The Beguiled

by Thomas Cullinan

  The second visitor was Mattie who entered after a few more minutes and came over also to have a look at Johnny and a feel of his brow.

  “Poor boy,” said Mattie. “You had to come all the way from some foreign country just to have this happen to you.”

  Then she turned and noticed me. She was the only one of all those who came in to see Johnny on that afternoon who did notice me.

  “Get on out of there, Miss Amelia,” she said. “Get outside to the well and fetch yourself some water and then march upstairs to your room and get yourself ready for dinner. I declare you’re gettin to be most as untidy as Miss Marie—and that’s a ways to go.”

  “Limbs never grow again on people the way severed tails sometimes do on lizards, do they, Mattie?” I asked her.

  “I never heard of such a thing happenin,” she said.

  “Neither have I. I was pretty sure it was impossible, but I thought maybe you might have heard of something like that happening in Africa, or wherever your people came from.”

  “My Daddy came from right here in Virginia and that’s where I come from.”

  “What about your Daddy’s father?”

  “I never seen him. He might have come from some foreign land but I was never told about it if he did.”

  “But didn’t any of your people way back come from strange places where they had magic cures and medicines which could accomplish all sorts of wonderful things which are never possible here? Mattie, I’m sure I’ve heard the people on our own place at home talk about things like that.”

  “Maybe you did hear your Daddy’s people talk about them, but you ain’t heard me talk about them and you ain’t gonna hear me! That’s Devil talk and it ain’t nothin for a little Christian child to be foolin with.”

  “Mattie, could the Devil restore Johnny’s leg to him?”

  “I expect he could. The Devil can do most anything he sets his mind to—’cept get into Heaven.”

  “How would one go about arranging that kind of thing for Johnny?”

  “You crazy, child?”

  “I was just wondering.”

  “Well stop wonderin. It ain’t nothin for anybody to be speculatin about, specially a little girl like you. I said the Devil prob’ly could restore this boy’s leg if he wanted to, but he sure ain’t gonna do it for nothin. The Devil don’t run his business that way. If he does you a favor, he expects a favor from you in return. And in this case—which would be a mighty tough case, since it wouldn’t be no child’s play to fasten a person’s leg back on, specially after it’s buried under a yard or more of dirt—in this case the Devil wouldn’t take the job for anything less than the guaranteed payment of a first class human soul. That means you’d have to sell your soul to the Devil in exchange for the restoration of this Yankee’s leg. Now do you think that one little Southern lady’s pure white soul would be a fair exchange for the leg of one no-account Yankee soldier?”

  “But he isn’t no-account, Mattie.”

  “Well, let’s say . . . somewhat no-account. And even if he was of great account . . . even if he was a Yankee general or the King of France . . . or the Mayor of New Orleans . . . it wouldn’t be a good bargain. A human soul is a precious thing, honey, specially an uncontaminated hardly-used little soul like yours.”

  “But why would it have to be my soul which was offered in return for Johnny’s leg? Why couldn’t Johnny bargain with his own soul?”

  “Cause he ain’t that foolish, that’s why. He knows when he comes to die he ain’t ever gonna get into Heaven without a soul. And for a second good reason, there ain’t no comparin your soul and the soul of this Yankee who’s been bummin all over creation ever since he growed up gettin into the Lord only knows what kind of mischief. Your soul is a hundred times as valuable as this boy’s and the Devil, who ain’t no fool, knows that as well as I do. The Devil wouldn’t be at all interested in this McBurney’s soul if there was any chance at all of gettin yours instead. Now let’s have no more of this talk. Fix yourself for dinner like I said and stop all this foolishness.”

  “I don’t feel much like eating, Mattie,” I said.

  “What you don’t feel like don’t matter in the least. You got to learn to be strong and to carry your troubles without bein weighed down by them. Everybody who was ever born has got some misery in their life. If you got a big load of it today, and you carry it without complainin, moren’ likely the good Lord will send you a lighter load tomorrow. Least that’s always been my way of lookin at it.”

