Rhett Butler's People

  In his Sunday suit and stiff celluloid collar, Wade dogged Tazewell Watling and hoped no grown-up would ruffle his hair. His great-aunt Pittypat said, “Wade, you are the very image of dear Charles!” A tear tracked down her old wrinkled cheek.

  Beneath the portrait of Scarlett’s grandmother, Beatrice Tarleton and Alex Fontaine were discussing a loose horse several men had seen. Mrs. Tarleton disbelieved. “I know every roan between here and Jonesboro.”

  Beatrice’s daughters were somewhere about. Her sons, Brent and Stuart and Tom—Scarlett’s ardent suitors before the War—were now just sad memories.

  Scarlett sighed.

  As if he’d read her thoughts, Rhett took her hand. “Darling, if there are ghosts here tonight, they want us to be happy.”

  The little orchestra interspersed waltzes with reels. To the older guests’ dismay, the musicians refused to play “them old-timey” quadrilles.

  After Taz danced with his mother, he partnered Beatrice’s grand-niece Polly—a brown-haired, shy slip of a thing.

  Belle Watling glowed with pleasure. “Look at my boy,” she whispered to no one in particular. “Lord, will you just look at him.”

  Beatrice Tarleton inclined her head to the woman beside her. “Miss Watling,” she said, hoarsely, “things are not as they were.”

  “I…”

  “I believe it’s for the best. I don’t know what got into people. All that needless straitlaced respectability. Did we actually think God cared if a man got a peek at our legs? Tell me, Miss Watling”—Beatrice looked Belle square in the eye—“are all men the same?”

  Belle coughed and patted her throat. “Gracious,” she said. Then she leaned in confidentially. “There’s men and men, don’t you know.”

  Ashley and Rosemary sat on the porch swing, discussing nothing really—but enjoying their conversation immensely.

  Desserts were served on tables on the lawn, but once the breeze died, the mosquito hordes descended and everyone carried their plates indoors.

  In her high-backed wing chair, Miss Pittypat reflected happily and sadly how much dear Melanie would have enjoyed this evening.

  When the fiddler struck up “Soldier’s Joy,” Rhett offered Scarlett his hand.

  “Rhett, I’ve been so foolish.”

  “Yes, we both have been.” Mr. Butler led Mrs. Butler onto the dance floor.

  When we met, Scarlett thought, I was a child. Rhett helped me become who I am.

  “My dear,” Rhett murmured politely, “it’s a reel, not a two-step.”

  Scarlett O’Hara Butler whirled. Whirled like the girl she had been, like the girl who dwelled in the depths of her heart. She whirled as a child whirls, as a young girl whirls, as a woman whirls, and her man was beside her, his hand quick to capture hers. So much love sparkled in her husband’s eyes that for the first time in her life, Scarlett Butler wasn’t afraid of growing old.

  At midnight, despite many protests, the band put their instruments away.

  Rhett had a special train waiting in Jonesboro for their Atlanta guests. Nearer neighbors lingered in the turnaround.

  “Thank you so much for coming,” Scarlett repeated. “Certainly we’ll do it again.”

  As the last buggy lamp dwindled down the lane, Rhett closed up the house.

  Scarlett found Belle Watling in the upstairs hall. She wore an astonishingly pink dressing gown.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever had a lovelier day,” Belle said. “Thank you, Miss Scarlett, for having me to stay.”

  Scarlett kissed the pink creature on the cheek. “Good night, Belle.”

  In her bedroom, Scarlett luxuriated in her undressing. Rhett would come to her tonight—her tingling skin assured her he would. Humming, she dabbed cologne behind each ear and beneath the soft curves of her breasts.

  Rhett had never seen the sheer nightgown she put on. Scarlett felt like a precious gift.

  When she opened the curtains, cool blue moonlight flooded the room.

  Scarlett knelt beside her bed and crossed herself. She thanked God for Tara and Ella and Wade and everybody who loved her. She thanked God for bringing Rhett home.

  Then she smelled smoke.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  My Day Is Come

  Scarlett coughed and coughed. Shadows gathered at the base of her bedroom door and oily black smoke trickled, then surged inside and up the wainscoting.

  Rosemary cried, “Fire! My God! Fire!”

  When Scarlett touched the doorknob, she jerked back with a gasp. It was hot as a stovetop!

  Shirtless and barefoot, Rhett burst in from the nursery. “The fire’s in the stairwell,” he said matter-of-factly. “Help me get the children out.”

