The Beguiled

by Thomas Cullinan

  “Go to hell . . . go to hell,” Edwina moaned.

  “It was only to save the wrinklin of them . . . while I was restin there on her bed and all. . . .”

  She started to leave then but he grabbed her hand and held her in a tight grip when she tried to pull away. “I wouldn’t’ve gone to your room, dear. I wouldn’t’ve even asked to go . . . because you’re a nice girl . . . and I love you. . . .”

  “You lie . . . you lie,” Edwina cried softly.

  “I’ll make you believe me. I’ll make you see I’m tellin the truth. Tomorrow . . . or the day after . . . just as soon as I can get about again . . . I’ll show you, Edwina, how much you mean to me . . . and how I plan to repay you . . . for all you’ve done for me. . . .”

  His grip on her hand relaxed then and he closed his eyes.

  “Johnny,” she whispered. “Johnny, I will try to believe you. I’ll try to have more faith in you from now on.”

  But he was asleep. She waited there for a moment longer, holding his hands now in her own. Then she released him gently and pulled the blanket higher on him since the room was getting a bit chilly now. Finally she smoothed his hair with her fingertips and wiped the perspiration from his forehead and upper lip with her handkerchief. And then wiping her own eyes with the damp handkerchief she left the room.

  Well, I said to myself, there certainly seems to be a lot of unsuspected trouble in this house. Johnny McBurney, I thought, you really have managed to cause a wagonload of commotion and consternation in this school in the few short weeks that you’ve been here.

  But I still didn’t think any the less of him despite the various things I had heard on that afternoon. After turning the more recent things over in my mind, I wasn’t any more disturbed by Edwina’s remarks than I had been by Alice’s or Miss Harriet’s. And what was more important, I wasn’t hardly bothered at all by what Johnny had said to Edwina.

  I know his remarks were probably rather vulgar, but that sort of thing never upsets me. I’ve heard it all before. I’ve overheard enough conversations between overseers and field hands on our place at home which included a number of remarks which were less refined than Johnny’s.

  And as for the rest of it, I didn’t know whether he was being sincere with Edwina or not and I didn’t much care. I was almost always certain that he was entirely sincere in anything he ever said to me, and that was all that counted. The others, I decided, could look out for themselves.

  While I was pondering these things in the growing darkness, Mattie came to the doorway.

  “You still in there, child?” she demanded.

  “Yes, I’m still here,” said I.

  “The others are all at the table,” Mattie grumbled. “You gonna force me to feed you in here? Miss Martha and Miss Harriet are gettin too easy with you chil’ren. They ought not to put up with all this nonsense, makin all this extra work for me.”

  “What table are you serving at tonight, Mattie?”

  “The kitchen table! Is that what’s botherin you?”

  “Is Edwina there . . . and Alice?”

  “Yes, they’re all there but you . . . and Miss Harriet who’s sick again. None of the other young ladies is as foolish as you. They know they gotta eat their meals at the proper time and place, no matter if all the Yankees in the world gets their legs cut off.”

  “All right,” I said, rising. “I’ll come out and join the rest. I’m still not very hungry, but I am satisfied now that Johnny is in no danger at least for the time being.”

  “You think he’s a mite stronger then?” Mattie came over and inspected him.

  “I don’t know whether he’s any stronger physically or not,” I said, “but I believe he has more vitality now than he seemed to have a while ago. I think now Johnny may have found something to live for.”

  “And what would that be?” Mattie asked.

  “I think maybe he has a goal now,” I said. “I think he’s planning to show certain people here that they were very wrong in treating him as they did.”

  “More power to him then,” said Mattie. “There’s a few folks here that need to be took down a peg or two.”

  Then she left the parlor and I followed her and joined the other girls at dinner in the kitchen.

  Alicia Simms

  Before I begin to say anything about Johnny McBurney as I knew him after his operation, I want to state emphatically that I thought the entire thing was horrible. It seems to me that cutting off a human leg is a terribly cruel thing to do to anyone, especially without a person’s permission, unless that person is absolutely at death’s door and unable to speak or consider things sanely. Also I think you can hardly blame the victim of such an operation for being very mean and nasty about it afterwards. Well that’s the way Johnny was and I never held it against him hardly at all—except that I did think he was rather unfair in the direction of his meanness sometimes, since he turned it indiscriminately on some people who didn’t deserve it. I happened to be one of those people.

  Anyway it was several mornings later before I managed to have a private conversation with him. This, I might say, was no mean accomplishment at that time when the awakening thought of everyone here was always, “Is Johnny McBurney still alive or not? Or if he hasn’t died, has he become reconciled to his crippled condition?” With thoughts like these in mind all the students usually rushed downstairs in the morning and crowded around the parlor door, but they were always refused admittance by Miss Martha or Miss Harriet who would post themselves there before any of the girls arrived. However on this particular morning I didn’t rush down with the others. I adopted the tactics of some of the slyer girls here—girls like Marie and Amelia who astonished me by not thinking of it themselves—and I waited, upstairs until Miss Martha had shooed them all into the dining room for breakfast and then I slipped down the stairs very quietly and went straight into the parlor.

