The Beguiled

by Thomas Cullinan

  “Now lean on that cane and your good leg,” Miss Martha instructed him. “Don’t put any weight on the bad leg.”

  “He shouldn’t be movin that leg at all,” Mattie grumbled. “Even swingin it a little bit ain’t gonna help it and if he bumps it on something all them stitches are gonna bust right out.”

  Miss Martha said that she agreed with Mattie but that the weight of public opinion seemed to be against them. None of the younger people in the house, she said, including her own sister, had learned the advisability of not rushing Nature but allowing her to take her own course. In any event, she said, if Corporal McBurney wanted to take the risk of reinjuring his leg, he was free to do so, but she wanted us all to know that she was not in any way responsible for the consequences.

  While these statements were being made, the three of them were progressing very slowly across the parlor floor toward the garden door with Corporal McBurney in the middle leaning on the cane and half hopping on his good leg and Miss Martha and Mattie moving protectively beside him. Suddenly he slipped and would have fallen had not the two of them caught him.

  “It was staged,” my roommate, Marie Deveraux, remarked in my ear. “It was just a pretended slip to make the whole thing look more difficult.”

  “I’m sure that isn’t so,” I whispered back. “He could have hurt himself very badly if Miss Martha and Mattie hadn’t been right there.”

  “But they were there and he knew it,” said Marie who is just about the most cynical person I know of any age, no matter what her other virtues. “It’s what acrobats and tumblers do all the time when they know they have nets below them. I’ve seen them take deliberate tumbles many times from tightropes and trapezes just to win a little audience sympathy at the Christmas entertainments at the Opera house in New Orleans. Oh my goodness, don’t tell me he’s going to try the same trick again!”

  He didn’t, if it was a trick and I still don’t believe it was. He regained his own balance this time and made it to the garden door where he stood for a while, catching his breath and looking out at the garden.

  “Your roses need pruning,” he said after a moment. “And those hedges are in terrible shape. The whole flower garden needs a good goin over. I’ll get to it tomorrow or the day after.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind,” Miss Martha told him. “It’s kind of you to offer but that garden has been neglected for some time and it can remain that way for a while longer.”

  “It is most kind of you to offer, Mister McBurney,” Miss Harriet said. “Have you had much gardening experience?”

  “Oh yes,” he replied. “I did a good bit of it at the big place back home. They said they’d make me head gardener some day if I wanted to stay, but I was eager for the higher things—such as getting myself blown up in the American war.”

  “Well if you really have a knack for gardening, you can make yourself most welcome later in your convalescence. That English box hedge has not been trimmed properly for three years or more. There’s just no one around here capable of doing it.”

  “And I’ve tried a dozen times to put that rose arbor in order,” said Miss Harriet, “and got nothing for my pains but wounded fingers.”

  “A flower garden like that needs a man all right,” Mattie declared. “I sure can’t do nothin with it. Anyway I was raised to work in the house and not in the yard.”

  “Mattie does very nicely with the kitchen garden,” said Miss Martha, “but the flowers have defeated her as they have the rest of us.”

  That proved once again what an influence for good Corporal McBurney had become on the people here because it was very seldom that Miss Martha ever said a word of praise about Mattie’s work in the vegetable garden, or anywhere else for that matter, and the dear soul does struggle awfully hard with her beans and peas and other plants, even though she does feel obliged to complain now and then about it not being her kind of work.

  On the other hand Marie says that Mattie really does enjoy her outside duties and would be heartbroken if she ever had to give them up. Marie feels that since the kitchen garden is Mattie’s special assignment, it is her one big chance to direct the whole school, even including Miss Martha who does her daily stint of hoeing along with the rest of us. According to Marie’s reasoning, Mattie only complains about being unsuited for field or yard work in order that Miss Martha will not have the satisfaction of seeing she is happy with the arrangement. To be honest about it, I seldom bother to wonder about the reasons behind people’s actions as much as my roommate does.

