The Beguiled (originally A Painted Devil) by Thomas Cullinan.

[midnight_birth]

Title: The Beguiled (originally A Painted Devil).
Author: Thomas Cullinan.
Genre: Fiction, war, civil war, thriller, feminism, sexuality.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1966.
Summary: Wounded and near death, a young Union Army corporal is found in the woods of Virginia during the height of the Civil War and brought to the nearby Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies. Almost immediately he sets about beguiling the three women and five teenage girls stranded in this outpost of Southern gentility, eliciting their love and fear, pity and infatuation, and pitting them against one another in a bid for his freedom. But as the women are revealed for who they really are, a sense of ominous foreboding closes in on the soldier, and the question becomes: Just who is the beguiled?

My rating: 6.5/10.
My review:


♥ Now this was the first time I had ever burn close to a Yankee and I suddenly realized something. They don't look a whole lot different from our boys.

♥ "How old are you, Amelia?"

"Thirteen," I said. "Fourteen in September."

"Old enough for kisses then, and old enough to hate."

♥ I was pickin peas for dinner, lookin up from the row now and then to keep an eye on the smoke to make sure it didn't start to move our way. The boomin and the bangin wasn't botherin me too much by then. It's like a lotta other things. In time you can learn to live with almost anything.

♥ Well I been thinkin about these things lately-about what I mighta done, or at least tried to do. On the other hand I keep tellin myself I didn't know then what I know now.

I didn't have any notion then how much evil we got in us, all of us. Seems like none of us ever stop to think how evil can collect in us... how one little mean thought can pile on another 'til finally we got a mighty load of badness stacked up inside us... and then all it takes is maybe one nasty word to set off the trigger in us... and maybe that's some little triflin thing that wouldn't even have raised our tempers in a calmer time... and then we rush ahead and do things we coulda sworn to the Lord Almighty in the beginning we never had in us to do.

Oh yes, I seen them comin all right, though I pretended later that I hadn't. I seen them comin, but I didn't do anything about it. I just dumped my apronful of peas in the basket, picked that up and went on back to the kitchen.

♥ "I wouldn't go out there any more, Alice," Emily told her. "You know Miss Martha doesn't like us outside when there's troops around."

"That means enemy troops, doesn't it?"

"It means any kind of troops," Edwina said sharply from her corner. "Just as Miss Martha says, any kind of strange men are capable of doing harm to women."

♥ Then the Yankees decided if they were going to have a war they might as well get on with it, and so they decided as a first step they'd whip all the rebels in Northern Virginia. General McDowell-whom my mother knew but not well-was put in charge of the expedition and he got on his horse and led the whole army across the Potomac and down to Manassas Junction. A lot of other gentlemen and ladies-including Congressmen and Senators and their wives and such like-packed picnic lunches and drove down there in their carriages on the morning of the twenty-first of July because they figured the war was going to end with this one big battle and if they didn't see this battle now, they might never see one again for the rest of their lives.

My mother and I went along in the carriage of a Congressman from Iowa. We weren't going just for the picnic, of course. We figured if most of the Union Army was going to be present at the battle, the chances were very good that my father might be there too.

Well, if he was there, we didn't find him. And if he ran like most of the other Yankees on that afternoon, I'm certainly glad we didn't. We didn't see much of the battle itself from the hillside where we stopped for our picnic, but we certainly heard plenty of cannon and musket fire and a lot of yelling. Then the Yankee troops began to retreat along the road where we were, with our boys pouring a lot of fire after them. I say "our boys" because it was just then that my mother and I definitely decided to take sides.

♥ Of course, I know my father has his hands full with them-their soldiers are better fed and better clothed than ours for instance-but they don't have the sprit or the common purpose that our boys have and that is what will defeat them in the end. Our boys are all native born citizens of the Confederate States, while the Union army is made up of foreigners and immigrants and even some Negroes now they say, and the Lord only knows what else. Just like this creature that Amelia brought in-who was obviously from Ireland or some foreign place like that. Not that we don't have a good number of respectable Irish people in Charleston, although they are somewhat the poorer class, but at least they are native born citizens of the South and not complete strangers hired or impressed to take part in a quarrel that is not their own.

♥ I thought to say more but she seemed so guileless, as she always does, that I let the matter drop. It quite astonished me the way those girls could just stand there gazing with such fascination at that apparently dying boy and his terrible wound. When I was a young girl, the mere sight of a finger pierced by a thorn was enough to make me swoon, but these students of ours seemed to have no such sensibilities at all. That, I think, is one of the uncalculated evils of our times-the way these years have hardened our young ladies.

♥ ..Amelia and Alice looked to be the most woebegone, the first, I guessed, because it seemed she might be losing her prize trophy, and the second because she was beginning to think, like her unfortunate mother, that the loss of any man diminished a woman's world. I wondered idly if either Alice or her mother had ever heard of John Donne.

♥ I've heard Miss Martha's bitter accusations and Miss Harriet's weeping. She weeps, like all the weak people in the world, for the lost days, for the way things once were and will never be again.

♥ Well, once again she was wrong about me. I was not weeping out of any pity for the Yankee. If one were to begin bewailing the wounded and the dying, even those who had been struck down on one solitary day, there would be no end to weeping. I didn't know this fellow. He wasn't wearing the uniform I was supposed to be supporting, and for all I knew, he deserved what he got. At least that is how I felt, as far as I can remember, on that first afternoon.

