The Beguiled

by Thomas Cullinan

  “I have some things to do,” I told him. “If you like you can take a nap there while I’m busy.”

  “I’m not tired,” he said. “What is it you have to do?”

  “Attend to my sick turtle.” I reached under my bed and got the jewel box in which my turtle was staying. I had brought him a few dried insects from the woods, which I fed to him now.

  “Do you pick those things up with your hands?” Johnny asked, making a little grimace.

  “How else would I pick them up?”

  “Oh don’t get huffy. It just don’t seem proper for a little girl, that’s all. Also that turtle doesn’t look sick to me.”

  “He’s improving rapidly. He’s much better now than he was.”

  “You’re very fond of him, are you?” Johnny asked, drinking some of his wine.

  “He’s my dearest possession. I love all animals, but I love this turtle the best of all.”

  “Well then,” said Johnny. “I certainly do hope he makes a complete recovery.”

  “Thank you, Johnny,” I replied. “I know you’re sincere about that. I’ll tell you something else. If I had to go away from here and leave this turtle in charge of someone, that someone would be you. I know you’d care for him just as lovingly as I do.”

  “Sure I would. He’s a great old turtle.” Johnny took another swallow of wine, then selected a mushroom and began to nibble on it.

  “Be careful,” I said. “There are one or two bad ones in there.”

  “I know the bad ones,” he said with assurance. “Don’t we have these things growin all over Ireland. They’re one of my favorite foods, you know. It’s a wonder you wouldn’t bring in a whole lot of them for Mattie to cook for dinner.”

  “Most of the people here don’t care for them very much,” I said. “Many of our girls are opposed to eating anything that grows wild in the woods. Now you’ve taken another one. You’d better watch out, Johnny.”

  “I told you I know them,” said he, “and I don’t see a false one in here. Why would you bring back bad ones anyway?”

  “Well I can use them in my collection, and also they were growing with the others and I hated to leave them standing there alone.”

  He laughed. “God Almighty, you’re a strange one, but I love you anyway. You’re my heart’s favorite, Amelia. Well maybe I will take a snooze for a minute or two. You wake me up, will you, if any of the mean ones come sneakin up here.”

  “Yes, I’ll wake you,” I promised.

  He stretched out on the bed and was silent for a moment as he stared at the stump of his leg. “What is it do you suppose they’ll try to do to me, Amelia?” he asked after a while.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but if it’s something bad I won’t let them.”

  “Thank you, Amelia,” he said, and shortly after that he went to sleep. Now I’m not sure to this day whether he was honestly afraid at that time, or whether he was just pretending to be in order to make me think I was truly helping him.

  Well I told Marie this, when she came in a few moments later. I was still attending to my turtle, and so at first I didn’t pay much attention to her.

  “I see the famous John McBurney is asleep,” she remarked, sitting down on the floor beside me.

  “Your powers of observation are becoming quite acute,” I said.

  “Don’t be pert with me,” she said. “I’m here on an errand. I’m supposed to tell Johnny something.”

  “What?”

  “That Miss Martha and the others are preparing to hang him.”

  “Are they?”

  “Well to be honest with you, I don’t see how it’s possible, although I’m sure they’d like to do it. Anyway I’m supposed to convince Johnny that they’re getting everything ready and that they’re going to do it tonight. That’s supposed to frighten him into running off to the woods with us and never coming back.”

  “And that will be enough for them? That’s all they want, that he goes off and never comes back?”

  “Well they say that’s all they want,” Marie replied. “Actually, I believe most of them are afraid he may do more harm away from here than he’s done while he’s been staying here—by talking about various things, I mean. As a matter of fact, I’m a bit afraid of that myself.”

  “What could he say that would harm you?”

  “Oh, we all have our little secrets,” said Marie. “I’ll tell you about mine a little later. Meanwhile, what’s your opinion? Do you think it’s worthwhile to try and frighten Johnny?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said, “but if that’s what you’ve been sent to do, I suppose you might as well try it. If it works, it suits our purpose as well as Miss Martha’s.”

