The Beguiled

by Thomas Cullinan

  “Do you mean we’d have to beg for it?”

  “No, no. As long as we looked as though we needed it very badly, there’d be scads of folks to give it to us without us hardly askin.”

  “It still sounds like begging to me,” I informed him, “and while I wouldn’t mind giving it a try for a day or two, just for the novelty of it, I surely don’t know what my father would say if he came by here and found I was engaged in that kind of activity.”

  “Listen, darlin,” said Johnny. “There’s somethin I got to tell you. I should’ve told you before but I didn’t have the nerve to start. I’m only managin to do it now because I don’t want to go off and leave you alone here at the mercy of the two old biddies.”

  And that’s when he told me the outlandish story about meeting my dying father after a battle and being sent here to look out for me. Well, as I said, it seems ridiculous now but at the time I was very shocked by it.

  The main reason I believed it, of course, was the way Johnny told it. That boy could really relate a story very convincingly. In this instance he talked so softly and he squeezed my hand so and he screwed up his face so and grew so sad himself in the telling that he actually managed to squeeze out a tear or two to keep me company when he saw me begin to cry.

  In all fairness to him now, I don’t think he anticipated my carrying on so about the news. I guess he didn’t realize I had so much affection for my father because apparently there is something in my character that makes people assume that I am not capable of loving anybody. I guess maybe Johnny thought that I would be only momentarily disturbed by his story and that I would recover quickly and go off with him. Because that was part of the lie too, you see. That supposedly was what my “dying” father had wanted me to do.

  Anyway I was so upset and making so much noise that Johnny grew very alarmed. And that was when he told me an even worse lie . . . I guess in an attempt to keep me in the room with him until he could calm me.

  I was weeping very loudly, I guess, and had gone to the door, whereupon Johnny jumped up and hobbled just as fast as he could over there to block me. He was apparently thinking that he’d better not let me repeat the story about my father to other people. He knew that Miss Martha and Miss Harriet might attempt to convince me that the story was untrue, don’t you see, and once that happened I might become his mortal enemy.

  So then he told me the even more disturbing lie about my having been responsible for my father’s getting killed. It was because of the Lord’s being vexed with me, Johnny said, for eating meat on Friday. And then, things just went from bad to worse. I said I was going to ask Miss Martha to let me go home and see my mother and he said my mother wouldn’t have me when she found out what I’d done and therefore the only thing left for me to do was to keep quiet about the whole business and go away with him.

  He let go of me then, but followed me out into the hall. “Everythin will be all right, love,” I remember he called softly as I went back up the stairs. “Don’t worry about anythin, darlin. I’ll take care of everythin.”

  You see I really think he began to feel sorry almost immediately that he had told me those terrible lies. I’m almost certain that if he had known how I was going to carry on right then, he never would have done it. And of course I’m absolutely certain that if he had known how it was going to affect my conduct later, he never would have done it. In that case, of course, he would’ve needed to be absolutely insane to take a chance on offending or frightening me.

  Because you see I was very lonely then for my mother and, like Johnny himself, I wanted to go home in the worst way. It might be considered somewhat surprising that I felt like that because my mother has never been as sympathetic toward me as my father has and I gather I have always been much more of a trial for her than I have for him.

  But when you think you have lost one parent, I guess it is only natural that your thoughts turn to the other parent and you hope that maybe this one will be a little more understanding and tolerant of you now. I realized, of course, that no new understanding was ever going to come about if my mother heard this terrible story about me from Johnny. My mother is just a terribly religious person who spends half her life praying and I was certain that she would accept my being the cause of my father’s death as just one final act of devilment on the part of her wayward daughter.

  And so it was plain that if I was ever to go home again, she couldn’t be permitted to hear about my being such a sinner. It also seemed plain that I couldn’t trust Johnny McBurney not to tell her unless I went along with him and became a guide for him and a beggar and maybe his servant too, for all I knew. And even then—even if I went with him and did everything he asked—I still wouldn’t be able to trust him not to tell her some time or other, because he was such an impulsive spur-of-the-moment kind of fellow that he would be just liable to become displeased with me some day and do it anyway—sit down and write my mother a letter about it and ruin me forever.

  For that same reason I didn’t intend to say anything to Miss Martha or Miss Harriet about what Johnny had told me. There was no telling when one of them might become so upset with me over some trivial school matter that she would inform my mother about the whole story. Of course, I don’t object to anyone knowing about it now since I found out the whole thing was completely untrue.

  Anyway in the end it was all very bad luck for McBurney—my not telling our teachers, I mean—because it’s quite possible that if I had told them immediately, Miss Martha—or perhaps even Miss Harriet—would have realized the ridiculousness of his story and would have marched right into the parlor and gotten the whole truth out of him. And then, of course, that would have changed my attitude toward him. I mean I undoubtedly would have been angry with him for lying to me that way but I would no longer have been frightened of his telling my mother.

  Well, I went back to my room and stayed there for a long while, just lying there on my bed. Amelia had gone off to the woods or somewhere so I was alone with my troubles.

