This, of course, is a favorite topic at every meal—the way things were and the way they are now. I suppose the poor dears feel they must console themselves occasionally and at the same time impress their poorer students by reciting the history of their family’s glorious past. I don’t object to it but I am not overawed by it and I don’t think some of the others are either, Amelia and Marie, for two examples.
Marie’s father owns two or three large places in Louisiana and Amelia’s family has one of the largest plantations in the northern part of Georgia, which I understand has been overrun by Yankees now, and also a large new home in Atlanta. As for our own place in South Carolina, you could put Farnsworth and all its land in one corner of it and never see this little school again, unless you happened to ride across it on a hunt or something.
Well I suppose the account of balls and levees and various other social activities at this house and at the old Farnsworth place on the James, or wherever it was, might have been of some interest to our visitor but he didn’t exhibit much enthusiasm. He was certainly polite enough and he nodded and smiled agreeably whenever anyone looked at him, but he made no attempt to enter into this part of the conversation. He just kept on eating what finally added up to an enormous amount of food.
Everyone was trying to avoid mentioning the war, of course, for fear of causing him embarrassment, although this was somewhat ridiculous, as we all finally realized, with the battle raging furiously once more to the east of us even closer now, it seemed, than yesterday. It is very hard to avoid speaking of something that is making your garden windows rattle and the coffee cups juggle precariously on your plates.
“My goodness,” I said finally. “If they must have wars in the morning, you’d think they could be more quiet about it.”
“I’m in favor of that,” said McBurney cheerfully. “I suggest we go back to the good old days of pikes and lances and broadswords. Then, you’ll see, the Irish will rule the world.”
“Do you really believe so, Mister McBurney?” asked Miss Harriet.
“Oh yes ma’am, there’s no doubt of it. There never was a nation better at individual close-hand combat than the Irish. Didn’t we keep the Roman legions at bay when they had all the Britons hidin in their caves or roostin in the trees. We beat off the Angles and the Saxons and the Jutes, and the Picts and the Gauls and the Norsemen, and after that we held our own with the Normans too. Yes ma’am, your maps of the British Isles would look a bit different today if it wasn’t for gunpowder. It was the invention of gunpowder that ruined us.”
“That’s an interesting theory,” I remarked. “And if you want to carry it a bit farther, you might anticipate some other interesting results. I’ll bet your Northern armies wouldn’t be in Virginia now, if this war could be fought entirely with the weapons which the Greeks and Romans used.”
“You’re absolutely right, Miss,” said he. “Didn’t that same thought occur to me only yesterday when I saw how valiantly your boys were conducting themselves and against such overwhelming odds. There was this road, d’ye see, we were told to cross—a whole bunch of us—and a little group of your fellas were defending it—Georgians, I think they were. . . .”
“I’m from Georgia,” Amelia told him. “Although I don’t have any relatives in those Georgia regiments any more.”
“Was it the Seventy-First or Seventy-Fourth Georgia Volunteer Regiments?” I asked him. “Those regiments are part of my father’s brigade although it’s possible they’re still fighting with General Longstreet in the West.”
“If it was the Twenty-Third Georgia,” said Marie, “you might have been shooting at my own Uncle Philip. He lives in Macon and I’m sure he’s with that regiment unless he’s already dead.”
“To tell you the truth,” McBurney said, “I don’t know what regiment it was. They didn’t say. They just yelled out that Georgians were never gonna let the Yankees pass and by God—excuse me—by George, they didn’t. They were dug in behind some rocks and fallen logs and they stood off a dozen charges of the best we had. I don’t know what might have happened later because there was artillery coming up behind us, and then our bunch was sent off to support an advance in another section of the line, so whether those Georgians are still holding out or not, I couldn’t say. In a way, you know, I kinda hope they are.”
“Those are hardly the proper sentiments of a loyal Union soldier,” Miss Martha felt obliged to put in then.
“Oh my goodness, Miss Martha,” Alice said. “He’s just paying tribute to our boys. Anyway I’m sure Corporal McBurney wasn’t in any position of command where it would make any difference to him whether those boys held out or not. Isn’t that so, Corporal?”
“Quite so,” said he, giving Alice a quick flicker of his eyelid. Already, I thought, he has Miss Alice sorted out and classified. Most young ladies might feel insulted if a person like McBurney winked at them, but one sort of expects those things to happen to someone like Alice Simms.
“That’s exactly right, ladies,” he continued now. “I don’t mean to low rate the Union Army at all because there are a lot of fine and courageous fellas in it. I only mean that mechanical contrivances have taken all the sport out of war. There’s just no fun in it any more like there might’ve been a thousand years or so ago. Oh it must’ve been a lot different when you could ride off to a battle, secure behind your visor and your suit o’ mail, depending only on the strength of your arm and the quickness of your eye to save you from anything worse than a few missing fingers or an ear or a dent on your helmet and a sore head for a week or two. And even if you did fall in them days, you had the consolation of knowin you had been bested by a better man than you, and not some skinny nervous dry goods clerk with his hand twitchin on a cannon lanyard maybe two miles or more away. Oh ladies, when I saw your fellas yesterday guardin that muddy piece of road, I realized it was in the best and most noble traditions of the heroes of old. Oh when you think of what gunpowder has done to the knighthood of the world. Why those fellas behind the walls at Troy wouldn’t have lasted through one sunset if those outside would’ve had a mortar or two or even a three inch rifle. The whole history and literature o’ the world would’ve come out entirely different. What’s that book the Greek fella wrote?”
