The Beguiled

by Thomas Cullinan

  Well, I just had to marvel at my sister’s calmness. I am frightened half to death of any violence, particularly when it occurs unexpectedly, but I think the whole ceiling could collapse on the dining room table and it would not ruffle my sister’s breakfast composure—unless, of course, she wanted to appear disturbed. I have never seen another person so able to control her emotions as my sister, which might lead a stranger to think she is totally without feelings, but of course that is not at all the case. At this particular time, in fact, she was very likely raging inside but she refused to betray it by more than a slight trembling of her hand on the table and a bit tighter than usual compression of her lips.

  “That boy is not well,” I said, when I could manage to say anything. “A temper like that is far from normal.”

  “You think he is insane?” asked Martha. “I don’t agree. He is as responsible for his actions as any of us. He will not find refuge in that excuse.”

  “Will you go out and look for soldiers now as you said you would?” I wanted to know.

  “Not just yet. I’d be afraid to leave all of you alone with him. He probably has Father’s pistol, and all of the knives in the house.”

  I knew perfectly well about Father’s pistol, of course, having seen it the night before, but I didn’t mention that to Martha.

  What I did say was, “I don’t really think he’ll bother us, if we leave him alone.”

  “How would you describe his actions just now?” Martha demanded. “Do you mean you wouldn’t consider swinging a club at my fingers as an act intended to bother us? And even if he did leave us in peace if we ignored him, how long do you think we could continue that policy? Can we operate a safe and successful school here with that fellow in our midst?”

  “No, I suppose not, sister,” I said. “And so what will you do then?”

  “I don’t know. I need to think about it . . . I need to think a lot about it.”

  “Perhaps if we wait a few more days another squad of our soldiers will come along like the group which stopped here a few weeks ago.”

  “There’s small likelihood of that. According to Mister Potter, there are no more of our soldiers in this vicinity. He says he hasn’t even seen any cavalry for more than a week.”

  “You’ve never told Mister Potter about McBurney, have you, sister?”

  “No, and I regret it now. If anyone outside the place knew about his presence here, an investigation might be started, particularly if no word was received from us for several days.”

  “My goodness,” I exclaimed, “things may not be that bad, Martha. We’re not trapped inside this place yet, are we? McBurney has merely said that he isn’t leaving, he hasn’t said he’ll try to prevent any of us from going out.”

  “But his defiance of me came after I had threatened to send for help, didn’t it? That would seem to prove, wouldn’t it, that he doesn’t plan to let me carry out my threat.”

  “Well, sister,” said I, “you’ll never know until you try it. Put on your going-to-store dress and I’ll hitch Dolly to the cart, and then we’ll both drive down to the end of the lane and just see if he’ll try to stop us.”

  “No,” she said, “I won’t today.”

  “Then I’ll stay here and reason with him while you’re gone. I’ll be friendly and reasonable with him—I’m not afraid—and I’ll bet he won’t pay any attention at all to your leaving.”

  And I really wasn’t afraid of him then. In fact, even though I deplored his terrible conduct, my intention then—had I been able to get Martha out of the house—was to persuade him to leave immediately. I would have tried to send him back into the woods the way he came, so that he could avoid whatever soldiers Martha might send after him. Then I thought, when the pursuit was over, Mister McBurney could make his own way back to the Union lines. But that solution was not to be.

  “No,” declared Martha, “I won’t take a chance on letting you stay here alone with the girls, not now anyway.”

  “I don’t really think he’d harm any of us, Martha.”

  “Perhaps not, but it’s too much of a risk. I know you too well, Harriet. You wouldn’t stand up to him in a critical situation. You’d likely shut yourself in your room with one of your headaches if he got violent, and then the Lord only knows what might happen.”

  “Please, Martha . . . you could trust me in this.”

  “I said ‘no,’” my sister half shouted, and then after a moment added, “Perhaps you’d like to leave right now and look for help yourself. If you’d like to do that, it’s agreeable to me. I’m sure you could get into the cart, give Dolly a few slaps with the reins and be off down the road before McBurney could fire a shot at you. I don’t think Father’s pistol was ever a very accurate weapon anyway, not at any distance. Now, would you like to go for assistance, Harriet? You have my permission to do so.”

  Of course she knew I wouldn’t go. She knew I was opposed—at that time anyway—to the whole idea of denouncing him to either his military people or our own. But naturally Martha didn’t choose to interpret my refusal that way. She chose to see it only as another indication of my weak character.

  “I really think everything will be all right, Martha,” I said, “if we just remain calm and try to reason with him.”

  “You’re a fool,” my dear sister informed me, “and you become a greater fool with every passing day.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, Martha,” I answered. “I know sometimes it’s much easier to be foolish than to be wise. As long as you insist, I’m quite willing now to relinquish all responsibility in this matter.”

  “You’ve never had any responsibility to relinquish.”

  “Just as you say, Martha. Perhaps it is a mark of your courage that you’re deciding now to wait and do nothing. Perhaps the situation will improve if you just sit a while and think about it.”

