The Beguiled

by Thomas Cullinan

  In any event, I had no opportunity for several days to accomplish the thing he desired of me. Miss Martha seemed to be wearing her key ring on her sash every time I caught sight of her, and on those occasions when she did remove it, she handed it immediately to someone else, such as Miss Harriet or Mattie, and then saw to it that the borrower returned the keys as soon as she had finished with them. As I told Johnny, Miss Martha has always been very reluctant to part with those keys for any great length of time.

  Meanwhile, to everyone’s surprise, Corporal McBurney really was improving rapidly. By about the fifth day after his operation he was trying to sit up on his settee and swing his good leg over the edge. Marie, in fact, reported that she had seen Johnny with his left foot on the floor looking very much as though he was going to try to balance himself on it. Marie had rushed off to Miss Martha with this news, and Miss Martha had gone immediately to the parlor and very firmly insisted that Johnny, for his own good, must remain in at least a semiprone position for a while longer.

  Of course, Miss Martha was very happy, along with everyone else, at his speedy recovery, and in addition, I believe Miss Martha was a little proud of her own accomplishment. As I mentioned, I never expected Johnny to get better and I’m sure she really didn’t either. Therefore, when he astonished her by starting to seem almost normal immediately, she evidently made up her mind she would do all in her power to keep him that way. In one afternoon, she had become a successful surgeon, and she wasn’t going to have her glory taken away from her now.

  Well, I can tell you, that boy fared better in this house after he lost his leg than he or any of the rest of us did before. He was given meat and broth and all kinds of fresh greens at just about every meal. He was fed salt pork and bacon and dried beef stew—and that I can tell you was the cause of plenty of eyebrow-raising among the students here who were not aware that Miss Martha had any more dried beef locked up in her larder.

  Marie spoke for all of us when she remarked, “Some more people here may soon feel like sacrificing a leg if it means this kind of improvement in our menu.”

  One day about a week after the operation, Mattie came up with a real treat for him—and to some extent for all of us, with the exception of Miss Amelia Dabney. Old Mattie happened to be browsing around in the far tobacco field near the logging road—looking for herbs and dandelions, I guess—when she suddenly spied something fluttering out of the woods into the ditch which separates the woods from the road. She went out to investigate and found to her great joy it was a young wild turkey.

  He had evidently broken his wing in some way, so it was not any trick for Mattie to grab him and dispatch Master Tom with a nearby rock. Then she brought him home in triumph, swinging him around her head and shrieking and yelling and looking, as Emily said, like some old African Amazon returning from a successful war.

  Well, naturally, Johnny got the lion’s share of the turkey, which Mattie roasted that same night. The rest of us had to be content with little nibbles of it. I had a portion of the neck and gizzard, as I recall, which was about as much as any student managed to get. And strangely enough, no one begrudged Johnny’s having the best of it, because at that time everyone here really did want him to get well. However, it wasn’t long until some people began to change their minds on that subject.

  As you might suspect, there was one person here who refused to end any of that turkey. That was Miss Amelia Dabney, who protested violently during the plucking and cleaning of the bird and then marched upstairs when it went on the spit, and stayed in her room and refused to join us that night for dinner. Of course, I think she might have been sentenced to that exile anyway, as a result of her noisy demonstration. That strange little girl has evidently got it into her head that everything that walks or flies or crawls in that woods is her personal property, and even though this turkey had plainly strayed outside the limits of the trees—as Miss Harriet did very kindly try to explain to her—Miss Amelia would have had Mattie carry it back to its mother’s nest, or else bring it home to Amelia for repair of its broken wing.

  Anyway, you can be sure Corporal McBurney was not suffering for lack of attention at that time. Every student here, including Edwina, did her best to be unceasingly civil to him, and Miss Martha even began to cooperate a little in this respect by gradually permitting us to visit him just as often as we pleased.

