Rhett Butler's People

by Donald McCaig

  As offended ladies withdrew, Scarlett suppressed her giggles.

  On that triumphant note, on a beautiful May afternoon, Rhett and Scarlett Butler boarded a railroad car paneled in Philippine mahogany and green velvet. The rose petals in the crystal sconces glistened with moisture, the tablecloth was damask, the Sillery perfectly chilled.

  When Rhett raised his glass to his bride, Scarlett announced, “I never said I loved you, you know.”

  Rhett’s glass hesitated. “You pick this moment to remind me? Scarlett, what incredible timing!”

  “I’m the only woman you know who’ll tell you the truth. You’ve often told me I am.”

  Rhett shook his head ruefully. “Yes, honey, I suppose I did. Sometimes I say the goddamnedest things.”

  As dusk settled on the piedmont, their porter lit lanterns, drew the curtains, turned down their bed, and closed the door behind him.

  “Tara is just beyond those hills,” Scarlett mused. “When I was a young girl, how could I have imagined…”

  The backs of Rhett Butler’s hands were furred with the softest curly hair. Except for the creases across his knuckles where the flesh was as white as hers, Rhett’s fingers were tanned. His strong fingers could untie a bow or unhook a stay as delicately as if a cat had brushed Scarlett’s shivering skin.

  In the morning, as their train rushed through the Alabama countryside at a breathtaking clip, the porter brought steaming-hot water for Scarlett’s hip bath.

  Rhett Butler sat in an armchair, smoking a cigar.

  “What are you looking at?” Scarlett tried to cover her breasts with a washcloth.

  Rhett laughed until Scarlett started laughing, too, and the washcloth fell away.

  They had their first quarrel soon after they got to New Orleans.

  “Why can’t we move to the St. Charles?” Scarlett demanded. “This”—she dismissed their luxurious suite—“is the Creole hotel.”

  “Yes, dearest.” Rhett pressed studs into his cuffs. “Which is why we are here. The St. Charles caters to Americans. Americans are great engineers, moneymakers, and moralizers, but they don’t know how to eat. If you don’t know how to eat, you cannot know how to make love.”

  “Rhett!”

  He grinned at his bride. “I’ve rather enjoyed our marital relations.”

  “That doesn’t mean we need to talk about them.”

  “When food and love are forbidden topics, conversation descends to politics.” As an orator might, Rhett set his left hand in the small of his back. “Tell me, Mrs. Butler, will Georgia ever be free of Carpetbagger rule? Is Governor Bullock’s concern for the negro a ruse to get their votes?”

  When he ducked, Scarlett’s shoe clattered against the shutters behind him.

  That night, the lobby was thronged with well-dressed European travelers and wealthy Creoles. When Rhett asked the doorman to summon a cab, Scarlett said, “Rhett, I didn’t know you spoke French.”

  “Creole isn’t exactly French, honey. Parisians can’t make head or tails of it.”

  The doorman drew himself up to his full five foot two. “Monsieur, that is because our French is ancient and pure. The Parisian French have bastardized a beautiful language.”

  Rhett’s inclined his head. “Sans doute, monsieur.”

  Every morning, disdaining the hotel waiters, Rhett went to the kitchen to fetch Scarlett’s breakfast tray. Scarlett’s day began with caresses and beignets and the bitterest, blackest coffee she’d ever tasted.

  “My dear, you have jam at the corner of your mouth.”

  “Lick it off.”

  They never left the hotel before noon.

  Rhett knew every shop in the city, and fashionable dressmakers greeted him with a kiss on the cheek and news of old acquaintances. “English, please.” Rhett smiled. “My wife is a Georgia lady.”

  The new high waistlines flattered Scarlett’s neck and bodice, and she bought so many gowns, Rhett had them packed in steamer trunks and shipped home. They bought a Saint Bernard puppy for Wade and a coral bracelet for little Ella. Though Scarlett said she’d never wear it, Rhett bought a shimmering red petticoat for Mammy.

  One languorous, sensual day blurred into another. Scarlett hadn’t been flattered so shamelessly since she was a maiden. Despite her wedded state, more than one Creole gentleman made it clear he would gladly have taken matters beyond admiration. Rhett took no offense at the flirtations but never left her alone with another man.