♥ The artillery fire was continuing in the woods and there was a great deal of smoke in that direction, covering the whole eastern and northeastern sky. It occurred to me that I was not the only person with trouble in the world. Each rumble of the cannons, each swirl of smoke, was a sign of great trouble, starting at the spot in the woods where the metal landed and spreading like ripples in a stream to villages and towns and solitary lonely houses all over the land. Perhaps the trouble of the wounded boy inside would spread and infect people far away from here-a mother possibly, or a sister, or a sweetheart. I wondered if he had a sweetheart.

I always wondered vaguely if anyone would be concerned if I died. If, for instance, a misguided shell should fall on the school and kill me, would anyone really care? Would my father care-or did he have more pressing problems of his own?

♥ Just before sunset, I saw Miss Martha with the pony and cart turn off the Cedar Hill road and start up the school drive. "Here comes the cannon ball that will decide the Yankee's fate," I thought. "His life is in her hands." Subsequent events proved that was only partly true. His life was in all our hands, as ours were in his.

♥ I knew from three years' experience it was not a wise thing to enter into debate with Edwina Morrow. She apparently takes a malicious pleasure in twisting anything I say to fit her own purposes-childishly evil whims for the most part-born of her own loneliness, Harriet insists. Born of the devil, I am more inclined to think.

♥ "I don't know what you're so worried about anyway. Why should the Yankees take anything from you? Those people are probably carrying more in each of their wagons than you've got on all of your shelves."

Some people in this locality declare me unpatriotic and unsympathetic to our cause because of sentiments like these, but I affirm it's only being realistic. The Yankees have all the goods and all the money and therefore, it seems evident to me, they will eventually win the war. Money is your great and ultimate weapon. With money you can buy steel and gunpowder and salt pork and all the courage you need.

I said these things in eighteen and sixty-one and I do not hesitate to say them, now. Nowadays I don't see how anyone can be uncertain of the outcome. It is no longer a question-if it ever was-of who will be victorious, but only how much longer we can continue to bleed. (The same thought occurred to me later when I saw the Yankee in my living room and the results of Harrier's poorly applied tourniquet on my needlepoint settee.)

Well, if I cannot be sensible and popular at the same time, then I will always choose the virtue rather than the friends.

..Of course it is one thing to have sensible convictions and another to fly them from a flag pole. I realize that many of our girls have lost near relatives in the war-I lost a brother myself-and it sometimes causes grief to think that dying serves a purpose. Therefore, as much as possible, I avoid entering into any discussion of military events with the students-or even with my sister, who is often as ostrich-like about the situation as they are.

♥ "You're a joker too, ain't you, ma'am," he said grinning, "as well as bein a lady who knows exactly what she wants. I noticed that about you when I seen you comin down the road expectin the whole army of Northern Virginia to divide before you like the Red Sea. Well, that's the way to be. Know exactly what you want... and to blazes with how you get it... and with everybody else."

He fell back into line then and moved off, chewing philosophically on the raw chunk of pork. I often wondered after if he knew what he wanted and if he stayed alive to realize it.

♥ She waited until the very end with Ben. I remember how she looked at me and then at Ben and then at the dealer. I wanted to call to her and say, "Send me away too if you're going to send Ben," but I didn't say anything. I couldn't. There was a pride in me that made me keep silent, a pride almost as strong as Miss Martha's own.

Well she didn't sell Ben that day. She finally sent the dealer away with his loaded wagon and then she went into the house without sayin anything and left Miss Harriet and Ben and me standin there. I don't know what it was she felt in her heart that day but whatever it was, she repented of it because a week or so later she sold Ben to a farmer over at Locust Grove.

It was for less money than she was offered on that first day, I found out later from Miss Harriet-not much less but some-and it was to a place nearby so that Ben was able to come and see me now and then until he died. I guess maybe that was as close as Miss Martha could come to kindness when money and her pride was involved.

♥ Maybe she was a bit fearful of me once, but that was long ago. We all change in our feelings toward each other as we get older. I don't even hate her any more like I used to. I know that she's the way God made her and I suppose she can't help it and she can't change.

♥ "Also," said Marie Deveraux who welcomes the sort of excitement this guest of ours promised to bring, "also, if our boys find this Yankee by the roadside, they may just be curious as to where he came from and they may wonder if there are any more like him around. That may cause great hordes of them to come poking around here to see if we have any more wounded Yankees and, Miss Martha, I believe that is just exactly the situation you are trying to avoid."

"We could wait 'til after dark," said old Mattie, "and maybe take him further down the road where this place wouldn't be connected with him."

"How can you be so heartless, Mattie," Marie said, "and here this poor boy has been fighting to set you people free."

"I ain't heartless," Mattie said. "I'm just afraid."

Mattie very likely had been seeing strange signs in her herb tea again or listening to the wild dogs baying at the moon, either one of which would have been to her a sure sign of impending doom. I was accustomed to old Negro women like Mattie at home on our place and I knew there was often a lot of truth in the terrible things they predicted. These people are so used to living with trouble, it seems they have a special eye and ear for its coming.

