The Beguiled

by Thomas Cullinan

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE BEGUILED

  Thomas Cullinan (1919–1995) was a novelist and playwright, as well as a writer for television. In addition to The Beguiled (1966), he wrote three other novels—The Besieged (1970), The Eighth Sacrament (1977), and The Bedeviled (1978)—as well as several plays, which are still produced. He received a Ford Foundation grant to represent the United States at a literary colloquium in Berlin in 1964, and he wrote a weekly television program in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, both for WKYC, a local television affiliate, and for Case Western Reserve University. The Beguiled was made into a film twice: in 1971, starring Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page, and in 2017, directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst, and Elle Fanning. Cullinan is survived by his son, Thomas W., and his wife, Helen, to whom this book is dedicated.

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  First published in the United States of America by Horizon Press 1966

  Published in Penguin Books 2017

  Copyright © 1966 by Thomas Cullinan

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Cullinan, Thomas, author.

  Title: The beguiled : a novel / Thomas Cullinan.

  Description: New York, New York : Penguin Books, 2017. | Movie tie-in.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017015395| ISBN 9780143132400 (paperback) | ISBN 9780525504382 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction. |

  Man-woman relationships—Fiction. | Soldiers—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / Romance / Gothic. | FICTION / Media Tie-In. | GSAFD: Historical fiction. | Gothic fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3553.U33 B44 2017 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015395

  Cover Key Artwork © 2017 Focus Features LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Helen

  Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Amelia Dabney

  Matilda Farnsworth

  Marie Deveraux

  Alicia Simms

  Emily Stevenson

  Harriet Farnsworth

  Edwina Morrow

  Martha Farnsworth

  Matilda Farnsworth

  Emily Stevenson

  Marie Deveraux

  Amelia Dabney

  Harriet Farnsworth

  Alicia Simms

  Amelia Dabney

  Martha Farnsworth

  Edwina Morrow

  Emily Stevenson

  Matilda Farnsworth

  Harriet Farnsworth

  Alicia Simms

  Marie Deveraux

  Amelia Dabney

  Edwina Morrow

  Emily Stevenson

  Martha Farnsworth

  Marie Deveraux

  Amelia Dabney

  Alicia Simms

  Emily Stevenson

  Harriet Farnsworth

  Edwina Morrow

  Marie Deveraux

  Harriet Farnsworth

  Amelia Dabney

  Matilda Farnsworth

  Amelia Dabney

  I found him in the woods. Miss Harriet had given me permission to hunt for mushrooms as long as I promised not to go beyond the old Indian trail, which is just before the woods begin to slope down to the creek. Well all that land belongs to the Farnsworths but they never have used it for anything, I guess, which is fine with me. I prefer to have places like the woods kept just the way they are. Anyway on that afternoon—during the first week of May it was—I didn’t find very many mushrooms, but I did find him.

  He was lying on his face in some dead leaves with one arm around a fallen log, just clinging to it like it was his mother or a raft in deep water. His cap had fallen off and there were half a dozen flies buzzing around a deep scratch on his forehead. He had red hair and freckles and his face in the cleaner places was very pale. I thought at first he was dead but then he moaned very softly and turned a bit on his side. There was a great deal of blood underneath him on the oak leaves and his right trouser leg was just covered with blood.

  My first thought was to return to the School and fetch Miss Harriet or Marie or Alice, but then I decided against it. They’d probably make a big fuss about it and decide to wait until Miss Martha returned from the crossroads and then Miss Martha would say it was too dangerous for any of us to be in the woods and none of us would be allowed to come back. So I knew I’d have to move him myself.

  The cannons sounded louder now. They had been booming since early in the morning from some distance to the east of us in that wilderness across the creek. There’s still a lot of virgin timber on this property but over there there’s nothing but creepers and brambles and second growth pine. It’s no good for farming and all the best wood was cut years ago. I couldn’t imagine anybody wanting to fight over it but apparently some people did.

  His face was turned toward me now so I could get a better look at him. I leaned over to study him a bit closer. He was certainly harmless enough in his present condition and he didn’t appear to have a weapon of any kind, though it might be underneath him. But what to do with him? I certainly couldn’t drag him back to the school and there was no other way of moving him.

  Then he opened his eyes. And almost immediately closed one of them again. I couldn’t imagine anyone winking at me under those circumstances but that’s certainly what he seemed to be doing.

  “Are you frightened?” he asked, very softly but distinctly.

  “No,” I said . . . then, “Yes.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “So am I.” And sighed and closed his eyes again.

  “Can you move at all?” I asked him.

  “I’ve come this far,” he said, “on my feet and on my knees and on the flat of me. I might go a mite farther if there was someplace to go.”