  And so Marie awakened him and told him that ridiculous story about how they were planning to hang him from the apple tree that very night with a rope made out of bed sheets or something. Johnny just laughed at first, or at least pretended to laugh, but after a few moments of Marie’s very vivid description of all the details of the plan, he became noticeably less sure of himself and his voice took on a very definite quaver.

  Marie described how they were going to wait until he was asleep that evening. Then they’d sneak into the parlor, bind him tightly with harness and drag him out into the moonlight. Finally they’d put the noose around his neck, throw the rope over the apple tree branch, and then tie the other end to Dolly and whip her until she bolted away.

  Well, I guess it could have worked, although I certainly wouldn’t have counted on it. Anyway, whether you believed that some girls and women could carry out a plan like that or not, just the fact that they hated you enough to discuss it would probably be enough to make most any person feel pretty nervous.

  And Johnny began to get into a very excited state. He was mumbling curses and drinking wine with a trembling hand and a still more trembling lip, and spilling the wine all over the bed clothes in the process.

  I guess it was a mistake to tell him, because it certainly didn’t accomplish its intended result in the end, or at least not the goal announced for it. The thing was, Johnny couldn’t make up his mind whether to be more frightened or more angry and as a consequence from the two emotions working on him together, he just lost control completely.

  “Damn em, damn em all,” he kept muttering. “Damn their dirty souls, the lot of them. Do me in entirely, would they? And after all the other rottenness they’ve done me here.”

  “It’s going to be all right, Johnny,” I told him. “Marie and I will take you out to my hiding place and you’ll be safe.”

  “I’ll fix em first,” he said. “I’ll fix em all. I’ll smash every bit of glass and every stick of furniture in the house. Then I’ll take care of every one of the biddies here, so I will. Like it or not, they’ll get a bit o’ Johnny McBurney. Then I’ll burn the whole Goddam place down over the heads of all of you.”

  “You’re getting nasty now,” said Marie. “If you’re going to keep on that way, you’re going to make me disgusted with you. When you talk about burning down the house, you know, you’re forgetting that my roommate and I happen to live here, too.”

  He didn’t reply to that. He was trembling very violently then and I tried to think of some way to help him. “Here,” I said finally. “Hold my turtle for a moment, will you, Johnny? I have to clean his box for him.” And I put the little turtle in Johnny’s hand.

  You see, I was hoping that holding that friendly little turtle would occupy Johnny’s mind for a few moments, and in the interval he might calm down. However, it didn’t work out that way.

  “Get the ugly thing away from me,” he shouted. And he took my turtle and threw him against the wall.

  Matilda Farnsworth

  Now, if you ask me why I’d cook and serve bad mushrooms, I’ll tell you it was because they was handed to me and I was told to cook em and that’s what I did. I d
idn’t look at em very hard and I didn’t test em with a silver knife the way you’re supposed to do. I just put em in a pot and cooked em like Miss Martha said to do.

  And if you ask me if she knew that some of those mushrooms was bad, I’ll say no, she didn’t. She didn’t know they was, but she was hopin they was and so was everybody else here, cept the one who ate them. And if you ask me what was in my own mind that day, I’ll hafta say yes, there was a part of me hopin they was bad, too, and that’s why I didn’t drop the silver knife in the pot with them the way you always do to see will it turn black from the poison. See if I’d been sure they was bad I woulda had to do somethin, but as long as I wasn’t sure I could keep on tellin myself that everything was all right and that nothing would happen and that the Yankee would be allowed to go away from here without bein harmed.

  Well, there was a time when I wouldn’ta acted that way. There was a time when I woulda spoken up and said, “Look here, you people. You ain’t in that much trouble with him. You say you’re afraid of the things he does here and also of the things he might do if he goes away. Well then, treat him kindly here and maybe he won’t do them. Don’t argue and fight with him all the time and provoke him the way you do. Even when he provokes you and makes you mad, don’t do nothin about it. Hold back a little on your feelins.”

