Scarlett

by Alexandra Ripley

  “I’ll tell Susie to start heating the irons,” Eulalie offered. She rang the silver bell near her plate.

  “She’d better wash out this cloth before she starts on anything else,” Pauline said. “Once a stain sets—”

  “You might observe, Sister, that I have not yet finished my breakfast. Surely you don’t expect me to let it get cold while Susie clears everything off the table.”

  Scarlett fled to her room.

  “You won’t need that heavy fur cape, Scarlett,” said Pauline.

  “Indeed not,” said Eulalie. “We have a typical Charleston winter day today. Why, I wouldn’t even wear this shawl if I didn’t have a cold.”

  Scarlett unhooked the cape and handed it to Pansy. If Eulalie wanted everyone else to have a cold, too, she’d be glad to oblige her. Her aunts must take her for a fool. She knew why they didn’t want her to wear her cape. They were just like the Old Guard in Atlanta. A person had to be shabby like them to be respectable. She noticed Eulalie eyeing the fashionable feather-trimmed hat she was wearing, and her jaw hardened belligerently. If she had to face Rhett’s mother, at least she would do it in style.

  “Let’s be off, then,” said Eulalie, capitulating. Susie pulled the big door open, and Scarlett followed her aunts out into the bright day. She gasped when she stepped down from the entrance. It was like May, not November. Sun reflected warmth from the white crushed shell of the path and settled on her shoulders like a weightless blanket. She tilted her chin up to feel it on her face and her eyes closed in sensuous pleasure. “Oh, Aunties, this feels wonderful,” she said. “I hope your carriage has a fold-down top.”

  The aunts laughed. “Dear child,” Eulalie said, “there’s not a living soul in Charleston with a carriage any more, except for Sally Brewton. We’ll walk. Everyone does.”

  “There are carriages, Sister,” Pauline corrected. “The carpetbaggers have them.”

  “You could hardly call the carpetbaggers ‘living souls,’ Sister. Soulless is what they are, else they couldn’t be carpetbaggers.”

  “Vultures,” Pauline agreed with a sniff.

  “Buzzards,” said Eulalie. The sisters laughed again. Scarlett laughed with them. The beautiful day was making her feel almost giddy with delight. Nothing could possibly go wrong on a day like this. Suddenly she felt a great fondness for her aunts, even for their harmless quarreling. She followed them across the wide empty street in front of the house and up the short stairway on the other side of it. As she reached the top of it, a breeze fluttered the feathers on her hat and touched her lips with a taste of salt.

  “Oh my goodness,” she said. On the far side of the elevated promenade, the green-brown waters of Charleston’s harbor stretched before her to the horizon. To her left, flags fluttered on the tall masts of ships along the wharves. To her right the trees of a long low island glowed a bright green. The sunlight glittered on the tips of tiny pointed wavelets, like diamonds scattered across the water. A trio of brilliantly white birds soared in the cloudless blue sky then swooped down to skim the tops of the waves. They looked as if they were playing a game, a weightless, carefree kind of follow-the-leader. The salt-sweet light breeze caressed her neck.

  She’d been right to come, she was sure of it now. She turned to her aunts. “It’s a wonderful day,” Scarlett said.

  The promenade was so wide, they walked three abreast along it. Twice they met other people, first an elderly gentleman in an oldfashioned frock coat and beaver hat, then a lady accompanied by a thin boy who blushed when he was spoken to. Each time, they stopped, and the aunts introduced Scarlett. “. . . our niece from Atlanta. Her mother was our sister Ellen, and she’s married to Eleanor Butler’s boy, Rhett.” The old gentleman bowed and kissed Scarlett’s hand, the lady introduced her grandson, who gazed at Scarlett as if he had been struck by lightning. For Scarlett the day was getting better with every passing minute. Then she saw that the next walkers approaching them were men in blue uniforms.

  Her step faltered, she grabbed Pauline’s arm.

  “Auntie,” she whispered, “there are Yankee soldiers coming at us.”

  “Keep walking,” said Pauline clearly. “They’ll have to get out of our way.”

  Scarlett looked at Pauline with shock. Who would have thought that her skinny old aunt could be so brave? Her own heart was thumping so loud that she was sure the Yankee soldiers would hear it, but she willed her feet to move.

