Well, close to the time on our midday meal, Miss Harriet came into the library, looking very haggard and more than usually subdued. However her tone was cheerful enough as she told us that Miss Martha had set McBurney’s leg and was now engaged in stitching it up again. Miss Harriet added that, although Miss Martha was not as yet overly optimistic about the thing, she herself felt that the leg would be better again very shortly. She also predicted that once our visitor was on his feet again we would find him a different person.
“This accident may have taught him a much needed lesson,” said Miss Harriet. “In the future I think he may prove himself a much more trustworthy young man.”
“You know it’s possible what he says is true, Miss Harriet,” Alice remarked. “It’s possible he came to my room looking for the map. My goodness . . . if he had only told me at once what he wanted. . . .”
“By golly, do you remember that time I saw the two of you on the parlor settee, Alice?” Marie asked. “I’ll bet McBurney was searching for that map then, wasn’t he? I’ll bet he thought you had it hidden somewhere on your person.”
“Please, girls . . .” said Miss Harriet, stepping in between Marie and the murderous-looking Alice. “This is no time for personal quarrels. Miss Martha is depending on you to attend to your own lessons today. You know how I tell her that you are diligent young ladies—that we have nothing but virtuous and studious young ladies at this school.”
“And no matter how often you tell her,” remarked Marie, “I’ll bet she still doesn’t believe it, eh, Miss Harriet?”
“Miss Harriet, is Johnny in any pain?” Amelia asked.
“No more than he has suffered in the past, I think. We have given him a little wine and that has deadened it.”
“Will you please tell him that we are being kept away from him.” Amelia persisted. “I wouldn’t want him to think that I didn’t care to visit him.”
“Yes, I will tell him,” Miss Harriet promised. “And perhaps we can have that order modified in a day or two—when we have all proven to Miss Martha—and this includes Corporal McBurney—that we are as good as she would like us to be.”
“That’s a physical impossibility,” Marie stated.
“Nevertheless I am sure we will all strive for perfection,” our executive headmistress continued sweetly. Of course if Marie had made a remark like that to Miss Martha she would have received one week’s confinement to her room without dinner, but Miss Harriet just acts as though half the time she doesn’t even hear what goes on in this house. Anyway she went on to tell us now that she had to return to the parlor and help Miss Martha, but that she needed some willing girl to take a tray of food to Edwina. I volunteered. Surprisingly enough, everyone else did too.
“Miss Edwina must be more popular than we thought,” said Miss Harriet with her little smile.
“It’s not popularity,” Marie informed her. “It’s curiosity, and I’m the only one honest enough to admit it.”
That was not exactly true in my own case. I did sort of wonder, naturally, what Edwina might have to say about the events of the night before, but I also had some sympathetic feelings about her, too. I have always felt rather sorry for Edwina and I will not hesitate to admit this to anyone.
Anyway Miss Harriet must have recognized my true motives—or again perhaps it was only because she considered me the most reliable—because she immediately selected me to be the Good Samaritan. She then returned to the parlor and I went to the kitchen to prepare the tray, leaving the study group temporarily in Alice’s charge. There was no help for that. Someone older, if not wiser, must always be delegated to keep an eye on Amelia and Marie.
“Emily . . . oh, Emily,” our problem child shouted after me. “Alice forgot to salute when she relieved you!”
Naturally, I ignored this and continued on to the kitchen. Well I guess the tray I fixed for Miss Edwina might not have seemed too appetizing to the diners at the Exchange Hotel or the Oriental Saloon in Richmond but it was good nourishing food all the same. There was still a little barley porridge in the pot and I filled a bowl with some of that—although I didn’t reheat it since that would have meant rekindling the fire and we were keeping our cooking fires down to a minimum while the Yankees were still in the general area. Not that we were trying to conceal our presence, but we weren’t advertising it either by sending up unnecessary smoke during the daylight hours.
So I took the porridge and some leftover corn cakes and a cup of acorn coffee—admittedly cold too, but still invigorating—and went up to Edwina’s room. We two roomed together at one time, but we didn’t get along. She was constantly accusing me of prying into her affairs, even to the point of spying on her and searching her belongings. I’ll admit I did question her rather closely at first, but it was only in an effort to learn if there was anything we shared in common—likes and dislikes and so forth—on which at least a temporary friendship might be built. It was a waste of time, of course. Even if she had been willing to tell me anything about herself—which she wasn’t—it wouldn’t have been for the purposes of friendship. Edwina Morrow doesn’t want any friends.
I didn’t expect her to answer my rapping and she didn’t. However, since I had been instructed to deliver breakfast to her, with no mention of any asking whether she wanted it or not, I considered it within the limits of my orders to open the door and walk in. Which I did. Miss Martha has never permitted us to lock our bedroom doors—in fact we have no keys—just in anticipation, I suppose, of such emergencies.