  New Orleans winked at behavior that would have set Atlanta tongues wagging. Scarlett could get tipsy. She could play chemin de fer. She could flirt so outrageously, Atlanta biddies would have thought it adulterous.

  At Sunday Mass in St. Louis Cathedral, Rhett leaned over to whisper a joke so crude, it set her choking and coughing. Rhett joked when he should have been solemn, was solemn when he should have jeered. He was delighted by Louisiana’s Carpetbagger legislature, praising its every folly, reveling in its corruption, as if madness were the natural state of affairs.

  Scarlett adored Creole cooking. Lunching at Antoine’s one afternoon, when Scarlett speared the last mussel from Rhett’s plate he grinned. “If you grow round and fat, I shall take a Creole mistress.”

  Scarlett looked for the waiter. “Let’s order more crawfish.”

  Rhett reached across the table, took her left hand, and with his thumb caressed the tender web between Scarlett’s thumb and forefinger.

  Hoarsely, Scarlett said, “I don’t want any more. Quick, Rhett. Let’s go back to the hotel.”

  One afternoon, Rhett hired a vis-à-vis to drive them along the levee, where Mississippi River paddle wheelers were exchanging cargoes with deepwater ships. Since the Federals captured New Orleans early in the War, the city hadn’t been bombarded, and became the South’s busiest port. The stevedores were immigrant Irish, glad to have twelve hours’ work for fifty cents. They lived in shantytowns behind the levee with worn-out wives and too many squalling, dirty children. Startled to hear her father Gerald’s familiar accent, Scarlett gripped Rhett’s arm.

  “What is it, sweetheart?”

  “Promise me, Rhett. Oh, promise me I’ll never be poor again.”

  Per New Orleans custom, they dined late and afterward attended balls—public and private, costume and masked. Or they gambled at the Boston Club (named from the popular card game, not the Yankee city). After Scarlett understood bezique, she won more than she lost.

  One night during a memorable run of luck, Rhett insisted they leave immediately.

  Scarlett nursed her anger until they were in their cab. “I was having fun! I was winning! You don’t want me to have my own money!”

  “My dear, money means much more to you than it does to me.”

  “You want to own me!”

  “Money means even more to the gentlemen whose pockets you were emptying. I know those particular gentlemen. I’ve known them for years.”

  Scarlett tossed her head. “Why should I give a darn about them?”

  “You needn’t, but I must. Since they cannot possibly seek satisfaction from a lady, they must challenge her escort. The levee is damp at daybreak, and I’d hate to catch a chill.”

  Several evenings, Rhett went out on business, leaving Scarlett in the hotel to try on her purchases.

  One tiny cloud drifted across Scarlett’s happiness. The young man was dressed soberly, more like a senior clerk than a man about town. He was usually in the lobby when they passed through, leaning against a pillar with his arms crossed, or sitting in a club chair reading a newspaper. He chatted familiarly with the doorman.

  He watched them come into the St. Louis and watched them go out. He frequented the same restaurants.

  “Who is that boy?” Scarlett whispered. “He was at the Boston Club last night. Why is he interested in us?”

  “You needn’t worry yourself, dear,” Rhett replied. “He fancies he has a grievance with me.”

  “What grievance? Who is he?”

  “How kind you are t
o worry about me,” Rhett said. “Really, you needn’t.”

  “Worry about you?” Scarlett sniffed. “Don’t be silly. You can take care of yourself.”

  Still, the young man was a cloud.

  Those profiting under the Reconstruction government were building homes in what, not long ago, had been truck gardens outside the city. This “Garden District” was growing so rapidly that fine new mansions were fronted by streets where municipal horse-cars sank to their hubs in mud. Unfinished mansions were surrounded by stacks of raw lumber (which Scarlett thought compared poorly with Georgia pine). Evenings were punctuated by carpenters’ hammers tapping away like woodpeckers until it was too dark to see.

  Captain Butler and his beautiful bride were invited to fêtes where cotton factors and riverboat owners mingled with hard-faced men whose easy laughter never reached their eyes. Although they were expensively dressed, their lapels were too wide and their trousers too tight. They favored bright parrot colors. These men spoke of Cuba and Nicaragua as casually as if they’d just come from there and might go back tomorrow. Their women were too young, too pretty, too fashionably dressed, and didn’t try to conceal their boredom.

  The hard men were more courteous to Rhett than to one another.