  When only three paces separated them, the soldiers drew aside, pressing their bodies against the railings of metal pipe that lined the edge of the walkway along the water. Pauline and Eulalie sailed past them as if they were not there. Scarlett lifted her chin to equal the tilt of her aunts’ and kept pace.

  Somewhere ahead of them a band began to play “Oh! Susanna.” The rollicking, merry tune was as bright and sunny as the day. Eulalie and Pauline walked more quickly, keeping time with the music, but Scarlett’s feet felt like lead. Coward! she berated herself. But inside she couldn’t stop trembling.

  “Why are there so many damned Yankees in Charleston?” she asked angrily. “I saw some at the depot, too.”

  “My goodness, Scarlett,” said Eulalie, “didn’t you know? Charleston is still under military occupation. They’ll likely never leave us alone. They hate us because we threw them out of Fort Sumter and then held it against their whole fleet.”

  “And heaven only knows how many regiments,” Pauline added. The sisters’ faces were glowing with pride.

  “Mother of God,” Scarlett whispered. What had she done? Walked right into the arms of the enemy. She knew what military government meant: the helplessness and the rage, the constant fear that they’d confiscate your house or put you in jail or shoot you if you broke one of their laws. Military government was all-powerful. She had lived under its capricious rule for five harsh years. How could she have been such a fool as to stumble back into it again?

  “They do have a pleasant band,” said Pauline. “Come along, Scarlett, we cross here. The Butler house is the one with the fresh paint.”

  “Lucky Eleanor,” said Eulalie, “to have such a devoted son. Rhett positively worships his mother.”

  Scarlett stared at the house. Not a house, a mansion. Shining white columns soared a hundred feet to support the roof overhang above the deep porches along the side of the tall, imposing brick house. Scarlett’s knees felt weak. She couldn’t go in, she couldn’t. She’d never seen any place as grand, as impressive. How would she ever find anything to say to the woman who lived in such magnificence? Who could destroy all her hopes with one word to Rhett.

  Pauline had her by the arm, hurrying her across the street. “ ‘. . . with a banjo on my knee,” she was singing in a low off-key murmur. Scarlett allowed herself to be led like a sleepwalker. In time, she found herself standing inside a door, looking at a tall elegant woman with shining white hair crowning a lined lovely face.

  “Dear Eleanor,” said Eulalie.

  “You’ve brought Scarlett,” said Mrs. Butler. “My dear child,” she said to Scarlett, “you look so pale.” She put her hands lightly on Scarlett’s shoulders and bent to kiss her cheek.

  Scarlett closed her eyes. The faint scent of lemon verbena surrounded her, floating gently from Eleanor Butler’s silk gown and silken hair. It was the fragrance that had always been part of Ellen O’Hara, the scent for Scarlett of comfort, of safety, of love, of life before the War.

  Scarlett felt her eyes spilling uncontrollable tears.

  “There, there,” Rhett’s mother said. “It’s all right, my dear. Whatever it is, it’s all right now. You’ve come home at last. I’ve been longing for you to come.” She put her arms around her daughter-in-law and held her close.

  11

  Eleanor Butler was a Southern lady. Her slow, soft voice and indolent, graceful movements disguised a formidable energy and efficiency. Ladies were trained from birth to be decorative, to be sympathetic and fascinated listeners, to be appealingly helpless and empty-headed an
d admiring. They were also trained to manage the intricate and demanding responsibilities of huge houses and large, often warring, staffs of servants—while always making it seem that the house, the garden, the kitchen, the servants ran themselves flawlessly while the lady of the house concentrated on matching colors of silk for her delicate embroidery.

  When the deprivations of war reduced the staffs of thirty or forty to one or two, the demands on women increased exponentially, but the expectations remained the same. The battered houses must continue to welcome guests, shelter families, sparkle with clean windows and shining brass, and have a well-groomed, imperturbable, accomplished mistress at leisure in the drawing room. Somehow the ladies of the South did it.

  Eleanor soothed Scarlett with gentle words and fragrant tea, flattered Pauline by asking her opinion of the desk recently installed in the drawing room, diverted Eulalie with a plea to taste the pound cake and judge if the extract of vanilla bean was strong enough. She also murmured to Manigo, her manservant, that her maid Celie would help him and Scarlett’s maid transfer Scarlett’s things from her aunts’ house to the big bedroom overlooking the garden where Mr. Rhett slept.

