Scarlett

by Alexandra Ripley

  “Why did you leave me? Ochón!

  Ochón, Ochón, Ullagón Ó!”

  Scarlett was glad she hadn’t told anyone in Savannah about her plan to take Wade and Ella back to Ireland with her. Now she didn’t have to explain why she’d left them at Tara; it would have been so humiliating to tell the truth, that her own children didn’t want her, that they were strangers to her and she to them. She couldn’t admit to anyone, not even herself, how much it hurt and how much she blamed herself. She felt small and mean; she could hardly even be glad for Ella and Wade, who were so obviously happy.

  Everything had hurt at Tara. She’d felt like a stranger. Except for Grandma Robillard’s portrait, she hardly recognized anything in the house. Suellen had used the money every month to buy new furniture and furnishings. The unscarred wood of the tables was glaringly shiny to Scarlett’s eyes, the colors in the rugs and curtains too bright. She hated it. And the baking heat she’d longed for in the Irish rains gave her a headache that lasted the whole week she was there.

  She’d enjoyed visiting Alex and Sally Fontaine, but their new baby only reminded her how much she missed Cat.

  It was only at the Tarletons’ that she had a good time. Their farm was doing well, and Mrs. Tarleton talked nonstop about her mare in foal and her expectations for the three-year-old she insisted that Scarlett admire.

  The easy, no-invitation-required visiting back and forth had always been the best thing about the County.

  But she’d been glad to leave Tara, and that hurt, too. If she didn’t know how much Wade loved it, it would have broken her heart that she could hardly wait to get away. At least her son was taking her place. She saw her new lawyer in Atlanta after the Tara visit, and she made a will, leaving her two-thirds share of Tara to her son. She wasn’t going to do like her father, and her Uncle Daniel, and leave a mess behind her. And if Will died first, she didn’t trust Suellen an inch. Scarlett signed the document with a flourish, and then she was free.

  To go back to her Cat. Who healed all Scarlett’s hurts in a second. The baby’s face lit up when she saw her, and the little arms reached out to her, and Cat even wanted to be hugged, and tolerated being kissed a dozen times.

  “She looks so brown and healthy!” Scarlett exclaimed.

  “And no wonder to it,” said Maureen. “She loves the sunshine that much, she takes off her bonnet the minute your back is turned. Little gypsy is what she is, and a joy every hour of the day.”

  “Of the day and the night,” Scarlett amended, holding Cat close.

  Stephen gave Scarlett her instructions for the trip back to Galway. She didn’t like them. Truth to tell, she didn’t much like Stephen either. But Colum had told her Stephen was in charge of all arrangements, so she donned her mourning clothes and kept her complaints to herself.

  The ship was named The Golden Fleece and it was the latest thing in luxury. Scarlett had no quibble with the size or the comfort of her suite. But it did not make a direct crossing. It took a week longer, and she was anxious to get back to Ballyhara to see how the crops were faring.

  It was not until she was actually on the gangplank that she saw the big Notice of Departure with the ship’s itinerary, or she would have refused to go, no matter what Stephen said. The Golden Fleece loaded passengers in Savannah, Charleston, and Boston, disembarked them in Liverpool and Galway.

  Scarlett turned in panic, ready to run back to the dock. She couldn’t go to Charleston, she just couldn’t! Rhett would know she was on the ship—Rhett always knew everything, somehow—and he’d walk right into her stateroom and take Cat away.

  I’ll kill him first. Anger drove away her panic, and Scarlett turned again to walk up onto the ship’s deck. Rhett Butler wasn’t going to make her turn tail and run. All her luggage was already on board, and she was sure that Stephen was smuggling guns to Colum in her trunks. They were depending on her. Also, she wanted to get back to Ballyhara, and she wouldn’t let anything or anybody stand in her way.

  By the time Scarlett reached her suite, she had built up a consuming fury against Rhett. More than a year had passed since he had divorced her, then immediately married Anne Hampton. During that year Scarlett had been so busy, had experienced such changes in her life, that she’d been able to block out the pain he had caused her. Now it tore her heart, and with the pain was a deep fear of Rhett’s unpredictable power. She transformed them into rage. Rage was strengthening.