  “It’s not my misery that’s bothering me,” I said, “it’s Johnny’s. And I’m afraid he may not be so willing to put up with it.”

  “Oh, he’ll come around all right in a day or two,” said Mattie. “It ain’t the end of the world to lose one leg. There’s plenty more like him who’ll come out of this war with one leg gone, and maybe some with two, and they’ll likely live just as long and get just as rich and be just as ornery to their neighbors as anybody else. Now if you’re gonna stay in here for a while, be quiet. I’m gonna let poor Miss Harriet catch a little extra rest in here too.”

  Miss Harriet showed signs of awakening now shortly after Mattie had left the room. She stretched a bit and sighed and glanced drowsily at the table and must have realized then, I guess, even in her state of half consciousness, that the wine bottle had disappeared. She came fully awake with a jerk and leaned over and examined the table carefully but, of course, to no avail. Then she sighed again, more heavily this time, and settled back and closed her eyes once more, maybe thinking it might be possible to dream about some wine even if she didn’t really have any. Then after another short while she evidently remembered about Johnny, which caused her, with what seemed like some annoyance, to shake herself and sit erect in her chair. She rubbed her eyes and leaned forward for a good hard look at him.

  “Mister McBurney?” she asked rather tentatively. “Are you awake?”

  Miss Harriet doesn’t see as well as most people and she couldn’t at first determine whether or not Johnny was still unconscious. Obviously she couldn’t see me farther over in the shadows and a bit later I began to wish I had identified myself but by that time it was too late to do it without embarrassing her.

  Because the things Miss Harriet began to talk about were very personal matters which I’m sure she would never have mentioned if she had realized there was a conscious person within sound of her voice. It seemed as if she was taking advantage of Johnny’s being asleep on the settee to talk about matters which she had kept to herself for a long time. I think maybe she needed the presence of another person to whom she could direct her words, but at the same time that person had to be incapable of listening, if you know what I mean. Well it’s no disgrace to talk to yourself that way, in my opinion. I do it myself all the time in the woods. I talk to birds and animals whom I know can’t understand me either—although they most certainly do listen to me, sometimes very attentively.

  Now I imagine Miss Harriet had been waiting a long time for this opportunity and she made good use of it. She began by referring to the missing wine and saying that she had known it would be gone when she awakened.

  “Martha was just waiting for the chance,” she said. “She no doubt walked by the door here a dozen times, just waiting for me to close my eyes so she could steal in here and take the wine away. It’s too bad it won’t be here if your pain gets worse and you need it, but you can blame my sister if that happens. It was for you I was saving it, but naturally Martha would never be convinced of that. You might have been thinking me to be the weaker of the two sisters, but I’m not, you know. I’m much the stronger, much more self-sufficient than Martha . . . and I’ll always be that way. I have an ultimate strength, you see, which guarantees my position in this house. Until now I’ve been reluctant to use my power, but it’s there if I need it. I know certain things, Mister McBurney, and because of that my sister fears me. Oh she c
an mock me before the students, and she can ignore me at the table, and she can subject me to a thousand small indignities such as hiding the key to the wine cellar when I need a remedy for a chill or an aching back, but there are limits to all this, Mister McBurney. There are bounds beyond which I will not tolerate my sister. She can wait outside in the hall until I am asleep and then sneak in here like a thief and snatch almost-empty bottles of wine from me, but she dares not face me directly with an order which I do not wish to carry out. She cannot bid me go or stay or sit or stand . . . or do anything contrary to my own desires . . . because I have this strength, Mister McBurney . . . I have the power to destroy her.

  “I do believe my sister was honestly appalled at the realization of what she had done to you, Mister McBurney,” Miss Harriet continued, “just as she was completely broken up when she realized what she had done to my brother. Of course she got over her grief for Robert very quickly—just as she may recover in a day or two from the shock of knowing that she has performed an unnecessary amputation.”