♥ "What in your opinion," I asked her, "is going to be the final end of this Yankee affair?"

"In all the orders that I know of in the animal and insect kingdoms, the intruder is never accepted peaceably by the existing species. That's stated very plainly in a book by an English naturalist which I have in my trunk."

"What happens to the intruders in these other kingdoms?" I asked her. I was trying to crack a walnut by slamming it in the bureau drawer and trying to accomplish it quietly so that Miss Martha wouldn't hear.

"Well," said Amelia thoughtfully, "sometimes they win out. I've seen a hunting wasp invade a nest of grasshoppers and kill or at least paralyze all of them with his stinger, so hat each of them could be hauled away at leisure to be eaten."

"My goodness," I said, finally getting the walnut cracked but also splitting the side of the bureau drawer a bit, although not too noticeably, I thought. "I'm certainly glad I'm not a grasshopper."

"On the other hand," Amelia went on, "quite often the intruder doesn't win. I've seen a caterpillar invade a nest of tiny red ants and be charmed by them or diverted in some way until he was entirely at their mercy. The little ants seemed to be stroking the caterpillar with their feelers until he was quite relaxed and after a while he released a few drops of liquid from somewhere near his tail, and then all of the ants partook of this liquid which they seemed to enjoy very much. Then, having milked him, they joined together to drag that helpless caterpillar underground, intending, I suppose, to use him for future feedings."

"Good heavens," I said. "Was that caterpillar permanently injured?"

"I'm not sure, although that's not too important from a naturalist's point of view. The caterpillar would have died in the spring anyway when he became a butterfly and meanwhile he was providing food all winter for that little colony of ants."

♥ In fact sometimes I feel more concern for those innocent animals that are suffering in this war than I do for all the soldiers on either side. The soldiers are at least to some degree responsible for their own fates. Most of them have probably volunteered to be where they are, or even if they haven't, they can still escape the burning woods like Corporal McBurney.

Whether I would feel this way if my brothers were still alive is something I cannot say. I do know that Dick and Billy both would probably laugh at my sentiments if they were present now, the same way they used to laugh when I cried at their hunting quail and pheasant in our fields at home. Also I know that if they were both to be allowed back from the grave tomorrow, they would surely volunteer again, for fear they had missed some noise and excitement the first time. And no animal would ever be foolish enough to do that.

Well I suppose whether you prefer animals or people depends a great deal on the individual circumstances.

♥ These natural sounds were punctuated now and then by the crack and echo of a rifle from way off in the woods. The pickets on both sides were still nervous, I suppose. It is probably difficult to leave off anything, even killing, when you've been hard at it all day. "Poor lonely pickets," I thought. "I do wish all of you could find your way out of the woods tonight."

♥ "Do animals go to heaven when they die?" asked Amelia, turning that elfin little face to me.

"I don't think so," I said. "I believe God permits them to have their happiness in this life."

"What about the animals that are dying in the woods tonight?"

"Well," I said, "first of all we've not sure they're dying, are we? Perhaps they're all escaping the fire. And even if a few are trapped... I'm sure they're the old ones who are ready to pass on anyway. And I'm sure God makes certain that it happens painlessly."

"What about us?" Marie asked. "Don't we ever get our happiness in this life?"

"Not very many people do."

"I intend to have mine," Marie said. "I'm not at all sure I'll care much for heaven, especially if they have a lot of rules and regulations, so I think I'll take a bit of mine on earth."

"You will be very lucky then, if you accomplish it," I said.

♥ "Have you ever been truly happy, Miss Harriet?"

"Yes, once... a long time ago... but it didn't last very long."

"What caused it to end?" Amelia wanted to know.

"Reason and common sense," I said.

♥ "What was your happiness like when you experienced it long ago, Miss Harriet?" asked Marie, the chief inquisitor.

"Very nice."

"Do you think it will ever come to you again?"

"I no longer count on it."

"Would you be glad if it did?"

"I... yes, I suppose I would... but it could not be the same, because you see the knowledge of unhappiness makes it impossible to ever more experience unalloyed bliss. That's only possible in a state of innocence."

Innocence? Yes, they seemed completely innocent-watching me quietly-Amelia with her sad brown eyes and Marie with her guileless blue ones.

♥ "We can only pray that he continues to do so."

"I don't set much store by prayer," she said. "I don't recall ever getting anything through prayer."

"Did you ever pray for anything?"

"Once-long ago. Did you ever pray for anything, Miss Harriet?"

"Why certainly," I said.

"And was your prayer answered?"

Should I tell the truth? No, it wasn't granted. In fact I haven't really prayed for years. I just go through the motions to keep my sister happy and to maintain the image of a devout teacher in a Christian school. I fear God-as I fear many things-but I don't pray to Him. Because I know the thing I would ask for, if I did pray, would not be granted. Indeed, I suppose if I were God, I would not grant it either."

♥ It was hard to dislike him. He had such an open friendly look about him, that even when you knew for a positive fact that there was guile behind his innocence, it was difficult to think of it as anything but a boyish trick.

And the guile was there, no doubt about it. Whatever Corporal John McBurney said, you had to ask yourself-is this the way Corporal McBurney really feels?-or is this the way he wants you to think he feels?-or is he even more clever than you suppose and is allowing the edges of the trick to show, hoping that when you see it, it will make you feel superior to him in cleverness. And you're really not. Or at least he thinks you're not. Because what he really wants is your misjudgement of him.

