Scarlett

by Alexandra Ripley

She started from the beginning, with the truth about her marriage. “I didn’t love him, at least I didn’t know it if I did. I was in love with someone else. And then, when I knew it was Rhett I loved, he didn’t love me any more. That’s what he said, anyhow. But I don’t believe that’s true, Colum; it just can’t be.”

  “Did he leave you?”

  “Yes. But then I left him. That’s what I wonder, if it was a mistake.”

  “Let me get this straight . . .” With infinite patience Colum unravelled the tangle of Scarlett’s story. It was well after midnight when he knocked the dottle out of his long-cold pipe and put it in his pocket.

  “You did just what you should have, my dear,” he said. “Because we wear our collars backwards some people think that priests are not men. They’re wrong. I can understand your husband. I can even feel great compassion for his problem. It’s deeper and more hurtful than yours, Scarlett. He’s fighting himself, and for a strong man that’s a mighty battle. He’ll come after you, and you must be generous to him when he does, for he will be battlesore.”

  “But when, Colum?”

  “That I cannot tell you. I know this, though. It’s he that must do the seeking, you can’t do it for him. He has to fight himself alone, until he faces his need for you and admits it is good.”

  “You’re sure he’ll come?”

  “That I’m sure of. And now I’m to bed. You do the same.”

  Scarlett nestled into her pillow and tried to fight the heaviness of her eyelids. She wanted to stretch this moment, to enjoy the satisfaction that Colum’s certainty had given her. Rhett would be here—maybe not as soon as she wanted, but she could wait.

  45

  Scarlett was none too pleased when Kathleen woke her up the next morning. After sitting up so late talking to Colum, she’d much rather have slept longer.

  “I’ve brought your tea,” said Kathleen softly. “And Maureen asks will you be wanting to go to the Market with her this morning?”

  Scarlett turned her head away and closed her eyes again. “No, I think I’ll go back to sleep.” She could feel Kathleen hovering. Why didn’t the silly girl just go away and let her sleep? “What do you want, Kathleen?”

  “Begging your pardon, Scarlett, I wondered if you’d be getting dressed? Maureen wants me to go in your place if you’re not going, and I don’t know when we’ll be back.”

  “Mary Kate can help me.” Scarlett mumbled into her pillow.

  “Oh, no. She’s been off to school for ages. It’s all but nine already.”

  Scarlett forced her eyes open. She felt as if she could sleep forever—if people would let her. “All right,” she sighed, “get my things out. I’ll wear the red and blue plaid.”

  “Oh, you do look so lovely in that one,” Kathleen said happily. She said the same whatever Scarlett chose. Kathleen considered Scarlett quite the most elegant and beautiful woman in the world.

  Scarlett drank her tea while Kathleen arranged her hair in a thick figure-eight across the nape of the neck. I look like the wrath of God, she thought. There were faint shadows under her eyes. Maybe I should wear the pink dress, it’s better with my skin, but then Kathleen would have to do the laces again, the pink has a smaller waist, and her fussing is driving me crazy. “That’s fine,” she said when the last hairpin was in, “now go on.”

  “Would you care for another cup of tea?”

  “No. Go on.” I’d really like coffee, Scarlett thought. Maybe I should go to the Market after all . . . No, I’m too tired to walk up and down, up and down, looking at every single thing. She powdered under her eyes and made a face at herself in the looking glass before she went downstairs to rummage up some breakfast.

  “My grief!” she said when she saw Colum reading the newspaper in the kitchen. She’d thought there was no one in the house.

  “I came to ask you a favor,” he said. He wanted some feminine advice in selecting things for people back in Ireland. “I can manage the lads myself, and their fathers, but the lasses are a mystery. Scarlett will know, I told myself, what’s the latest thing in America.”

  She laughed at his perplexed expression. “I’d love to help, Colum, but you have to pay me—with a cup of coffee and a sweet roll at the bakery on Broughton Street.” She no longer felt tired at all.