  About a half hour or so later I heard the others arising and going downstairs to breakfast, but if my absence was noticed no one did anything about it because after a while I fell asleep and slept for hours.

  I could tell by the sun that it was noon when I awakened and also I was beginning to feel a bit hungry. More than that I was also starting to feel a trifle vexed that no one had bothered to summon me for breakfast or morning lessons—not that I missed those, of course—or even, as far as I knew, to look in on me to see whether I was alive or dead.

  Well I was lying there, comforting myself a little with these vexations and wondering what I could do to keep Johnny from informing my mother, when Emily Stevenson thrust open the door and sailed into the room—without knocking, naturally. Our student general is above such niceties.

  “What are you crying about?” she demanded.

  “I’m not crying,” I yelled at her. I suppose I was crying but I was condemned if I was going to admit it to her.

  “You certainly are crying and you have been crying for some time by the wretched sight of you. Your eyes are all swollen and your nose is all red and your cheeks are striped where the tears have washed the dirt away.”

  Well that made me very angry. “It’s none of your business what I look like,” I shouted, “and also you needn’t come in here and tell me I have to go to lessons because I’m not going! I don’t feel at all well!” And I ended with a small profanity which is really not such an awful word because my father uses it quite often but I suppose it’s hardly something that ought to be repeated.

  “You are going to have your mouth washed out with soap, Miss,” said Emily. “We’ll clean your tongue if not the rest of you.”

  “That will never happen,” I informed her. “With the scarcity of soap nowadays Miss Martha doesn’t even bother to threaten me with things like that anymore.”

  “Then I’ll advise her to dose
you with something else. If you’re feeling ill we’ll give you a couple of spoons of castor oil and tomorrow you’ll feel better.”

  “Just try and give it to me,” was my reply. “Don’t forget what happened to Miss Harriet’s finger when she tried to force castor oil into me last winter. She had her finger bitten, if you remember, and Miss Alice Simms got a good kick in the knee cap for trying to hold my legs down.”

  That seemed to give Emily pause for a moment because she just stood there and studied me. “You revolting child,” she said finally, “I don’t know why you should be included in any matter as important as this, but Miss Martha says you must be. We are all meeting in the library in a few minutes and you are required to be there.”

  “I told you I’m not attending any lessons today.”

  “This isn’t a lesson. It’s a meeting about McBurney.”

  “I don’t want anything more to do with Johnny McBurney, now or ever,” I said.

  “That’s the purpose of the meeting. None of us want any more to do with him so we have to decide what to do about him, since it seems just ignoring him isn’t working too well.”

  “He hasn’t done anything bad to you,” I said, not really to defend Johnny but merely to continue the argument with Emily.

  “Hasn’t he though? He’s only promising to give information to the Yankees which will lose the entire war for us, that’s all. He informed me he was going to do that not two hours ago.”

  “Just where is he getting this information?” I inquired.

  “He got it from me, if you must know. I very foolishly told him things, confidential things about our plans and strategies, because I thought he was a friend and also I was trying to take his mind off his own problems. Now this is how he repays me, by saying that once he leaves here, or once Yankee or Confederate troops are told about his being here, he intends to betray us . . . especially me and my father.”

  Well that mention of her father—who ought to have been betrayed, if you ask me, if he was stupid enough to tell military information to his daughter—set me to thinking again of my own father and I got caught up in a new attack of weeping.

  “There, there, dear,” said Emily, apparently thinking that I was worried about us losing the war. “Everything will be all right. We won’t let McBurney harm us.”

  And so I guess because I had been waiting there for someone’s shoulder to cry on, I cried on Emily’s. That shows you how desperate I was, and feeling that way, I let her help me up from the bed and lead me down the stairs to the library where practically everyone was sitting waiting for the famous meeting to begin.

  I believe everyone was there with one exception—Amelia—who I found out later spent the day in the woods tidying up the hiding place for Johnny. Of course he wasn’t there either at the beginning although he came in later. Anyway I was rather glad of Amelia’s absence because it explained why she hadn’t come upstairs to inquire for me. At least I could think now that even though no one else in the place was interested in my welfare, Amelia might have been, had she been around.

  Harriet Farnsworth

  Note One. Most of the following conversation and testimony is reproduced exactly as it occurred on the afternoon of July 3rd although this is a fair copy made from my rough notes of that day.

  Note Two. There has been some discussion between Miss Martha Hale Farnsworth and myself with regards to the proper nomenclature of the meeting which occurred on July 3rd for the purposes of this journal record. My position has been that the designation “Proceedings of Investigation” describe the situation best, since the word “Trial” which my sister proposes seems to me to presuppose some vested legal authority which we do not and did not possess. My sister’s argument is that the conditions of the times and our extraordinarily isolated circumstances did in fact grant us temporary legal authority. She feels that since a decision was reached and a judgment made at this time, a trial, therefore, did take place. Perhaps she is right, at least in the lower case meaning of the word. However since this record is in my hand I feel it is my perogative to entitle it as my conscience dictates. It is a small matter in any case, since my sister and I are both aware that justice does not depend on the definition of a word.