  “How do they know you?”

  “From time to time, I’ve put a little business their way.”

  In a Touro Street mansion, a house so new Scarlett could smell the wallpaper paste, an old woman introduced herself. “I am Toinette Sevier.” Her smile was charmingly insincere. “Sevier is my maiden name. I prefer to forget my husbands. You are a Robillard, I believe. You favor your mother.”

  Scarlett felt like someone had stepped on her grave.

  Toinette Sevier’s skin was age-spotted and her pink scalp gleamed through thinning white hair. Her jeweled rings, bracelets, and necklace proved she’d once been a desirable woman.

  “Ellen and I were Savannah belles too many years ago. I did know Ellen’s beau, Philippe, rather better than I knew your mother.”

  Philippe! A name Scarlett had banished to the furthest corner of her memory. On her deathbed, Scarlett’s mother’s final plea had been for “Philippe!”

  A servant replaced Toinette’s glass with another. Her smile was reminiscent. “Philippe was a flame that grows hotter and brighter, until it consumes everything—or should I say everyone—it touches.”

  Scarlett didn’t want to hear another word. Ellen O’Hara had been the finest lady, the most perfect mother. … Scarlett drew herself up to reply, “My mother never spoke of the man.”

  “She wouldn’t.” The woman’s old eyes had seen everything. “There are Catholics and Catholics, my dear, and Ellen Robillard was a penitential one.”

  In New Orleans, Scarlett was happy—almost too happy. She did miss her sawmills: the buying and selling, the satisfaction of besting shrewd businessmen. And she missed Ashley. She missed his face, the now-too-rare spark in his tired, dear brown eyes. Ashley Wilkes was Tara and Twelve Oaks and everything Scarlett had ever desired! In this mood, with Ashley on her mind, she couldn’t remember why she’d married Rhett Butler.

  Scarlett resented Rhett’s power. His embrace overwhelmed her resistance; his kisses won his way with her. Scarlett just knew Rhett wanted her to become someone less than she was: a devoted wife who was as good as she was stupid. In this half-bored, half-resentful mood, Scarlett went through Rhett’s portfolio one morning while he was fetching her breakfast.

  Some of Rhett’s papers were in Spanish and bore elaborate wax seals. She found bills of lading—one for “two trunks, by rail to the National Hotel, Atlanta. HANDLE WITH CARE!”; one for Wade’s Saint Bernard puppy: “Special Handling! Express car!” She found a bill from Peake and Bennett, London tailors, a letter of credit from the Banque de New Orleans in an amount that pleasantly surprised her, and a ticket for a ball, two nights hence, at the Honeysuckle Ballroom.

  One ticket. Not two.

  Of course Rhett had been with other women. He’d made no secret of that. But Scarlett had assumed that now they were married, she would satisfy him. The “business” Rhett went out for at night—what sort of “business” was transacted between midnight and dawn? Scarlett’s ears burned. She’d been a fool!

  When Rhett brought her breakfast, Scarlett was in her petticoat before the pier glass. “Look how fat I am,” she announced.

  When he put his arms around her, she stiffened. “I won’t eat anything, ever again, no matter how hungry I get. Oh Rhett, I remember when a man could put both hands around my waist and touch his fingertips.” When Rhett’s fingertips failed to meet by three inches, Scarlett burst into tears.

  That afternoon, Rhett went out again on his mysterious “business.” Scarlett went to the lobby, where the watchful young man nodded politely. The doorman was loading a Yankee family into a cab when their little boy kicked his shin. “The young monsieur is certainly a lively boy! Yes, madame, he is certainly lively.”

  The doorman pocketed his five-cent tip, massaged his ankle, and turned to Scarlett. “Yes, madame? Artaud is at your service.”

  “I wish a ticket for the Honeysuckle Ballroom.”

  The doorman smiled like someone who hears a joke he doesn’t understand. “Madame?”

  “The Honeysuckle Ballroom? Surely you’ve heard of it.”

  Artaud cautiously admitted he might have heard of that establishment. It was on Bourbon Street, or was it Beaubein?

  Scarlett offered a banknote. “The ticket is ten dollars, I believe.”

  The doorman put his hands behind his back. “Je suis désolé, madame. Désolé! I cannot help you.”

  The watchful young man paused in the doorway. “Pardon, madame. White ladies are not welcome at the Quadroon Ball.” The young man strolled away, whistling.