  “I don’t know why you asked me to come with you, Colum! You don’t like a single thing I’ve suggested.” Scarlett looked with exasperation at the piles of kid gloves, lace handkerchiefs, clocked silk stockings, beaded bags, painted fans, and lengths of silks, velvets, and satins. The drapers’ assistants had pulled out all the choicest wares of the most fashionable shop in Savannah, and Colum had shaken his head no to everything.

  “I apologize for all the trouble I’ve given,” he said to the stiffly smiling clerks. He offered Scarlett his arm. “I beg your pardon, too, Scarlett. I fear I didn’t make it clear enough what I was wanting. Come along, and I’ll pay the debt I owe you; then we’ll try once more. A cup of coffee would be welcome.”

  It was going to take more than a cup of coffee to make her forgive him for this wild goose chase! Scarlett ostentatiously ignored the proffered arm and sailed out of the shop.

  Her temper improved when Colum suggested they go to the Pulaski House for coffee. The huge hotel was very fashionable, and Scarlett had never been there. When they were seated on a tufted velvet settee in one of the ornate, marble-columned reception rooms, she looked around her with satisfaction. “This is nice,” she said happily when a white-gloved waiter brought a laden silver tray to the marble-topped table in front of them.

  “You look right at home in your elegant finery amidst all the grand marble and potted palms,” he said, smiling. “That’s why we crossed paths instead of travelling together.” People in Ireland, he explained, led lives more simple than Scarlett knew. More simple, perhaps, than she could even imagine. They lived on their farms, in the countryside, with no city nearby at all, only a village with a church and a blacksmith and a public house where the mail-coach stopped. The only store at all was a room in the corner of the public house where you could mail a letter and buy tobacco and a few foodstuffs. Travelling wagons came by with ribbons and trinkets and papers of pins. People found their entertainment by going to other people’s houses.

  “But that’s just like plantation life,” Scarlett exclaimed. “Why, Tara’s five miles from Jonesboro, and when you get there there’s nothing much but a train depot and a puny little feed store.”

  “Ah, no, Scarlett. Plantations have mansion houses, not simple whitewashed farmers’ homes.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Colum O’Hara! The Wilkes’ Twelve Oaks was the only mansion house in all Clayton County. Most folks have houses that started out with a couple of rooms and a kitchen, then added on what they needed.”

  Colum smiled and admitted defeat. Nevertheless, he said, the gifts for the family couldn’t be city things. The girls would do better with a length of cotton than one of satin, and they wouldn’t know what to do with a painted fan.

  Scarlett put her cup in its saucer with a decisive clink. “Calico!” she said. “I’ll bet you they’d love calico. It comes in all kinds of bright patterns and makes up into pretty frocks. We all had calico for everyday stay-at-home dresses.”

  “And boots,” Colum said. He took a thick packet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. “I have the names and sizes here.”

  Scarlett laughed at the length of the paper. “They sure saw you coming, Colum.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. It’s an American saying.” Every man, woman, and child in County Meath must have put their name on Colum’s list, she thought. It was just like Aunt Eulalie’s “As long as you’re going shopping, would you just pick up something for me?” Somehow she never remembered to pay for whatever it was, and Scarlett would bet Colum’s Irish friends would turn out just as forgetful.

  “Tell me more about Ireland,” she said. There was plenty of coffee left
in the pot.

  “Ah, it’s a rare beautiful island,” said Colum softly. He talked with love in his lilting voice about green hills crowned with castles, of rushing streams rimmed with flowers and leaping with fish, of walking between fragrant hedgerows in misty rain, of music everywhere, of a sky wider and higher than any other sky with a sun as gentle and warming as a mother’s kiss . . .

  “You sound almost as homesick as Kathleen.”

  Colum laughed at himself. “I won’t weep when the ship sails, it’s true. There’s none who admire America more than I do, and I look forward to visiting, but I will not shed a tear when the ship sails for home.”

  “Maybe I will. I don’t know what I’ll do without Kathleen.”

  “Don’t do without her, then. Come with us and see the home of your people.”

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  “It would be a grand adventure. Ireland’s beautiful any time, but in the spring the tenderness of it would break your heart.”

  “I don’t need a broken heart, thank you, Colum. What I need is a maid.”