  PRELIMINARIES OF THE INVESTIGATION

  At approximately thirty minutes past the noon hour on July 3rd Miss Martha Farnsworth stated that she was ready to call our meeting to order. The time must be approximate because our library clock has run down on two occasions during the past year and had to be reset according to the sun, since we have had no visitors to bring us the correct time during that period.

  Those assembled in the library were the following persons: Miss Martha Farnsworth, Miss Harriet Farnsworth, Miss Emily Stevenson, Miss Edwina Morrow, Miss Alice Simms, Miss Marie Deveraux and Matilda Farnsworth. One person was late in coming, Miss Marie Deveraux, which delayed the beginning of the meeting. One person did not attend. This was Miss Amelia Dabney, who was not in the house and whose whereabouts were reportedly unknown by any of the others present.

  We were seated around the library table with Martha in Father’s old chair at the head and myself to her left, Mattie at the end and the students in between. In front of me I had these pages—taken from one of Father’s old tobacco account ledgers—a cup of blackberry ink which Mattie had made that morning, and, from Mattie also, a newly sharpened quill, the last remains of a wild turkey she had cooked for Corporal McBurney some weeks before.

  There was some little frivolity involving Emily and Alice, but not as much really as I had anticipated.

  Of course one reason for the relatively quiet response to the announcement of postponement of classes was the absence of our two youngest students, Miss Amelia and Miss Marie, who can be counted on to create some kind of disturbance on almost any occasion and especially at news of unexpected events. Oddly enough, Marie, who was present now, seemed very quiet and withdrawn and was seated with her hands folded, paying no attention to the rest of us. She was rather pale too, and I decided that unless she improved before nightfall, she would be dosed with castor oil and Mattie’s herb medicine, just on the chance that she might be coming down with something.

  Another chair, quite a comfortable one—the large, wing chair which is kept on the opposite side of the library fireplace from Father’s chair—was placed at some distance from the table. This was to be for the use of Corporal McBurney if he decided to attend our meeting. At Miss Martha Farnsworth’s suggestion a pair of cushions were placed on Miss Marie’s chair so that Miss Marie might be on a level with the others at the table.

  PROCEEDINGS OF THE INVESTIGATION

  Miss Farnsworth: (rapping teaspoon on teacup to call meeting to order) This meeting will please come to order. Miss Harriet, please call the roll.

  Miss Harriet Farnsworth: (calls roll)

  Miss Martha Farnsworth: (makes opening statement) I should like to make a brief opening statement. First, I want you all to understand the seriousness of what we are about to do. We are, in effect, setting up a little court here at Farnsworth School. We find this necessary because no other court is available to do what must be done. We are going to try to the best of our ability to discover the truth about certain matters and then act upon this knowledge in the way that seems best for all of us. As you all know, an individual here has been charged with very serious crimes. Other serious crimes are suspected of him. We must find out the extent of his culpability in these matters and, most important, we must consider to what extent it is possible, or perhaps probable, that these crimes will be repeated, or worse ones committed.

  Miss Marie Deveraux: Are you going to punish Johnny?

  Miss Martha Farnsworth: This court is not I alone, it is all of you. And we are not here to punish anyone. We are here to find a way or ways of protecting ourselves. Now I want to impress upon you that this meeting must be conducted in the same spirit of fervor and gravity as our meet
ings with God in church or during our prayers at night. Seeking the truth is seeking God.

  Mattie Farnsworth: Amen.

  Miss Martha Farnsworth: I want your complete attention to these matters. I want no giggling, no restlessness. I want you all to sit up straight in your chairs. I want no talking except when you are required to answer questions, or when you desire to make a statement to the chair.

  Miss Marie Deveraux: What chair?

  Miss Martha Farnsworth: The chair in which I am sitting. I might be called the chairlady of this meeting.

  Miss Edwina Morrow: If it is a court, you ought to be called the judge, oughtn’t you?

  Miss Martha Farnsworth: If that is a cynical remark, Miss, it is out of place. If there is to be a judge here, it will be all of us.

  Miss Alice Simms: Is Johnny going to be present?

  Miss Martha Farnsworth: We are going to invite him to attend, if he so desires. His presence is not important to us, since we will not rely on his testimony.

  Miss Harriet Farnsworth: Why not, sister?

  Miss Martha Farnsworth: Obviously because we could not believe him.

  Miss Marie Deveraux: You could ask him to swear on my Catholic prayer book.

  Miss Martha Farnsworth: I’m sure no matter what oath he swore he would not hesitate to add perjury to his other misdeeds. However if he wants to join us, he is free to make any reasonable statements during this meeting and we will listen to him. That is his privilege in fair proceedings and we will not deny it to him. Now if he is present you must not smile at him or laugh at his sallies, with which we may expect him to try to disrupt this meeting. In the past we have been taken in by him. Let us be taken in no longer.

  Miss Edwina Morrow: Will there be anyone to act as his defense representative? That is customary I think in court cases.

  Miss Martha Farnsworth: If you, Miss, or anyone else here wishes at any time to speak in his defense you are free to do so.