outbursts,” said Miss Martha when she had everyone’s attention again, “because of the unusual state of excitement brought on us today by the coming of our wounded visitor. However, it is precisely because of the presence of this person that we can have no more of it. If he recovers, there might come a time when we may need all the steadfastness and strength of purpose we can summon in order to preserve our welfare here. Of course I don’t anticipate his being with us long enough to cause us any real difficulty, but in these times, it is well that we be prepared for any eventuality. And a great part of that preparation is self discipline.”

  “Amen,” said Emily again.

  Well I thought remarks like that were foolish but naturally I made no comment. It just seemed ridiculous to me that a harmless-looking boy like Corporal McBurney would ever cause us any injury. But thinking about it later, I guess it was not physical injury Miss Martha had in mind.

  She leafed through her Bible then, reading us some appropriate passages which applied to her remarks. I can’t remember the exact verses but I know they had to do with sinful people and the destruction of Jerusalem and the importance of being watchful in the night.

  Then, as was customary, Miss Martha asked if any of the girls—“or more particularly any of the faculty,” with a hard stare at Miss Harriet—would like to confess any of their errors of the day and ask God’s forgiveness for them. There was no response to this invitation. There seldom has been during my years at Farnsworth School.

  “Then,” said Miss Martha after a pause, “if you all feel you are innocent of any misdeeds today, I can only pray that God will enlighten you. Now we’ll move on to the petitions. Does anyone wish to ask for special blessings?”

  Edwina held up her hand. “I pray that the Lord will see fit to restore the health of the wounded Yankee,” she said, looking at all of us quickly as though she expected an argument.

  “That is a proper prayer,” Miss Martha said. “We will pray for his return to health and for his early departure.”

  We all lowered our heads—ev
en Marie participating in this—and asked for blessing for Corporal McBurney. I prayed especially hard for his recovery, but not his departure. I wanted Corporal McBurney to get better and stay here with us more than anything I had ever wanted in my entire life. At that moment I wanted it more than I wanted my mother to come back and take me away from Farnsworth, and even more than I wanted to find my father.

  “Are there any more petitions,” said Miss Martha, deciding that Corporal McBurney had received enough of God’s attention.

  “I ask God’s blessing on our armies,” said Emily. “I ask that General Lee’s army emerge victorious from the battle in the woods. I pray that this may be the final crushing blow against the enemy and that our boys may then return home to their families and that our great Confederacy may prosper and live in peace forever.” She paused and then continued, faltering a bit. “Also I pray that those who are already gone will be the last to go.”

  “On both sides,” said Miss Harriet, wiping her eyes. “I pray for the safety of all our relatives and friends in the field, especially those in positions of great responsibility, like Emily’s father and Marie’s father. I also pray for our deceased kindred. Amelia’s two brothers . . . Emily’s brother . . . Miss Martha’s and my brother . . . who is missing. . . .”

  “And who we are certain now is dead,” said Miss Martha. Miss Martha cannot refrain from correcting a mistake even in a prayer.

  “May they be in happiness somewhere . . . waiting for us. . . .” It seemed like there was more to it but Miss Harriet’s voice is so soft at most times it is difficult to hear her and now the prayer just trailed off into silence.

  “And may we conduct ourselves in such a manner in our daily lives,” said Miss Martha, determined to have the last word, “that we may be worthy of joining our relatives in Heaven. Are there any more subjects for our prayers?”

  Amelia raised her hand shyly. “My snapping turtle is ill,” she said.