  Surprisingly enough, he was sitting, bolstered up with pillows on his settee. “Surprisingly” is probably not even a strong enough word to use in these circumstances, because I think anyone would reasonably expect a person who had just undergone a serious leg amputation to be knocking on death’s door, or mighty near to it, for a good many days subsequently, and not be sitting calmly propped up, staring intently at a girl as she entered his room, hardly three days later.

  Well I tell you when I left that boy after visiting him briefly on the day of his operation I really never expected to see him alive again, but there he was, as cool as you please, nibbling on one of Mattie’s beaten biscuits and sipping at a cup of acorn coffee. However, I did observe that he was still extremely pale and drawn looking, and I expect he was experiencing a lot of pain, although he was not about to admit to anything like that. I guess by that time, he had made up his mind that he was not going to be defeated by a flock of women. I guess he was just bound and determined to recover from his operation, just out of spite, if for no other reason.

  “Fine, I feel just fine,” he said in answer to my question. “I believe I’ll recommend to everyone the job that was done on me. It’s a great thing for tonin up the constitution.”

  “You seem to be doing so well already, no doubt you’ll be up and around again in a few days,” I told him.

  “I will, I promise you,” he agreed. “Maybe ’twill be before that even. I have a lot to do here, and I must be gettin on to it.”

  “What exactly must you do?” I inquired.

  “Various things,” said he with a nasty grin. And with that he put down his coffee cup and reached over and pinched me very hard and, I can almost certainly say, viciously, on the tender part of my back body. It was really done so meanly that it just brought tears to my eyes, but that devil, Johnny, just continued to grin.

  “That’s nothin,” he told me, “nothin at all compared to what you’ll get if you don’t pay attention to me. From now on you must do just exactly
as I tell you, or you may wish you’d never been born.”

  “But what’s wrong, Johnny?” I asked him in great surprise. “What have I done that displeases you?”

  “You haven’t jumped fast enough when I’ve snapped my fingers, dearie, that’s the whole trouble. You’ve acted so pert and snappy with me sometimes that I’ve been thinkin lately you might take it into your head to disobey me entirely, and o’ course I won’t have any of that. I’ve a couple of little tasks in mind for you now, and they’ve got to be accomplished very quickly.”

  “I’ll do anything I can for you, Johnny,” I told him. “You can believe that.”

  “I hope I can believe it. I think at heart you’re a willing girl and maybe you’ll improve a bit now that your mistakes have been pointed out to you. If you do you’ll be rewarded, and if you don’t, you’ll be punished, like I told you. If you’re good, you’ll get this.” And he patted me gently in the same region as before. “But if not, you’ll get this.” And once again he pinched me, even more cruelly than the first time. I would have cried out with the pain, had he not pulled me down to him and clapped his hand to my mouth.

  “Now, now,” he said, “no tears, there’s my brave girl. It was only the one more lesson you needed. You won’t get any more like that if you’re a good girl. Now then, are you ready for your first instructions?”

  I had to nod my agreement, because I couldn’t even speak with the way he was practically smothering me with his big hand. I suppose I should have pulled away from him right then and walked right out of that room and never had anything more to do with Johnny McBurney, but I guess I was just simply afraid to do it. He couldn’t have leaped up and caught me right then, of course, but I had to think of the future—of the time when he had recovered his health and strength as it seemed right then he was surely going to do.

  And also I must admit I had liked him in the past and I was hopeful that I might like him again at sometime in the future. I won’t deny that I had been very attracted to him for several reasons, one of which had been his kind and gracious manner with me, and so I began hoping that this strange meanness of Johnny’s would pass and that he would become the dear person he had been before.

  “All right then, sweetheart,” he said, “here’s the first task I’m assignin to you. It’s a very important job, and you must handle it carefully. Are you up to it, do you think?”

  “Yes, yes,” I said, not wanting to be hurt again.

  “Very well. Here’s what you must do. You must fetch me Miss Martha’s key ring.”

  “But she won’t give it to me.” I really thought he must be joking.

  “I’m not suggesting that you ask her for it.”

  “You mean you want me to steal it?”

  “Oh that’s a terrible word, an awful word to use. And it ain’t even appropriate. When you steal something, it usually means you want to keep it, don’t it, or else sell it. I don’t want to keep the key ring. I just want to borrow it for a little while, and then I’ll return it to dear old Miss Martha.”

  Well, as you can imagine I was very shocked. The key ring to which he was referring is the one Miss Martha generally wears attached to a sash around her waist, and whether he intended to return it eventually or not, taking it without Miss Martha’s permission seemed to me to be a very serious matter—one which Miss Martha would regard as a very grave offense—an offense for which a person might well be discharged from this school.

  And more than that, it was impossible. I told him so. “Miss Martha has those keys with her practically all the time,” I said.

  “But not constantly,” said Johnny McBurney. “I believe I’ve seen her without them. In fact I have the impression she doesn’t always wear her key ring at dinner.”

