The Beguiled

by Thomas Cullinan

As I have said, I do not always like Miss Martha, but I do admire her strength of will. I must repeat that our army has lost a great soldier in the person of Miss Martha, and let me tell you, her mettle and her coolness under fire were tested even further in the weeks ahead.

  Marie Deveraux

  Well, I did not mind at all being sent to my room without dinner on that first evening. It had happened to me many times before and I expect it will happen many times again. After all, it is really not as serious a catastrophe as a stranger to our school might suppose.

  For instance, Miss Harriet usually manages to dare the wrath of her sister on these occasions and will slip up to see me later in the evening with a portion of dinner concealed beneath her shawl. As a matter of fact, it is quite possible for a person to fare better at this kind of secret meal, than when one must face the nightly competition at the table down below. I suppose Miss Martha and Miss Harriet would hold up their hands in horror at the suggestion that there is any mealtime competition between the polite young ladies at this school, but nonetheless, it most certainly exists.

  Now it might be thought that Amelia and I, who are the youngest, would be given some sort of preference at the table but such is not the situation at the Farnsworth school. Here, lately, it seems to be more of a case of “to the oldest belongs the spoils” with no thought or consideration for those students who may have brought valuable and nowadays very hard to get food and other merchandise with them, when they came to the school in the first place . . . without mentioning any names, of course.

  Anyway for a while I thought I had discovered a method of winning these mealtime contests. I began in various ways to cause mild commotions at my end of the table. Sometimes I would kick Amelia or speak loudly to her or perhaps I would spill a glass of water or reach long distances for some article instead of asking to have it passed to me. In these and many other general ways I would just exhibit such terrible table manners that Miss Martha in desperation would all but drag me from my chair and bring me up to the seat next to her and across from Miss Harriet.

  Well that plan worked very well for some time. Up there at the head of the table I was served right after the teachers and before any of the other girls and I was faring much better than I had for several semesters until Miss Martha finally realized that my bad conduct was intentional and then she began to send me away from the table altogether.

  I might say that I think if Miss Harriet was in charge of the dining room here we might not have all these problems. Miss Harriet is generally much fairer than her sister about younger students getting their share of the food, but Miss Harriet, as my father used to say, is not piloting the steamboat. Also she is always daydreaming so much that she doesn’t even notice what goes on. However, it is a different situation altogether when someone is sent away from the table. That person who is banished immediately gains Miss Harriet’s total sympathy and as much of her support as Miss Harriet can afford.

  I explained all this to Amelia Dabney who, like Miss Harriet, lives in a world of her own. They’re not very similar worlds, of course. Miss Harriet’s mind is generally in the past and is preoccupied with balls and parties she attended in the old days, or believes now that she did. I know this because the poor thing quite often talks to herself when she thinks she is alone.

  On the other hand Amelia’s world includes no human beings at all. It’s filled with bats and bugs and all the wiggling, crawling creatures that live in logs and under rocks and in the crevices of trees. I believe Amelia Dabney would not care one whit if the whole human race was destroyed tomorrow as long as her dear woodland creatures were preserved from harm. I confess I sometimes wish I had another roommate because I am not all that fond of living in a room in which you are liable to find worms in your bureau drawers and bats on your bedposts.

  “Don’t worry about your dinner,” I told her now. “Miss Harriet will be along in a bit with some yams and greens and possibly even a rasher or two of bacon because I think Miss Martha managed to bring some home today.”

  I was trying to comfort Amelia because she is not used to being in disgrace as I am. However, although she does live in mortal fear of a cross word from Miss Martha or from anyone else for that matter, she has less reason to worry about missing dinner than anyone else in this house. That girl has a trunk full of nuts, herb roots, berries and mushrooms, some being the poisonous ones, I suppose, which she had picked that afternoon and some others which could be eaten safely. I guess they were safe to eat because on this occasion Amelia was certainly eating them.

  She offered me some but I refused politely. There’s no doubt she knows a great many of the secrets of nature, but as long as I was certain that Miss Harriet would be coming along shortly anyway with whatever she’d been able to save for us from the table, I decided I wouldn’t take a chance on the mushrooms. I did accept a handful of blackberries and a few walnuts and hazelnuts which were left over from last autumn.

  “What in your opinion,” I asked her, “is going to be the final end of this Yankee affair?”

  “In all the orders that I know of in the animal and insect kingdoms, the intruder is never accepted peaceably by the existing species. That’s stated very plainly in a book by an English naturalist which I have in my trunk.”

  “What happens to the intruders in these other kingdoms?” I asked her. I was trying to crack a walnut by slamming it in the bureau drawer and trying to accomplish it quietly so that Miss Martha wouldn’t hear.

  “Well,” said Amelia thoughtfully, “sometimes they win out. I’ve seen a hunting wasp invade a nest of grasshoppers and kill or at least paralyze all of them with his stinger, so that each of them could be hauled away at leisure to be eaten.”

  “My goodness,” I said, finally getting the walnut cracked but also splitting the side of the bureau drawer a bit, although not too noticeably, I thought. “I’m certainly glad I’m not a grasshopper.”