  In under ten minutes, everything had been accomplished to move Scarlett without opposition, or injured feelings, or interruption to the even rhythm of the tranquil life under Eleanor Butler’s roof. Scarlett felt like a girl again, safe from all harm, sheltered by a mother’s all-powerful love.

  She gazed at Eleanor through misted, admiring eyes. This was what she wanted to be, had always meant to be, a lady like her mother, like Eleanor Butler. Ellen O’Hara had instructed her to be a lady, had planned for it and wanted it. I can do it now, Scarlett told herself. I can make up for all the mistakes I made. I can make Mother proud of me.

  When she was a child, Mammy had described heaven to her as a land of clouds like big feather mattresses where angels rested, amusing themselves by looking down at the goings-on below through cracks in the sky. Ever since her mother died, Scarlett had had an uncomfortable childish conviction that Ellen was watching her with unhappy concern.

  I’ll make it all better now, she promised her mother. Eleanor’s affectionate welcome had, for the moment, erased all the fears and memories that filled her heart and mind when she saw the Yankee soldiers. It had even wiped out Scarlett’s unacknowledged anxiety about her decision to follow Rhett to Charleston. She felt safe and loved and invincible. She could do anything, everything. And she would. She would win Rhett’s love again. She would be the lady Ellen always meant for her to be. She would be admired and respected and adored by everyone. And she would never, ever, be lonely again.

  When Pauline closed the last tiny, ivory-inlaid drawer of the rosewood desk and Eulalie hurriedly swallowed the last slice of cake, Eleanor Butler stood, pulling Scarlett up with her. “I have to pick up my boots from the cobbler this morning,” she said, “so I’ll take Scarlett along and introduce her to King Street. No woman can possibly feel at home until she knows where the shops are. Will you all join us?”

  To Scarlett’s immense relief, her aunts declined. She wanted Mrs. Butler all to herself.

  The walk to Charleston’s shops was pure pleasure in the warm bright winter sunlight. King Street was a revelation and a delight. Stores lined it for block after block; dry goods, hardware, boots, tobacco and cigars, hats, jewelry, china, seeds, medicines, wines, books, gloves, candies—it seemed that everything and anything could be bought on King Street. There were crowds of shoppers, too, and dozens of smart buggies and open carriages, with liveried drivers and fashionably dressed occupants. Charleston was nowhere near as dreary as she had remembered it and feared it to be. It was much bigger and busier than Atlanta. And no sign of the Panic at all.

  Unfortunately, Rhett’s mother behaved as if none of the color and excitement and busyness existed. She walked past windows full of ostrich plumes and painted fans without looking at them, crossed the street without so much as a thank you to the women in the buggy that had stopped to avoid hitting her. Scarlett remembered what her aunts had told her: there wasn’t a carriage to he had in Charleston except those owned by Yankees, carpetbaggers and scallywags. She felt a rush of white-hot rage at the vultures that were fattening on the defeated South. When she followed Mrs. Butler into one of the boot shops it did her heart good to see the proprietor turn over his richly dressed customer to a young assistant so that he could hurry forward to Rhett’s mother. It was a pleasure to be with a member of the Old Guard in Charleston. She wished fervently that Mrs. Merriwether or Mrs. Elsing were there to see her.

  “I left some boots to be resoled, Mr. Braxton,” Eleanor said, “and I also want my daughter-in-law to know where to come for the finest footwear and the most agreeable service. Scarlett, dear, Mr. Braxton will take the same good care of you that he has of me for all these years.”

  “It will be my privilege, ma’am.” Mr. Braxton bowed elegantly.

  “How do you do, Mr. Braxton, and I thank you,” Scarlett replied, with great refinement. “I believe I’ll get a pair of boots today myself.” She raised her skirt a few inches to display her fragile, thin leather shoes. “Something more suitable for city walking,” she said proudly. No one was going to take her for a carriage-riding scallywag.

  Mr. Braxton took an immaculate white handkerchief from his pocket and brushed off the spotless upholstery on two chairs. “If you ladies please . . .”