  Well, when others were present he played the proper gentleman, but when I was alone with him, he frequently reverted to his tricks of pinching me and squeezing my hand painfully hard, and one time when I innocently leaned over to give him the friendly kiss he requested, he pulled my hair so savagely that I almost screamed with the agony of it.

  “The key ring, darlin,” he hissed. “Fetch me that key ring as you promised, or I’ll pull every strand from your lovely head.”

  Of course that threat didn’t bother me as much as the one I’ve already mentioned. I would have risked the pain or the possible loss of great clumps of my hair—which everyone seems to agree is one of my most attractive endowments—but the thought that he might start a false scandal about my friendship with him really troubled me. Consequently, I was very thankful that same afternoon, when I noticed Miss Martha picking bugs off the greens in the kitchen garden and seemingly not wearing the precious key ring. She had come downstairs on Mattie’s summons and she and Mattie were working with great concentration, hunting some new kind of weevil Mattie had discovered.

  Classes were finished for the day, and there was still an hour until dinner. Miss Harriet was resting in her room, which adjoins Miss Martha’s and all my fellow students, presumably, were engaged in various activities downstairs or in the garden. It seemed the perfect opportunity to slip upstairs and see whether Miss Martha had happened to leave the key ring in her room.

  The upstairs hall was empty and the doors to both our teacher’s rooms were closed. I paused briefly and listened at Miss Harriet’s door until I heard the sound of her snoring. Her head was evidently buried well beneath the bed covers, I decided, because ordinarily the sounds of Miss Harriet sleeping can be heard as far as the front gate.

  That poor thing is the most uneasy sleeper I have ever come across. She takes each breath as though it is bound to be her last and, moreover, as though she is in mortal terror of the life to come. Well, I feel sorry for anyone like that who cannot rest easily at night, since all my dreams are always pleasant ones and, I believe, I am descended from people of the same conscience. At any rate, my mother has always taught me that a lady’s bed is not the place to bring her troubles and she follows this principle by always sleeping like an absolutely petrified log herself. Or at least she was in the habit of doing so the last time I shared a bed with her.

  Anyway I moved on to Miss Martha’s room, assured that Miss Harriet would cause me no distress. Her sister’s door wasn’t locked, I found when I tried it gently, good evidence that the key ring might be somewhere inside.

  The door squeaked a bit as I opened it, and so I waited for a moment until I could hear Miss Harriet’s snoring once again. Then I entered the room on tiptoe to begin my search.

  Now I must admit I had not been overly alarmed about the project until that time. It had been merely something to accomplish whenever I could in order to satisfy McBurney, and then my intention was to forget the whole matter immediately. In addition, I had promised myself that I would never become a participant in any such risky venture again. As a matter of fact, I think I was seriously considering staying away from McBurney entirely after the business was finished.

  But now, standing in the middle of the enemy camp, I suddenly realized how risky the business really was. It dawned on me that if Miss Martha were to walk in and trap me, I might as well start at once to pack my bag, because I would very likely be ordered out of the house before morning. I knew well enough that Miss Martha was not going to believe me, or even listen to me for one instant if I tried to explain to her th
at the undertaking was just a prank. No ma’am and no sir, thank you very much. I had come into her room without asking her permission, and that is all the evidence she would need to convince herself that Alicia Simms was a trashy thief.

  Well, I guess I just stood there for a minute or more, shivering and trembling, and then I got hold of myself and decided that the best thing was to get the business over with as quickly as possible. The problem was how to discover in a hurry where Miss Martha had put the keys, there being no sign of them in the obvious places such as the top of her bed stand or her dressing table, and without moving further I could see they weren’t on the table or the chest of drawers in Miss Martha’s adjoining sewing room either.

  Well, I thought, if those pesky keys aren’t on top of some article of furniture, they must be inside or underneath—always provided they haven’t been left or given to someone downstairs. If I cannot find those keys within a very few minutes, I told myself, I will have to conclude they’re not in this room at all, and then I’m going to give up on the entire undertaking and Mister Corporal McBurney can go hang himself. Already I had made a very honest effort to help him and if he had any decency at all he couldn’t possibly hold it against me that I had failed.