How deep do the layers of deception go, I wondered one day. But not that second day. On that morning I found myself-at least for the moment-beginning to enjoy the company of your Corporal McBurney.

♥ "Please, Miss Martha," said that least-innocent one, as innocently as only someone very practiced could be.

♥ "Well," he said lying back and breathing heavily from the exertion, "I'll give you a few quick facts so's I won't be a total stranger to you, in case you decide to throw me out this morning. Name... John McBurney. Age, twenty. Colonial citizen without rights of Great Britain. Born in the Country of Wexford of Patrick McBurney, deceased, and Mary McBurney, still living... if you can call it that nowadays in Ireland. No money, no prospects, no worries. No contagious diseases, no physical defects, except a recent war wound. All my teeth and hair, fingers and toes. A sound mind, I'm told, and a good memory. No troubles, no grievances, no hatreds-which may surprise you, considering where I've come from. No curiosity, except about the whole world. No wishes, except to be my own man. Entered the city of New York, December twenty-third, eighteen-and-sixty-three. Enlisted in the Union Army, January fourth, eighteen-and-sixty-four. Promoted to the rank of acting corporal, April fifteenth, eighteen-and-sixty-four. Promoted to the rank of acting corporal, April fifteenth, eighteen-and-sixty-four. Now ma'am would you say you still don't know me?"

"I know what you've told me."

..I must admit I was somewhat beguiled by his earnestness of manner, if not his audacity.

♥ "Don't you believe me?"

"I don't disbelieve you."

"That's not quite the same thing, is it?"

♥ Everyone was trying to avoid mentioning the war, of course, for fear of causing him embarrassment, although this was somewhat ridiculous, as we all finally realized, with the battle raging furiously once more to the east of us even closer now, it seemed, than yesterday. It is very hard to avoid speaking of something that is making your garden windows rattle and the coffee cups juggle precariously on your plates.

♥ "I don't mean to low rate the Union Army at all because there are a lot of fine and courageous fellas in it. I only mean that mechanical contrivances have taken all the sport out of war. There's just no fun in it any more like there might've been a thousand years or so ago. Oh it must've been a lot different when you could ride off to a battle, secure behind your visor and your suit o' mail, depending only on the strength of your arm and the quickness of your eye to save you from anything worse than a few missing fingers or an ear or a dent on your helmet and a sore head for a week or two. And even if you did fall in them days, you had the consolation of knowin you had been bested by a better man than you, and not some skinny nervous dry goods clerk with his hand twitchin on a cannon lanyard maybe two miles or more away. Oh ladies, when I saw your fellas yesterday guardin that muddy piece of road, I realized it was in the best and most noble traditions of the heroes of old. Oh when you think of what gunpowder has done to the knighthood of the world. Why those fellas behind the walls at Troy wouldn't have lasted through one sunset if those outside would've had a mortar or two or even a three inch rifle. The whole history and literature o' the world would've come out entirely different. What's the book the Greek fella wrote?"

"The Iliad, by Homer," Edwina Morrow supplied, her eyes shining as she watched him.

"That's it," he said. "Now that fella would've had no plot at all if the city had come tumbling down on the first day. Well they don't write poetry about wars anymore, do they, and it's no wonder. There's nothin very poetic about being destroyed by a machine..."

♥ "Perhaps we have all been taught a lesson this morning," Miss Harriet said now. "Perhaps we have all learned not to judge anyone too quickly."

"There's more to any man," Corporal McBurney said soberly, "than the color of his coat, or for that matter, his skin."

♥ "Is there much attention given to prayer in the Northern camps, Mister McBurney?" Miss Harriet asked him as we all arose.

"Very little, ma'am," he said. "It's all card playing and cursing and general loose talk, except, o' course, on the eve of a battle, and then you can't move an inch from your blanket without trippin over courageous Christians on their knees."

"Don't you suppose the same situation may exist as well in the Confederate Army?" Edwina asked him.

"I suppose it does, Miss," said he, staring thoughtfully at her. "The only difference being that since most of the Confederates seem to know what they're fighting for, they may have their minds on their jobs more often than the Yanks."

♥ "Do you feel very strongly about anything?"

"How do you mean that, Miss?"

"Is there any belief or cause to which you are dedicated? Is there anything you would be willing to die for?"

"To be honest with you, Miss," he said after a pause, "I don't think so. Unless it was some person-my mother maybe or a girl who was very close to me. I might be willing to sacrifice myself to protect a person like that. Of course you must understand that not everyone who puts on a uniform has any thought of spilling his own blood on it. In fact I'd wager to say that very few fellas in this war, whether they be from North or South, have any thought of dying when they march away."

♥ "Well let me give the whole matter a good thinking over. It's not a nice thing, you know, to be a turncoat, although I guess a person is allowed one honest mistake in a lifetime."

♥ "That's something you're dedicated to, isn't it-your own country."

"Yes maybe so. I suppose you could say that."

"Well I'm glad. I think every person ought to be dedicated to something. Otherwise I don't think that person could be of much value."