  When he disappeared behind a curtain in the rear of the shop, Eleanor leaned close to Scarlett and whispered in her ear. “Look closely at his hair when he kneels to fit your boots. He colors it with boot polish.”

  It took all of Scarlett’s self-control not to laugh when she saw that Mrs. Butler was right, especially when Eleanor was looking at her with such a conspiratorial twinkle in her dark eyes. When they left the shop, she began to giggle. “You shouldn’t have told me that, Miss Eleanor. I nearly made a spectacle of myself in there.”

  Mrs. Butler smiled serenely. “You’ll recognize him easily in the future,” she said. “Now let’s go to Onslow’s for a dish of ice cream. One of the waiters there makes the best moonshine in all of South Carolina, and I want to order a few quarts for soaking the fruitcakes. The ice cream is excellent, too.”

  “Miss Eleanor!”

  “My dear, brandy’s not available for love nor money. We all have to make do the best we can, do we not? And there’s something quite exciting about black-market dealings, don’t you think?”

  What Scarlett thought was that she didn’t blame Rhett one bit for adoring his mother.

  Eleanor Butler continued to initiate Scarlett into the inner life of Charleston by going to the fancy goods draper for a spool of white cotton (the woman behind the counter had killed her husband with a sharpened knitting needle through the heart, but the judge ruled that he had fallen on it when he was drunk, because everyone had seen the bruises on her arms and face for years) and to the pharmacist for some witch hazel (poor man, he was so nearsighted he once paid a small fortune for a peculiar tropical fish preserved in alcohol that he was convinced was a small mermaid—for real medicine, always go to the shop on Broad Street that I’ll show you).

  Scarlett was sorely disappointed when Eleanor said it was time to go home. She couldn’t remember ever having had such fun, and she almost begged for visits to a few more shops. But, “I think perhaps we’ll take the horsecar back downtown,” Mrs. Butler said. “I’m feeling a little tired.” And Scarlett immediately began to worry. Was Eleanor’s pallor a sign of illness instead of the pale skin so prized by ladies? She held her mother-in-law’s elbow when they stepped up into the brightly painted green and yellow tram and hovered over her until Eleanor settled into the wicker-covered seat. Rhett would never forgive her if she let something awful happen to his mother. She’d never forgive hersell, either.

  She looked from the corner of her eye at Mrs. Butler as the horsecar moved slowly along its tracks, but she couldn’t see any outward sign of trouble. Eleanor was talking cheerfu
lly about more shopping they would do together. “We’ll go to the Market tomorrow, you’ll meet everyone you should know there. It’s the traditional place to learn all the news, too. The paper never prints the really interesting things.”

  The car jolted and turned to the left, then moved a block and stopped at an intersection. Scarlett gasped. Immediately outside the open window next to Eleanor she saw a soldier in blue, rifle on his shoulder, marching in the shadows of a tall colonnade. “Yankees,” she whispered.

  Mrs. Butler’s gaze followed Scarlett’s eyes. “That’s right, Georgia’s been rid of them for some time, hasn’t it? We’ve been occupied so long that we hardly even notice them any more. Ten years next February. One gets accustomed to almost anything in ten years.”

  “I’ll never get used to them,” Scarlett whispered. “Never.”

  A sudden noise made her jump. Then she realized that it was the chime of a great clock somewhere above them. The horsecar moved into the intersection, turning to the right.

  “One o’clock,” said Mrs. Butler. “No wonder I’m tired; it was a long morning.” Behind them the chimes ended their quartet of notes. A single bell rang once. “That’s every Charlestonian’s timekeeper,” Eleanor Butler said, “the bells in Saint Michael’s steeple. They record our births and our passings.”

  Scarlett was looking at the tall houses and walled gardens they were passing. Without exception they bore the scars of war. Pockholes of shelling marred every surface, and poverty was visible on all sides: peeling paint, boards nailed over shattered windows that could not be replaced, gaps and rust disfiguring elaborate, lace-like wrought iron balconies and gates. The trees lining the street had thin trunks; they were youthful replacements for the giants broken by shelling. Damn the Yankees.

  And yet the sun gleamed on brightly polished brass door knobs, and there was the scent of flowers blooming behind the garden walls. They’ve got gumption, these Charleston folks, she thought. They don’t give in.