  “The Farnsworth School is just the other side of these woods,” I told him. “The Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies.”

  He considered this a bit. Then, “Any men about?”

  “No men. Just five students including me . . . and Miss Martha Farnsworth and her sister, Miss Harriet Farnsworth. I won’t say you’ll be completely welcome but it will be better than where you are.”

  “True enough,” he said. “I’ll accept your invitation. Let’s see if I can’t make it in on foot. Can you give me a lift up? I’m that light in the head.”

  I stooped down beside him and tugged at his arm. It was no use, I could get him no more than an inch or two off the ground. After a moment he fell back exhausted. “If I hadn’t lost my rifle in the creek,” he said. “I could lean on that.”
>
  “Here,” I said, kneeling beside him. “Put your right arm around me and we’ll both raise up at the same time.” That got him, trembling, up a foot or more but he couldn’t bend his knee to pull it under him.

  “Wait a bit,” he said. “Can you hold on just a bit ’til I get my breath?”

  “Yes,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I could. But then he didn’t seem to be as heavy, holding him that way, as I had expected. He wasn’t nearly as heavy as my brother Dick, for instance, or least ways from how I remembered Dick from the summer before last. I told him that and about how Dick and I used to wrestle on the lawn until Mama decided that it wasn’t ladylike and I was getting too old for it.

  “Where’s Dick now?” he asked, still breathing heavily.

  “He got killed last year at Chickamauga. That’s in Tennessee.”

  “I know,” he said, “but that wasn’t none of us. I’m with the Army of Potomac. We was never in Tennessee.”

  “I wasn’t blaming you,” I told him. “I know it wasn’t your fault.” My brother Billy was killed at that battle too, of course, but I didn’t see any value in mentioning it. Billy was four years older than Dick and we had never wrestled together, although I liked Billy pretty well too.

  Now this was the first time I had ever been close to a Yankee and I suddenly realized something. They don’t look a whole lot different from our boys. As a matter of fact that was the first time that anybody, other than a member of my own personal family, had ever had his arm around me.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Amelia Dabney.”

  “Mine’s McBurney . . . Corporal John McBurney.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” I said.

  “How old are you, Amelia?”

  “Thirteen,” I said. “Fourteen in September.”

  “Old enough for kisses then, and old enough to hate.”

  “How could I hate you,” I said. “I don’t even know you.”

  He smiled a bit at that. His teeth were white though a bit crooked in front. “That’s a grand philosophy,” he said. “Let’s teach it to the world and we’ll have done with all this squabblin. Now then, shall we try once more . . . ?”

  I raised up with all my might, lifting him a bit, then he pulled his knees under him, trying to lean on the good one. The pain made him gasp and the sweat broke out on his forehead but we made it.

  “There we are,” he panted, “and off we go . . . for what is it now?”

  “The Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies.”

  “And with only five students? The title’s longer than the enrollment.”

  “The other girls have gone home,” I said. “Miss Martha was going to close the school this year but she decided to keep it open when we five said we’d stay.”

  “That was brave of you. That betrays the scholars in you.”

  “Well, it was mainly that we didn’t have anywhere else to go.” I kept talking, hoping to keep his mind away from the pain. “My home is in Georgia, you see, and my mother decided it would be better if I stayed up here in Virginia for a while . . . what with your General Sherman down there so close to Atlanta and all. And it’s practically the same thing with the other girls. Marie Deveraux . . . she’s the youngest, she’s only ten . . . her home is in Louisiana, and there’s practically nothing but Yankees swarming around down there now. And Emily Stevenson’s folks have a big place in South Carolina but there’s nobody on it, except the hands, because her mother’s dead and her brothers are all in the army . . . and her father is too. Her father is a brigadier general. He’s probably off there in the woods right now.”

  “If he’s smart, he won’t stay,” said McBurney. “I’ve been in battles before but never one like that. It’s terrible in there. The brush is burning in a hundred places . . . look, you can see the smoke.”

  We stopped and looked back. The smoke was rising now above the trees on the other side of the creek. The cannons were still booming, continually now, and once in a while when the wind shifted, you could hear the crack of rifles and what sounded like high pitched singing or whining.

  “It’s them screamin, do you hear the screamin in there? It’s bad enough to be shot but to burn to death . . . and when you can’t see a foot in front of you or tell one man from another. . . .”

  “Did you run away?” I asked him.

  “I wouldn’t say I ran exactly. I’m with the Sixty Sixth New York and there’s plenty of vet’rans in that outfit and I only did like everybody else. The way it was, we were part of Hancock’s Corps and we come across the river last night. Then this morning Captain Weaver told us to form a skirmish line and advance down this road . . . ’twasn’t a road at all but only a mud track through the woods . . . and then I was hit and I fell . . . and everything began to blaze . . . the trees and bushes, everything . . . and so I crawled anywhere . . . for an hour maybe. Then I saw an open space and that creek back there at the bottom of the slope . . . and I went down for water.”