♥ "I'm an awful funny fella, Mattie. But I mean no harm. I'm a wanderer and a rover and a great dreamer of wild dreams... and a great liar too, I suppose. I'm seldom seen when I pass and I won't be missed when I'm gone. But believe me, Mattie, I mean no harm."

♥ "And it is possible that I am not that old-at least not in civilized society."

"That's the great trouble with the world, do you know it-civilized society. That's what keeps us tied down and locked up and smothered. Haven't you ever felt a small little uncivilized spirit in you, batterin at the walls of your heart, cryin in a tiny voice, 'Let me out, Miss Harriet Farnsworth... let me out, let me breathe!"

"Yes," I told him. "I have felt it."

♥ "I'm sorry," I said.

"Ah, you needn't be. I wasn't out anything, except a bit of pride. Shame is a great weapon, ma'am. It'll do more damage to a soul than a war can ever do to a body."

♥ "I think you've a great fondness for the finer things-things that might, to plainer folks, seem useless and trivial and maybe even showy-but to you they're more important than the ordinary facts of life we have to deal with everyday. I think you love the fragile, delicate stuff that's so easily shattered in the hands of the clumsy world. Fine pieces of china, I'll bet, and old lace... thin crystal goblets and buts of polished ivory..."

♥ ..I read quietly aloud and then waited. There was a long pause during which I began to think that this time he might really be asleep.

But then. "Beauty is truth, and truth beauty... that's true, that's very true. Though some people would deny it. In fact, I'll bet most people would say that truth is that sound you hear outside there in the woods. Truth is thunder and fire and death, they'd say, and anyone who thinks that's beauty must be mad. But I agree with the poet. I think that truth is this peaceful room.... and a kind lady... and that butterfly in the sunlight out there in the garden."

♥ Well there wasn't much talk between us for a while after that. I believe the next thing that was said was said by me. It seems to me that was some trivial remark like, "My goodness, will you let me get my breath?" and then I added, "I don't believe we have been formally introduced. My name is Alicia Simms."

"Oh I've known you for years," he said. "I used to dream about you when I was a boy."

♥ ..I was not able to say two words of this before everyone began leaving the room. It is really disgraceful sometimes the way I am always the last one called upon to speak at table and, contrast wise, the first one asked to recite in class. If I am ever enrolled in any other school, I intend to lie about my age in the hope of getting a little simple justice.

♥ "She quite often can be a terrible nuisance," Emily felt obliged to put in. "But of course I suppose one must consider her age."

"Well, now," McBurney said. "I never thought of her as being any younger than the other students here. She seems to be a very sensible and serious minded person, Miss Marie does."

"Do you really think so?" Alice asked him, evidently genuinely amazed. Now when Alice, who is not entirely stupid, was moved to question his flattery, I began to wonder if, just possibly, he might not really believe it.

♥ It was only then she realized that she was still carrying the old pistol.

"When the soldiers saw me with this," she said, "I believe they were more frightened than either Mattie or I. In fact one of them remarked, 'I've faced thousands of Yankees in my day, ma'am, but I don't think all of them together would be as dangerous as one nervous lady holdin a cocked pistol in her two hands.'"

♥ We went back to the parlor then, where I was reprimanded for disobeying orders, first by Miss Harriet and later by Miss Martha when she returned from outside. This is the price one must pay for independence and I have learned to put up with it. I don't know what else anyone could expect from a member of a family which my father says has a history of arguing with the headsman even while the blade ids falling. I am just a person who was always accustomed to making up her own mind-if the truth must out, my own dear mother and I quite often disagreed over this and it happens to be one big reason I am in attendance at this isolated Protestant school-and I am too set in my ways now to ever change them.

♥ "Why do you want to know so much about everyone's personal business?"

"Partly curiosity and partly for protection, dear Amelia. It's a cruel world we live in and a fella has to take precautions."

"Have you ever read any of the works of Mister Charles Darwin?" I asked him. "All nature is cruel, Mister Darwin says."

"Well thank God we're around civilized people here."

♥ "Well I'm not anxious to be buried anywhere myself," said Johnny, "but I guess if I had to choose, a woods might be better than a churchyard. Somehow I think a woods might not be quite so lonely."

"Do you believe in Heaven, Johnny?"

"To tell you the truth, I haven't thought much about it. Maybe there is a Heaven and maybe there isn't, but whatever way it is, I've never felt any need or desire to wonder about it. Maybe it's because I'm not yet convinced I'm ever going to die. That may seem strange to you, but that's the way I am. I've never even thought much about dying-even at the worst time in the battle I don't recall that I did. For some reason I just wasn't concerned about death-even with it happening all about me-but only of being hurt badly and disabled. During the battle, I remember, what I feared most was being blinded, and after that of losing a leg or an arm. I'll tell you a secret, Amelia. Do you know that I must have awakened fifty rimes during my first night in this place-I was never as unconscious as a lot of people thought, only in a kind of fog through which I could most times dimly see and hear but couldn't speak. Anyway I kept coming to my senses in a panic every little while... remembering the horror in the woods... the fire and the smoke and the screaming... and wondering now to myself, 'Is my leg gone? Will I ever walk again? Will I ever run and jump and dance again?' Then suddenly the pain would hit me and do you know, I'd bless it-I'd bless that pain-and after a while, I'd slip back down in the fog again."