“The Iliad by Homer,” Edwina Morrow supplied, her eyes shining as she watched him.
“That’s it,” he said. “Now that fella would’ve had no plot at all if the city had come tumbling down on the first day. Well they don’t write poetry about wars any more, do they, and it’s no wonder. There’s nothin very poetic about being destroyed by a machine. . . .”
He paused here, lowered his gaze, as though he felt he might have spoken out of turn, and returned to his food.
“Interesting, very interesting,” said Miss Martha.
“Extremely interesting,” said Miss Harriet. “You have a fine philosophic turn of mind, Mister McBurney.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said he modestly. “I try to find a helpful lesson in the experiences of each day.” And winked at me, the devil, behind his coffee cup. You rogue, I thought, you unmitigated red-headed rogue.
Well, he had succeeded in those few words, and while completing his breakfast which consisted of three bowls of barley porridge, four stacks of corn cakes and molasses, about a dozen beaten biscuits with drippings and several cups of acorn coffee, in completely charming the entire company, to a certain extent myself included. I believe if a vote could have been taken right then, with no time out for consideration of the thing, Corporal McBurney would have been elected a permanent resident of this school.
Of course I suppose some of our students would have voted that way even before that first breakfast. Some of the giddier ones had gone to fantastic extremes to make themselves look pretty for the Corporal. That included Edwina, whom I would have considered to be above such frivolities, but who came to breakfast wearing her finest red brocade dress, and
Alice, who of course has few dresses of any sort and nothing very fine, but who managed, nevertheless, to bedeck herself with a collection of gaudy trinkets—rings, wrist bands and other baubles—which I gather are some of her mother’s lesser trophies.
Little Marie, who will not be left out of any gala occasion, entered regally, wearing a pair of jade earbobs and looking for all the world like some kind of midget woman of the streets, and would have stayed at table that way had not Miss Martha, realizing that this was the ultimate in absurdity, ordered the child to either remove the jewelry or leave the room. Marie removed the earbobs, ungraciously, of course, and throughout the entire meal thereafter was as sullen and unmannerly as only she can be.
“Perhaps we have all been taught a lesson this morning,” Miss Harriet said now. “Perhaps we have all learned not to judge anyone too quickly.”
“There’s more to any man,” Corporal McBurney said soberly, “than the color of his coat, or for that matter, his skin.” And looked at each of us in turn as he spoke—to test our reactions, I suppose, to that question which the Yankees seem to feel is the only thing we think about down here—and ended his inspection with old Mattie who was just entering with a fresh pot of acorn coffee. “Is that the way you feel about the situation?” he asked her. I could have sworn he was on the verge of saying “Miss Mattie” but recollected where he was and thought better of it.
“I don’t think about such things,” she told him shortly in the tone she reserves for white people whom she considers not quite up to her standards. “Nobody knows any of us but the good Lord. And He’s the only one can ever judge us proper. I ’spect He knows there’s plenty of hatred behind the most friendly faces, and plenty of love too, I s’pose even in them that never smile.”
“Amen to that.” It was Edwina, surprisingly. I had never known her to agree before with any of Mattie’s little comments which she sometimes offers to us, free of charge, at mealtimes, or any other time she is given the opportunity. For that matter, I couldn’t remember Edwina ever saying an agreeable word to Mattie, which is not surprising, I suppose, when you consider that she seldom says anything agreeable to anyone.
Well the breakfast party ended shortly after that. Miss Martha invoked the blessing and our visitor bowed his head with the rest of us and meditated as ordered, though whether on religious matters or other topics I cannot say.
“Is there much attention given to prayer in the Northern camps, Mister McBurney?” Miss Harriet asked him as we all arose.
“Very little, ma’am,” he said. “It’s all card playing and cursing and general loose talk, except, o’ course, on the eve of a battle, and then you can’t move an inch from your blanket without trippin over courageous Christians on their knees.”
“Don’t you suppose the same situation may exist as well in the Confederate Army?” Edwina asked him.
“I suppose it does, Miss,” said he, staring thoughtfully at her. “The only difference being that since most of the Confederates seem to know what they’re fighting for, they may have their minds on their jobs more often than the Yanks.”
“Did you know what you were fighting for, Corporal McBurney?” I inquired.
“Put it this way, Miss,” said he, “I thought I did, but I’ve been having my doubts ever since the day I boarded the cars and set off for Maryland.”
“And what changed your mind?” Marie wanted to know.
