Rhett Butler's People

  “Cousin Scarlett, you are so pale!”

  “Yes, Willy,” Scarlett gasped, “I am pale. Ladies are supposed to be pale. Don’t fuss!”

  That Man touched a forefinger to the brim of his gleaming panama hat.

  Willy knelt beside Scarlett’s chair. “Your face is turning red! This dreadful heat! Let me help you indoors.”

  At Twelve Oaks, That Man had overheard her pleading to Ashley, begging Ashley to love her as she loved him, her plea rejected by the finest, noblest…

  Now That Man dared to put a finger to his lips, as if he knew her intimate thoughts but vowed to keep her secret.

  “He … the man in civilian clothes?” Scarlett choked out.

  “The notorious Captain Butler,” a blond youth in a Zouave uniform replied. “I do not know why Mrs. Ward admits him.”

  “Butler’s bold enough,” Willy Ward conceded. “On his last run, he steamed through the blockade in broad daylight. Butler convinced the blockaders he was a Federal mail boat, and they escorted him into the harbor!”

  Butler approached Scarlett as a big cat might: with a deliberate, lazy confidence. Swarthy, tall, and unusually muscular for a Southern gentleman, his frock coat was black broadcloth, his shirt was ruffled at the cuffs, and his foulard was the delicate blue of a robin’s egg. Though he swept his panama from his head, his gesture seemed less chivalrous than it might have.

  “My dear Mrs. Hamilton, I was devastated to hear of your husband Charles’s death. ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.’” He paused, smiling. “Perhaps you were not cursed with a classical education. ‘’Tis sweet and honorable to die for one’s country.’ A sentiment that, doubtless, these gallant officers share.”

  “And you, sir—you do not serve?” Scarlett inquired innocently.

  “Some of us are not heroic, ma’am.” Although his hat swept low again, his gesture reeked of mockery. “How proud you must be.” He smiled at the young men. “How proud you all must be.”

  The young officers bristled, although they weren’t exactly sure why.

  Willy Ward thought Butler presumptuous to approach the finest girl Willy had ever seen, right here in the family garden. Willy was concocting a rebuke when Scarlett dumbfounded him. “Gentlemen, please do excuse us. Captain Butler and I have something to discuss.”

  Reluctantly, the young men withdrew out of earshot, although Willy kept a sharp eye on the couple, as if, piratically, Captain Butler might seize the young widow and escape with his prize.

  Rhett Butler appraised Scarlett impertinently. “Black isn’t your color, my dear. Paris fabrics are subtler this season. They have a taffeta the color of your eyes.”

  Scarlett looked at him straight. “Captain Butler, at Twelve Oaks, matters were not as they may have seemed. I indulged a lighthearted flirtation on the eve of my old friend’s wedding. Neither Ashley Wilkes nor I actually meant what we said. I’m sure any gentleman”—Scarlett almost choked on the word—“must understand.”

  Rhett placed a hand over his heart. “How well I do! Doubtless the gallant Wilkes took your pretty entreaty as whimsy; of no more consequence than the butterfly’s flirtation with the flower.” Butler’s eyes were laughing at her. Laughing! “For my own part, should I ever have the pleasure of meeting you again, I’ll pretend your meaningless flirtation never occurred. Why, we can pretend we’ve never met.” The man beamed in the most aggravating manner.

  Scarlett had never met anyone so hateful. She stamped her foot. “Oh, fiddle-dee-dee!” Her dramatic exit was marred by a slight stumble on the doorstep.

  As Scarlett burst into her aunt’s withdrawing room, Frederick Ward’s eyes widened as one of his habitual opinions rolled toward its inevitable, unstoppable conclusion, no longer Frederick’s creature, but its own: “Perhaps Philippe Robillard was too breakneck for sister Ellen, hmm? But to marry a coarse, striving Irish immigrant like Gerald O’Hara …”

  Frederick’s opinion was trampled under Scarlett’s impatient query. “Aunt Eulalie, why do you admit Captain Butler? He is no gentleman.”

  Flustered, Aunt Eulalie wagged her several chins. “Why, he, he …”

  Having dispatched her aunt, Scarlett turned on Frederick. “Did I hear you correctly? Did I hear you say my mother married beneath her? God’s nightgown, sir!” Scarlett erupted, in a passable replication of her father Gerald’s earthy brogue. “Faith! If it’s thin blood my father was wantin’ to marry, look no further than the Robillards! Begorrah, they’ve no blood at all!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Some Lovers

  The Ashley River rolled brown and dirty in spate. The rice fields had been planted and flooded and plantation houses stood above glistening water like islands. Rice birds exploded from the roadside as a bright blue phaeton sped past. Drays and farm wagons pulled to the verge to let the gentlefolk by.