"It's all right now, isn't it Johnny? You're not worried about your leg now, are you?"

"Lord no, I'm not worried about anything now. The leg is fine and I'm fine and I'm on my way to being a whole, live man again. I'll soon be ready and as fit as ever to take on all comers for a fight or a wrestle or a romp on the feathers, begging your little girl's pardon. That's my Heaven, dear Amelia. It's the only one I need. Do you believe in Heaven, darlin?"

"Well," I said, "it's a comfort, of course, to think that one's brothers are somewhere and that one will see them again some day, but there are times when I feel that such is not the case. There are also times when I feel that even if there is a Heaven I don't want to go there myself. Because my roommate, Marie Deveraux, keeps telling me that, according to the best Christian theology, animals cannot possibly go to Heaven when they die because they have no souls. ..Anyway, I also asked Miss Martha and Miss Harrier if they thought animals would be allowed to enter Heaven and they both said they didn't think so. Miss Harriet said that possibly Heaven was already stocked with some eternally living animals but that it seemed to her very unlikely that any of our common earthly breeds would be admitted."

"Now let me tell you even Miss Martha and Miss Harriet don't know everything. Where've they been in this great world, will you inform me, that they're such experts on animal theology? What kind of a place would Heaven be if a man had to rude up to the gate and leave his horse outside? What about the donkey on which the Bible says, if I can recall my lessons, the Lord rode around Galilee? What about all these goats and cows and such like that were in the Bethlehem stable on that Christmas night? And while you're at it, consider all the birds and beasts that sailed around for forty days ans nights with old Noah on the Ark. It would be mighty ungrateful of the powers that be, don't you think, to deny all those famous Biblical animals a bit of Heavenly reward. ..If there's any other world after this one, it stands to reason it'll be big enough to house all the animals this earth had known since time began to tick. They'll all be there... the good ones and the bad... all the dinosaurs and unicorns and dragons... the whale that swallowed Jonah... the lions that passed up the chance to eat Daniel... maybe even some of the other lions that ate the Christians in old Nero's day. A lion that has dined on a saint must take on a bit of saintliness himself, would you say, Amelia?"

♥ And oddly enough, the more Johnny's interest in her increased, the more Edwina openly ignored him. During his first days with us, she had visited him in the parlor several times a day just like the rest of us, but once she sensed he was attracted to her she began to act-at least in public-as though he didn't exist at all. That, I think, is a very strange human reaction for which you can find no parallel in the animal kingdom.

♥ Also when he declared that I was his best friend at the school, I truly believed him, and that in spite of knowing of his interest in Edwina Morrow. Because I knew that the way he might have felt about her was entirely different from the way he felt about me.

I knew that when boys become a certain age they develop a biological interest in females which is very similar to the mating instincts of all animals. If Johnny McBurney had those kind of biological feelings about Edwina Morrow, I knew that he couldn't help it. From a scientific point of view it was only natural; and maybe even proper for him to be that way.

Therefore there was no reason for me to be jealous about it. I wasn't old enough or pretty enough to stimulate the same kind of feeling in him, and I did have his friendship and his trust which to me was worth a whole lot more than just a common mating instinct.

♥ I lay on my bed and wept for a spell while my roommate, who was serving out some punishment or other, sat propped up on her bed, silently watching me and eating a crab apple. When she had finished with the apple she threw the core out the window, which is a common practice of hers to get rid of the evidence.

"Very little in life is worth weeping about," she said finally, "unless some purpose is served by the weeping. I almost never weep unless I can gain something by it."

"I'm not crying out of unhappiness," I explained after a moment, "as much ass I'm crying out of temper."

"Either reason is a waste of time," said Marie selecting another apple from a pile of them on her bed.

♥ I felt that he was attracted to me. If you want a detailed analysis of that attraction, I cannot give it. I'm not at all sure now that he even liked me and at one time I was convinced he didn't. We all know how people can be attracted by things they don't like, such as spiders on the ceiling and warts on the cheek.

..I also can't deny that I was attracted to him. I will also admit that I liked him very much-at first-and that was one reason I tried to stay away from him. With very few exceptions I have never remained in mutual favor very long with people I have known well. They very quickly find things wrong with me, or I with them. And I suppose nowadays I anticipate the disillusionment of others by keeping free of any illusions myself.

♥ I felt at first that he had understood, as no one else around here ever had, the rather troubled and perhaps troublesome person that I am. I am not always the easiest person in the world to get along with, but I did feel that Corporal McBurney might possibly be someone who-even if he did not know all the reasons for my bitterness-would accept mew the way I am with maybe the hope that affection might improve me. It might well have, you know. It really might have done so.

♥ "It's not what you feel about me now. It's what you might feel about me in the future... when you know me better."

"I know you well enough now and my feelings about you will never change."

"You don't know everything about me..."

"For pity's sake, what is there to know? I know you have a short temper, so have I. I know you have a sharp tongue, so have I. We'll murder each other very likely before the end of our first week together. Now for the love of the saints come away from it. I know all I need to know about you, all I want to know."

"If you're sure, Johnny," I whispered.

"I am absolutely sure, my sweet Edwina."

And that, I guess-if you can reduce such things to solitary moments-was the happiest moment of my life. It wasn't a very long moment, but it was a nice on while it lasted.