  Bridie was travelling with Scarlett part way. The Boston O’Haras had found her a good position as a lady’s maid. Until she learned the ship was going to stop in Charleston, Scarlett had been glad at the prospect of Bridie’s company. But the thought of stopping in Charleston made Scarlett so nervous that her young cousin’s constant chatter nearly drove her crazy. Why couldn’t Bridie leave her alone? Under Patricia’s tutelage Bridie had learned all the duties of her job, and she wanted to try them all out on Scarlett. She was loudly distressed when she learned that Scarlett had stopped wearing corsets, and vocally disappointed that none of Scarlett’s gowns needed mending. Scarlett longed to tell her that the first requirement for a lady’s maid was to speak only when spoken to, but she was fond of Bridie, and it wasn’t the girl’s fault that they were going to stop in Charleston. So she forced herself to smile and act as if nothing was bothering her.

  The ship sailed up the coast during the night, entering Charleston Harbor at first light. Scarlett hadn’t slept at all. She went out on deck for the sunrise. There was a rose-tinted mist on the wide waters of the harbor. Beyond it the city was blurred and insubstantial, like a city in a dream. The white steeple of Saint Michael’s Church was palest pink. Scarlett imagined that she could hear its familiar chimes faintly in the distance between the slow strokes of the ship’s engine. They must be unloading the fishing boats at the Market now, no it’s a little early yet, they must still be coming in. She strained her eyes, but the mist hid the boats if they were there ahead.

  She concentrated on remembering the different kinds of fish, the vegetables, the names of the coffee vendors, the sausage man—anything to keep her mind occupied, to fend off memories she didn’t dare confront.

  But as the sun cleared the horizon behind her, the tinted mist lifted and she saw the pocked walls of Fort Sumter to one side. The Fleece was entering the waters where she’d sailed with Rhett and laughed at the dolphins with him and been struck by the storm with him.

  Damn him! I hate him—and his damned Charleston—

  Scarlett told herself she should go to her stateroom, lock herself in with Cat; but she stood as if rooted to the deck. Slowly the city grew larger, more distinct, glowing white and pink and green, pastel in the shimmering morning air. She could hear Saint Michael’s chimes, smell the heavy tropical sweetness of blooming flowers, see the palm trees in White Point Gardens, the opalescent glitter of crushed oyster shell paths. Then the ship was passing the promenade along East Battery. Scarlett could see above it from the ship’s deck. There were the treetop-tall columns of the Butler house, the shadowed piazzas, the front door, the windows to the drawing room, her bedroom— The windows! And the telescope in the card room. She picked up her skirts and ran.

  She ordered breakfast served in her suite, insisted that Bridie stay with her and Cat. The only safety was there, locked in, out of sight. Where Rhett couldn’t find out about Cat and take her away.

  The steward spread a glistening white cloth on the round table in Scarlett’s sitting room, then rolled in a cart with two tiers of silver domed plates. Bridie giggled. While he meticulously set places and floral centerpiece he talked about Charleston. It was all Scarlett could do not to correct him, he had so many things wrong. But he was Scottish, on a Scottish ship, why should anyone expect him to know anything?

  “We’ll be sailing again at five o’clock,” said the steward, “after cargo’s loaded and the new passengers board. You ladies might want to take an excursion to see the town.” He began placing platters and lifting off their covers. “There’s a
nice buggy with a driver who knows all the places to see. Only fifty pence or two dollars fifty American. Waiting at the foot of the gangplank. Or if you’d like some cooler air off the water there’s a boat over at the next wharf south that goes up the river. There was a big civil war in America some ten years back. You can see the ruins of big mansion houses burnt by the armies fighting over them. You’d have to hurry, though, she leaves in forty minutes.”

  Scarlett tried to eat a piece of toast, but it stuck in her throat. The gilded clock on the desk ticked the minutes away. It sounded very loud to her. At the end of a half hour she jumped up. “I’m going out, Bridie, but don’t you dare stir a step. Open the portholes, use that palmetto fan over there, but you and Cat stay in here with the door locked no matter how hot it gets. Order anything you want to eat and drink.”