  And then I woulda said, “If that don’t work, if bein nice to him don’t work, then lock him up somewheres around here. I know he’s got the keys, but you can get them back from him. You can sweet-talk him into givin you those keys for some reason, or you can sneak em back from him some night when he’s asleep. Or you don’t even need the keys. You can lock him up in the wine cellar with that bolt that’s on the door. He ain’t gonna slip that bolt or break that door down, not that skinny little Yankee. Then you just take away his crutches and you keep him there long as you like. Take him food and water once or twice a day. Be nice to him, but keep him locked up. There’s certainly enough of us here to handle him. It just don’t make sense, all of us bein afraid of a one-legged frail little boy.”

  Well, I coulda said those things, but I didn’t. And it wasn’t because I was afraid to say them. Even if they was to send me away from here and sell me down the river, it wouldn’ta mattered. Fear of Miss Martha or Miss Harriet wouldn’ta stopped me. The only thing that could stop me is what did stop me, the lack of charity in my own heart.

  And I’ll tell you the reason for that, the reason I had a meanness in me toward that boy. It was because I was gettin back at him for a mean thing he said to me. That’s why I was turned against him. That’s why I didn’t speak out for him at the meeting Miss Martha had. And that’s why I didn’t try to find out if the mushrooms was bad.

  Here’s the way it happened. A few days before his last day here he came into the kitchen late into the afternoon while I was shellin peas for dinner. Miss Martha was pokin around in the garden. Miss Harriet was takin a nap and the young ladies was at their studies, or anyway supposed to be.

  Well he came swingin himself into my kitchen on them crutches of his and he says to me, “Mattie, I want to ask you a question. Is that all right with you?”

  “Sure it is,” I says. “You go ahead, Mister Yankee Soldier, and ask me any question you like. Thing is, o’ course, I ain’t gonna promise to answer the question, even do I know what the answer is.”

  “That’s fair enough,” he says, laughin. “I’ll just have to take my chances then, I guess. Anyway maybe you won’t even need to say anything. Maybe I’ll know what the answer is just by lookin at your face.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes, I do, Mattie.”

  “All right,” I says, “ask your question.”

  “You promise to tell the truth now? I mean if you answer at all?”

  “I ain’t promisin nothin.”

  He stopped and thought about that for a minute. “All right, Mattie,” he finally says, “I’ll go along with that. I know you’re a good Christian and I’m sure you wouldn’t lie about anything.”

  “I hope I wouldn’t,” I says.

  “I know for a positive fact you wouldn’t, Mattie. Now here’s my question. Are you ready for it?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Are you the mother of Edwina Morrow?”

  “What, man? What you say?”

  “Is Edwina your daughter?”

  “You clear outa here, white man! You get yourself outa my kitchen!”

  “Listen, Mattie, don’t get upset. I’m only askin outa curiosity.”

  “Well she ain’t, if that satisfies you!”

  “Now, see, you’re all excited and I can’t tell whether you’re lyin or not.”

  “Get outa here, white man, fore I call Miss Martha!”

  “Look, will you let me explain what I’ve been thinkin. See Edwina told me one time that the thing she wanted most in the world was to be somebody else. So it came to me that maybe Edwina was your gal and Miss Martha was keepin her here and educatin her out of fondness for you. You tell me if I’m wrong, Mattie.”

  “I already told you that!”

  “Wait now. Here’s another thought I had. That maybe there was some relationship between the Farnsworth sisters and Edwina, you know? That maybe Edwina’s father was somebody close to them . . . very close maybe . . . like their brother, Robert, maybe? Or maybe even their own father?”

  “O, man, I’m gonna take this cleaver to you!”

  “Now just a minute, Mattie,” he says, backin off. “It’s only because I’m very interested in Edwina, that’s why I brought it up.”