♥ "Now whether she was really still stained with that blood or not or whether she was merely going daft, I can't honestly tell you. Whatever way it was, it only proved once again what my own mother always told me-no matter how fast you run, you can never get away from your past. It's like your shadow, she used to say. Some people like to think their shadows disappear with the darkness but my mother always claimed that's just the time the devil sets to work and your shadow catches up with you. 'If you've been good, Johnny,' she used to say, 'you've nothing to fear. But if you've been bad, watch out. All your evil deeds are strung out behind you wrapped in the folds of your shadow and some night the devil may creep up to your bed and snare you with it.'"

♥ "It never does anyone any good to know the future," said old Mattie as she came in with more acorn coffee. "That's why the good Lord shields it from us. If we knew what was waitin for us just around the corner half the days of our lives, it seems to me we'd be too scared to get out of bed."

"I agree completely," I said. "I have no wish to ever know the future. It would be terrible if you were always certain of tomorrow, if you always knew that it could never be any better than you imagine it will be."

♥ "Corporal McBurney's stay with us," said Miss Martha, "has taught us all a very important lesson-that the enemy as individuals are not necessarily wicked men."

♥ Then I tried to think of how wonderful it would be sometime soon when Johnny and I met again somewhere far away from this school-far away from anywhere I had ever been miserable. I tried to picture Johnny and me as man and wife living in a nice house somewhere-in New York or Philadelphia maybe, or some other city in the North where I believe people are sometimes valued more for who they are and what they can do rather than what they are and where they come from-because in some ways I hate the South more and more every day. Sometimes I just hope we lose this war and are utterly destroyed by the Yankees-just ground down under all their heels so that there will never be any more trace of us, or our mothers or our children. I hate Richmond and Savannah and this school and all the rest of it. I hate it now but I hated it more on that night, because with the expectation of something better in store for me, there was no reason to hold back my hate. I just hated the whole world, except Johnny, on that night. And I loved him, I knew then. I had said the words to him in the afternoon and meant them but now I knew for certain that I loved only him.

♥ I know him better than that, I said. I may not be the greatest judge of character in the world, but I certainly know Johnny better than that. How could Johnny or anyone else in the world deceive a person who all her life has been only waiting and watching for the words and glances that don't match, for the raised brow and the turned back, for the scorn behind the smile?

♥ Feeling that I had accomplished a little something, I left the room then and went back downstairs. "Girls!" I remember thinking impatiently. "Idiotic girls who can lose all their control and dignity over a worthless vagabond like McBurney." In my mind I had begun to disassociate him from the Yankees because his being a member of even an enemy army made the whole war seem less noble and the Yankees much less worthy to be our opponents. As a matter of fact in my disgust, I think I was even beginning to disassociate myself from the entire female sex.

♥ Well that wouldn't matter. The little temple could wait, someone else could tear it down. Or perhaps it would be just as well to leave it as it was in its shining restoration-as a monument to all those things in a lifetime that don't turn out the way they are planned.

♥ He would realize the necessity for it and adapt to it and make the best of it. As we all must do, all our days.

♥ "Do you know... I think I might prefer to be present," she answered. "I may be of little physical value, as you say, but I promise not to cause you any trouble. As long as you say the thing is necessary... and must be done today... then I feel it is my duty... not to leave you here alone... with these children..."

"Bravo, Miss Harriet," said Emily. "That's the spirit. That's the very thing our brave boys always say to themselves before they go into battle. Even though tyhey don't want to do it, they go ahead anyway, without complaining, because that's the only way we're ever going to win this war."

"Bosh," said Marie. "They go ahead because there's a great line of generals behind them ready to prick them with swords and bayonets if they don't go."

♥ I marked the new place on his leg with my forefinger and laid the edge of the razor on it. Then-a mistake-I looked up again to make sure he was still unconscious. He was, but that momentary glance cracked the edges of the detachment I had maintained until then. McBurney looked suddenly, not like a problem to be solved, but like a person about whom I had some feelings-not always liking, perhaps, and probably on some occasions even disliking, but always something, some very personal interest. I couldn't ignore him as a person any longer-especially now that I had remembered a resemblance to someone else.

♥ "There is some frailty in you, after all, isn't there," observed my sister as Mattie took the sheet and put it over him.

"I have never denied it," I told Harriet. "I do deny myself the pleasure of giving in to my weaknesses."

♥ "When do you think you might condescend to return to good old Farnsworth school?"

"Maybe never-maybe I'll never go back."

"Don't you know those people either-Miss Martha and Miss Harriet and the girls?"

"I'm beginning to think maybe I don't know them."

"Well you know me, don't you, for pity's sake!"

"Yes, I think I will always know you, Marie."

I didn't say anything for a long while after that. To tell the truth I couldn't think of anything to say after that very nice remark Amelia had made about me-and in response to my shouting at her, too. Finally I told her, "I'm sure I will always know you, too, Amelia. I think you're the nicest person at the school, even if you probably are the strangest too."

♥ ..but what I'm trying to say is that I have always been more distressed by the thought of suffering than I have been by the thought of death. Death is a natural biological event but there is no rule in nature which demands our suffering. Perhaps this is a law of religion-as my roommate once tried to tell me-but I am certain there is nothing of the sort in the world of nature.