  “Oh look, Rhett,” Rosemary said. “They’re repairing the old Ravanel place.”

  Rhett reined in Tecumseh.

  Workmen swarmed over the farmhouse roof, pulling up broken cedar shingles and letting them fall into the head-high weeds around the foundations. On a scaffold, three workmen were extracting a rotted window, casement and all.

  Rhett said, “William Bee bought it for his son. Bee has made so much money running the blockade, he can afford whimsey.” Tecumseh champed at the bit. “Easy, boy. I wonder how much paint it will take to cover that house’s sins?”

  “Were you there often?” Rosemary asked.

  Rhett shrugged. “When I was young and filled with despair. The last time …”

  “Rhett?”

  A warm September rain glistened the cobblestones as young Rhett Butler rode Tecumseh toward Grandmother Fisher’s. Rain dimpled the Charleston harbor where distant Fort Sumter floated in and out of the mist.

  Rhett was in a black humor. Last night, Henry, Edgar, and Old Jack Ravanel had helped him celebrate a poker win until his winnings were a memory. Rhett had drunk too much, and at daybreak, when he stepped out of Miss Polly’s, he’d flinched and squinted against the scorching sunlight. He’d thought, For you, Little Rosemary, I must change my life.

  Last night, Henry Kershaw had been coarser than usual, Edgar Puryear’s sycophancy more irritating, and Rhett had noticed Old Jack Ravanel eyeing him with the affection a bobcat reserves for a plump hare.

  Why had he come back to Charleston? To flaunt his West Point disgrace before his father’s political cronies? There were so many places he’d rather be, so many things he’d rather be doing. Rhett Butler was weary of annoying, stupid people, tired of shocked dismay on dull, utterly predictable faces. After a bad night, young Rhett Butler took a deep breath of salt air. He’d go to Rosemary. Perhaps her child’s love could save him.

  When Grandmother Fisher answered the door herself, Rhett’s hopes crumpled. “Rhett, I’m sorry. I don’t know how your father learned you’d been visiting! I’ve never seen Langston so furious. If I’d been a man, I believe he would have called me out.” Grandmother set her lips. “Rosemary is Langston’s daughter. There wasn’t one thing in the world I could do.”

  “Where is she?” Rhett demanded.

  “At Broughton. Langston said…”

  Rhett jerked his head, as if pulling words out of her.

  “Your father told me she’d stay until you were dead or gone from the Low Country. Damn the man! Come inside, Rhett, and we’ll talk. I am not without influence and…”

  The clatter of Tecumseh’s hooves obliterated what more she might have said.

  On rain-slick cobblestones, Rhett galloped Tecumseh through the city. Cabbies cursed, riders drew up sharply, and servants leaped from his path. The great horse hammered along, tireless as a steam engine.

  After an hour, he slowed Tecumseh to a canter, then an easy walk. When the horse shook his head, hot horse spittle spattered Rhett’s cheeks. They were well out of the city on the River Road.

  Young Rhett Butler believed the years to come wouldn’t be different from the years h
e’d already lived. He was disgraced; he would be always be disgraced. He was alone; he would always be alone. Rhett could endure being unloved. He could not live without loving.

  It was twilight when Rhett turned into Colonel Jack Ravanel’s lane. Jack had been involved in a particularly dubious financial scheme and was eluding the bailiffs.

  Jack’s lane was unkempt and overgrown. Outside the dooryard, Rhett unsaddled Tecumseh and rubbed him down. The horse’s legs trembled with fatigue.

  Old Jack didn’t stir from the piazza. “You drive that horse too hard, boy,” he said. “I admire that horse. If you’re going to kill him, might be you could sell him to me instead.”

  “Hay in the shed, Jack?”

  “Where it always is. There’s a bucket next the well.”

  As Rhett watered his exhausted animal, he whispered, “Don’t you, by God, founder on me, Tecumseh. I couldn’t stand it if you foundered!”

  The horse pushed his nose into the bucket.

  The Ravanel farmhouse (“plantation house” was too grand a name) had been built by Jack’s grandfather and ill maintained for years. Rhett climbed its moss green cypress risers.