  “Well you can all quit worrying about your posies now,” said Johnny McBurney. “You’ve got an expert to take care of them.”

  And he was telling the truth, as we soon found out. The very next morning he insisted on going out into the garden to see just exactly what needed to be done. I walked beside him while he hopped along on his good leg and the cane, inspecting the rose arbor and what Miss Martha calls her English box hedge surrounding it. It is really not an English hedge at all but a box huckleberry, gaylussacia brachyeera, a kind of evergreen shrub which is usually not raised successfully much farther north than Alabama or perhaps the Carolinas.

  Well after that we had a look at the inner hedge of forsythia, which is named for the famous botanist, William Forsyth, and then at the rose arbor itself. Then after the arbor we went along examining the lavenders and lilacs and camelias which line the path all the way to the little Shrine of Eros, as Miss Harriet calls it and which is now just a mass of tangled jasmine and myrtle and honeysuckle and tall weeds some of whose proper names even I don’t know.

  Johnny even examined the lawn itself, sending me to step over the flower beds and pull specimen blades of grass here and there which he would take and squint at and roll in his fingers, in what I suppose was an expert’s manner, and once or twice he even chewed meditatively on a blade as though he could tell just exactly what care it needed from the taste of it.

  “Now this bit has an odd flavor to it,” he said once.

  “Perhaps Lucinda and Dolly have been out here.”

  “Who?”

  “Our cow and Welsh pony. Miss Martha lets them graze out here.”

  “For pity’s sake, dear girl,” he said, spitting out the grass. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You didn’t ask me,” I said. “It’s how we keep the lawn trimmed. Of course someone is always sent out here with Lucinda and Dolly to make sure they don’t eat any of the shrubs or flowers.”

  “No matter,” said he. “A nice lawn like this hadn’t ought to be used for pasture.”

  “I agree with you,” I told him. “I don’t see any value in trimming a lawn at all. It just takes away all the cover for little animals and birds and also, remember this: When you cut away the clover and dandelions you are depriving wild bees of a source of pollen. Have you thought much about that?”

  “By golly, I haven’t,” Johnny replied, “but I’m certainly going to twirl it around in my mind a few times before this day is out. Now there’s a week’s work alone around that little open shed. It looks like you’re cultivating weeds there instead of posies.”

  “Miss Harriet has thought about cutting them on several occasions,” I said, “but that part of the garden is sort of Miss Martha’s private domain so in the end Miss Harriet always decides to leave the weeds alone.”

  “What’s that little house supposed to be?”

  “It’s a shrine of Eros—the Greek god of love.”

  “Fancy that. Were these people pagans in the old days then?”

  “Oh no. It’s just something that Miss Martha and her brother Robert built one summer when they were young. I guess there were some bricks left over from some building job or other and so they made those columns and roofed them over with some old boards and painted the whole thing white, as you see. It’s supposed to look like the Acropolis in Athens but I guess the resemblance is r
ather slight. Then one of them—I don’t know which one—got that old marble statue of Eros from a shop in Richmond and they put that in the middle of the house and planted these vines around the outside.”

  “That little naked fella is Eros?”

  “Yes, or Cupid as the Romans called him.”

  “Fancy that. It’s a strange thing for Miss Martha to be interested in. She just doesn’t seem the type for it. And her brother, with all due respect to the gentleman, must’ve been an odd sort too.”

  “Well I never met him,” I said, “and I wouldn’t say anything about the shrine to Miss Martha if I were you. It’s something that she doesn’t like to talk about.”

  “Oh she’d be willing to discuss it with me,” said Johnny. “I find people are quite often willing to discuss their most personal business with me. It’s the disarming way I have.”

  “Why do you want to know so much about everyone’s personal business?”

  “Partly curiosity and partly for protection, dear Amelia. It’s a cruel world we live in and a fella has to take precautions.”

  “Have you ever read any of the works of Mister Charles Darwin?” I asked him. “All nature is cruel, Mister Darwin says.”