  Miss Harriet was speaking softly now though much more urgently and perhaps even more viciously than she does at normal times. In fact her whole manner was completely unlike that meek and hesitant person who generally always yields in any disagreement, even with students like Edwina and Emily and sometimes even with Marie.

  “It’s a pity you didn’t come to visit us a long time ago, Mister McBurney,” was the next thing she said. “You would have enjoyed yourself then at Farnsworth. In the old days, when Father was alive, this was a nice house . . . and a nice home. Everything was different then. We had company all the time, or most of the time. We had parties of all kinds . . . barbecues and balls and galas . . . oh nothing of the magnitude that is put on in Richmond, perhaps, but very pleasant occasions all the same. I think I may safely say that the Farnsworth parties were quite the best ones in this part of the county. And people from all over came to them. We had guests here from Fredericksburg and Culpepper and Warrenton . . . and from the Courthouse and from Richmond, too, on many occasions . . . and a few times people who knew our family from the old times came here—people from around our old place down on the James. And, of course, the year Robert was at the University he brought many of his friends here for the holidays. And that included people from all over. That Christmas, I remember, there were boys here from Augusta and Biloxi, and one from the capital—the Yankee capital, I mean—and another very pale and shy boy from the city of New York, who was very friendly with me—not with anyone else—only with me. And of course Howard Winslow was here too . . . he was always here in those days. Well we had parties or entertainments of some kind every day and evening for a solid week. Martha and I were attending Miss Monroe’s Seminary in Fredericksburg at that time too, and three of those girls came home with us for Christmas . . . Mary Bradley, as I recall, and Elizabeth Colby and a gawky girl from Boston whose name I can’t for the life of me remember but I do know she had the most terrible complexion of anyone at Miss Monroe’s. Of course Elizabeth and Mary were nothing to brag about in the beauty line either which, naturally, was the reason Martha invited them. She wouldn’t have wanted Robert to be subjected to any undue temptations.

  “Yes, Martha and I were away at school that year. Prior to that time we had been taught by a succession of middle aged and impoverished immigrants, mostly Germans and Austrians, none of whom were ever very happy out here in the hinterlands where they had Martha’s continual attitude of superiority to add to their discomfort. So since we had no tutor at the moment and since Robert was going to be away at the University, my sister persuaded Father to send us off to Miss Monroe’s. I recall she had wanted him to enroll both Robert and herself at a university in France where it seems females are admitted, but Father was never very enthusiastic about education of any kind for women and in Martha’s case he realized—quite properly—that an experience of that sort would just make her more insufferable than she already was.

  “Of course I’m not suggesting that Martha isn’t bright. She always did have it over Robert and me in that respect. I’m sure if she had been born a man, she might have made a fine career for herself in education or politics, or maybe even in medicine. You’ve had a taste, haven’t you, Mister McBurney, of my sister’s eagerness to practice medicine. And it’s possible she might have talked Father into the Paris scheme, as she had talked him into everything else she ever wanted, except it turned out Robert wasn’t very eager to go to Europe himself and that, needless to say, caused Martha’s interest to dwindle. I believe Robert was making an honest effort at that time to escape Martha’s influence and that’s why he decided to go to the University of Virginia.

  “Well, Martha is a strange woman. She is my closet kin but sometimes I feel no affinity with her at all. Sometimes I think she is a person who is not only incapable of natural love herself, but also lacks whatever kind of spiritual magnetism is necessary to attract it. She can command respect of sorts, but not love. She just seems compelled to rule and possess everything and everyone about her, and obviously a person with those qualities is neither going to be liked nor loved.