  The porch smelled dank, as if decades of river mists had congealed in the rotten wood and peeling paint.

  Without rising, Old Jack waved a languid welcome. “We have Jack’s plantation to ourselves, young Butler. All the sports are in town. Hell, I wish I was in town.”

  The prospect of another debauched evening made Rhett faintly ill.

  “You’re not looking pert, son. Woman trouble, I wager.” Jack slid a nearly full whiskey bottle toward the younger man. “This’ll cure her. This’ll cure love pains, failures, and guilt. It’ll help you grieve and help you forget.”

  Although the old reprobate rarely bought a round, Rhett was too low to be suspicious. He drank deeply from the bottle.

  “She must have been a pretty wench,” Jack observed. “Love, my boy—”

  “Don’t say anything about love, Jack. This is Rhett, remember? I know you, Jack.”

  “Ah? Do you?” After a hot glance, Jack reverted to his familiar jokey self. “Why, of course you do. Who knows Old Jack better than his friends? Carpe diem, eh, Rhett?”

  Rhett should have been warier, but despair had blinded him to everything but grim prophecies.

  Jack left the bottle and disappeared indoors.

  As the moon slunk across the sky, young Rhett Butler drank whiskey and felt like dying. The evening star was low on the horizon when Jack came outside, yawning. “Man is born to troubles, eh, Rhett?”

  Rhett had drunk his way through drunkenness into a weary, irritable sobriety. “Anything you say, Jack.”

  “I say that I hate to see a clever boy so downhearted. Why, if Jesus Christ himself stepped onto this piazza with the keys to Paradise, I reckon you’d turn Him down.”

  Rhett turned bloodshot eyes on the old scoundrel. “You want something, Jack. Spit it out.”

  Years afterward, Rhett stared at the old house.

  “Rhett? Where did you go?” Rosemary asked.

  “Sorry, Sister. I was woolgathering. Edgar Puryear loved to come to Jack’s. Edgar enjoys other men’s weaknesses. Andrew hated it. Andrew was more fastidious than his father.”

  “And you?”

  Rhett shrugged. “I thought hell was where I belonged.”

  A skid of old shingles slid down the mossy roof and landed with a crash. Tecumseh flattened his ears. “Easy, boy. Easy.” Rhett’s strong hands spoke through the reins.

  Meg and Cleo were in the groom’s seat behind. Rhett felt Meg’s sweet breath on his neck. “Mommy, how far are we?”

  “Not far, dear,” Rosemary said. “Look there! That snag in the river. See the eagle?”

  Rhett flicked the reins and Tecumseh danced before settling into a brisk trot.

  The buggy coming toward them was as solemn black as the smallish mare drawing it. When Tunis Bonneau drew up, he tipped his hat to Rosemary. Rhett tipped his to Mrs. Bonneau.

  Ruthie Prescott Bonneau was a light-skinned, plump young woman, corseted and stayed within an inch of her life. “Good afternoon, Captain Butler. Isn’t this a fine afternoon?”

  “‘No spring or summer beauty hath such grace…“

  Mrs. Bonneau’s smile was reserved. “My father, Reverend Prescott, taught me my letters. I am more familiar with Dr. Donne’s sermons than his poetry.”

  Rhett stretched. “But it is a day for poetry, isn’t it?”

  Tunis said, “Hello, Tecumseh. Miss Rosemary, I see you’re takin’ good care of that horse.” Tunis nodded to the groom’s seat. “Little Miss Meg. How you today?”

  Meg put her thumb in her mouth.

  Ruthie said, “Captain Butler, every Sunday at the First African, we pray you and Tunis have a safe voyage.”

  “Well,” Rhett grinned. “That’s my prayer, too.”

  “Got a letter from Daddy Thomas,” Tunis said.

  Rhett explained to Rosemary, “Tunis’s parents immigrated to Canada.”

  Ruthie said, “My husband’s father has a home in Kingston, Ontario, Mrs. Haynes. Thomas Bonneau says things are better there.”

  Tunis said, “Papa says Canada is cold as the dickens.”

  Rhett steadied Tecumseh. “Tunis, I swear this horse wasn’t skittish when I left him with you.”

  “Might be negro horses got more cause be skittish than white men’s horses,” Tunis deadpanned.

  “Maybe they do at that,” Rhett said. “Good to see you again, Mrs. Bonneau. Please thank the First African for their prayers.”

  Tunis nodded and clucked to his mare.