  “I’ll send you Brigid, she’s longing to come. I suppose she should have been the one all along, not Kathleen, only we wanted Kathleen away.”

  Scarlett scented gossip. “Why would you want to send that sweet girl away?”

  Colum smiled. “Women and their questions,” he said. “You’re all alike both sides of the ocean. We didn’t approve of the man who wanted to court her. He was a soldier, and a heathen besides.”

  “You mean a Protestant. Did she love him?”

  “Her head was turned by his uniform, that was the all of it.”

  “Poor girl. I hope he’s waiting for her when she gets home.”

  “Thanks be to God, his regiment’s gone back to England. He’ll bother her no more.”

  Colum’s face was hard as granite. Scarlett held her tongue.

  “What about that list?” she asked after she gave up expecting Colum to speak. “We’d better get back to our shopping. You know, Colum, Jamie has everything you want at his store. Why don’t we just go there?”

  “I couldn’t put him in a fix. He’d feel bound to make me a price that would hurt him.”

  “Honestly, Colum, you don’t have the brains of a flea about business! Even if Jamie sells to you at cost, it will make him look better to his suppliers, and he’ll get a bigger discount next order.” She laughed at Colum’s bewilderment. “I have a store myself, I know what I’m saying. Let me explain . . .”

  She talked a blue streak while they walked to Jamie’s. Colum was fascinated and obviously impressed, asking question after question.

  “Colum!” Jamie boomed when they entered the store. “We were just wishing for you. Uncle James, Colum’s here.” The old man came out from the storeroom with his arms full of bunting fabric.

  “You’re the answer to a prayer, man,” he said. “Which is the color that we want?” He spilled the fabric onto a counter. It was all green, but four closely related shades.

  “That one’s the prettiest,” Scarlett said.

  Jamie and her uncle asked Colum to make a choice.

  Scarlett was miffed. She’d already told them which was the best. What would a man know, even Colum?

  “Where will you have it?” he asked.

  “Over the window outside and in,” Jamie replied.

  “Then we’ll look at it there, for the light on it,” said Colum. He looked as serious as if he was picking out the color to print money, Scarlett thought crossly. What was all the fuss about?

  Jamie noticed her pout. “It’s to decorate for Saint Paddy’s Day, Scarlett darling. Colum’s the one to say what’s closest to the true green of a shamrock. It’s been too long since we’ve seen them, Uncle James and me.”

  The O’Haras had been talking about Saint Patrick’s Day ever since the first time she met them. “When is it?” Scarlett asked, more polite than interested.

  The three men gaped at her.

  “You don’t know?” Old James said incredulously.

  “I wouldn’t ask if I knew, would I?”

  “It’s tomorrow,” Jamie said, “tomorrow. And, Scarlett darling, you’re going to have the finest time of your life!”

  Savannah’s Irish—like the Irish everywhere—had always celebrated on March 17. It was the feast day of the patron saint of Ireland, and feast day was the secular meaning, as well as the canonical. Although it came during Lent, there was no fasting on Saint Patrick’s Day. There was, instead, food and drink and music and dancing. Catholic schools were closed, and Catholic businesses, except for saloons, which expected and achieved one of their biggest days of the year.

  There had been Irish in Savannah from its earliest days—the Jasper Greens first fought in the American Revolution—and Saint Patrick’s Day had always been a major holiday for them. But during the bleak depressed decade since the defeat of the South, the entire city had begun to join in. March 17 was Savannah’s Spring Festival, and for one day everyone was Irish.

  There were gaily decorated booths in every square selling food and lemonade, wine, coffee, and beer. Jugglers and men with trick dogs gathered crowds on street corners. Fiddlers played from the steps of City Hall and proud, peeling houses throughout the city. Green ribbons fluttered from flowering tree branches, shamrocks made of paper or of silk were for sale from boxes carried by enterprising men, women, and children from square to square. Broughton Street was bedecked with green bunting in shop windows, and ropes of fresh green vines strung between lampposts to canopy the parade route.