  Everything was happening so quickly! When Rhett took her hand, Scarlett protested, “But I’m not dressed!”

  In the nursery, smoke drifted lazily through the moonlight. Among scattered toys and books, the children sat around Rosemary, who held Louis Valentine in her lap. As icy calm as her brother, Rosemary said, “Tazewell’s gone for his mother.”

  “Good man.” Rhett knelt at child’s eye level. “Ella, it’s past your bedtime. What are you doing up so late?”

  Ella put her hand over her mouth; her fear transmuted into giggles.

  “Beau, are you my brave boy? I need you to be brave tonight.”

  Beau blew his nose hard.

  Rhett said, “We’re counting on you, Wade Hampton Hamilton.”

  Outside the nursery door, the fire sounded like a great beast crackling through the undergrowth. Hurry! Scarlett thought. We must hurry!

  Rhett turned to the shivering Louis Valentine. “How old are you, Louis?”

  “Seven, Uncle Rhett.”

  “You were named for a pirate. Did you know that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Rhett!” Scarlett protested.

  Rhett squeezed Scarlett’s hand but kept his eyes fixed on the child. “Then you’ll have to be brave as a pirate. Right, Louis Valentine?”

  Louis Valentine squeaked, “Yes, Uncle Rhett.”

  “Good. Because when we go through that door, it’s going to be hot and black and frightening. We will hold hands so nobody gets lost or left behind. Scarlett will lead us, then Wade, then Louis Valentine, then Rosemary, then Ella. Beau, you’ll take Ella’s other hand—you mustn’t let go of it—and I’ll hold your hand and come last. Join hands now. Good. Hang on tighter than you’ve ever hung on to anything. Hang on hard!”

  As Rhett was talking, the room filled with smoke and Ella started coughing. Scarlett prayed Ella wouldn’t take one of her fits.

  “We’re going to crawl down the hall underneath the smoke to the servants’ stairs and down those stairs to the kitchen and outside,” Rhett continued. “You mustn’t tarry and, even if you are scared, you must pretend you’re brave. You cannot turn loose of the hands you are holding. Do you understand?”

  A ragged chorus of yeses. Ella muffled a sob.

  In the same even tone, Rhett said, “Scarlett, honey, take Wade’s hand. Off we go.”

  Though her teeth were chattering, Scarlett said, “Mr. Butler, are you sure this is the way to the Honeysuckle Ballroom?”

  Rhett snorted. Scarlett hitched her nightgown above her knees and knelt.

  Rhett threw the hall door open on suffocating black smoke tongued by sullen yellow flames. Scarlett crawled into it. Each wooden floorboard was outlined by light from below; the ceiling had disappeared in swirling blackness. Scarlett’s neck was so hot. What if her hair burst into flames? It was farther to the servants’ stairs than Scarlett remembered. She crawled, with Wade’s hand clamped behind her, and when her fine new nightgown slipped under her knees and hampered her crawl, she ripped it.

  The fire roared like an angry bear. The floor scorched Scarlett’s hands and knees and she gasped for air. Wade’s hand in hers was slippery with sweat. Rhett’s bellow cut through the roar: “Children. You must not let go. Hang on with all your might!”

  Ella
shrieked, “I want my mother!”

  “I’m here, honey. Keep crawling.” Scarlett hacked a painful cough.

  Ahead in the smoke, a darker rectangle became the stairwell. With her free hand, Scarlett groped for the top stair, crying, “I’m at the stairs. I’m starting down.” She coughed until it felt as if she were coughing up lung tissue. Clinging to Wade’s sweat-slippery hand, Scarlett backed down—two, three steps. Cool air rushed up the stairs, lifting the smoke above her. Feeling with toes for each invisible riser, Scarlett backed down the narrow pitch-black stairs.

  Far behind, Rhett shouted, “Hands tight! Hold tight!” When Wade misstepped, his hand was snatched from hers and she blocked his body so he wouldn’t tumble down. Wade said, “Sorry, Mother,” sounding just like Charles Hamilton.

  In the tiny vestibule outside the kitchen, Scarlett tried to remember whether the latch was on the left or right. Somewhere above, Rhett cried, “We are nearly there! Louis Valentine! Pirates never snivel!”

  The narrow door swung open on Mammy in nightdress and calico nightcap. The old negress said helplessly, “Scarlett, honey. We is on fire.”

