THE mirror!
Thoughts of that one object consumed Mary Scarlett’s mind as she swept into the second-floor sale room of Sotheby’s that crystal-bright spring afternoon.
The mirror—listed in the catalogue as “American, Eighteenth Century, gilt frame handcrafted by Savannah master artisan Will Johnston”—might have been on the minds of many of the other buyers that afternoon. But it quickly lost its hold on their attention when the woman in the white Chanel suit entered the room on the arm of a man who was undeniably Hollywood-handsome. They made a striking couple, like a latter-day Scarlett and Ashley. The amazing thing—the detail that kept everyone staring—was that no one knew who they were.
Mary Scarlett felt their stares, but looked neither right nor left. Her gaze focused instead on the delicate angels, flowers, scrolls, and hearts that framed the silvery face of the mirror—her dream machine, her obsession since earliest childhood.
“How’s this?” Allen asked, indicating two seats on the aisle only a few rows back from the massive hooded podium from which the auctioneer would conduct his business.
“Fine.” Mary Scarlett took her seat, still staring at the mirror displayed on the stage. “How long before they begin?”
“The auction starts at five minutes past two. It’s 1:40 now. I’ll just have time to dash upstairs and see how things look for the Josephine. I won’t be long, darlin’.”
Allen left her then, stopping a moment to speak to a man wearing a blue Sotheby’s blazer. They chatted for only a moment before Allen disappeared through a door.
All around her, the hundred-and-fifty-or-so buyers talked in subdued tones. A dapper, elderly gentleman seated next to her turned slightly and shielded his words with his bidding paddle. “Odds are your young man’s set on buying the Josephine for you. Well, if it’s not too forward of me, I’d like to say you’ll look even more lovely with that fabulous bauble adorning your person.”
Mary Scarlett smiled and nodded, not bothering to tell the man that Allen was selling, not buying, the necklace.
The silver-haired matron sitting to the man’s right dug bejeweled fingers into his arm. “Duffort,” she said in a harsh whisper, “how many times must I tell you not to speak to strange women?”
Allen reappeared, drawing Mary Scarlett’s attention away from the couple beside her. His deep frown sent a chill to her heart.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He sat down and squeezed her hand. “Nothing to be alarmed about, honey. But it looks like we might have some stiff competition for the mirror. See the guy over there at the lectern talking on the white telephone?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he takes phone bids. When I went up to the third floor, one of my buddies tipped me off that there’s another party interested in the mirror. He’ll be calling in bids against us.”
“Who?” Mary Scarlett demanded a bit too loudly.
“I don’t know. Some out-of-town collector. He’s here in the building, just flew in and didn’t have time to change or something. The whole thing sounds screwy. Anyway, he’ll be watching and bidding from the board room up there.” He pointed above to a row of windows that looked down on the sale room.
Mary Scarlett glanced up, almost afraid to see the face of their competition. But the windows looked blank, like wide, staring eyes.
“Then you don’t think we’ll get it?” Her voice trembled as she spoke.
“Yes, we will,” Allen answered determinedly. “This just means we’ll probably have to pay a lot more than I’d bargained for. But surely he won’t force us over my limit.”
Mary Scarlett’s heart sank. Allen hadn’t mentioned anything about a limit before. If only she had her own inheritance, she would pay anything to get the mirror back. She fully intended to repay Allen as soon as humanly possible.
Just then a hush fell over the audience. All heads turned toward a tall man walking down the center aisle toward the stage.
“It’s about to begin,” Allen whispered. “That’s the chairman and chief auctioneer.”
“Lot Number twelve hundred,” the auctioneer called in the voice of a game show host, and the sale began.
“Showing here,” called the man in the blue blazer Allen had spoken to earlier.
“Showing on stage,” the auctioneer said, indicating a Queen Anne sideboard.
The bidding began slowly, but even so Mary Scarlett had difficulty following what was going on. The price went up and up without her being conscious of any bidders. Finally, the man next to her raised his paddle slightly.
After a long pause, the auctioneer’s gavel came down. “Sold! For twenty-seven thousand dollars.”
The amount made Mary Scarlett shudder.
Meanwhile, the buyer upstairs was staring down at her, watching her reaction, his nerves as tightly strung as her own. He resumed pacing the green carpet, sipping a Scotch and water, waiting for the final item, Lot Number 1240, the mirror.
More and more items were sold Time and again the auctioneer’s gavel crashed down. Prices soared. A good day. The man on the podium was almost smiling.
Mary Scarlett felt Allen grow tense beside her as time neared for the Josephine to be shown. He muttered under his breath, praying one minute, cursing the next.
“Calm down, Allen,” Mary Scarlett whispered at last. “You’re going to have a stroke.”
“A stroke’s what I want—a stroke of good luck. This sale can make me if that necklace goes for top price like the rest has today.”