  “Then you go ask her who her mother and father is!”

  “She’d take it wrong, Mattie. She’d be offended.”

  “Well how come you didn’t figger I’d be offended too, tell me that, white man!”

  “Listen, Mattie, it’s no disgrace, is it, for a darky to be pronged a little by the gentry, ain’t that the way they look at it around here?”

  “You listen, white man. That ain’t the way I look at it! I had a man and he’s dead and he’s the only one I ever had. Now as for Miss Edwina, I don’t know who her Mama and her Daddy is, but they sure ain’t nobody from around here.”

  “But you do figger one of em is a darky, don’t you?”

  “Man, you git now! For the last time I’m tellin you, you better git!”

  “See now, Mattie, I can read your face. You’re tellin me all I want to know. All right, Mattie, I’m leavin. Put down your ax, old dear, and get back to your peas.”

  He went away laughin then on his crutches. Them was about the last words I ever spoke to him and I think they was the last words he ever spoke to me, cept for one little thing he did say to me on the night of his birthday dinner. Well, I tell you, I was real upset by those mean remarks of his. I don’t know how he could ever have thought of such a thing. First, I even tried to figger it might be a joke, that maybe one of the young ladies had put him up to it. But then I decided it couldn’t be that way, cause none of our young ladies would be that low-down mean to do a thing like that.

  Anyway, I spose I shoulda waited a while for my temper to cool off, and for the mean thoughts to seep outa me fore I said anything about it. Because if I had waited a day or two it’s likely that I wouldn’ta said anything at all. But I was just so downright mean mad about the whole thing that I couldn’t wait. I told Miss Martha when she came in from the garden and then later in that same evenin I told Miss Edwina too.

  Her I didn’t tell as much as I did Miss Martha. Miss Martha I told exactly everything that the Yankee had said. And she didn’t make no answer at all. She just stood there listenin and noddin and chewin on her lip the way she does when she’s distracted. Then she threw the greens that she’d picked on the table and marched off without a word.

  Miss Edwina I told only this. “The Yankee been askin questions about you. He wants to know who your M
ama and your Daddy is and do I know them.”

  “Why does he want to know that?” Miss Edwina ask me.

  “He didn’t say why. If I was you, Miss Edwina, I’d stay mighty far away from him.”

  “Do you think I’d want to be anywhere near him?” she just about shouted at me. Then she marched away too.

  Course I didn’t expect her to thank me. Miss Edwina never took to me like most of the young ladies we’ve had here. What she acts most like is some of the Northern young ladies we used to have here sometimes before the war. Little white girls like that ain’t too easy around black folks sometimes, cause they never been raised with them, you see what I mean?

  Anyway, like I say, I had no more talk with the Yankee, or even with anybody else about him until that day of his birthday dinner when Miss Martha had a meeting about him in the library. She asked me special to go to that meeting. She say, “Mattie, in this matter you count as much as anybody else.”

  Well, it didn’t seem like I counted for too much, cause they never paid much attention to anything I said. I told them they ought to drive the Yankee away from here, for instance, but they made it plain they didn’t think that would work at all. Then Miss Martha went on to talk about the mean things he had done here.

  And it was true enough, you couldn’t argue against that. All you had to do was look at poor little Miss Harriet, how pale she was and tremblin, sittin there tryin to write with the tears runnin down her poor white cheeks, until finally she gave up altogether and just put her poor head on her arms and sobbed.

  “It’s no disgrace, it’s no disgrace, dear,” Miss Martha tried to tell her. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “You don’t believe that, Martha,” Miss Harriet say.

  “I do believe it, dear. You’re not responsible. You haven’t been responsible for your actions for a good long time.”

  “Martha,” cry Miss Harriet, “don’t say a thing like that in front of these children.”

  “Marie isn’t here now and neither is Amelia and the others are old enough to understand,” say Miss Martha. “Now don’t try to write any more, dear. You’ve put down all the essentials. Nothing else is needed.”