  And so I began searching the drawers in the dressing table and bed stand. Miss Martha had apparently gone downstairs in such a rush she left every drawer in the place unlocked, which was fortunate for me in one sense, but in another sense unfortunate because it caused me a number of distractions.

  For example, there was a very handsome jewelry box—locked—in the top drawer of the bed stand, along with a lot of legal papers, which seemed to relate to this property here as well as other Farnsworth properties elsewhere in Virginia. Most of these papers were receipts for the sale of land, which my mother always says is a sure sign a family is on the decline.

  Then in the middle right-side drawer of the dressing table was a supply of lead balls for Miss Martha’s father’s pistol—although not the pistol itself—and also a packet of old letters tied with a red ribbon. The top letter—and all the rest of them too, I think—was from the Farnsworth boy, Robert, who had signed his name on the envelope together with his address at the University of Virginia. All of the letters had obviously been written many years ago, and I had neither the time nor the inclination at that moment to read any of them. For one thing, I doubted whether I could get the same perfect bow on the ribbon if I untied it.

  Anyway the amazing find was in the bottom drawer on the left side of the table. Now you could rack your brains for a hundred years and never guess what was in that drawer concealed beneath a lace shawl and a pile of handkerchiefs. As a matter of fact, I believe I am discreet enough and lady enough not to expose this secret to any outside acquaintance of Miss Martha and as far as that goes I did not disclose it to more than two other people at this school. One person was McBurney himself, to whom I merely related it in passing, and that disclosure certainly doesn’t matter now. And the second person was a student to whom I mentioned it—as will soon be evident—before I really had a chance to think about it.

  Now let me reveal the secret in this way, by asking what is our Miss Martha’s most attractive feature? Well I think everyone will agree that our headmistress is not the most beautiful woman in the world. She is tall and well proportioned and has a graceful carriage, but she is undeniably rather plain of face and also there is something slightly unfeminine about her, if you know what I mean. She is too much the farmer, there is too much of the field and stable about her for my taste, and this is why the discovery was even more surprising. It was something that in my wildest dreams I would never have connected with Miss Martha.

  Because there was one possession of Miss Martha’s of which I always thought she need never be ashamed. Even if she were thrust into the most civilized Washington or Richmond society, she had at least one acceptable and redeeming feature, I thought, and that feature was her hair. As anyone can observe by looking at her today, Miss Martha Farnsworth has a very lovely head of jet back hair. And it is not her own!

  That is what I found in that dressing table drawer—another wig exactly like the one she was wearing at that same moment in the garden!

  Well, I guess I was so stunned I must have remained kneeling there by that drawer for several moments, forgetting completely the dangerous situation I was in. And I was brought to my senses in a hurry when I heard a voice behind me say triumphantly, “Ah ha, the criminal is caught in the act!”

  Now as you can imagine, I just about went through the ceiling from shock, and then I turned very slowly and fearfully and found Miss Edwina Morrow, standing in the doorway with her arms folded, smiling at me. I had not closed the door completely in order that I might hear any footsteps on the stairs, but I had forgotten there are people in this house who can move like cats and Edwina is one of them.

  “Why, Edwina,” I said, trying to be civil, “I thought you were downstairs in the library.”

  “How unlucky for you. As it happens, I was in my own room, which I suppose is very lucky for me—otherwise you might have been in there trying to steal something.”

  “That’s not so,” I protested, half on the verge of tears. “I didn’t come in here for that reason at all.”

  “Then what is your reason, pray tell, for being in this room snooping through Miss Martha’s possessions?”

  “I’m not snooping,” I almost shouted. “I’m only looking for something which Corporal McBurney would like to borrow from Miss Martha.”