Miss Morrow, still wearing her blue silk dressing gown, was sitting by her window which overlooks the woods and a part of the garden. There was an open book on her lap but she wasn’t reading it. In fact, she didn’t seem to be doing anything but sitting there in a kind of trance, awake but seemingly unaware of anything around her.
“Here’s your breakfast,” I informed her. “You’re getting headquarters service this morning.”
Not a flicker of an eyelid, so I tried again. “Corporal McBurney’s leg may be all right, Miss Harriet says. It may not have been permanently injured after all.” No answer, but definitely quickened breathing. I decided to push farther in this direction.
“The general feeling seems to be that what happened last night was just an unfortunate accident and that it would be well to forget it as soon as possible.”
“Who thinks that?” asked Edwina in a low voice but without turning to me.
“Well, Miss Harriet for one. And possibly McBurney himself for another. He certainly hasn’t been accusing anyone of causing him to fall. As for myself, I can’t imagine anyone being interested enough in McBurney to bother harming him. Of course, we all gathered from your rather angry words last night that you and McBurney had been having some kind of argument.”
“I pushed him,” she said, still in the same soft tone. “I shoved him down the stairs.”
“Why?” I asked quickly.
“Because I hate him.”
“Because of his uniform? Or because he was up there visiting Alice? Alice claims he only came up to borrow a map from her. Of course we all have our doubts about that, but I must say she doesn’t seem very concerned about him at the moment.”
“When will he go away?”
“As soon as he’s able, I suppose.”
“I don’t want to have to look at him again.”
“It shouldn’t be necessary,” I told her. “He’s confined to the parlor and we’re forbidden to enter.”
I put the tray on a table near her. She had begun to weep again and her book fell from her lap. The tears were running down her face and she was making no attempt to halt them or even wipe them away. This sort of thing—or indeed, I suppose, any such sign of unopposed weakness—always makes me a bit impatient and that was just the way I felt as I turned away from her and went to her chest of drawers in search of a clean handkerchief.
No
w, I assure you, finding that handkerchief was my sole intention at that moment. I had not the least desire to pry and I’m sure my curiosity was hardly stirred as I opened the top drawer, which seemed the logical place to find the piece of goods I wanted.
The handkerchiefs were there all right—a good number of all kinds and colors, probably more than were owned by all the other students combined. And atop the pile of handkerchiefs was a small toilet mirror with an ivory handle and next to that a pocket-size, cheaply framed tin picture, somewhat bent and faded.
It was a picture of a young, light-complexioned Negress in a frilly summer dress and with a parasol in her hand—both dress and parasol, I assumed, having been borrowed from her lenient mistress for the occasion or else from the photographer himself, whose establishment, I noted from the label on the frame, was located in Savannah. The girl was of at least half mixed blood and strikingly pretty too and was, I supposed, some nurse or house servant Edwina had become attached to as a child, although it is difficult to think of Edwina’s being attached to anyone. However I had turned my attention from the picture and was examining the mirror—which was of very intricate, though somewhat mawkish design, with cupids and rosebuds and the like carved on the handle and frame—when a rather disagreeable little incident occurred.
I must explain that I hadn’t picked up the mirror—or the picture, for that matter—but was looking at it in the drawer so that I suppose Edwina had no idea which of her hidden treasures I had found. Anyway when I turned back to her with the handkerchief I found her staring at me with a look of absolute terror on her face.
“Your gold and jewels are quite safe,” I told her. “I haven’t taken a thing.”
“You didn’t . . . ?”
“I didn’t touch a thing,” I said, quite angrily. “I’m sure I don’t care a fig for any of your possessions!”
“I’m sorry, Emily. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“You should be sorry,” I informed her. “Your manners are atrocious. Now dry your eyes and compose yourself. You look absolutely hideous.”
As a matter of fact her tears had stopped, I noticed, as I handed her the handkerchief. Evidently greed can sometimes take precedence over worthier emotions. Anyway, vexed as I was, I continued my work of charity by putting her dressing gown in order, as it had opened, exposing a good deal of her natural self. She was dressed exactly as she had been when she left us on the night before and therefore it seemed evident that she had never gone to bed. Well, realization of the misery that must have kept her from sleep cooled my temper a bit.
“I’m sure Miss Martha and Miss Harriet would understand if you decided to rest here until dinner time,” I said. “With the McBurney situation as it is, we are likely to have no classes anyway for the remainder of the day.”
As one more good-will gesture I picked up her fallen book. It was The Works of William Blake and it was open to a poem of few words but much gushy sentiment.
“Never seek to tell thy love,” I read aloud. “Love that never told can be. For the gentle wind does move . . . silently, invisibly.”
“Please, Emily,” said my former roommate biting her knuckles.
“I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart . . . trembling, cold, in ghastly fears—ah, she doth depart.”
“Please, Emily . . . don’t read any more!”
“It’s mighty foolish stuff, don’t you agree?”
“Yes, Emily. Emily . . . ?”
“What, what? Speak up.”
“Do you like me, Emily?”