  “On the other hand,” Amelia went on, “quite often the intruder doesn’t win. I’ve seen a caterpillar invade a nest of tiny red ants and be charmed by them or diverted in some way until he was entirely at their mercy. The little ants seemed to be stroking the caterpillar with their feelers until he was quite relaxed and after a while he released a few drops of liquid from somewhere near his tail, and then all of the ants partook of this liquid which they seemed to enjoy very much. Then, having milked him, they joined together to drag that helpless caterpillar underground, intending, I suppose, to use him for future feedings.”

  “Good heavens,” I said. “Was that caterpillar permanently injured?”

  “I’m not sure, although that’s not too important from a naturalist’s point of view. The caterpillar would have died in the spring anyway when he became a butterfly and meanwhile he was providing food all winter for that little colony of ants.”

  That girl certainly entertains herself in the weirdest fashion. I don’t think I’ve ever met another person who will spend her time as Amelia does, crouched for hours over an ant hill or a grasshopper’s nest, and then draw a moral lesson from the activities of those insects, if it was a moral lesson she was trying to pass on to me at this time.

  “You still haven’t said what you think Miss Martha will finally do with your Corporal McBurney,” I told her.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I hope he gets well soon and goes away. Or else dies.”

  “Amelia Dabney,” I cried somewhat shocked.

  “If he’s going to be treated meanly here, I’d rather have it that way,” she said. “In fact if I thought he was going to be treated meanly, I believe I would take him back to the woods tonight.”

  “I doubt if he can walk,” I said.

  “I’d help him like I did before.”

  “He’s unconscious now.”

  “Maybe he’ll come around after a while.”

  “Well if he does,” I said, “that’s due to Miss Martha’
s taking care of him and stitching up his leg. That certainly doesn’t seem like meanness to me. ‘Give Satan his due,’ is what my mother always says and I think what’s good enough for Satan is good enough for Miss Martha.”

  “How he is treated now is no guarantee of how he will be treated later,” Amelia said. “I would like you to promise me something, Marie. Promise me that if I decide it’s better that Corporal McBurney leaves here, you will join me in helping him escape.”

  “What help would he need?” I wanted to know. “He’s a grown man of at least eighteen years of age, isn’t he, and maybe even more. When his leg heals he can just walk right out of here and go back to the Federal Army or the North Pole or anywhere he likes.”

  “Promise me anyway,” Amelia insisted.

  To quiet her I did. I couldn’t for the very life of me see what possible harm could come to Corporal McBurney from five girls and three old women but to comfort that nervous child I agreed. I call her a child even though she is three years older than I am, because I am certain I will be a grownup adult long before Miss Amelia Dabney.

  Shortly after that she decided she would go back downstairs and see how Corporal McBurney was getting on. That was perfectly all right as far as I was concerned because if she didn’t return before Miss Harriet came with our secret dinner, it just meant that much more for me. Of course Amelia had eaten so many of her woodland delicacies that she undoubtedly had no appetite for normal food by this time.

  “If you are not otherwise occupied,” she said, pausing by the door, “I wish you’d keep an eye on my chelydra serpentina.”

  “Your what?”

  “My little snapping turtle. He’s underneath the bed in that old jewel box of yours, which was empty and which you weren’t using anyway.”

  “If anybody ever gave me any jewels they would have to be put in that box,” I told her sharply. “I believe that is why my mother presented me with it. I don’t think she would be happy at all to hear that some dirty old snapping turtle was occupying my teakwood jewel box.” My Lord you just have to be on your guard every moment with that girl if you don’t want every one of your possessions used to shelter the monsters she collects. In any case I absolutely refused to have anything to do with her snapping turtle.

  She left the room then, moving very quietly as she always does, and went down the stairs. That girl certainly would have no trouble, I thought, escaping from anywhere or anyone she pleased. She can come and go like a summer shadow without anyone hardly ever taking notice. I suppose if someone really wanted to get away from the Farnsworth School without attracting attention the best possible person to go to for advice would be Miss Amelia Dabney.

  Amelia Dabney

  The rest of the School was still at dinner when I came down the stairs to have a look at Corporal John McBurney so that I was able to enter the parlor without disturbing them.

  He really seemed to be quite a bit improved. He was still very pale and as motionless as before but his hands seemed warmer and his breathing was becoming almost regular and quite audible now. I went to the garden door and opened it slightly to give him a bit more air.

  The day had ended by this time and most of the sounds of battle with it, but the woods to the east of us were still on fire. What was happening to all the birds and animals in that part of the woods, I wondered. Would God permit them to escape the flames? Would He protect their dens and nests until the armies moved on?

  I had found a quail’s nest a few weeks before in that part of the woods. It was a wonderfully well-constructed thing, sheltered in a clump of high grass and concealed from the eyes of passing hawks by a covering spray of wild grape vine. There were eleven little eggs in that nest on the afternoon I discovered it and I wondered now if those baby quail had all come out of their shells and left their nest before today. A God who could permit those baby quail to be destroyed, I thought, would be a most cruel kind of God and I don’t believe I would ever be able to warm up to Him.