  “Would you like me to believe that Miss Martha sent you to do this?”

  “Of course not! Actually it’s only a trick—a trick which Johnny is playing on Miss Martha, that’s all it is.”

  “Is that so. Well, Johnny must be in a very lighthearted mood then, and right after his serious operation, too. It’s nice to know he’s feeling so jolly once again.”

  “Especially nice for you,” I retorted, feeling braver. “It must be a comfort to you, since you were the cause of the operation.”

  “Let’s not go into those matters, shall we?” She wasn’t smiling at all now, just staring at me with such a cold expression that I really was very afraid of her for the first time in my life.

  “What is this secret thing you’re looking for then?” she asked after a moment. “Is it something out of Miss Martha’s jewel case?”

  “It’s her key ring,” I said. I really wouldn’t have admitted that if I hadn’t been afraid of Edwina.

  “I might’ve guessed it,” Edwina said. “Johnny will be playing tricks in the wine cellar and in every cabinet and cupboard in the house.”

  “Well I didn’t ask him why he wanted the keys,” I said. “However, I don’t see how he can rush about the house opening cupboards in his present condition.”

  “Oh he’ll be moving around again shortly, I fancy,” said Edwina. “Emily and Amelia are making a pair of crutches for him right now. Tell me, what do you find so fascinating in that drawer?”

  “Nothing,” I said, trying to close the drawer casually. I honestly didn’t want to tell her about the wig, because I didn’t think she was the kind of person who ought to be entrusted with information like that.

  “Get up out of there and let me see.”

  “It’s nothing at all,” I said again, “only someone’s old hair piece is all it is.” If the information about the wig was going to be spread throughout the school, I was determined I would be the one to tell it and not Edwina Morrow. Little enough attention is paid to me around here to pass up an opportunity like that without a struggle.

  However, the unmannerly Miss Morrow pushed me aside and jerked the drawer open. She had a brief look at the contents and then stood back as though disappointed. “That must be her dress-up one,” she commented. “I think it’s a bit glossier than the other.”

  “Do you mean to stand there and tell me that you knew about this b
efore, Edwina?”

  “Certainly. A blind person could tell Miss Martha’s hair is not her own.”

  “And you’ve never told anyone here?”

  “To whom would I tell it—you, for instance?”

  “No, I suppose not,” I admitted. Edwina has no friends here to whom she might naturally confide a secret like that. Of course, as far as that goes, neither do I.

  “Do you think Miss Martha is completely bald then?” I inquired.

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” was her ungraceful answer. “During your snooping you didn’t happen to notice Miss Martha’s jewel box, did you?”

  Well I’m sure I would have told her that I hadn’t but after a pause she continued, “If you tell me where the jewel box is, I might locate the key ring for you.”

  “Where is it?”

  “There, you ninny.” She pointed to Miss Martha’s wardrobe closet, and there, through the half open door, the key ring was plainly visible, hanging on a hook. Edwina went over, took it down and tossed it to me. “Now where’s the jewel box?”

  “In the second drawer,” I told her, feeling obligated to do so now. “It’s locked though,” I added.

  “You’ve tried it, have you?” Edwina opened the drawer and brought out the box. “Well, perhaps the key to it is among the dozen or more on here.”

  She grabbed the key ring from me and sitting down on the floor with the box on her lap she began trying the keys, finally succeeding in springing the lid, on the tenth try. Then she lifted out the inner tray with its contents which included a very few objects of jewelry—some rings with very modest stones, an inexpensive looking coral necklace and a few tarnished pins and brooches—and quite a number of gold coins.

  “There we are,” said Edwina with satisfaction. “There’s my money.”

  “How do you mean—your money?”

  “I’ve given it to her, all of this, in the years I’ve been here. What the rest of you have contributed may be in the bottom of the box.” She indicated a rather meager-sized bundle of Yankee paper money which was in the second compartment along with a man’s gold watch and a pair of gold cuff links.