Rhett Butler's People

by Donald McCaig

  Wilkes went on: “You would want all of a man, Scarlett, his body, his heart, his soul, his thoughts. And if you did not have them, you would be miserable. And I would not want all of your mind and soul and you would be hurt…”

  Rhett thought: That’s a real gentleman: Nothing ventured and absolutely nothing lost.

  They wrangled toward the traditional finale: She slapped his face and he elevated his aristocratic chin and, with honor, if not dignity, intact, marched from the room.

  Rhett meant to stay hidden until Scarlett left, too, but his heart was alight with laughter and when Scarlett hurled crockery at the fireplace and fragments landed on his couch, he raised up, ran a hand through his sleep-rumpled hair and said, “It is bad enough to have an afternoon nap disturbed by such a passage as I’ve been forced to hear, but why should my life be endangered?”

  She gasped, “Sir, you should have made known your presence.”

  “Indeed. But you were the intruder.” He smiled at her and, because he wanted to see her eyes flash, he chuckled.

  “Eavesdroppers …” she began a denunciation.

  He grinned. “Eavesdroppers often hear highly entertaining and instructive things.”

  “Sir,” she said decisively, “you are no gentleman.”

  “An apt observation. And you, Miss, are no lady.”

  He loved how her green eyes flashed. Might she slap him too? He laughed again because life is so surprising. “No one can remain a lady after saying or doing what I have just overheard. However, ladies have seldom held any charms for me. I know what they are thinking, but they never have the courage or lack of breeding to say what they think. But you, my dear Miss O’Hara, are a girl of rare spirit, very admirable spirit, and I take my hat off to you.”

  His laughter chased her out of the room.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Merry Widow

  A full year later, the blockade runner Merry Widow tied up at the Haynes & Son wharf: three days from Nassau and six hours of moonless silence slipping through the Federal blockade. Rhett Butler stepped off the boat into flaring gaslights and stevedores’ bustle.

  John Haynes shook his partner’s hand. “You shaved it close this time, Rhett. It’ll be light in fifteen minutes.”

  “Tunis can see our cargo into the warehouse. Join me for breakfast?”

  “Give me a few minutes with Tunis. The market café?”

  In that first light, Rhett walked the East Battery, enjoying a beautiful city. The briny air was overlaid with the scent of mimosa. Here and there, a gray-clad sentry stood on the parapet, his glass fixed on the Federal fleet. In the market, fishmongers cried their wares while housemen, cooks, and mammies haggled over produce and freshly baked bread. Many stall holders wore the brass FREE COLORED badges the city council had recently issued.

  Looking as fresh as if he hadn’t been up all night, Rhett Butler threaded through the market, leaning inside a stall to shake a hand or share a joke. Every free colored knew Rhett had hired Tunis Bonneau as his pilot, even though white men wanted the job.

  John Haynes was at a corner table with a cup of coffee.

  “Ah, John. It’s good to be home. Lord, I’m famished. Yankee warships whet my appetite. Only coffee?”

  “An uneventful voyage, Rhett?”

  “There are more blockaders and they’re getting smarter.” Rhett rapped the table. “Knock wood.”

  “Rhett, if they ever corner you, for God’s sake, don’t try to escape. Run the Widow aground or surrender. The Widow’s paid for and we’ve made a decent profit.”

  “But John,” Rhett said solemnly, “it’s an adventure! Heart in the throat, hair bristling on your neck; don’t you want to trade places?”

  John smiled. “Rhett, I’m a stodgy young businessman who intends to become a stodgy old businessman. I’ll leave the adventuring to you.”

  When Rhett ordered sausage, eggs, grits, and coffee, the waiter apologized, “Captain Rhett, we got to charge more. Everything’s got so high!”

  “Damn profiteering blockade runners,” Rhett intoned. The waiter laughed.

  “So tell me, John. How is my beautiful niece, Meg? Has she been asking for her uncle Rhett?”

  John happily reported his daughter’s doings. “Rhett, being a father is like being a child again. Meg makes the familiar world new.”

  “I envy you your daughter, John.”

  “You’ll be a father one day.”

  “Will I? I’m told a woman is needed for that project.”

  John laughed. “Rhett, you’re handsome, bold, and rich—you have your pick of women.”

  When Rhett last visited 46 Church Street after his previous run, the tension between Rosemary and John was so palpable, their attempts at civility so strained, that Rhett didn’t stay an hour. It was that damned Patriotic Ball. Andrew Ravanel had driven a scandal between Rosemary and her husband.