  “Well thank God we’re around civilized people here.”

  When Johnny had finished his estimate of the garden work he sent me to the tobacco barn for the necessary tools—the various spades and shears and trowels he required—all of which we found to be quite rusted now and in need of sharpening. So we spent the rest of the first outside morning at that task, buffing and honing the tools against a small slab of granite which I also found in the barn.

  “This is good stone,” Johnny said as he spat on it and applied the edge of a pruning knife to it. We were sitting on the bench in the arbor and I was watching the house, sort of hoping, I guess, that the others would sleep late and allow Johnny and me a bit more of the morning. Of course I knew that Miss Martha would be out at her usual time, fifteen minutes until eight, and Miss Harriet would follow with the girls soon after, but I couldn’t help wishing anyway that things might change this morning.

  Mattie was on her knees in the kitchen garden picking the weevils—cylas formicarius—off the sweet potatoes and I knew she would not bother us because she was already starting to worry about the possibility of Corporal McBurney’s infringing on her vegetables. I had reassured her on this matter and had said that I was certain that Corporal McBurney, if he did volunteer to do kitchen garden work when he was able, would be very happy, I was sure, to do it under her supervision.

  “That particular stone is called New England granite,” I told Johnny now. “It’s not native to this part of the country but I guess Miss Martha and Miss Harriet’s father had a wagon load of it brought in here one time from the North.”

  “What did he want it for?”

  “Most of it was used for paving in front of the house and the rest of the slabs were set by for grave markers in the cemetery in the woods. All the slabs have been used now except this one.”

  “Are the Farnsworths buried in the woods then?”

  “Not the family. They’re always buried in Saint Andrews Churchyard. It’s the darky cemetery I’m talking about. Before Mister Farnsworth bought this granite their graves were either marked with boards or not at all. Now each grave has its own stone marker with whatever names and dates Mister Farnsworth could remember.”

  “Kept outside the walls even in death, are they? Well there’s only need for one more marker. For old Mattie, eh?”

  “I suppose. She’s certainly counting on being buried out there. She’s rather fond of the woods, like me—or at least in daylight she is—and also her husband is buried out there. He was owned by a farmer near here and when he died the farmer sent his body back to Mattie. I believe Mattie has said that Miss Martha paid the farmer ten dollars for the kindness.”

  “Well I’m not anxious to be buried anywhere myself,” said Johnny, “but I guess if I had to choose, a woods might be better than a churchyard. Somehow I think a woods might not be quite so lonely.”

  “Do you believe in Heaven, Johnny?”

  “To tell you the truth, I haven’t thought much about it. Maybe there is a Heaven and maybe there isn’t, but whatever way it is, I’ve never felt any need or desire to wonder about it. Maybe it’s because I’m not yet convinced I’m ever going to die. That may seem strange to you, but that’s the way I am. I’ve never even thought much about dying—even at the worst time in the battle I don’t recall that I did. For some reason I just wasn’t concerned about death—even with it happening all about me—but only of being hurt badly and disabled. During the battle, I remember, what I feared most was being blinded, and after that of losing a leg or an arm. I’ll tell you a secret, Amelia. Do you know that I must have awakened fifty times during my first night in this place—I was never as unconscious as a lot of people thought, only in a kind of fog through which I could most times dimly see and hear but couldn’t speak. Anyway I kept coming to my senses in a panic every little while . . . remembering the horror in the woods . . . the fire and the smoke and the screaming . . . and wondering now to myself, ‘Is my leg gone? Will I ever walk again? Will I ever run and jump and dance again?’ Then suddenly the pain would hit me and do you know, I’d bless it—I’d bless that pain—and after a while, I’d slip back down in the fog again.”

  “It’s all right now, isn’t it Johnny? You’re not worried about your leg now, are you?”