  “Be quiet, be quiet!” she screamed, and brought her closed hand down with such force that she smashed the second Limoges cup which Mattie had just brought her.

  “Yes, sister,” I replied very patiently. “As always I will do whatever you say.”

  And in all truthfulness, I was hoping that the situation would get better, if we did nothing to worsen it. If only McBurney and my sister could learn to keep their tempers in check, I thought, we might be able to return to a semblance of harmony once again. I didn’t think at that time that McBurney was an evil man, I really didn’t. I thought he was evil tempered and impulsive, but if we were all to merit damnation for such personality defects, my sister would have been consigned to the flames long ago.

  Anyway after a moment I did begin to feel a bit sorry for the burden she seemed obliged to bear alone. “Sister, I hope you didn’t think I was siding with him against you,” I told her. “I don’t want you to get that impression from his last remark about he and I being fast friends.”

  “What he thinks of you is not important,” she said. “It’s what you think of him.”

  “Well naturally I couldn’t think very highly of him after what he just did.”

  “And he is capable of much worse than that,” she said in a somewhat warmer tone. “You will see, sister, you will see.”

  And she was right. That was the beginning of what someone has described as our “Reign of Terror.” I don’t remember who put that name on it—possibly Emily or Edwina or maybe it was Martha herself, although I am certain none of those people was as terror-stricken as I was during the period. The odd thing, as Martha has since remarked, was that strangers coming into the house at that time might have noticed nothing out of the ordinary at all in McBurney’s conduct—or perhaps even in the conduct of the rest of us, at least in public and particularly during the first few days after he declared war on us.

  His first thrust in that war was the decision to, in all possible ways, circumvent my sister’s order about the students associating with hi
m. He began by seeking out the students and engaging them in conversation at every opportunity and, although some of them did try at first to avoid him—albeit not very strenuously—it soon proved impossible in the fairly close confines of this place.

  At first we conducted our classes as usual and he did not try to interrupt them. I think he spent most of that first day rebuilding and improving his crutches, although later in the morning, between classes, I heard him laughing and joking with students in the kitchen garden. One time it was with Alice and later with Marie and Amelia. In the afternoon Martha called the girls together and reprimanded them, but I’m sure even she had begun to realize by then that her words were wasted. It is just impossible to legislate against the natural inclinations—the friendliness and curiosity—of young girls. If McBurney insisted on joking with them, they would laugh and if he teased them, they would retort and no law of Martha’s was going to prevent it.

  McBurney’s second tactical maneuver was making up his mind on that same day that from henceforth he was going to dine with us and again it seemed we were powerless to prevent it. He waited until everyone else was seated that evening and then swung himself into the dining room on his crutches, freshly scrubbed and combed as he had been in the morning, pulled up a chair and sat down, smiling and nodding cheerfully at us all. If you are going to continue having your meals in a group, he seemed to be saying, you will have to include me because there is no way you can keep me out.

  Martha realized this as quickly as the rest of us, but naturally she was not going to admit it, especially in front of him. Likewise she was not going to give him another opportunity to defy her in the presence of the students. Therefore when he asked Mattie—politely enough—for a table setting, Martha lowered her gaze to her own plate and refused to look at Mattie who had turned to her for a decision.

  “Yes, you may serve him, Mattie,” I said finally. It seemed to me that if the situation was hopeless we might as well accept it as gracefully as we could, although I half expected my sister to leap up in a violent rage. But she didn’t. She just devoted all her attention to her food and took no part in any of the conversation which followed.

  Well McBurney had very little to say on that evening. As I have mentioned, he was then, and, in general company, continued to be extremely courteous with us—perhaps just a trifle overly, mockingly so. Anyway he didn’t press his advantage very heavily on that evening and the students, thankfully, did not respond to any great degree to his casual overtures about the pleasantness of the weather (it had rained intermittently on that day) or the deliciousness of the meal (Mattie had burned the biscuits, as I remember, on that evening).

  But from that time on he made little attempt to play the gentleman in his individual and private dealings with us. I have very good and personal evidence of this change in his conduct which I will mention in a moment, and there are other people here—students and adults—who can offer similar testimony. I’m not even referring now to the incident which I have just described as happening in the wine cellar—when he said those drunken, nasty things to my sister. That sort of conduct might possibly be excused because of his condition, but as you will soon realize, he said and did plenty of other brutal things when he was stone cold sober.

  Also he later on one or two occasions did state publicly that he would not permit any of us to leave the boundaries of the school. He said nothing like that on the first day of his opposition to us, I will admit, but he definitely did say it later. On one occasion I think Alice and Emily were present and on another Emily and Marie.

  Now as to whether he actually threatened anyone with bodily harm on those occasions, I cannot recall right now. If such threats were uttered they were undoubtedly reported at the little investigation we conducted here a fortnight ago and they will be found noted in the record which I kept of those proceedings. Anyway I am certain that verbal threats of violence were made at some time if not at those exact times.