  “Where are you going, Scarlett?”

  “Never mind about that. I’ll be back before the ship sails.”

  The excursion boat was a small rear-wheel paddle boat painted in bright red, white, and blue. Its name, in gold letters, was Abraham Lincoln. Scarlett remembered it well. She’d seen it passing Dunmore Landing.

  July was not a month when many people toured the South. She was one of only a dozen passengers. She sat under an awning on the upper deck fanning herself and cursing mourning dress for its long-sleeved, high-necked sweltering effect in the Southern summer heat.

  A man in a tall top hat striped red and white bellowed commentary through a megaphone. It made her angrier by the minute.

  Look at all those fat-faced Yankees, she thought with hatred, they’re just lapping this up. Cruel slave owners, indeed! Sold down the river, my foot! We loved our darkies just like family, and some of them owned us more than we owned them. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Fiddle-dee-dee! No decent person would read that kind of trash.

  She wished she hadn’t given in to the impulse to come. It was only going to upset her. It was already upsetting her, and they weren’t even out of the harbor and into the Ashley River yet.

  Mercifully, the commentator ran out of things to say and for a long while the only sound was the thunk-thunk of the pistons and the splash of water as it fell from the wheel. Marsh grass was green and gold on both sides with wide moss-hung oaks on the riverbank behind it. Dragonflies darted through the midge-dancing air above the grass; occasionally a fish leapt from the water, then flopped back in. Scarlett sat quietly, removed from the other passengers, nursing her rancor. Rhett’s plantation was ruined, and he was doing nothing to save it. Camellias! At Ballyhara, she had hundreds of acres of healthy crops where she had found rank weeds. And she had rebuilt an entire town, while he just sat and stared at his burnt chimneys.

  That’s why she had come on the paddleboat, she told herself. It would make her feel good to see how far she was outstripping him. Scarlett tensed before each bend, relaxed when it was past and Rhett’s house had not appeared.

  She’d forgotten Ashley Barony. Julia Ashley’s big square brick house looked magnificently forbidding in the center of its unadorned lawn. “This is the only plantation the heroic Union forces did not destroy,” bawled the man in the absurd hat. “It was not in the tender heart of their commander to injure the frail spinster woman who lay ill inside.”

  Scarlett laughed aloud. “Frail spinster,” indeed! Miss Julia must have scared the pants off him! The other passengers looked at her curiously, but Scarlett was unaware of their scrutiny. The Landing would be next . . .

  Yes, there was the phosphate mine. So much bigger! There were five barges being loaded. She searched under the wide-brimmed hat of the man on the dock. It was that white-trash soldier—she couldn’t remember his name, something like Hawkins—no matter, around that bend, past that big live oak . . .

  The angle of the sunlight sculpted the great grass terraces of Dunmore Landing into green velvet giant steps and scattered sequins on the butterfly lakes beside the river. Scarlett’s involuntary cry was lost in the exclamations of the Yankees crowded around her along the rail. At the top of the terraces the scorched chimneys were tall sentinels against the painfully bright blue sky; an alligator was sunning itself on the grass between the lakes. Dunmore Landing was like its owner: cultivated, damaged, dangerous. And unreachable. The shutters were closed on the wing that remained, the place that Rhett used for his office and his home.

  Her eyes darted avidly from spot to spot, comparing her memory to what she saw. Much more of the garden was cleared and everything looked as if it was thriving. Some building was going up behind the house; she could smell raw lumber, see the top of a roof. The shutters of the house were fixed, or maybe new. They didn’t sag at all, and they glistened with green paint. He’d done a lot of work over the fall and winter.

  Or they had. Scarlett tried to look away. She didn’t want to see the newly cleared gardens. Anne loves those flowers as much as Rhett does. And the fixed-up shutters must mean a fixed-up house where the two of them live together. Does Rhett fix breakfast for Anne?

  “Are you all right, miss?” Scarlett pushed past the concerned stranger.