♥ "I don't feel much like eating, Mattie," I said.

"What you don't feel like don't matter in the least. You got to learn to be strong and to carry your troubles without bein weighed down by them. Everybody who was ever born has got some misery in their life. If you got a big load of it today, and you carry it without complainin, moren' likely the good Lord will send you a lighter load tomorrow. Least that's always been my way of lookin at it."

♥ "Well, Martha is a strange woman. She is my closest kin but sometimes I feel no affinity with her at all. Sometimes I think she is a person who is not only incapable of natural love herself, but also lacks whatever kind of spiritual magnetism is necessary to attract it. She can command respect of sorts, but not love. She just seems compelled to rule and possess everything and everyone about her, and obviously a person with those qualities is neither going to be liked nor loved."

♥ Naturally I was somewhat disturbed by what Miss Harriet had said, but I thought that since it was not at all like her, it simply must have been due to one glass too many of the wine. I think if a person is generally kind and gentle and soft-spoken in all of her dealings with those around her, as Miss Harriet certainly is, then it is not at all fair to judge that person by words or actions which are the results of unusual circumstances. It is true that there came a time when I might have applied that principle to an action of Johnny McBurney's, and I failed to do it. The explanation for this, I suppose, lies in the fact that that particular action of Johnny's affected me deeply and the affairs of the Farnsworth family don't and never have. My final thought about Miss Harriet's remarks on that afternoon, I remember, was that actually she was no worse than I. I myself had often said hateful things about people in the privacy of the woods and it wasn't Miss Harriet's fault if the parlor on that afternoon was not as private as she thought.

♥ 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 absolutely petrified log herself. Or at least she was in the habit of doing so the last time I shared a bed with her.

♥ In all honesty I must say that we had enjoyed a very pleasant hour together, and I was feeling very sorry for him as I went up the stairs. He had been very mean to me only a short while before and, if I had only known it, very soon he would be extremely mean again, but on that afternoon I was willing to forget his nasty aside. In fact, I believe that afternoon was the closest I ever came to loving him.

♥ "How'd he hear about these people?"

"I don't know. Possibly the information was given him by some disgruntled prisoners he captured-boys like yourself, who may have been very dissatisfied with the state of things in the North."

"You can't always trust fellas like that, you know," Johnny said and looked away from me again. I've been thinking lately that was the most honest statement he made while he was here, and perhaps the only one.

♥ I do have my troubles with Martha, as must be obvious to everyone, and I do get very annoyed with her sometimes, but in this matter she has my complete sympathy and I would never be heartless enough to use such information against her, even in my moments of greatest rage at her.

As my father said that day to Robert and me, "A lady's appearance is her only weapon and we must never reveal that we now this weapon has no edge." Of course, I know now that my sister has other swords at her disposal, but Father's point was valid enough.

♥ "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."

♥ "It's certainly a great pity if the person who is second in command at our school cannot be allowed to protest vocally when she is under attack by the enemy," said Emily.

"Oh bosh," yelled Amelia. "Miss Harriet was no more under attack than you are."

"Oh but I am. That's just the point," Emily replied. "We're all under attack here and it's time we realized it."

♥ "As a reward for his conduct?" inquired her sister, looking at her as though she were slightly mad.

"No, no, of course not," Miss Harriet replied, "only to show him that we harbor no ill feelings-that we have the proper Christian attitude."

"I believe Christian attitude in a situation like this depends on what kind of Christians you're referring to," remarked Emily. "For instance, I'm told that Christians of the Roman Church tortured their opponents severely during the Spanish Inquisition."

"And Northern Christians up in New England or somewhere burned quite a few old ladies at the stake, didn't they, because of some disagreement over worshiping the devil," put in Marie who is always quick to counter any attack on her religion.

"It's about all you can expect of Northern people of any extraction, Christian or otherwise," stated Alice, revealing a patriotism of which she had never previously been suspected.

♥ After all, in this part of the country we have only one or two kinds of Protestant heretics such as Episcopalians like the Farnsworth sisters and Baptists like Mattie. Up there in the North they have hundreds of different kinds of fallen aways, to say nothing of pagans and Jews and the Lord only knows what other kinds of heathens.

♥ "If Johnny is in awfully bad trouble here and you're afraid some harm will come to him I could take him away from here," she said now.

"Where would we take him?" I emphasized the "we" because I felt the responsibility was as much mine as hers. She may have found him but he and I were of the same religion.

♥ 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 world "Trial" which my sister proposes seems to me to presuppose some vested legal authority which we do not and did no 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 decisions 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 prerogative 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.

♥ 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 didn'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 everythin 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 ti9me when I woudn'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 go 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 wouln'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.

♥ I didn't hear much of what she said cause right then I went off a little ways and had myself a good cry. I don't know if I was the only one who did it but I just couldn't help myself. It wasn't only that the whole thing needn't have happened at all. It was the fact that buryin that boy that way made me think of my own Ben who had to go off and die in a place that was strange to him.

See right then I wasn't blamin anybody for what had happened, and I'm not even sure I'm blamin anybody now, cept myself. I take the blame for whatever part I had in it, but the thing is I ain't sure how much that means. I had a reason for what I did at the time and I ain't sure but what I'd find another reason if the boy was to come back here right now and the whole thing was to happen over again.