  Scarlett pulled Wade into the cool kitchen.

  “Yes, Mammy, we’re on fire. Ring the farm bell and rouse everybody.” Scarlett handed Louis Valentine into the kitchen, then Rosemary and Ella, then Beau, and finally Rhett Butler, who was tucking his scorched hands into his armpits.

  “But it was such a fine barbecue,” a dazed Mammy said. “We ain’t had such a time in years!”

  Scarlett cried, “Oh Rhett! Your hands, your poor, poor hands!”

  “Left my gloves in Glasgow,” he replied lightly.

  Rosemary shepherded the children into the yard as Mammy’s bell clamored the alarm. The steading was dark and quiet. When Ella collapsed, Rhett caught and carried her. Ella’s chubby bare feet dangled from his arms. Rhett laid Ella in some grass beside the springhouse and said, “Poor child. She was as brave as she needed to be.”

  “I’ll stay with Ella,” Rosemary said. “Wade Hamilton, please heed the younger boys.”

  Taz leaned a ladder against Gerald O’Hara’s balcony, where his unflustered mother was waiting. Flames flickered behind Tara’s upstairs windows. Ellen O’Hara’s fanlight and side lights glowed white. An empty fuel can lay next to the front door. Scarlett could smell kerosene in the wood smoke.

  Tara’s front stairs, where the orchestra had played Strauss waltzes just hours before, were burning.

  Rhett braced the ladder as Taz climbed.

  Grass beside the house was scorched. The boxwoods were burned sticks. As if ghosts were sitting in it, Tara’s porch swing creaked back and forth.

  Her pink dressing gown as intact as her dignity, Belle Watling backed down the ladder rung by cautious rung.

  Negroes ran to the house. Dilcey shouted, “Tara! We got to save Tara!”

  Scarlett woke from her stupor. “Rhett!” she cried. “My God! It’s Tara.” She darted for the door as the fanlight popped and flame blossomed on the underside of the porch roof.

  Rhett caught her around the waist and lifted her off her feet. “No!” he said. “It’s too far gone.”

  She kicked at his shins. “Not Tara. I won’t lose Tara.”

  “By God! I won’t lose you! Not ever again!” Rhett bore Scarlett away as flames burst through the soffits and over the roof peak.

  The heat was blistering. Rhett, Scarlett, Tazewell, and Belle retreated to the turnaround.

  Scarlett wept angrily. “We should have tried!” She flailed at Rhett’s chest. “We should have done something!”

  The fire roared and Tara’s windows glowed like Satan’s eyes. Hoofbeats in the lane: the neighbors. Too late. Altogether too late.

  “Oh Rhett,” Scarlett moaned, “it’s Tara. It’s Tara.” She buried her face in his shoulder.

  “Yes, honey. It was.”

  The voice wasn’t as loud as the fire. “My day is come.”

  The ragged old man had twigs in his beard. His greasy hair was knotted into tangles. He’d got too near the fire and his shirtfront and sleeves were scorched here and there. He held a rusty single-shot dueling pistol.

  “Rhett Butler,” Isaiah Watling repeated dully, “my day is come.”

  Rhett pushed Scarlett aside. “Good evening, Watling. You didn’t need to burn my wife’s house. I’d have come out if you’d asked.”

  “Cleansing fire …” Isaiah mumbled.

  “I don’t recall needing a cleansing fire,” Rhett said. “But I’m not particularly religious. Doubtless, you know a good deal more about cleansing fires than I do.”

  The old man found a residue of energy and straightened. “You murdered my son, Shadrach. Because of Rhett Butler, the Young Master of Broughton Plantation, my boy burns in hell.”

  Through chattering teeth, Scarlett yelled, “You! Leave Tara! Depart from us, you miserable creature!”

  Rhett said, “Isaiah, if I hadn’t killed your son, somebody else would have. You know that. Shad Watling wasn’t going to die in bed.”

  “Nor will you, sinner!” With trembling hands, old Isaiah raised his pistol.

  Rhett took a step toward him. “Give me the pistol, Isaiah.”

  Belle ran to her father, crying, “Poppa! Poppa! Please! You mustn’t!”

  The report wasn’t loud: a crack, not much louder than a stick breaking. Belle Watling shuddered. Tucking her pink dressing gown neatly so no one could see her bare legs, Belle sat down on the mounting block.