  Rhett asked lightly, “What good woman would marry a brigand, John? The brigand’s life is apt to be short and his finances irregular. Maritally, he is a dreadful prospect.”

  When the waiter brought Rhett’s breakfast, he dug in with a will. “I did meet a Georgia girl last spring ….” Rhett chuckled. “Alas, she was immune to my charms.”

  “Poor, poor Rhett. Tell me honestly, friend. Can we win this war?”

  “John, one hundred revolvers leave Colonel Colt’s New Haven factory each day. Each takes a standard bullet and the cylinder from one revolver fits any other. Yankees are engineers and Southerners are romantics. In war, engineers whip romantics every time.”

  “But don’t you think—”

  Rhett forestalled this evasion. “John, I wish nothing more than your and Rosemary’s happiness. Old friend, can I do anything to reconcile you and my sister? If you wish, I’ll speak to her. Sometimes a kinsman …”

  John Haynes picked at a gouge in the wooden table-top. Despising himself, John Haynes read every newspaper account of Andrew Ravanel’s military exploits: “Daring Raid”; “Ravanel’s Brigade Strikes Tennessee!”; “Colonel Ravanel Takes a Thousand Prisoners!”: “Behind enemy lines, with Federal cavalry in hot pursuit, the audacious Colonel Ravanel paused to telegraph the Federal War Department to complain about their horses he was capturing.”

  John’s eyes were so pained, Rhett fought an urge to look away.

  John said quietly, “My Rosemary … says she did not marry me of her free will. She married me to escape her father’s house.” He kneaded his left hand with his right. “I have not upbraided her about the Patriotic Ball, but Rosemary hasn’t forgiven me for not being … Andrew. My dear wife believes as she had been her father’s chattel, she is now mine. No better than a slave. Rhett, Rosemary has called me ‘Master John.’”

  Rhett winced. After a moment, he said, “Why don’t I rent a rig and we’ll go—you and I, Meg and Rosemary—for a jaunt in the country?”

  John shook his head. “I cannot. I must see the Widow’s cotton properly stowed.” John took a sip of cold coffee and said too brightly, “Tell me about this Georgia girl?”

  “Ah yes, Miss Scarlett O’Hara.” Rhett was happy to drop the painful subject. “Last spring, while you Charlestonians were busy starting this war, I was in Georgia buying cotton. I was invited to a barbecue at the local mugwump’s plantation. Said mugwump’s son was to marry an Atlanta cousin. These country aristocrats don’t bring new blood into the family if they can help it. I liked John Wilkes, but Ashley, the son, was so genteel, he squeaked. The prettiest girl there was Miss Scarlett O’Hara, and Miss Scarlett had it in her head that Ashley Wilkes ought to marry her instead of his fiancée! John, a love tragedy was on the boil!

  “Unfortunately for my dishonorable intentions, since the young lady couldn’t marry Wilkes, she married the nearest boy at hand: the fiancée’s brother, Charles Hamilton.” Rhett shook his head ruefully. “What a waste.”

  “Hamilton? O’Hara? A Georgia family? Near Jonesboro?”

  “The same. Lord, I envy Charles Hamilton
his nights of love with that incomparable girl before going off for war. So many tender adieus. So many, many tender adieus.”

  “Charles Hamilton is dead.”

  “What?”

  “And the Widow Hamilton is in Charleston, visiting her aunt, Eulalie Ward. What do you say to that?”

  Rhett Butler grinned like a schoolboy. “Why, John, what excellent news! On my last run, I brought Eulalie Ward’s daughters some Paris brocade. Perhaps I’ll call on them this afternoon and see what they made of it.”

  Civilians and newly minted Confederate soldiers promenaded past the great black guns emplaced on Charleston’s White Point Park.

  “What if they shoot they guns, Miss Scarlett?” Prissy stepped back from the second-floor window. “They big guns all ’round and Federal blockaders swimmin’ in the sea and I afeared.” Her brow furrowed until her thought meandered to its destination: “I afeared for Baby Wade.”

  Who was, Scarlett O’Hara Hamilton noted gratefully, nodding off to sleep in Prissy’s arms.

  “What if Wade ’n’ me takin’ the air when they start shootin’? What if they sail into the harbor shootin’ they guns? Little Master Wade be scared out of his skin!”