  I had to agree with that. Miss Martha kept the keys at hand most of the day to open the bookcases and various locked closets and cupboards with which this house abounds, but when she came to the dinner table—especially when she had changed into her good black velvet dress—she seldom brought the key ring with her.

  “And so,” Johnny continued, “you could slip up to Miss Martha’s room tonight during dinner, couldn’t you, and whisk that key ring down to me in an instant with no one being the wiser. Couldn’t you do that for me, dearie?” And he made as though to pinch me again.

  “I suppose I could,” I admitted, “but I would surely be caught at it. If the keys were missing and I was absent from the table for even an instant after Miss Martha came downstairs, I would surely be accused of taking them. You don’t seem to be acquainted with the rules of this school yet, Mister McBurney. It just so happens that all students are supposed to be at table when Miss Martha enters the dining room and they are supposed to remain there until after she leaves the room.”

  “Well, she does walk around without those keys on some other occasions, doesn’t she?”

  “I suppose she does,” said I, “but it doesn’t happen very often. What do you want with those keys anyway?”

  “Nothin, nothin much at all. I only want to play a joke on Miss Martha.”

  “She won’t think it’s very funny. She’ll raise a terrible fuss if she ever finds that key ring missing.”

  “I’m sure she will,” he grinned. “That’s the joke of it. And she won’t blame you for taking it, don’t worry about that. I’ll bet you a dozen kisses that she accuses her sister of makin off with it. She’ll think Miss Harriet has grabbed the keys in order to get at the wine downstairs.”

  “Miss Harriet seems able to get the wine without the keys whenever she wants it,” I said, “but even if Miss Martha was misled, Miss Harriet has always been most kind to me and I’d hate to get her into trouble.”

  “Ah, it won’t be anything serious,” said Johnny. “Her sister can’t drive her out of the house, can she? In fact we’ll probably be doin Miss Harriet a favor with this joke, because if she’s falsely accused of somethin like this, she may just rear back and assert herself and tell the old bat off for the first time in her life.”

  It didn’t seem awfully likely, but I supposed it might be possible. “But how will you get the keys back to Miss Martha when you’re finished with your joke?” I asked him.

  “I’ll just throw them somewhere and let her find them. Maybe I’ll toss ’em over behind that chair there, or over by the window, and she’ll come in and think she dropped them and that they’ve been there all the time. Now, darlin girl, don’t you see how simple the whole thing is?”

  Well I still didn’t want to do it. If he had to begin playing jokes, I told him, he’d be better off to get himself a partner who liked that sort of thing—someone like Marie Deveraux, for instance.

  “I don’t want a child,” said he. “I want a quick and clever girl like yourself who knows what she’s doing. Marie Deveraux might agree to grab the keys all right, but she also might decide to improve the joke and drop the keys in the well and then where’d we be? You see, dearie, I think I can make you toe the line more easily than I can Marie.”

  “I’m not that much afraid of you hurting me,” I said, more bravely than I felt. “I can always stay away from you.”

  “No, you couldn’t sweetie. I’d catch you sooner or later, even with my one poor leg. And even if you could avoid my hand, you could never get away from the sound of my voice—my rich tenor voice that’d be continually singin out, accusin you of all sorts of sly and fancy deeds with me in your room that night the black-haired bitch pushed me down the stairs.”

  I’m just repeating his own words now, I certainly wouldn’t use that kind of language myself. And also I really hadn’t done anything wrong that night, but naturally I realized at once that I could never prevent him from saying that I had, and of course, I’m in such a precarious position here, what with my mother never bothering to send Miss Martha any money for my education and keep, or for that matter never even writing occasionally to say tha
t she intends to send some money at some time in the future when she is more able to do so, and also what with the way that some girls are somewhat jealous of me—or of my appearance, I mean, and my hair especially—which sometimes causes some trouble to arise here, that sometimes I think it wouldn’t take much provocation at all to cause Miss Martha to send me away from here, war or no war.

  One other little thought did occur to me at that time, which, in order to be completely honest, I will report now. Although it was a terribly nasty and vicious word to use in describing her, it did give me some comfort to realize that Johnny had at last recognized Edwina Morrow for what she was.

  Anyway I finally did consent to try and get Miss Martha’s key ring for Johnny. He had never given me any reason to doubt him in the past, was the way I argued it to myself, and therefore if he insisted it would only be a joke there was no good reason for me not to at least try to believe him. The final and winning argument was, of course, when I decided that I had more to fear from Johnny right then than I did from Miss Martha or anyone else in the house.

  Well, once I had consented, his disposition changed and he became the Johnny of old. He was tender and soft-spoken with me once again, and before I left him I permitted him to kiss me once, which he did in a most gentle manner. As I departed he was starting on his breakfast again, and singing to himself as though he hadn’t a single care in the world and was as healthy and complete as any man alive. Of course, I suspect the act was put on because he was very pale, I noticed, and stuffing the food in his mouth and not really enjoying it, and also he certainly wasn’t singing as well as he had sung in his better days. Therefore, as a little further test, I bumped his right leg—or what remained of it—accidentally as I departed, and I can tell you he practically bit through his lower lip from the pain.