  “Parade?!” Scarlett exclaimed when she was told. She touched the green silk ribbon rosettes Kathleen had pinned in her hair. “Are we finished? Do I look all right? Is it time to go?”

  It was time. First early Mass, and then a celebration all day and into the night. “Jamie tells me there’ll be fireworks starring the sky over the park until you’re fair giddy from the splendor of it all,” Kathleen said. Her face and eyes were shining with excitement.

  Scarlett’s green eyes were suddenly calculating. “I’ll bet you don’t have parades and fireworks in your village, Kathleen. You’ll be sorry if you don’t stay in Savannah.”

  The girl smiled radiantly. “I’ll remember it forever and tell the tale by all the hearths of all the houses. Once home, it will be a grand thing to have seen America. Once home.”

  Scarlett gave up. There was no budging the silly girl.

  Broughton Street was lined with people, all of them sporting green. Scarlett laughed aloud when she saw one family. With all those scrubbed-up children wearing green bows or scarves or feathers in their hats, they were just like the O’Haras. Except that they were all black. “Didn’t I tell you everyone is Irish today?” Jamie said with a grin.

  Maureen elbowed her. “Even the loo-las are wearing the green,” she said, jerking her head toward a pair nearby. Scarlett craned her neck to see. Good grief! It was her grandfather’s stuffy lawyer and a boy who must be his son. Both of them were wearing green cravats. She looked curiously up and down the street at the smiling people, searching for other familiar faces. There was Mary Telfair with a group of ladies, all of them with green ribbons on their hats. And Jerome! Where had he found a green coat, for pity’s sake? Surely her grandfather wasn’t here; please, God, don’t let him be. He’d manage to make the sun stop shining. No, Jerome was with a black woman wearing a green sash. Fancy that, old prune-face Jerome with a girlfriend! At least twenty years younger, too.

  A street vendor was handing out lemonade and coconut candy cakes to each O’Hara in turn, starting with the eager children. When he got to her, Scarlett accepted with a smile and bit into the candy. She was eating on the street! No lady would do that, even if she were dying of starvation. Take that, Grandfather! she thought, delighted by her own wickedness. The coconut was fresh, moist, sweet. Scarlett enjoyed it very much, even though it lost its thrilling defiance when she saw that Miss Telfair was nibbling on something that she was holding betwee
n her kid-gloved thumb and forefinger.

  “I still say the cowboy in the green hat was the best,” Mary Kate insisted. “He did all those fancy things with the rope, and he was so handsome.”

  “You just say that because he smiled at us,” Helen said scornfully. Ten years old was too young to be sympathetic with the romantic dreams of fifteen. “The best was the float with the leprechauns dancing on it.”

  “Those weren’t leprechauns, silly. There aren’t any leprechauns in America.”

  “They were dancing around a big bag of gold. Nobody would have a bag of gold except leprechauns.”

  “You’re such a child, Helen. They were boys in costumes is all. Couldn’t you see that the ears were false? One of them had fallen off.”

  Maureen intervened before the argument could get out of hand. “It was a grand parade, every bit of it. Come along, girls, and hold on to Jacky’s hand.”

  Strangers the day before, strangers again the day after, on Saint Patrick’s Day people joined hands and danced, joined voices and sang. They shared the sun and the air and the music and the streets.

  “It’s wonderful,” Scarlett said when she tasted a chicken drumstick from one of the food stalls. And, “It’s wonderful,” she said when she saw the green chalk shamrocks on the brick paths of Chatham Square. “It’s wonderful,” about the mighty granite eagle with a green ribbon around its neck on the Pulaski Monument.

  “What a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful day,” she cried, and she spun around and around before she sank exhausted onto a newly vacated bench next to Colum. “Look, Colum, I’ve got a hole in the bottom of my boot. Where I come from everybody says you can tell the best parties because they’re the ones where you dance your slippers right through. And these aren’t even slippers, they’re boots. This must be the best party ever!”

  “It’s a grand day, to be sure, and there’s the evening still to come, with the Roman candles and all. You’ll be worn through just like your boot, Scarlett darling, if you don’t take a little rest. It’s near four o’clock. Let’s go to the house now for a bit.”