Top price. The words chilled Mary Scarlett through as she glanced again from Granny Boo’s mirror to the windows high above. What was the top price on this fragile antique that was part of her life, part of her heritage?
Bidding on the necklace went well, better than even Allen could have hoped for. When the gavel came down after a more than generous bid from Taiwan, Mary Scarlett could tell it took all Allen’s control to keep from jumping up and giving the Rebel yell.
The gentleman sitting next to Mary Scarlett leaned over and whispered, “I’m so sorry. You were born to wear that necklace.”
She smiled in response. Her smile faded a moment later.
“Lot Number 1240,” the auctioneer announced.
“Showing here,” said the man in the blazer.
“Showing on stage,” called the auctioneer.
Allen started with a bid of five hundred, which only brought a scowl from the auctioneer. He set the floor at one thousand. That amount was quickly reached by a nod from the man on the white phone. The gentleman next to Mary Scarlett bid fifteen hundred, but dropped out when she gave him a pleading look.
“It belonged to my great-grandmother,” she whispered.
Allen went to two thousand, cancelled out immediately by the anonymous bidder upstairs. Mary Scarlett turned a pleading gaze toward the windows.
At five thousand, Allen turned to Mary Scarlett and shook his head slightly.
“One more bid,” she begged.
“You make it,” he said.
With a shaking hand, Mary Scarlett raised her paddle. The auctioneer nodded. Silence fell over the room. It seemed that no one was breathing. The man on the phone remained motionless. Mary Scarlett, her heart pounding, stared up at the windows, then back to the auctioneer. His gavel was raised to strike.
Then came the quiet voice of the man on the white phone. “Ten thousand here.”
“Sold!” To Mary Scarlett, the crash of the gavel sounded like a gunshot right through her heart.
Allen was saying something to her, but she couldn’t concentrate on his words. She could only stare at the mirror with a sinking feeling. Slowly, she rose and walked toward the stage. She had to look into it one last time.
So, it was all over, she thought. Finished! Forever!
Mary Scarlett couldn’t even cry. She felt numb and hopeless. Slowly, she made her way down the aisle to stand and gaze at her distorted image in the wavy looking
glass. She thought about Annie and Elisabeth and Marie and Louise and all the other women who had looked into this same mirror just as she was doing now and had lost the men they loved. “A cycle of unhappiness,” Granny Boo had called it. A never-ending cycle, she knew now.
Tears misted her eyes. Her own reflection blurred. She blinked rapidly, still staring at the mirror. She closed her eyes.
“So now it’s over.” She sighed, ready to turn away.
A hand touched her shoulder. Someone whispered her name. She opened her eyes and stared. There in the mirror, beside her own reflection was a man’s face. Her lover’s face. He looked so sad.
“I bought it for you, Mary Scarlett,” he said. “I guess I knew all along that we never had a chance, but I wanted you to have something to remember me by. Will gave it to Annie out of love. Now I’m giving it to you for the same reasons.”
Mary Scarlett wanted to turn and throw her arms around Bolt, but she couldn’t move. She found herself mesmerized by his face and hers, together in the mirror. Chills and thrills ran through her. Tears brimmed in her eyes again. Tears of joy, not sadness this time.
When she couldn’t find her voice, he turned as if he meant to leave. Mary Scarlett spun around and threw herself into his arms. “Oh, Bolt! Don’t leave! Will you marry me? Please!”
After he grabbed her and hugged her, he threw back his head and laughed. “I thought you’d never ask, darlin’.”
The staid crowd in the auction house applauded sedately as Bolt gave Mary Scarlett a million dollar kiss. She never noticed their admiring audience. She was too caught up in this new feeling, this sensation of belonging and cherishing and being loved.
“Bolt,” she whispered between kisses, “thank you for the mirror. We’ll take it back to Savannah and hang it on the foyer wall where it belongs. But I’ll never, ever have to look into it again. You’re the man I love. The man I’ve always loved.”
“Do you mean that, Mary Scarlett?”
“I’ve never meant anything more sincerely in my whole life.”
He drew her closer, kissing her again. But their embrace, reflected in the mirror, showed Will kissing Annie, Jean Lafitte caressing Marie, and, finally, Jacques embracing Louise.
By the time they looked again, Mary Scarlett and Bolt saw only two people in love, side by side, where they belonged and would remain for the rest of their long, happy lives.
Epilogue
During the month of June, Savannah is a city of weddings. Every weekend will find heavenly brides and handsome bridegrooms riding in limousines or horse-drawn carriages into brand-new lives, kissing for photographs in the city’s green squares, speaking their sacred vows before robed clergy in any of a dozen ornate churches with stained-glass angels looking benignly on.