  Charleston, the Cradle of Secession, was acutely sensitive to Federal victories. Some Federals boasted, “Charleston is where the revolt began and the revolt will end where Charleston was.” Last December, a fire in the city’s heart had destroyed eight blocks of churches, homes, and Secession Hall itself. Some whispered that “the burnt district” portended Charleston’s future.

  “I wish the Federal fleet would come in,” Scarlett said more to herself than to Prissy. “Anything to break this monotony.”

  Scarlett O’Hara Hamilton loathed widowhood. She despised her drab mourning clothes, her dutiful sackcloth and ashes.

  At least in Charleston, she could wear lavender sleeve piping! At Tara, any outfit that wasn’t utterly drear brought her mother Ellen’s swift reproach: “Dear Scarlett, people might misconstrue your true feelings.”

  Her true feelings …

  Solemnity was crushing her. Who was this morbid creature in black veil and flat widow’s cap? Was this caricature really Scarlett O’Hara, the gayest, most fetching young woman in Clayton County? Must Scarlett repel every admirer for her dead husband’s sake—whose passing Scarlett regretted less than the loss of a favorite pony? Charles Hamilton had been such a boy; his lovemaking so earnest and tedious!

  Life was terribly unfair! Scarlett must pretend to the world that her heart was buried with Charles while she dreamt of Ashley Wilkes, the man she should have married. Ashley Wilkes. Ashley’s smile. Ashley’s drowsy gray eyes. In her cold widow’s bed, Scarlett relived every moment she and Ashley had spent together—strolling through Twelve Oaks’ scented rose garden, Ashley’s quiet kindnesses, the books he’d mentioned, the great paintings he’d seen on his European tour, their happy rides through the Georgia countryside. Their love had been too precious and tender to need voicing, until that fatal afternoon in the library at Twelve Oaks when Scarlett had spoken her love and Ashley had rejected her to marry another.

  Very well, then. If Ashley would marry mousy Melanie Hamilton, Scarlett could bewitch Melanie’s naïve brother, Charles, and marry him!

  Six months afterward, Charles had succumbed to some silly camp disease, and Scarlett was pregnant, widowed, and fitted out in black.

  Scarlett had tried to grieve for Charles. She had tried.

  Concerned about her daughter’s health, and hoping a change of scenery might improve Scarlett’s spirits, Ellen O’Hara had sent Scarlett to Charleston to visit her aunt, Eulalie Robillard Ward.

  Scarlett had had hopes for Charleston; Charleston had a reputation. But it was more tedious than Tara had been.

  Every afternoon, Eulalie’s friends gathered to reconsider Charleston’s petty scandals and compare genealogies.

  Scarlett’s mother was infrequently mentioned in her sister’s home, and when someone did speak of Ellen Robillard O’Hara, they spoke in tones reserved for the gentlewoman who is rather more ill than she admits.

  Young Prissy tended Baby Wade as earnestly as a child cares for her favorite doll. “Hear Baby Wade? I believe he snorin’. Now ain’t he a wonder!”

  “Don’t all babies snore?” Scarlett sighed, and went downstairs for another long afternoon pulling lint with Aunt Eulalie Robillard Ward and her friends.

  Since the Confederacy had no linen bandages, gentlewomen rummaged their attics for chemises and camisoles that could be reduced to lint for stanching wounds.

  Eulalie’s fastidious brother-in-law, Frederick Ward, had abandoned his customary wing chair for a settee at farthest remove from the undergarments the ladies were disassembling; Frederick Ward thought novels immoral and had been known to leave the room rather than subject himself to “bohemian” opinions.

  He rose at Scarlett’s entry. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Hamilton.”

  In Frederick’s considered opinion, lavender sleeve piping was inappropriate for a widow whose husband had not been in his grave twelve months. Young Mrs. Hamilton seemed unaffected by Frederick’s disapproval, and rarely showed the deference one expected from an upcountry Georgia girl among her betters.

  The widow Eulalie Ward had worn black for years, but Charlotte Fisher Ravanel had donned her mourning garb last month when Grandmother Fisher died.

  Charlotte Ravanel and Rosemary Haynes made up their differences at the funeral, where Charlotte completely forgot the Patriotic Ball. Juliet’s cleverest innuendoes were blunted on Charlotte’s forgetfulness. “I do wish I knew what you were talking about, dear, but I had a headache and left the ball early.”