  “Lord no, I’m not worried about anything now. The leg is fine and I’m fine and I’m on my way to being a whole, live man again. I’ll soon be ready and as fit as ever to take on all comers for a fight or a wrestle or a romp on the feathers, begging your little girl’s pardon. That’s my Heaven, dear Amelia. It’s the only one I need. Do you believe in Heaven, darlin?”

  “Well,” I said, “it’s a comfort, of course, to think that one’s brothers are somewhere and that one will see them again some day, but there are times when I feel that such is not the case. There are also times when I feel that even if there is a Heaven I don’t want to go there myself. Because my roommate, Marie Deveraux, keeps telling me that, according to the best Christian theology, animals cannot possibly go to Heaven when they die because they have no souls.”

  “Ah well, I wouldn’t worry too much about what that one says.”

  “Oh Marie is very bright even if she is young. Sometimes I think she deliberately avoids letting our teachers see how bright she really is. Anyway, I also asked Miss Martha and Miss Harriet if they thought animals would be allowed to enter Heaven and they both said they didn’t think so. Miss Harriet said that possibly Heaven was already stocked with some eternally living animals but that it seemed to her very unlikely that any of our common earthly breeds would be admitted.”

  “Now let me tell you even Miss Martha and Miss Harriet don’t know everything. Where’ve they been in this great world, will you inform me, that they’re such experts on animal theology? What kind of a place would Heaven be if a man had to ride up to the gate and leave his horse outside? What about the donkey on which the Bible says, if I can recall my lessons, the Lord rode around Galilee? What about all these goats and cows and such like that were in the Bethlehem stable on that Christmas night? And while you’re at it, consider all the birds and beasts that sailed around for forty days and nights with old Noah on the Ark. It would be mighty ungrateful of the powers that be, don’t you think, to deny all those famous Biblical animals a bit of Heavenly reward.”

  “That’s true, of course. I’ve never looked at it that way before.”

  “Well, keep thinking of it now. If there’s any other world after this one, it stands to reason it’ll be big enough to house all the animals this earth has known since time began to tick. They’ll all be there . . . the good ones and the bad . . . all the dinosaurs and unicorns and dragons . . . the whale that swallowed Jonah
. . . the lions that passed up the chance to eat Daniel . . . maybe even some of the other lions that ate the Christians in old Nero’s day. A lion that has dined on a saint must take on a bit of saintliness himself, wouldn’t you say, Amelia?”

  “Yes,” I said, giggling a little. “I’ll tell you why I’ve been somewhat concerned about this problem, Johnny. It’s because I have a pet snapping turtle who has been very sick.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Turtles live to be very old.”

  “I know they do, or at least I know that some species do. I’m not so sure about snapping turtles. Anyway when you become attached to pets like that, you are quite apt to wonder what will become of them when they die.”

  “Well your turtle is still a long way from the pearly gates, I’ll guarantee you, and that without even giving him a complete medical examination. I’ll bet you that your snapping turtle outlives the both of us—or me, at least—and I’ve already told you that I’m not convinced I’m ever going to die.”

  That was about the end of my conversation with Johnny McBurney on that first outside morning because Miss Martha and the others began to come out then to work in the kitchen garden. I really think it was one of the best and most rewarding talks I ever had with Johnny. There were other talks on other mornings, of course, but the first was certainly one of the best. Also I think it may have been the longest talk I had with him all the while he was here because our opportunities for conversations lessened as Johnny grew stronger and able to attempt more work. Within a day or two, for instance, he was able to walk safely without someone standing by and a few days after that he was able to work a full morning in the garden.

  He began with standing tasks such as pruning the roses and cutting away the dead vines at the back of the house. Then he progressed to bending and stooping tasks such as attending to the beds and shrubs and trimming and shaping the hedges, still favoring his wounded leg of course, but paying it less and less mind every day. His leg seemed to be improving as rapidly as the garden and that, Miss Harriet told us, was beginning to look as beautiful now as it had in the days when she and Miss Martha were young.