  In fact sometimes I feel more concern for those innocent animals that are suffering in this war than I do for all the soldiers on either side. The soldiers are at least to some degree responsible for their own fates. Most of them have probably volunteered to be where they are, or even if they haven’t, they can still escape the burning woods like Corporal McBurney.

  Whether I would feel this way if my brothers were still alive is something I cannot say. I do know that Dick and Billy both would probably laugh at my sentiments if they were present now, the same way they used to laugh when I cried at their hunting quail and pheasant in our fields at home. Also I know that if they were both to be allowed back from the grave tomorrow, they would surely volunteer again, for fear they had missed some noise and excitement the first time. And no animal would ever be foolish enough to do that.

  Well I suppose whether you prefer animals or people depends a great deal on the individual circumstances. I do know that I never felt very close to anyone at Farnsworth—except very occasionally Marie Deveraux—until I found Corporal McBurney and brought him back here. And that was because, I decided on that first night, he was a person very much like me. I am what you might call a very alone person and I had the feeling Corporal McBurney was that kind of person too.

  The night sounds on the place were beginning as usual, war or no war. The cicadas in the oak tree out back started it and then the crickets joined in, followed by the frogs in the creek. The voice of one big bullfrog was missing for a while and I was beginning to think that something might have happened to him but then he began to speak his mind . . . galump . . . galump . . . galump. Then a tree toad put in his whistle and some nightingales joined in and finally the old owl, who lives in the eaves of this house and who is very quiet during the day for fear of being discovered, realized that night was safely on us and added his screech to the chorus.

  These natural sounds were punctuated now and then by the crack and echo of a rifle from way off in the woods. The pickets on both sides were still nervous, I suppose. It is probably difficult to leave off anything, even killing, when you’ve been hard at it all day. “Poor lonely pickets,” I thought. “I do wish all of you could find your way out of the woods tonight.” And came back then to Corporal McBurney who had found his way.

  Was he sleeping normally now or still unconscious from his weakness? He didn’t stir at all when I sat down on the floor next to the settee and put my lips very close to his ear.

  “Corporal McBurney,” I whispered. “You may not be able to hear me but I want to tell you anyway that I intend to help you in any way I can. I am your friend, Corporal McBurney. If you are mistreated here you must come to me and I will help you. There may be some people here who will hate you because of the uniform you wear, but I don’t feel that way. I like you and I want you to get well again. Remember that, Corporal McBurney. I am your friend.”

  “What are you doing there, you little vagabond?” It was Edwina Morrow standing in the doorway. Apparently she had recovered from her earlier fainting spell.

  “I was telling Corporal McBurney something private,” I said.

  “Come away from him, you grubby little thing. He’s not one of your birds or beetles to be fondled by your dirty fingers.”

  “My hands are reasonably clean, Edwina,” I said. “And I’m not touching Corporal McBurney anyway. I’m only talking to him.”

  “How can you talk to him when he’s in that condition, you little fool!”

  Edwina always calls me a lot of names, prefacing each one of them with “little.” I don’t know if a little something is worse than a big something but Edwina always makes it sound that way. Of course, I don’t really mind what she calls me. I know it is Edwina’s nature to say these things and I’m sure it indicates no personal dislike of me, at least not of me more than of anyone else.

  It’s true that I sometimes get a bit more of it than the other girls, but I think that may be becau
se I don’t retaliate. When she made a particularly nasty remark to Alice Simms one time, Alice walked right across the room and slapped her. Again, one time when she said something which Marie Deveraux took amiss, Marie, who—like a good many of those Louisiana people—has strong ideas about personal honor, bided her time for a week or more and then on a Sunday morning before church services dumped a pail of dirty water on Edwina who was walking in the garden. Naturally Marie was punished severely for this, but punishment on those occasions means very little to Marie. And it certainly made Edwina wary of crossing her in the future. Marie may be only a ten-year-old girl but all the same she is an extremely revengeful person.

  Edwina entered the room now holding something behind her back. “Go upstairs to bed as Miss Martha has instructed you,” she told me.

  “She didn’t instruct me to go to bed,” I said. “She only told Marie and I that we had to go to our rooms without our dinner. What is it you have there behind you, Edwina?”

  “Nothing,” she answered quickly. “It’s none of your business.”

  “It seems to be a bowl of potato and leek soup,” I said, “and you’re spilling it on the rug.”

  “Oh well,” Edwina said, “if you must be so nosy. It’s simply that I got tired of listening to all the stupid chatter in the dining room, so I brought my soup in here to finish it.”

  “Go ahead and finish it then. I won’t bother you.”

  “I shall when I am ready.”

  “The soup will be quite cold if you don’t hurry.”

  “It’s really none of your concern, Amelia,” she said angrily. “It’s quite possible, isn’t it, that I prefer it cold!”

  I thought of something then—something that might have come instantly to mind had it been anyone other than Edwina bringing the soup from the table. I resolved to test my suspicions.

  “Perhaps I will go back upstairs,” I said. “As long as you are here to keep an eye on Corporal McBurney.”