  Also on two occasions when I was present he made an unmistakable silent threat by exhibiting, if not actually flourishing, my father’s pistol. One time he did this at the dinner table and the second time it occurred during a French language class which I was conducting.

  On the first occasion he entered the dining room carrying the pistol at his waist and then made a pretense at apology, explaining that he had been cleaning the weapon on the bench in the rose arbor and hadn’t wanted to leave the gun out there for fear the evening dew might make it rusty. “Or where one of your enemies might find it,” remarked Marie Deveraux slyly, at which he only grinned and made no further comment.

  On the second occasion which was a day or so later, he passed by the library door holding the pistol in his right hand along with his crutch. He paused there and shouted, “Oui, oui, my pretty mademoiselles . . . keep studyin them parley vous, but don’t forget the poor downtrodden Irish.” Then he added something about having finished cleaning the pistol which I did not hear in its entirety because I closed the library door.

  Now perhaps it may be said that on both these occasions he was carrying the pistol as a joke and meant no harm by it, and perhaps this is so. I was always one of McBurney’s staunchest defenders and I am ready to believe that he might have been teasing us at those times. Again it may be stated that the pistol was not loaded either time, or that he was drunk both times. Again, both of these statements may be true. However neither of these defenses can mitigate the shock and fear which was felt by all present during these exhibitions. No such defenses can excuse the daily disruption and disorganization of our lives at this school, caused either by the incidents themselves or the apprehension that more serious incidents might occur at any time.

  In any case, McBurney continued to drink very heavily and although I did at first feel some sympathy toward him in this regard, after a while my patience began to wear thin. At first I thought the wine supply would soon be exhausted and, although that irritated me, at least I hoped it would lessen the McBurney problem and perhaps solve it altogether. If his intransigence was caused by the wine, perhaps it would disappear with the last bottle. As it turned out, however, there was either more wine downstairs than I had known about or else McBurney was a very inexperienced drinker.

  But now I will come to my personal difficulties with Mister McBurney which led to my losing all of my sympathy for him.

  The first difficulties occurred three or four days after his initial defiance of Martha. During that time she had done nothing to try to enforce her authority, but continued to tell me privately that she was still afraid to leave us alone with him for the length of time it would take her to find help outside. For my part, I was still inclined to minimize our danger as I tried to assure her I felt quite capable of coping with him. My courage, however, was soon to be put to the test and my feelings about our guest were soon to change very radically.

  Well on the afternoon of this incident I was alone in my bedroom on the second floor. Martha was conducting her class in the history of England in the library—or perhaps she was in the parlor, since that is where that class is customarily convened and with McBurney wandering all over the house anyway we had returned many of the classes to their regular locations. Anyway I was lying on my bed, having retired there with a slight headache, when I heard the measured thump of his crutches as he lifted himself slowly up the stairs. I sat up, realizing instantly who was coming and where he was coming, since I was the only person upstairs. My heart just froze in my breast as I sat there waiting for him to reach my door.

  At his first knock I couldn’t bring myself to answer. He knocked again and called softly, “Miss Harriet, are you in there? May I speak with you for one moment, ma’am?”

  His tone was as gentle as it had always been with me. It seemed an appeal and not a demand, I thought, and in any case the rest of the household was surely within immediate call. And so I forced myself to arise and walk to the door. I had neglected to bolt it when
I entered which was another thing impelling me to action.

  “What do you want?” I asked as steadily as I could.

  “It’s just a small private matter, Miss Harriet,” he whispered against his side of the door. “Won’t you listen to me? You’re the only one can help me.” He paused and then added, “You’re the only friend I have here, Miss Harriet.”

  I couldn’t accept that, of course—that I was his only friend, or for that matter, that I was his friend at all—but at any rate it didn’t seem the statement of a person bent on violence and so I opened the door an inch or two.

  “This is my bedroom,” I stated.

  “Yes ma’am,” said he, “I realize that. But you have a sitting room in there too, don’t you?”

  “That is adjoining,” I told him. “You may come to the next door.”

  I crossed to my sitting room, opened that door and waited for him to proceed down the hall. When he arrived on his crutches I stood aside and permitted him to enter.

  “Thank you, Miss Harriet,” he said smiling. “I knew I could count on you.”

  “I’m not sure that’s so,” I replied. “It depends on what you want of me.”

  “Just your good will, ma’am, that’s all,” he said. “Not that you wouldn’t prob’ly give me that without my askin.”

  He paused, apparently waiting for me to sit down but I was reluctant to oblige him since I was hoping to keep the interview as short as possible.

  “The entire world has my good will,” I told him. “I feel no hatred—or even strong dislike—for any creature, even those who are supposedly my enemies. Though I will admit I lack the courage to make that statement in every company.”

  “Oh you have plenty of courage, ma’am,” he said. “You’ve got a good strong heart, I’m sure, inside that delicate little body.”

  “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’d rather not discuss my physical qualities—or my spiritual either, for that matter.”