“The fact that we were invaders,” he said promptly. “Whatever the merits of the Yankee cause, it can’t be denied that we are invaders. And since I’d come from a land that has been living under the heel of invaders for several centuries, I began to lose heart in the whole venture. That’s God’s truth, ladies. I give you my solemn word.”
It seemed he had an irreproachable answer for every question. I wondered whether he really believed in every statement he made, or whether he might be merely feeding us a little sugar, as the saying goes, in order to insure a pleasant stay with us. Therefore I resolved to hang behind a bit as the others were leaving and examine him a bit further.
Young Marie waited behind for a moment too. “Let me give you some advice,” she told him as softly as it is possible for her to speak. “Don’t get too involved in these Protestant prayers we have here all the time.”
“What’s the best way to avoid them?” he asked her, grinning faintly over her shoulder at me.
“Oh you can’t completely avoid them. You just have to go along with them. The thing to do is count sheep or say a Hail Mary or something whenever Miss Martha gets started on one of those long winded blessing she’s so fond of composing. You don’t have to be openly nasty about it. Just don’t let yourself get caught up in it. Otherwise you might be in great danger of losing your faith.”
“Thanks very much, Miss,” he told her solemnly. “I appreciate your interest.”
“You don’t need to thank me,” she said. “You and I have to stick together against these heathens.” And with that she marched out, ignoring me.
“Well, Miss,” he said cheerfully to me. “It seems you’re next in line. Do you have some advice for me too? Don’t come too close to me, however, if you’re one of those heathens the little lass has mentioned.”
“If you plan to guide yourself according to the wisdom of that child,” I said, “you will very likely find yourself in serious difficulties before the day is out. Marie is a great one for telling others how to conduct themselves but she can never manage to stay out of trouble herself.”
“Oh she’s a regular little barracks lawyer all right,” he said laughing. “I had her number the first time I clapped eyes on her.”
“No one is going to interfere with your religious beliefs here.”
“I know that, Miss. Though as a matter of fact, I don’t feel very strongly about religion one way or the other.”
“Do you feel very strongly about anything?”
“How do you mean that, Miss?”
“Is there any belief or cause to which you are dedicated? Is there anything you would be willing to die for?”
“To be honest with you, Miss,” he said after a pause, “I don’t think so. Unless it was some person—my mother maybe or a girl who was very close to me. I might be willing to sacrifice myself to protect a person like that. Of course you must understand that not everyone who puts on a uniform has any thought of spilling his own blood on it. In fact I’d wager to say that very few fellas in this war, whether they be from North or South, have any thought of dying when they march away.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I said. “Even my father, I suppose, doesn’t want to give up his life if he can avoid it. Of course that doesn’t mean he won’t be quite willing to do so if it becomes necessary. But feeling as you say you do about the gallantry of our boys, it seems to me you joined the wrong side.”
“I’ve thought that many times myself, Miss,” said Corporal McBurney with unwavering gaze. “It came to me when I began to learn the story of the war and how the North had started all the fuss. You see I knew nothing at all about it when I stepped off the boat. Oh I’d heard there was some kind of fightin goin on but I didn’t know the first thing about the argument. One side looked as good as another to me then, and there were no Confederate recruiting stations on Broadway Street in New York.”
“You mean you joined the Union Army just for the adventure of it?”
“Mostly, I guess,” said he steadily. “O’ course a very good line was handed me by the recruiting officer—a smooth-talking oily sort—who told me how you were torturin and mistreatin all the blacks down here.”
“That’s a vicious lie!” I told him angrily.
“Well it would seem so,” said he, “from the little evidence I’ve seen. This Mattie woman you have here seems to be treated well enough.”
“Of course she is. And so are most of the others. Why the darkies on our place in South Caro
lina are just like members of our family.”
“You mean they’re related to you?”
“No, not that of course. I just mean they’re treated about as well as the rest of us.”
“You don’t ever intermarry with them though.”
“No, of course not.”
“But now I did hear somewhere though, that some people in the South are of mixed color . . . that they have black blood in them.”
“I guess there is a certain amount of that sort of thing among the lower classes,” I admitted. “But most of our people, of both colors, are every bit as respectable as people anywhere else.”
“Oh I know that. You don’t need to convince me on that score. Well as I say it’s just the story of the war itself I didn’t know before. Otherwise I can tell you I would’ve set sail for Charleston instead of New York.”
“I don’t think you would have made it,” I informed him. “Charleston is blockaded now and it’s very difficult for any ships to get into the port. However if you’re really thinking seriously of changing your allegiance, I’m sure it can be easily arranged. I’d only have to send a letter off to my father and I’m sure he could take care of it immediately.”
“Oh that’s very kind of you, Miss,” he said, and he honestly did look as though he was appreciative. “I may just accept your offer . . . once this leg of mine is healed again.”
“I could write my father now and your leg would be healing while we were waiting for his reply.”
“That’s so, isn’t it. Well let me give the whole matter a good thinking over. It’s not a nice thing, you know, to be a turncoat, although I guess a person is allowed one honest mistake in a lifetime. However I’d still like to study the proposition very carefully. You understand that, don’t you, Miss?”
The Beguiled Page 14