  Belle said, “Poor, poor Poppa,” and died.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Tomorrow Is Another Day

  After years of wondering about the place, Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Elsing visited the Chapeau Rouge. It was their patriotic duty.

  Nine years after the War, the Confederate story had flowered into a flamboyant, romantic myth. Certain lurid events that had once embarrassed these ladies had become prominent in their family legends. As Mrs. Elsing told her grandchildren, “When Georgia’s Yankee occupiers were hanging brave men right and left, Belle Watling’s ruse saved your father from the gallows. You simply cannot imagine!” Mrs. Elsing’s astonishment at Yankee gullibility was renewed every time she repeated the familiar tale. “The Yankees actually believed Hugh Elsing would brawl in a sporting house! Imagine that!”

  But a legend is one thing, a sporting house another, and when the ladies’ coach stopped before the notorious place, the ladies almost told their coachman to drive on. They were greatly relieved to see others they knew, respectable citizens come to pay their respects to Atlanta’s most notorious fallen woman.

  Tell the truth, they were disappointed. Afterward, Mrs. Meade told her friends, “Why, Miss Watling’s parlor seemed very nearly respectable!”

  Mrs. Elsing, who detested French decor, disagreed. “Too ar-tis-tic, my dear. Far too ar-tis-tic.”

  The Chapeau Rouge hadn’t changed since the days when Confederate officers rollicked there and veterans returned to honor the young men they had been. In uneasy association, reputable and disreputable Atlantans waited on a walk bordered by Belle’s fragrant roses.

  MacBeth greeted those he knew and those he didn’t with the same impersonal “Mornin’, sir, mornin’, ma’am. Glad you could come out on such a sorrowful day.”

  Inside, curiosity seekers who expected gay cockatiels and exotic flamingos found wrens: Belle’s black-clad Cyprians.

  Several presently respectable matrons had worked here during the War. Mrs. Gerald D. had been the vivacious “Miss Susanna” and “Li’l Flirt” was now Mrs. William P. By neither word nor gesture did the Cyprians recognize their former comrades.

  The mortician’s men had delivered fifty straight-backed chairs and shifted Belle’s parlor furniture upstairs. They’d set the coffin on sawhorses and draped the bier in black crepe. They’d placed scores of wreaths and floral arrangements to best advantage.

  Belle was laid out in a gray silk dress of distinctly old-fashioned cut. Her hair was loose on the white
satin pillow and her hands were crossed devoutly. She looked like a child wearing her mother’s ball gown. A broad red ribbon with Beloved in black letters was draped across her coffin.

  An ashen-faced Rhett Butler accepted condolences. “Yes, she was a fine woman. Belle had a trusting heart. Yes, Belle meant a great deal to me. Thank you, Henry, for coming.”

  Mrs. Butler stood beside her husband. “So glad you could come, Grandfather Merriwether. I hope you’ll partake of our refreshments. Kitchen’s through that door.”

  Scarlett introduced the young man: “Belle’s son, Tazewell Watling. Mr. Watling is a cotton factor from New Orleans. A Confederate veteran, yes.”

  Stunned by grief, Tazewell Watling accepted well-meant condolences from strangers. Though he thanked each politely, their kind words meant nothing. Tazewell’s mind was regretting what so easily might have been: his mother in the sunshine in his little Vieux Carré garden, happy at last. How he wished he’d kept one, just one, of his mother’s silly, precious letters!

  Although respectable Atlantans eschewed Belle’s lavish funeral feast, rougher citizens and their womenfolk gathered in the kitchen for roast beef, ham, and whiskey. They complained about the national depression and wondered when Atlanta would get up and get going again. They toasted Belle’s memory. They recounted Belle’s kindnesses when they’d been down on their luck.

  The Atlanta Journal reporter wrote,

  Wearing clanking leg irons, his wrists cuffed with bracelets of iron, the murdered woman’s father was escorted to the wake by Clayton County sheriff Oliver Talbot. As mourners recoiled in horror, the bearded patriarch who had taken his daughter’s life approached her bier. No fatherly tenderness softened his stony features; he uttered no grief-stricken cry. His finger had pressed the fatal trigger. His daughter had fallen at his feet, crying piteously. But if Isaiah Watling felt remorse, he showed none.

  What thoughts must have tormented his obstinate mind; what fevered emotions must have been quenched by his obdurate will. He bent for a moment over his daughter’s coffin and was seen to place something therein.