  “What, pray, is a ‘Quadroon Ball’?”

  The doorman produced a pained smile. “I cannot know, madame, and if I could know, I could not say. Forgive me, madame. …” He turned to an elderly French lady who wished to know which church had an eleven o’clock Mass.

  In the Boston Club that evening, Toinette Sevier was accompanied by a good-looking Creole half her age.

  “Excuse me, madame …”

  “Ah, Mrs. Butler. I understand you fancy bezique?”

  Scarlett didn’t want chitchat. “Madame Sevier,” she asked, “are you respectable?”

  The old woman chuckled, “My dear, old age makes all of us respectable. I am far more respectable than I ever wished to be. Henri, be a dear and fetch me some champagne.”

  “Then you don’t know about the Quadroon Ball.”

  She clapped her wrinkled hands in glee. “On the contrary, Mrs. Butler. Every lady knows about the Quadroon Ball, but she’d risk her reputation admitting it.”

  “Will you risk your reputation?”

  “My dear. My reputation has been blacked more thoroughly than an old boot. What do you wish to know?”

  “Why can’t I buy a ticket?”

  “Because Quadroon Balls are for white gentlemen and quadroon girls seeking connections with them. Neither negro men nor white ladies may attend. A few daring white women have slipped in—it is a masked ball—hoping to catch their husbands en flagrante. When they were discovered, the city buzzed about it for weeks. Delicious scandals. Absolutely delicious.”

  Rhett was out when the porter delivered an envelope to their room. The envelope was of good quality and on it, in a slanting hand, someone had written, “Compliments of a friend.” Scarlett found a ticket for the Honeysuckle Ballroom inside.

  When Rhett returned, he eyed Scarlett quizzically. “What are you up to, my little sparrow hawk? You were grouchy this morning. Now butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.”

  “Oh Rhett, I’m not feeling well. I can’t go out tonight.”

  Rhett eyed her skeptically. “I wouldn’t want you to waste away. I’ll fetch something from Antoine’s.”

  Scarlett was in bed with the shutters closed and a cold cloth o
n her forehead when Rhett returned with her favorite delicacies: clams swimming in butter, delicately crusted prawns, a langoustine opened like a pink-and-white flower.

  “Oh,” she said. “I couldn’t eat a thing. Here.” She patted the bed. “Sit beside me.”

  Men are such deceivers! Rhett seemed almost … concerned. He touched her forehead. “May’s too early for the fevers. Shall I fetch a doctor?”

  “No, my darling husband. You’re the only medicine I need.”

  He shook his head. “Then I’m sorry to disappoint you. I must go out for a few hours.”

  “Where are you going, darling?” Her voice was light and unconcerned.

  “Nowhere you need to worry about, my poor darling. Some business I must attend to.” Rhett leaned closer, his eyes glowing. “What do you have on your mind, my dear? Are you thinking again? Your angelic countenance betrays you.”

  “Can’t I go with you?”

  He laughed. “No, my dear, you certainly cannot. Anyway, as I seem to recall, you aren’t feeling well.”

  He donned the frock coat the tailor had delivered yesterday and the silk foulard he’d worn at their wedding. Rhett bent to kiss her forehead. “Try to eat something,” he said, and closed the door softly behind him.

  She plundered her wardrobe, dropping rejected gowns on the floor. Yes, her blue taffeta—Rhett’d never seen her in it. And that new black mantilla! She lay flat on the bed, cinching her corset until she gasped. She braided her hair into coils tucked under her blue velvet hat. Her sequined half mask concealed everything but her eyes.

  Carriages deposited gentlemen outside the Honeysuckle Ballroom and slipped around the corner into Bienville Street. The negro doorman was dressed as a Zouave in baggy red pants, a short blue jacket, a broad red sash, and a Turkish fez, which perched atop his huge skull like the turret of an ironclad. “Bonsoir, madame. Comment allez-vous?”

  He hesitated before accepting Scarlett’s ticket. “Et la Maman de vous, mamselle?” He peered closely at her. “Mamselle, are you lost? Have you perhaps arrived at the wrong address?”

  The watchful young man appeared and took Scarlett’s arm. “I see you got my ticket.” Scarlett’s escort made a joke in rapid-fire Creole and the doorman laughed and bowed them inside.