“Not particularly, at the moment, no. However, under ordinary circumstances I think I can safely say that I like anyone with gumption. You are free to keep that in mind and conduct yourself accordingly. Now compose yourself and try to act like a grown lady.”
“All right, Emily.”
“There is enough trouble in the world today without anyone making a spectacle of herself over a trifle like this. However Corporal McBurney may have offended you. You are a Southern woman and have more worthy things to weep about, if weep you must.”
“Yes, Emily.”
“All right then. Eat your breakfast and let’s have no more of this nonsense.”
“Yes, Emily.” Obediently, she picked up her spoon and set to work on the barley porridge.
Feeling that I had accomplished a little something, I left the room then and went back downstairs. “Girls!” I remember thinking impatiently. “Idiotic girls who can lose all their control and dignity over a worthless vagabond like McBurney.” In my mind I had begun to disassociate him from the Yankees because his being a member of even an enemy army made the whole war seem less noble and the Yankees much less worthy to be our opponents. As a matter of fact in my disgust, I think I was even beginning to disassociate myself from the entire female sex.
Well there was no studying but much enthusiastic discussion taking place in the library when I returned there. You cannot trust those young students to carry out your orders for five consecutive minutes unless you are standing right over them.
“For pity’s sake, what is it now?” I asked them.
“It’s poor Johnny’s leg, not that you’re at all interested in that subject,” Alice informed me impertinently.
“There are indeed more important things in life at the moment,” I replied. “Anyway I thought Miss Harriet said McBurney’s leg was getting better.”
“Miss Harriet was wrong about that as she is about so many things,” said Marie with her customary disrespect. “Miss Martha just came in here a moment ago with some official and exact news about McBurney. And, Emily, I’m so sorry that she didn’t ask whether you were present or not before she made the announcement.”
“You will get a good ear boxing before this day is out, Miss,” I told her. “Now either one of you will tell me what Miss Martha said or you will all get back to your books immediately. It doesn’t make a particle of difference to me which you choose.”
It did slightly, of course. I am as interested as the next person in whatever goes on in this house. And that was about as severe a punishment as was in my power to inflict on them. And as I expected, it worked.
“It’s terrible,” said Amelia, whom I noticed now wasn’t sharing the enthusiasm of the others but in fact was weeping. I should have expected that, of course, because in those days in this house some one person was nearly always weeping.
“What is terrible, you poor thing?” I inquired.
“Johnny’s leg,” said our nature girl. “Miss Martha is going to cut Johnny’s leg entirely off!”
Martha Farnsworth
I knew he was guilty, no matter what secondary responsibility might have been charged to any of our students. No matter what actually happened on the third floor that night or what his provocation, I knew what had been in his mind and in my rage at this betrayal of my hospitality I would have dragged him down to the Brock road and left him there had not my sister stayed my hand. Then later it occurred to me that such an action on my part might scandalize the younger students who presumably would have no idea of what McBurney had intended.
At any rate the certainty of his guilt did not prevent me from giving him all the immediate comfort I could. I stopped the bleeding and got him back to his downstairs bed and then the following morning, egged on by the entire household, I made quite a lengthy attempt to repair the damage Mister McBurney’s folly had caused him.
“It would take a magician to restore this leg to its former usefulness,” I said as I stitched it for the second time.
“And you’re the lady with the old magic wand,” said my patient cheerfully. “Now don’t trouble to deny it, ma’am, for there’s not a soul here will believe your story.”
“It looks as neatly done as before, sister,” said Harriet bravely. She had been feeling faint a few moments before and so I had sent her across to the library to che
ck on the activities of the students. However she had then obviously tarried in the hall as long as she could because when she returned I was almost finished.
“It may look neat but it certainly doesn’t look healthy,” I remarked. “Notice how swollen and discolored the calf is.”
“Good God, if the calf is discolored I wonder what state the cow is in.” Mister McBurney shouted merrily. “Ah to hell with all calf cuddling and general leg coddling anyway. Excuse me dear ladies, but that old stem needs only a cold cloth and a good rub down with the lily white hands of Miss Martha Farnsworth and ’twill be as sound and sturdy as the day I walked into the world with it. Them’s my opinions and the Pope, President Lincoln and good Queen Victoria won’t change them!”
“Notice also the complete lack of any feeling in it.”
“How dare you, Miss, how dare you! I’ll have you know that particular leg is the most sensitive part of my entire body. That leg blushes to the bone in bad company. I’ve used that leg for years like a weather glass to keep me always in the state o’ grace!”
“He does feel some pain, I’m sure,” Harriet insisted. “It’s only the wine and his braggadocio that won’t permit him to flinch when you apply the needle.”
It was true that the wine—whether it had any pain killing effect or not—had given him the courage to put on a show of complete indifference. Moreover the wine, which my sister had been pouring for him in most generous quantities, had loosened his tongue considerably. He had begun to use the worst kind of blasphemous language, following each curse and vulgar expression with a mocking apology to my sister and me.
The Beguiled Page 28