  “The heat—” she said. “I’ll go over there, deeper in the shade.” For the remainder of the excursion she looked only at the unevenly painted deck. The day seemed to last forever.

  70

  Five o’clock was striking when Scarlett ran pell-mell down the ramp from the Abraham Lincoln. Damn fool boat. She stopped to catch her breath on the dock. She could see that the gangplank of The Golden Fleece was still in place. No harm done. But still, the master of the excursion boat should be horsewhipped. She’d been half out of her mind ever since four o’clock.

  “Thank you for waiting for me,” she said to the ship’s officer at the head of the gangplank.

  “Oh, there are more to come,” he said, and Scarlett transferred her anger to the captain of the Fleece. If he said five o’clock, he should sail at five o’clock. The sooner she got away from Charleston, the happier she would be. This must be the hottest place on the face of the earth. She shaded her eyes with her hand to look at the sky. Not a cloud in sight. No rain, no wind. Just heat. She started along deck towards her rooms. Poor baby Cat must be practically cooked. As soon as they got out of the harbor she’d bring her up on deck for whatever breeze the ship’s movement might cause.

  Clattering hoofbeats and feminine laughter caught her attention. Maybe this was who they were waiting for. She glanced down at an open victoria. With three fabulous hats on the women in it. They weren’t like any hats she’d ever seen, and even from a distance she could tell they were very expensive. Wide brimmed, decorated with clusters of feathers or plumes held by sparkling jewels and swirled with airy tulle netting, from Scarlett’s perspective the hats were like wonderful parasols or fantastic confections of pastry on big trays.

  I’d look simply wonderful in a hat like that. She leaned slightly over the rail to look at the women. They were elegant, even in the heat, wearing pale organdy or voile trimmed with—it looked like wide silk ribbon or was it ruching?—on cuirass fronts and—Scarlett blinked—no bustle at all, not even a hint of one, and no train either. She hadn’t seen anything like that in Savannah or Atlanta. Who were these people? Her eyes devoured the pale kid gloves and folded parasols, lace, she thought, but she couldn’t be sure. Whoever they were, they certainly were having a good time laughing their heads off and not hurrying to get on the ship they were holding up either.

  The Panama-hatted man with them stepped down into the street. With his left hand he took off his hat. His right hand reached upward to hand the first woman down.

  Scarlett’s hands clutched the railing. Dear God, it’s Rhett. I’ve got to run inside. No. No. If he’s on this ship I’ve got to get Cat off, find a place to hide, find another ship. But I can’t do that. I’ve got two trunks in the hold with frilly dresses and Colum’s rifles in them. What in the name of God am I going to do? Her mind raced from one impossible idea to another while she stared blindly at the group below her.

  Slowly
her brain registered what she was seeing: Rhett was bowing, kissing one gracefully extended hand after another. Her ears opened to the repeated “goodbye and thank you” of the women. Cat was safe.

  But Scarlett was not. Her protective rage had disappeared, and her heart was exposed.

  He doesn’t see me. I can look at him all I want. Please, please don’t put your hat back on, Rhett. How well he looked. His skin was brown, his smile as white as his linen suit. He was the only man in the world who didn’t wrinkle linen. Ah, that lock of hair that annoyed him so was falling down on his forehead again. Rhett flicked it back with two fingers in a gesture that Scarlett knew so well she felt weak-kneed with possessive memory. What was he saying? Something outrageously charming, she was sure, but he was using that low intimate voice he saved for women. Curse him. And curse those women. She wanted that voice murmuring to her, only her.

  The ship’s captain walked down the gangplank, adjusting the set of his gold epauletted jacket. Don’t make them hurry, Scarlett wanted to shout. Stay, stay just a little longer. It’s my last chance. I’ll never see him again. Let me store up the sight of him.

  He must have just had his share cut, there’s the tiniest pale line above his ears. Is that more gray at the temples? It looks so elegant, the silver streaking his crow-black hair. I remember how it felt under my fingers, crisp and shockingly soft at the same time. And the muscles in his shoulders and his arms, sliding so smoothly under the skin, stretching the skin when they hardened. I want—