  “And so I can tell you truthfully that I’m sure my brother never loved her. In fact he may well have hated her toward the end, the way she treated him. It was like he wasn’t her brother at all or wasn’t even related to her—the way she went on, if you know what I mean. Maybe she thought that no one here was aware of the situation, but she couldn’t fool me. I saw the way she petted him and fondled him and followed after him wherever he went around this place. He couldn’t go ten steps toward the stables or the fields or the woods without her trailing after him. And, Mister McBurney, there were times when she even followed him to his room at night. Most often his door was locked but my sister had great patience. She would wait there in the hall, smiling to herself, and rapping softly and calling to him. ‘Just for a moment, Robbie,’ she would say. And after a while she would win him over. She would always win out in the end. He would open his door and stand there, pale and trembling, in the light of her candle, and then he would step aside and she’d enter . . . smiling . . . smiling. And the door would be closed, perhaps for hours, perhaps until dawn. And bad things would happen inside. Sometime I’ll tell you about everything that happened on those nights, Mister McBurney, if you’d be interested in hearing it.

  “And the next day she would act as though nothing unusual had occurred. Indeed if her manner changed at all it would be for the better and she might seem happier and more contented with what she might have described on the previous day as our dull life here at Farnsworth. Robert on the other hand might stay in his room all that following day, never coming out at all, even for meals . . . waiting perhaps until after dark and then slipping down to the stables and saddling his horse and racing off to the Courthouse . . . or maybe even to Fredericksburg, where he’d be drunk in some tavern or worse place for the better part of a week.

  “Father never knew what was going on upstairs, of course. He saw the result in the eyes of his wastrel son but he never knew the guilt that caused it. He always kept to himself a good bit anyway, Father did, in his later years. He took to spending most of his time on the porch or in the library, when we didn’t have company, since he couldn’t seem to find much in common with his children. He even slept on the settee in the library many nights when his gout was troubling him and that, of course, made it all the easier for Martha.

  “Well she got her payment in the end, Mister McBurney. Robert went away and never came back. My sister was in despair, I can tell you. For many months he’d been trying to get away from her but she managed to keep him here on the pretext that Father needed him, but then Father died and she had no excuses any more. He went away for the last time and she never saw him again. Oh she tried desperately to find him. She traveled many miles in search of him and wrote him hundreds of letters and sent them to places where she’d heard he had been or was expected to be. She even continued to write
letters when she had no address to which she could mail them because she had things on her mind and she wanted to get them put down and she kept hoping soon . . . maybe tomorrow or the day after or next week at the latest . . . she’d hear from him . . . or from someone who had seen him and could tell her where he was. I have secured some of those letters and I have them upstairs in my room, Mister McBurney. Sometime . . . if you are interested . . . I’ll show them to you. They’re very revealing letters, I can tell you. I think your opinion of my sister will change considerably after you’ve read them. In some of the letters she says she is sorry for the way she treated Robert and for her feelings about him, which she sometimes thinks now may have been wrong. She says in one letter that if he will only come back he’d need never fear her because she promises to remain at a distance from him and not even to speak to him unless he wishes it. Well you can’t believe any of that. If Robert returned tomorrow things would still be the same between them as far as she’s concerned. Of course she’s claiming now that he’s dead but you mustn’t believe that either. She buried something in the woods one night which she said was Robert, but it wasn’t, Mister McBurney, don’t you ever believe that it was. It was a bundle of rags is all that she picked from a hundred other bundles. It wasn’t Robert any more than you are Robert.

  “She realizes what she did, you see, that’s what’s causing her to suffer, and you can make her suffer, too, Mister McBurney, for what she did to you. Your pain will be her pain every time she looks at you. . . . The nights you lie awake in misery will be sleepless ones for her too. And even if you die from this, Mister McBurney, she won’t forget you. She’ll remember what she did to you. I’ll see that she remembers this day, too.”

  Miss Harriet paused again now and sighed and looked once more at the table and at the floor beneath it to see if she might possibly have misplaced the wine bottle. But it was definitely gone and this caused her to mutter a brief sentence which wasn’t entirely audible to me except that I know it included Miss Martha’s name and some words of profanity I had never heard Miss Harriet use before. Then she arose and without another glance at Johnny she left the room, walking slowly and stumbling a bit against the furniture. In a moment I heard her proceeding in the same unsteady fashion up the stairs.