  As the respectable black carriage went around the bend, Cleo muttered, “Them free coloreds think too high of themselfs.”

  They trotted past Hopeton and Darien Plantation. Gangs were still planting at Champney. “We never planted so late at Broughton,” Cleo disapproved. “Overseer don’t ’low it.”

  “You’re not at Broughton now, Cleo,” Rosemary reminded her maid.

  “Don’t I thank Jesus for that!”

  Rhett said, “I hear Wade Hampton bought the old Puryear place.”

  “Cathecarte Puryear lives in London now. Apparently war frightened his muse.”

  Rhett shook his head. “Poor Cathecarte. Lord, how he envied men with talent. Edgar’s a provost in Atlanta—that’s Edgar’s kind of work, you know. In his whole life, Edgar has learned one trick: how not to be his father.” He flicked the reins. “Maybe that’s all any man learns.”

  Rosemary touched her brother’s sleeve. “There’s our lane—beyond that big cypress.”

  The carriage wound through oaks dripping with Spanish moss into a clearing where Congress Haynes’s fishing camp perched on pilings like a wading bird.

  Rosemary inhaled deeply. “I love it out here,” she said. “We don’t come enough. If business doesn’t keep John in town, civic duties do. Isn’t this a lovely day?” She basked her face in the sun. “Isn’t it?”

  As Rhett and Rosemary stepped onto the porch, Meg ran toward the river. Skirts lifted, hat clapped to her head, Cleo hurried after, crying, “Now don’t you go gettin’ in that mud! Watch out for snakes! Don’t you fall in that ol’ river!”

  Congress Haynes had built this simple camp on a breezy mosquitoless point: a railed roofless porch outside one big room with a soot-blackened fireplace, crude benches, and a table with men’s initials carved into the wood.

  As a boy, Rhett’d sailed by here, mosquito hawks whupping as they swooped and bats twittering while Congress Haynes’s friends—too far away for Rhett to make out their faces—sat in the lamplight drinking and laughing. Drifting down the dark river, the invisible boy had wondered if he might ever be one of them.

  Now Rhett set a foot on the railing and lit a cigar while Rosemary unpacked their hamper and placed silver stirrup cups on the rail. “When I was a little girl, I’d dream of all the exotic places you were visiting. Tell me, Brother, are the pyramids as grand as they
say?”

  Rhett uncorked the wine. “Never got to Egypt. Maybe after the War.”

  Lost in thought, Rosemary watched the river. “I’m worried about Mother. She never comes to town, her friends don’t visit, and Father makes excuses why his dear, devoted wife can’t accompany him to Governor Brown’s fêtes.” Her brother poured wine. “Mother says Isaiah Watling believes the War was prophesied.”

  “Watling?”

  “He and Mother pray together. They meet in his house and pray. Isaiah’s wife died sometime last year.” Rosemary raised a hand to forestall objections. “It’s only praying; that’s all. Langston knows about it. There’s nothing between them.” Rosemary’s wry grin. “Except, perhaps, the Book of Revelations.”

  “Prayers can be a powerful bond. Sit beside me. We’ll have our picnic in a little while.”

  While Rosemary rested her elbows on the rail. Absent her marital tensions, Rhett’s sister seemed years younger.

  A dark-haired white child and an angular black girl ambled hand in hand beside the river. The child’s babble rose and fell with the breeze. Sandpipers patrolled the riverside, dabbing the mud with sharp pointed beaks. Clouds as fat as cotton bolls drifted lazily overhead. Pistons harrumphing, a riverboat tugged a string of empty rice flats upstream. When the helmsman waved, little Meg waved back enthusiastically.

  Rosemary asked, “Do you think Father ever loved Mother?”

  “On at least three occasions, Langston Butler loved his wife. Men can’t rise from a woman’s bed indifferent to the authoress of their pleasure. Belle Watling’s Cyprians joke about the marriage proposals they get.”

  “Belle Watling?”

  “Belle’s left New Orleans for Atlanta.” Rhett laughed. “Belle claims she’s a Confederate patriot. In fact, she’s a businesswoman and New Orleans’s Federal conquerors are partial to negro sporting houses.”

  Chin in her hand, Rosemary examined her brother. “Rhett, what is Belle Watling to you?”

  Rhett’s smile stretched into a mocking grin. “Has the Scapegrace Brother taken up with the Soiled Dove? Will Butler bastards be born in a sporting house?”