  Lifting her eyes from the chemise she was pulling apart, Juliet Ravanel said proudly, “This morning’s Mercury compared Andrew with Stonewall Jackson.”

  Scarlett Hamilton yawned. “General Jackson is the homeliest man alive.”

  Aunt Eulalie’s lapdog, Empress, barked.

  Rosemary Haynes grinned. “Ah-ha! That’s why the Federals run from Jackson. They are repelled by his visage! Here’s a plan! We’ll rout the Federals with likenesses! Our generals can use special batteries to bombard our foes”—Rosemary tugged an imaginary lanyard—“with daguerreotypes of homely Confederates. The Federals will run like rabbits! The South may lack flour, shoes, fabric, sugar, coffee, and tea, but we’ve plenty of flat-faced, scraggly-bearded, wall-eyed, leering, two-toothed males.”

  Her conceit was greeted by chilly silence. Scarlett muffled a coughing fit in her handkerchief.

  Eulalie’s tiny spaniel barked again and Eulalie said, “Empress does not appreciate your joking, dear. Who would have imagined that my sweet little dog would be patriotic?”

  Scarlett couldn’t resist: “She has a patriot’s brains.”

  Another silence. Scarlett shut her eyes. Lord! She was enmired in dullness. Dullness smothered her so, she could not breathe. Scarlett’s great fear was that one morning she’d be unable to remember—as the Wards could no longer remember—what joy was.

  Juliet Ravanel broke the silence. “Rosemary, I hear your brother is back in Charleston.”

  “Yes, he spoils Meg terribly.”

  “Didn’t I hear his son is in New Orleans?”

  “Dear Juliet”—Rosemary smiled, tight-lipped—“I wouldn’t expect you, of all people, to repeat scurrilous gossip.”

  Juliet Ravanel smiled right back at her.

  Meanwhile, bored Scarlett was populating an imaginary bestiary: Frederick Ward was an overfed yellow tabby cat, the high-colored Juliet Ravanel a cardinal. Eulalie’s daughters, Patience and Priscilla, in identical green brocade, had lizards’ features and reptilian attitudes. In her mourning habit, poor Aunt Eulalie was a perfect crow.

  While Scarlett daydreamed, conversation turned to a Robillard connection killed at Shiloh.

  Frederick set his index finger to his chin. “Pauline’s daughter’s husband, hmm. Wasn’t his first wife a Menninger? Hmm. If memory serves,
Menninger senior’s son, James, had that plantation on the Ashley, below Grafton, hmm. Didn’t he marry that girl—dear me, I can’t recall her name—that Richmond belle?”

  At that instant, had the Devil himself appeared shrouded in smoke, Scarlett would have taken his bargain gladly for one more barbecue, one more night of waltzes and music and fun.

  But the moment passed and Scarlett’s immortal soul shrank from the brink. “I believe I’ll take the air,” she said, not troubling to conceal her yawn behind her black silk fan.

  Outdoors, Charleston’s heat struck Scarlett like a wet woolen glove. Shading her eyes, she squinted against the glare. How she wished she were at shady Tara.

  The garden separated the Ward house from dependencies concealed behind a thick boxwood hedge. Louisiana iris bloomed beneath flame-colored azaleas whose scent was overwhelmed by lavender.

  Frederick Ward’s son Willy and his friends were gathered beneath an ancient eucalyptus. Willy Ward’s friends wore the elaborate uniforms of the Palmetto Brigade, the Moultrie Guards, and the Washington Light Infantry. Oh dear! Scarlett knew they would prate on about the War, and she must pretend to be fascinated by their gallantry. Scarlett Hamilton was so sick of boys!

  Inhaling Charleston’s moist, heavily scented air, Scarlett recalled Tara’s subtly aromatic roses. The memory was so poignant that, hundreds of miles from home, Scarlett closed her eyes and swayed.

  “Cousin Scarlett! Cousin! Are you unwell? Let me help you into the shade. You aren’t accustomed to our sun.” His face solemn with concern, Willy Ward guided her to a chair.

  “Why, thank you, Willy.” Scarlett’s smile was wistful.

  Although Willy had been quickest off the mark, other young men rushed to attend the lovely young widow. One suggested a cold cloth; another offered lemonade. Did she wish a parasol?

  “Oh, thank you all. You are too kind!”

  Across the garden, a middle-aged man in civilian clothes was leaning against the gate. His arms were crossed and a smile flickered across his lips. Scarlett’s heart started thumping so fast, she put her hand to her chest.