  “And when you left the creek you came out on the wrong side,” I told him. “It’s very simple. Do you want to go back now? I can show you the way.”

  “Not now,” he said. “Maybe later. When my leg stops bleedin.”

  We were moving very slowly across the roots and hollows, pausing now and then while Corporal McBurney rested. When I looked back, I could see a trail of little drops of blood behind us.

  “Is your home in New York City?” I asked him to keep him awake.

  “Not at all,” he said, jerking his head up. “I’m from County Wexford in Ireland and proud of it. But tell me about the others at the School. I’d like to know what I’m gettin into.”

  Well, I wanted to say something nice about Alice and Edwina but I didn’t know exactly how. I really don’t mind Alice so much. She’s really not too mean as long as you don’t provoke her, and she certainly can’t be blamed for her background. But Edwina is another sort entirely. Most of the time she seems to be completely hateful.

  “There are just these two other girls,” I finally said. “Alice Simms and Edwina Morrow. I don’t know where Alice is from originally but most recently she was living in Fredericksburg, which is about twenty miles from here and which I think your army is presently occupying. There was an almighty big battle fought around that town a bit over a year ago.”

  “I know,” he said. “I was still safe at home but they told me about it.”

  “As a matter of fact, there was a big battle fought last May, just around this time, in that very woods you’re coming from. Our General Jackson was killed in there.”

  “I heard about that, too,” he said. “Some of the fellas in my regiment came across the Rapidan last night for the second time.”

  One thing he didn’t know about; he never heard about how General Stonewall Jackson still rides through those woods at night on his black horse. Our Mattie swears she has seen him. She went up there one night with Miss Martha and Miss Harriet, one night last winter it was, but she never would tell us why Miss Harriet and Miss Martha wanted to go, or what they accomplished, only that she and Miss Harriet were scared half to death. Nothing, of course, bothers Miss Martha.

  “Well anyway,” I said, “Edwina is seventeen. She’s the oldest in the school. She comes from Richmond and her father has a warehouse there. He sells things to the government. And Emily whom I mentioned before, is sixteen and Alice is fifteen. Some people consider her very pretty.”

  “Ah now,” he said, “if she’s any prettier than you, she must be a raving beauty. But what about the teachers?”

  “Miss Martha’s very good and Miss Harriet’s very nice. Miss Martha’s the oldest, although not much older. I think they also may have been very pretty at one time, but that’s hard to tell now.”

  “I’m sure that sums it all up,” said McBurney.

  We came
to the Cedar Hill road now which divides the Farnsworth woods from the cornfield.

  “You’d better wait here a moment while I take a look,” I told him.

  “This road connects with the turnpike and the other way it angles off to the river and the place you’ve come from. There were a lot of our troops along here this morning and that’s why none of us are supposed to be out.”

  “Surely your own fellas would never bother you girls.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Miss Martha says you can’t trust any men . . . especially soldiers.”

  I climbed up the side of the ditch to the road and had a look. There was nothing to the north or east but the smoke from the wilderness. About a half mile to the southwest, down by the McPherson place, there seemed to be a cloud of dust. I went back to Corporal McBurney who was leaning against a tree beyond the ditch.

  “We’d better wait,” I told him. “There’s somebody coming and it’s a quarter mile yet across the field to the house.”

  “Don’t you want me to be captured, Amelia?” he asked, grinning though it was all he could do to stand.

  “Not until we can at least put a bandage on your leg,” I said.

  “To be sure,” he said. “Once that’s done I’ll leave immediately and be no further trouble to you. We’d better get down into the ditch hadn’t we, and not be standing here in full view of them that pass.”

  I helped him down. It was a fairly deep ditch and by bending our heads we were below the level of the road. Corporal McBurney still had his arm around me. I didn’t think it was entirely necessary since we weren’t moving now, but I didn’t say anything. There was the sound of horses on the road, coming fast, but that didn’t seem to bother Corporal McBurney. He kissed me on the ear. His beard was very rough.

  “I’ll never be convinced,” he said softly, “that you’re not the prettiest one in the school.”

  The horsemen, eight or nine of ours, went by riding hard. They looked as dirty and a bit more ragged than Corporal McBurney. The last one was a barefooted boy riding one of the horses in a team and dragging an artillery piece behind him. The wheel of the gun carriage swerved over the ditch and passed just inches from us. I was really scared then, but McBurney just laughed. It didn’t seem as though he could have been telling the truth before when he said he was frightened. It didn’t seem as though anything could frighten him. At least that’s what I thought then.