Bolton Conrad and Mary Scarlett Lamar joined these happy ranks on a softly sunny Saturday when all of Savannah was perfumed with roses, oleander, and bridal wreath, and a subtle, salt-tanged breeze blew the drifting beards of the ancient oaks. Dr. Schlager and Helga stood with them on that special day, making it a double wedding. The new Mrs. Schlager whispered to Mary Scarlett afterward that the woman in her aura no longer wore a dark shroud, but shimmered in bridal white.
In the previous weeks, much had happened. Detained by the New York Police Department on a warrant sworn out by Ida Hampstead, Allen Overman had not flown back to Savannah as soon as expected. His world-traveling benefactor had returned unannounced to her home in Savannah the very hour after Allen and Mary Scarlett left for New York. She found her bed unmade, her wine cellar depleted, and a number of her own valuables missing while someone else’s English silver, jewelry, and Limoges china were now stockpiled in her cellar.
Mrs. Hamptead had also been surprised when she walked into her bedroom to find a robbery in progress. ’Gator or ’Tator White—she could never tell which was which—was busily removing the rest of her jewelry from a safe she kept in her closet. He didn’t hear her come in or realize she was standing over him until an ugly ironstone pitcher that she had been meaning to dispose of for years crashed down on his skull.
Under interrogation later that day, ’Tator, as it turned out, confessed that he was not the brains of the operation—a fact that did not surprise Mrs. Hampstead in the least. What did surprise her was that he named as the mastermind behind this systematic looting of her property the very man she had trusted to guard it while she was away—Allen Overman. She found it difficult to believe that the “dear boy” could do such a dastardly thing, but not so difficult that it kept her from swearing out a warrant for his arrest.
Allen was picked up outside Sotheby’s in New York immediately following the auction, returned under guard to Savannah, indicted on charges of grand theft, then released to the custody of one of his ex-wives until time for his trial. Aurelia LaMotte, more than happy to have her former husband and current lover under house-arrest, planned a series of parties to entertain her prisoner and show him off to her friends. Even Mrs. Hampstead, firmly ensconced once more in her mansion on Lafayette Square, attended one of the soirées. Of all the members of Savannah society who were invited, only Bolt and Mary Scarlett sent their regrets to Aurelia’s lavish prison theme gala in Allen’s honor on Memorial Day, where champagne was served in tin cups and the guests came dressed as gangsters, gun molls, guards, and inmates.
Lumpkin Quincey was having his own prison party that very night down at Reidsville. Detective Edgerton had been correct; the new inmate would have plenty of time for reading during his nine-month incarceration. He was soon to be joined by ’Gator and ’Tator White.
Kathleen O’Shea quickly made the Millionaire’s Club at her new real estate position in Atlanta, selling one of the old Buckhead estates to an Arab sheik, who immediately had the fabulous landmark mansion painted hot pink and lined the long, curving drive with Cadillacs, Volvos, and BMWs in matching hues.
As for Richard Habersham Lamar, the alligator from those murky depths of the Okefenokee who had devoured him could have cared less that he was a member of the Oglethorpe Club or a wife-murderer. He had been simply breakfast, a fatty morsel, part of the food chain. Big Dick’s remains—a few pale, cracked bones—were never recovered, but settled down and down into the primordial ooze to become oil to fuel the as yet uninvented machines of far off generations.
Magnolia, free a last of the men who had plagued her all her life, married young Radley Axel Tollison III in a brief ceremony at the Chatham County Courthouse on the very day he graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design. After a few years of struggle, Rat placed his mark on the world of commercial art, lost the nose and tongue rings, and let his hair go back to its natural brown. The couple was finally accepted back into the fold when the elder Tollisons received word that their daughter-in-law was expecting. “Jennifer,” as Magnolia began calling herself after her marriage, became the toast of Sea Island society, singing at charity functions and shepherding the Tollison triplets to ballet recitals, harp lessons, and to the elegant birthday soirees of the many future debutantes of island society.
Mr. and Mrs. Bolton Conrad settled into their glorious marriage with the ease of two people deeply in love who have known each other since the beginning of time. Together they finished the renovation of the old house on Bull Street, turning Mary Scarlett’s childhood room into a nursery, since their first child was expected on St. Patrick’s Day, barely a year from the moment Bolt had picked up the phone that bright March morning to hear a sultry-sweet, magnolia-flavored voice whisper, “It’s Mary Scarlett, and I’m back!”
Well, she was back, all right! Back in his life, back in his arms, back where she belonged. Forever and ever. Back to raise the family he had always dreamed of. Back to accept the love he had always offered. Back to make dreams come true he had never thought possible.
As for the mirror, they hung it in the foyer where it had always been, and where it would remain for many generations yet to come. A symbol, a sign that love
is never impossible when it comes straight from the heart.
Granny Boo and the ghosts of all the lovelorn ancestors smiled down on the Bull Street house and its new family. But the spirits never tarried long in Savannah because out at Bonaventure the party went on … and on … and on…
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